In an investigation of this sort, you sometimes have to think outside the box. While no one had had anything bad to say about Sal, I knew that no one is perfect. Somewhere, Sal had a vice, because everyone does. If I could identify his vice, it was possible I could learn more about him.
The first thing that came to mind was alcohol or drugs. If Sal were a user or dealer, that could explain why Johnson went to see him, but I had nothing to suggest this was the case. A drug user should be showing signs of withdrawal after being locked up as long as he had, but there were no indications that he was suffering its symptoms. As for being a dealer, many dealers nowadays refused to sample their own product, preferring to keep their heads clear so that they could outwit law enforcement. For that reason, I couldn’t rule out the possibility.
Alcohol was another matter. I stopped in at all three of the local liquor stores, but once again, no one recognized the photo. That led me to look up the local taverns and clubs, and again, there were only three. Two of them were downtown, and it took me only a few minutes to learn that Sal had probably never been in either of them. The third one, however, was outside of town, the kind of place where people go when they don’t want to be noticed. I plugged it into my GPS and followed the directions.
I found the place with no problem, a rundown-looking building that might have been a house at one time in its history. It sat near the intersection of two back roads that led into town, and it was early enough that there were only a couple of cars in the parking lot. I pulled in and got out of my car, then walked inside to find only a man and woman sitting at a table at the far back, and the bartender behind the bar.
I sat down on a stool at the bar and ordered a beer. It was late enough in the day that I could justify being off-duty, and after the day I’d had, a cold beer sounded good. The bartender brought it to me in a bottle, and as I paid him, I flashed Sal’s photo.
“Ever see this guy in here?” I asked.
The bartender looked at it, then looked up at my face. “You a cop?”
I showed him my ID. “FBI,” I said. “This man is a murder suspect, but we don’t know who he is. I’m hoping maybe he was one of your patrons, and you can tell me.”
He shrugged. “He comes in now and then,” he said. “I never got his name, and he usually just sits quietly by himself and gets plastered.”
“Usually? But not always?”
“There’s been a couple of times, when nobody else was around, he just sat at the bar and sort of ran off at the mouth. He said he was working on something that was going to make the world a lot better, a way to make it so people don’t have to work so hard. He told me he could give me a bartender that would do all my work, but never cost me anything. You believe that shit?”
My eyebrows climbed up my forehead. “Really? Did he ever go into detail, on how he planned to do that?”
“Nope. He was an odd character, I can tell you that. He said he needed to get drunk once in a while in order to clear his mind, so he could figure out how to solve whatever problems were involved in what he was doing. Drank a lot of whiskey sour.”
“You heard about the deputy who was killed, when the house burned down the other night? Was he in here anywhere around that time?”
The bartender’s eyes got wide. “You mean he killed that deputy? Hell, that was Crazy Kyle. You shouldn’t lock him up, you should give him a fucking medal. Crazy Kyle was a lunatic with a gun and a badge. That sonofabitch had a habit of beating people damn near to death over stupid shit.” He stopped for a second, then said, “Yeah, he was in here the night before that. Him and some other guy sat back in the corner and talked for a while, but I didn’t see who it was. This guy bought the other one a few beers, but then it looked like they got into some sort of an argument, and the other guy left. This one stayed about another hour, then settled his tab and went home, I guess.”
“Had you seen him talking to that guy before?”
The bartender shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe. Every now and then, somebody would sit down and talk to him. Usually it was women, but he’d brush them off and they’d go hit on somebody else. Once in a while, I’d see some guy, maybe that one, sit down with him and talk. Not often.”
“Was Deputy Johnson one of them?”
He grinned. “Nope. I never saw him and Crazy Kyle together.”
“That last time he was in here, though, you said you didn’t get a good look at the man he was talking to. Could that have been Johnson?”
He shrugged again. “I guess it could have been,” he said. “The guy had a big coat on, with a hood, and he never let it down. He was big enough to be Kyle, but I’ve never seen Kyle come in here without starting shit. Like I said, the two of them got into an argument. Crazy Kyle wouldn’t have walked away, he would have beat this guy senseless.”
I thought about all this. “Let me ask you this,” I said. “Did you ever see any sign that this guy might have been involved in anything illegal? Selling drugs, anything like that?”
The bartender laughed. “No, no way. The few times I saw him talking to people, nothing changed hands, that I’m sure of. I keep kind of a close eye on that, and if I see anything like it, I throw people out. I’m not going to lose my bar over what some other idiot does.”
“But you’re sure he never gave you a name?”
“Never. Even his credit card was from some company, somewhere.” He smiled. “I’ll tell you this, though. Every once in a while, somebody will get wild in here, try to start a fight. A few times, different guys tried to start fights with him, but he would smooth talk his way right out of it. He would end up buying the guy a drink, and everything would get friendly again. Hell, more than once he bought a round for the house, just to cool things off when people were getting loud. He’s a peacemaker, he is. I’d have a hard time believing that he would kill anybody.”
