by Ninie Hammon
“Can you do that?”
“I just did. Of course, if the captain finds out I’ve got you digging around in the Cohen case when he thinks we’ve already found that bone, the guano will definitely hit the air-conditioning.”
“The only place we have to dig is the man Theresa saw at the Cohens’ house,” Jack said. He thought for a moment. “Anybody owe you a favor at the FBI?”
“If you’re asking did I take a bullet for somebody or throw myself on a grenade, no. But I’m a personable fellow for all that, and I made a few friends.”
“Think maybe you could arm-twist one of them into loaning you a sketch artist? Theresa got a good look at the guy.”
“You want me to get a sketch artist—for a closed case.” A statement, not a question.
“Uh-huh. And the use of their facial recognition software.”
“Sure you don’t want me to ask for somebody’s firstborn son?” Crock blew out his breath in a whoosh. “Ok, I’ll see what I can do.”
Jack got up to leave.
“Jack,” Crock said, “we’re twisting in the wind here. You know that, don’t you. No backup, nothing official.”
Jack looked Crock in the eye and nodded. Crock nodded back.
The moment passed.
“Well, while you’re out investigating a closed case, I’m going to stick my nose into one that’s out of our jurisdiction. I just called the Centurion Hotel and asked—you know, the suspect being a hometown boy and all——if they’d mind if I took a look-see at the surveillance footage from the elevator and hallway cameras for the week before Daniel hopped in it with Miss Goody Two-Shoes.”
Jack didn’t get it.
“I’ve watched that clip you gave me four times. That woman did a pre-tty impressive little dance, don’t you think? Had it perfectly choreographed. No way she pulled that off without practicing it. At the very least, she and whoever she’s working with scoped out the camera angles. Maybe they got caught on camera, too.”
“How do you know Lily Saunders has a partner?”
Crock cocked an eyebrow at Jack. “You ever try to black your own eye, bust your own lip and break your own nose?”
Before the end of that day, the sketch artist met with Theresa, and by mid-afternoon Thursday the facial recognition software had done its magic.
Jack marched triumphantly into Crocker’s office.
“You either just won the lottery or had a really good bowel movement this morning,” Crocker said. “Which is it?”
“We have a name,” Jack said, and handed Crocker a mug shot. “Edgar Wallace Boskowitz, Bosko to his friends and fellow inmates at Lebanon Correctional Institution. Served a dime there in 1995 for a string of burglaries. Has a rap sheet the size of Cleveland, property and drug crimes, and was just paroled from Marion on a controlled substances charge. But the thing is, he should have been otherwise occupied when Theresa’s friends died, locked away permanently as a persistent felony offender.”
“But he wasn’t because…”
“He was the driver in a Three Stooges bank robbery. Police capped his partner, but the guy’d killed a security guard. Bank robbery, dead guard——case gets kicked up to federal court and…”
“The judge in the case was Chapman Whitworth,” Crock finished for him.
“Give the man a kewpie doll. The gun his partner used was entered into evidence the first day of Bosko’s trial and then somehow got ‘misplaced.’ Defense demanded a mistrial and without the fingerprints and the murder weapon…”
Crock reached over his desk and gave Jack a fist bump as he got up from his big leather chair. “The Centurion Hotel called a few minutes ago,” he said. “Seems the cameras in that elevator and hallway that worked flawlessly to record Daniel’s assault on Thursday night didn’t work so flawlessly the previous Monday. That whole day’s tape from those cameras is blank. And that’s exceedingly odd, the manager told me, because the security company sent a technician to do an unscheduled inspection of the system the day of Daniel’s rendezvous. Clean bill of health. No mention of erased tape.” Crock picked up his little vial of toothpicks from the desk and slipped it into his pocket. “So I’m on my way to McComber Security Systems.”
Jack nodded.
“We caught a break on Bosko,” Jack said. “Our civic-minded federal judge shops locally--Mr. Boskowitz lives right here in Harrelton. I got the names of a couple of his ‘known associates’ from his parole officer, and I’m going out to shake some trees and see if anything falls out, maybe find a tie to Lily Saunders before I pay him a visit.” Jack paused. “After I discuss with an ATF agent an event he probably knows more about than I do.”
CHAPTER 21
2011
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” said the voice on the other end of the line, and Daniel Burke sincerely doubted that was possible. “If you can see a way out, I’m all over it. But as it stands, you can’t tell Clayton Abernathy no and neither can I.”
Daniel had met a stone wall when he’d tried to talk to Abernathy about Jeff Kendrick.
“That young man is the best criminal lawyer in Cincinnati, and you’re getting the best.” That was the old man’s final word, and short of telling him the real reason why he didn’t want Kendrick to represent him, there was no getting around it.
Daniel had to admit—grudgingly—that they both were stuck. “Fine, then,” he said. “You’re my lawyer.”
“Agreed.”
Silence again.
“There’s no lemonade to be made of this that I can see, so let’s just suck up the sour and get on with it,” Jeff said. “We have to talk. Soon. Carve out a big hunk of time because there’s a lot to go over. Clayton says you and Mrs. Washington are being framed, and I have to know why. And who.”
“You’re not going to believe it.”
Daniel heard anger replace annoyance in Kendrick’s voice.
“Let’s get one thing straight right now, Daniel,” he snapped. “I will believe it because you’re my client, and if you say it’s true, it’s true. That’s how attorneys roll.”
“Fair enough. My secretary can work it out with yours.”
“Done,” Kendrick said and hung up without saying goodbye.
When his secretary buzzed in a few minutes later, Daniel assumed she was confirming with him the appointment with Jeff Kendrick. She wasn’t.
“There’s a man here who wants to see you,” she said. “He’s not a reporter. He says he’s an old friend of yours, Billy Ray Hawkins.”
Billy Ray looked just like he had the day Daniel and Jack had visited him in prison—absent the prison garb, that is. In fact, he looked like he’d always looked, like he looked when Daniel was a kid tiptoeing with Becca through her living room, trying not to wake her father as he slept off a bender. He was one of those men who’d never looked particularly young, so as he aged, he never looked particularly old, either. He could have been anywhere between thirty-five and sixty. The only mark the years had left on him was a sprinkling of gray in his hair and wrinkles around his eyes that crinkled the tear-drop tattoo beneath the left one. Crow’s feet, not smile wrinkles. Billy Ray hadn’t earned smile wrinkles.
Dressed in jeans, work boots and a short-sleeved plaid shirt that displayed the full-sleeve tattoos, he was as comfortable in Daniel’s plush office as he’d have been in a chicken coop.
“You got nice digs, Reverend,” he said in a gravelly voice that was always startling no matter how many times you’d heard it. Daniel gestured toward the leather chair, and Billy Ray sat. He glanced around at the lush carpet and cherry desk, and his eyes came to rest on the floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with leather-bound tomes. “You read all them books?”
Actually, Daniel had read precious few of them. They had been selected painstakingly by somebody—some decorator, he supposed—to indicate a level of education and erudition he didn’t have. They were for show.
“Every last one.”
Billy Ray looked at him, made no c
omment, and Daniel had the uncomfortable feeling the man knew he was blowing smoke. It was dangerous to underestimate men like Billy Ray Hawkins. Daniel suspected that for most of the man’s life, other people had done just that and had lived to regret it.
“Can I get you anything?” Daniel asked in stony politeness. “Coffee, a soft drink?”
“The only thing you can get for me is my little girl,” he said, as easily as “pass the salt.” “I want her home with her daddy where she belongs, and I figure you know where I can find her.”
“Becca is a thirty-eight-year-old woman so I fail to see how ‘home with her daddy’ is where she belongs,” Daniel said.
“Now there you go, making all kind of assumptions and judgments. She’s my little girl, and I just want to take care of her and see she has everything she needs.”