I finished my beer. “Personally, I agree with you. I don’t think he did it. The trouble is that the current evidence says otherwise. Unless I can find some new evidence, or at least find a motive, I’m afraid this guy is toast.”
The bartender shook his head. “That sucks,” he said. “He was a good customer, and a great tipper.”
I gave the bartender my card. “Listen, I appreciate everything you’ve told me. If you think of anything else that you think I might need to know, give me a call. My cell number is on the card.”
He looked hard at my card, then nodded. “Sure will.”
I left the bar, pleased with what I had learned. Sal was a drinker, and had occasionally met with someone at the bar. He had had a meeting the night before Johnson was killed, a meeting that seemed to have gone sour, with someone who might have been Johnson himself.
The bartender seemed certain that Johnson would become violent when their argument broke out, but I could think of situations in which even a psychopath might decide that discretion was the better part of valor, and walk away. Was it possible that Johnson was investigating Sal, or even blackmailing him? If there was something going on that needed to be kept secret, something Johnson didn’t want anyone else to know about his relationship with Sal, then stomping his ass in a tavern would be a stupid idea. Perhaps it would be smarter to simply pay him a visit at his home the next evening, and settle whatever issue was between them in private.
It was almost six by the time I left the bar, so I drove back to Clement and found a restaurant. After dinner, I went back to my hotel and began looking through my case notes and the file. There was nothing to indicate what Johnson was working on at the time, so I made a note to be sure I found out the next morning.
I pored over everything I did have, even going back to the original report. I had read it several times already, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that you never see everything at once. This was a good case in point, because I suddenly realized that something was missing from the report.
There was no mention of Johnson’s car.
Johnson’s car should’ve been parked
at or near Sal’s house, but there was no mention of its presence, or of it being towed away. With the deputy dead, his car should have been taken into custody and gone over by CSI, just in case there was anything in it that might have shed light on the case. There probably wasn’t, but proper procedure meant leaving no stone unturned. I made a note to find out where his car had been that night, and what had become of it.
Once again, it struck me that something about this case just didn’t add up. There were discrepancies in the report, things that were missing that should have been there. I read through it one more time, and suddenly realized that Branson was almost certainly lying about the call that had brought him to the house that night.
It took me nearly thirty minutes to drive from Clement to Selkirk. According to Branson’s report, he had been at his office when he got a call saying that there was loud shouting coming from the house, and had immediately left to go there. If a fight that resulted in the death of the deputy was going on when he got the call, it struck me as odd that he could have gotten there in time to see Sal bending over Johnson as he took his final breaths.
Of course, it was possible that the argument had accelerated to the point of violence just before he arrived, but there was still something odd about it. Why didn’t he dispatch another deputy who might have been closer to go and check it out? Why did Branson decide to go and handle it personally, without even telling anyone where he was going? Branson was involved. Of this, I was now sure.
Now, all I had to do was find a motive.
Chapter 20
Gunner and I took our places in the chow line for dinner that evening, right at the front of the line again. I had half expected things to go back to normal, with the Black Guerrilla Family taking the lead position again, but it hadn’t happened yet. Instead, they always stood to one side and waited for me and Gunner to go to the head of the line.
Dinner that night was chili mac with cornbread and coleslaw, and it was actually pretty good. Most of the food we ate in the jail seemed to be rather old, or made up from some mix that probably included sawdust instead of flour. Getting something that had some actual flavor to it was a pleasant surprise, and finding that we had gained a few more friends who joined us at our table didn’t hurt anything, either.
Old Charlie was still there, of course, and he laughed uproariously when I told them all about my confrontation with Sheriff Branson. “Oh, man, I woulda loved to have been a fly on that wall,” he said. “That no-good sonofabitch has been a pain in everybody’s ass in this whole county for years. I’ve heard of a few guys who swear it was Branson who killed the one they went up for, but nobody has ever been able to prove it.” He raised his cup of Kool-Aid into the air over the table. “Here’s hoping you can be the guy to do it.”
Everyone at the table cheered, and we all drank a toast to putting Branson out of office. Even if I couldn’t prove him guilty of anything, it seemed there were enough discrepancies in this case to hopefully expose him as a fraud. From the stories that I was hearing, it seemed to me that there were probably an awful lot of guys in prison who didn’t belong there, and all of them put there because of testimony from Branson.
“You gotta be careful, though,” Gunner said. “He figure out what you up to, well—more than one guy has suddenly hung himself in his cell in this place. Not that I figure they can pull that with you, you one tough mother, but that don’t mean you couldn’t get shot trying to escape. Remember, the way it is right now, most these deputies and jailers think you killed Crazy Kyle. They all knew he was nuts, but seems to me you gotta be a little nuts to want to wear a badge in this world, so to them, he was just one of the good ol’ boys.”
“There probably isn’t a lot I can do about it,” I said, “if they really want to get the job done. All I can do is watch my back, and hope you’re watching it, too.”