“Why on earth would you come here looking for her?” Daniel asked. “If I’d known where to find her, why would Jack and I have gone all the way to Danforth to ask if you knew where she was?”
“You’s looking for Becca then, and you figured to start with me. Well, I’m looking for Becca now, and I figure to start with you—because it seems to me if you’s so determined to find her back in July, you’ve surely had success by now.”
Wrongo, Moosebreath—that’s what Andi always said when she was playing Go Fish and was bluffing.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Billy Ray, but we’ve come up snake eyes. Don’t have any more idea where she is now than we did when we talked to you.”
“See, there you go again. Making assumptions.”
“What kind of assumptions?”
“Assuming I’m too dumb to know when a man’s lying to me and when he’s telling the truth. Sitting in a cell twenty-four/seven for twenty years, studyin' people, how their eyes twitch when they’re lying—like yours just done.”
Oh yes, it was a dangerous thing, indeed, to underestimate Billy Ray Hawkins.
“I don’t care if you use eye-twitches, nose wiggles or projectile vomiting as an indicator, I’m not lying. But I also don’t care one way or the other whether you believe me.” He paused. “Ask Jack if you want to, but I can save you the trouble—he doesn’t know, either.”
At the mention of Jack, Billy Ray face closed up tight. “Don’t need to talk to that black buck. I done found out what I need to know.”
“Suit yourself. If you want to leave me your number, I’ll give it to her if I ever do find her. Right off the top of my head, though, I’d say it’s a safe bet she won’t use it, that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.”
“The wanting of it ain’t the point here. There’s what’s right and what’s true that matters. It’s right and true that I’m her daddy, and she’s my kin.” He leaned a little forward in the chair. “And she will come right on home with me soon’s I have a chance to convince her she’d ought to.”
“Well, I wish you luck, Billy Ray, but I can’t help you.” Daniel stood to indicate the conversation was over. Billy Ray remained seated, looking up at him through dark eyes as cunning and ruthless as a ferret’s.
“Take a word of advice from an old friend who’s known you since you’s a pup—probably be a good idea if you’s to stick to the truth from now on ’cause you ain’t no good at all at lyin’. I wasn’t sure of it before I came here, but I am now—you do know where she is.” His voice got softer, meaner. “Listen up to what I’m telling you for true. I’m only gonna say it just this one time, Daniel. You need to tell me what you know. Right now. You will regret it if you don’t.”
The cold edge of threat in his voice sliced through the air like a dagger.
“I can’t help you, Billy Ray,” Daniel said, and was glad his own tone was not only firm, but unafraid. Of course, his lack of fear was like the leather books that lined his office—all for show. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment.”
Billy Ray stood silently, went to the door, then stopped, looked back and shook his head sadly. “You’re gonna be real sorry you didn’t give me my girl when I asked, Reverend.” His voice was soft. “Real, real sorry.”
CHAPTER 22
2011
Jeff Kendrick always believed his clients. Even when every word coming out of their mouths was a bald-faced lie, he still “believed” them. It all came down to the definition of believe. He’d had to redefine the term a long time ago to mean simply to behave in a manner that does not contradict what your client says and present to the world the words of your client as gospel.
Neither of those definitions required that he, personally, had to blindly accept that his client was telling the truth—whatever that happened to be. In most cases, Jeff was lucky if his personal belief system lined up with his client’s on any part of their story. At least in Daniel’s and Theresa’s cases, he didn’t believe his clients were guilty of the crimes they’d been accused of committing. Clayton Abernathy believed in Daniel, and that alone would have been good enough for Jeff to bet his life and fortune on. Even without that, though, it was impossible to believe that the Boy Scout minister had committed rape.
Boy Scout. That’s what Emily had called him. Not that they talked about Daniel when they were together. Their time was too precious, so delicious and limited that they seldom squandered so much as a drop of it on any other human being but each other.
He jerked his mind away from thoughts of Emily like his hand had touched a hot stove. He could not go there, not with her…husband…sitting across the desk from him, putting his life and future into Jeff’s hands. Theresa was talking and Daniel was looking at her, and in that unguarded moment Jeff saw a ragged pain in Daniel’s eyes that he was sure mirrored his own unguarded self. It occurred to him to wonder how Daniel kept from thinking about Emily when he was sitting across the desk from the man who’d tried to take her away from him.
Jeff’s belief in Theresa’s innocence was a gut reaction he’d have bet his life on, too. She didn’t have Clayton Abernathy’s endorsement to speak for her, but the old woman didn’t need the endorsement of anybody to stand tall in her own righteousness. Theresa Washington was good—whatever that meant. Maybe that’s what made her so amazingly intuitive.
As soon as they were seated, Theresa looked at him with such discernment he was sure she could read the tag on his boxer shorts. She looked at Daniel and then asked, “What’s goin’ on ’tween the two of you?”
He figured he’d let Daniel field that one. Daniel didn’t say a word.
“You two been posturing around each other, peeing on bushes ever since we got here,” she said. “Any fool can see they’s way too much testosterone in this room. What’s wrong?”
The silence drew out until Jeff finally broke it. “You’ve both told me that there are things about this case you’re not willing to share with me. I agreed to represent you anyway. So you’re going to have to accept that there are things about it I’m not willing to share, either.”
Her black eyes continued to bore into him like a slow-speed dental drill. “That’s fair enough, I suppose,” she said.
But he’d bet his country club membership she’d keep probing until she had an answer.
And then they’d started telling him their story, and as the tale spread out before him, the question of “believing your client” flitted around in his head like an irritated wasp.
“So…let me get this straight. You’re telling me that Chapman Whitworth is somehow involved in all this?”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying a’tall,” Theresa said. “He’s not ‘involved.’ He’s the puppet master pulling the strings, and neither one of us would be here if it wasn’t for him.”
“This is payback for something you did to him twenty-six years ago—that you’re not willing to tell me about. And because the two of you know something about him—that you’re also not willing to share with me—and he wants to divert your energies so you won’t use it against him, and maybe to discredit you so no one would believe you if you did?”
>
He must have allowed the skepticism he felt to creep into his voice because Daniel lost it at that point. He’d been sitting quietly after he’d described the incident with the woman in the elevator, not contributing much to the conversation, letting Theresa tell the tale. Suddenly, he slammed his fist down on the desktop hard enough to set the balls in the Newton’s Cradle on Jeff’s desk whacking frantically at each other.
“There’s a monster controlling Chapman Whitworth, and that’s why Emily’s dead,” he said, his quiet voice a violent howl of emotion. “He had her killed. Are you listening to me, Kendrick? He murdered my wife while she was on the phone to me, telling me she loved me. I heard the gunshot…and then there was…silence.”
Jeff could do nothing but stare at Daniel. Clearly, the man’s grief had unhinged his mind.
“No, it wasn’t some ‘random act of violence’ like the police and the press said. It was premeditated murder. She died to save Andi’s life, killed by a creature sent after me.”
Jeff glanced at Theresa, looking for the sympathy in her eyes he knew he’d see there for a dear friend who’d obviously had some kind of breakdown. She met his gaze square.
“We wasn’t gone tell you all of it ’cause we knew you wouldn’t b’lieve us if we did. We only wanted to give you enough so’s maybe you could represent us against these lies.” She looked at Daniel and sighed. “But he’s done opened this can, so looks like we gone have to eat all of it.”
And then they told him the most amazing tale he had ever heard. It took more than an hour to weave all of its parts together. The police sergeant, Jack Carpenter, the school shooter, the man who’d kidnapped Theresa and tried to kill Carpenter in a warehouse. And other killings—a man in a hospital bed in some little town in Kentucky, a bomb and a fire in…it all began to blur at that point. But he heard the important part loud and clear: the mental hospital escapee who’d shot Emily was a man who was possessed by a demon.