“You know I am,” Gunner said, and several of the others swore that they were watching out for me as well. I thanked them all, and then Gunner reminded us that it wasn’t just the cops I had to worry about. “Black Guerrillas all got hard-ons for you, too. I’ve seen some of them looking at you and whispering, so I figure something be about to happen. You keep your guard up.”
We finished eating, took our trays to the dish window, and then settled in to watch some TV. Most of the time, we watched movies, but for some reason I couldn’t figure out, a lot of the guys liked to watch reruns of Cops. That evening, it was on, so we watched several episodes back to back until it was time for lock down.
It happened as we were getting ready to go up the stairs to our cell. Everybody was jostling, trying to get as far ahead in the line as they could, when somebody rammed into me from behind. I was knocked off balance for a split second, but then everything went into slow-motion again, and I turned to see what was happening. The guy who had rammed me stepped aside, and another big black man lunged at me with a piece of steel that had been sharpened to a point.
Without my quick reaction, I would probably have been dead. But I twisted myself out of his way and the shank missed me by a couple of inches. I hit his arm, trying to make him drop it, but he held on and spun to come at me again. We were in the middle of a dense crowd, and while no one else was trying to help him, anyone who might have helped me had been separated from me. My attacker lunged again, and this time I caught his hand, twisted his arm up and back, then chopped him across his Adam’s apple. He wheezed, grabbing his throat, and dropped like a sack of potatoes to the floor. I caught the shank to keep it from the others.
Instantly, almost everyone else hit the floor. I was standing alone, holding a homemade weapon in my hand, as the jailers came running in. They were screaming at me to get down, and two of them were pointing tasers at me. I dropped to the floor, and three jailers landed on top of me.
I released the shank, and it clattered to the floor. “That wasn’t mine,” I said, “someone just tried to stab me with it. All I did was take it away from him, it was that guy.” I pointed to indicate the man I meant.
Two dozen voices screamed out that I was lying, drowning out Gunner and Charlie and a few others who were trying to back up my story. Four of the Guerillas all told how I had attacked one of them, wielding the shank that they claimed I had made in my cell. I was quickly handcuffed, and dragged out of the cell block despite my protests.
Out in the hall, the shift commander, Lieutenant Lockwood, was waiting. “Jones, what the hell happened in there?”
“Somebody attacked me, tried to stab me. I took the shank away, and that’s why I had it when your guys came in. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, just defend myself.”
The Lieutenant looked at me for a moment, then motioned for the jailers to bring me along and follow him. We went into a glass-walled cubicle, and he stepped up to a video monitor.
“Let me see the video of that fight,” he said to the woman who was running it. She tapped on the computer for a few seconds, then touched the screen, and a small video image expanded to full size.
The video started at the point where we got up from the tables and headed toward the stairs, and to me, it looked fairly obvious that my friends were being herded away from me. A moment later, though, all you could see was a scuffle in the crowd, with one glimpse of my hand striking my assailant’s throat. Immediately after that, people started diving to the floor, and there I stood, shank in hand.
Lieutenant Lockwood looked over at me. “Unfortunately, I can’t see anyone with a weapon but you,” he said. “Now, after what happened the other day, I suspect you might be telling the truth, but I have to be able to back up my decisions with evidence. Since you’re the only one seen holding any kind of a weapon, I’m afraid you’re going to the SHU. The Warden will look at it tomorrow, and may decide to let you go back to population, but I wouldn’t count on it.”
I let out a sigh and nodded. “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
I was marched down a hallway and taken through a door into another, smaller cell block. This
one had only about two dozen cells, and there was no one in the day room. I could see inmates looking through the tall, narrow, wire-reinforced glass windows in their doors as I was brought in. The jailers took me to a cell door, and one of them spoke into the microphone on his shoulder. The door buzzed and popped open, and I was pushed inside.
I was still handcuffed behind my back, but a second later the meal slot popped open, and I was told to extend my hands back through it. One of the deputies grabbed my hands, and my cuffs were removed. The slot was slammed shut, and I was alone.
I had heard about the SHU, or the “hole,” as it was called. This was where inmates were brought for solitary confinement, either as punishment or when they were in danger in general population. Here, I would be locked in my cell for twenty-three hours a day, and allowed out to the day room for only one hour. Depending on how many inmates might be in it, that hour could be in the very early morning or late at night.
A few minutes after I was put in the cell, one of the others opened. An inmate, a young Hispanic man, walked out into the day room, but then came straight to my cell door.
“Hey, man, what you in for?”
“I’ve been charged with murder,” I said. “Somebody tried to shank me in my cell block, so they brought me here.”
The kid broke into a huge grin. “No shit, man? That’s killer, man. Who you kill?”
“The sheriff accused me of killing one of his deputies, Kyle Johnson. I didn’t do it, though.”
He started laughing. “No, man, of course you didn’t. None of us guilty in here!” He hurried away to another door, and I could hear him repeating what I had said. He went to every door that had an inmate housed behind it, and told all of them.
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 12