Enough falderal, I thought. I needed to be getting on back to the shop. I had a few more questions for ol’ Michael McKinsey – like, what the hell happened to Nalene, his first wife? How’d she happen to die? That sort of thing. The circumstances seemed a little more than suspicious, if you ask me. Of course no one has – asked me, that is.
I radioed in and asked if anyone was near Bishop and found out Dalton was. I told him to come pick me up at The Branches asap. I thought I’d leave the van for Nita and Jean.
I told the women what I was up to, just in time for Dalton’s squad car to come screeching into the cul-de-sac. I waved goodbye and sat riding shotgun. Once we were on the road and I’d filled Dalton in on everything that had happened that morning, and he’d told me why he’d been out this way (a carjacking outside Bishop in the country – a Bishop cardiologist and his wife, both shaky but at home, who promised to come to the station in the morning to look at mugshots), I said, ‘Dalton, I got something I need you to do.’
‘Sure, Milt. Anything you say,’ Dalton said.
‘You know that big dance coming up next month at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall?’ I said.
‘Sure, Milt. I heard about it.’
‘You going?’
‘Ah, hadn’t thought about it much,’ he said. ‘I took Mama a couple of years, since she knew people there, but most of them are gone now and it just depresses her, so I doubt if she’ll want to go.’
All I could do was shake my head. ‘Well, Dalton, I think you should go this year, but I don’t think you should take your mama. I think you should take Holly.’
All was silence behind the wheel. I let it go for close to five minutes, like you do in an interrogation when you want the perp to talk; you be silent and then the perp has to fill the silence with something. Well, it didn’t work. Dalton could out-silence me. So I finally said, ‘Dalton, did you hear me?’
‘What’s that, Milt?’
‘Did you hear what I said about taking Holly Humphries to the VFW dance next month?’
Silence.
‘Dalton, you have to acknowledge that I said something.’
‘Well, yeah, Milt, you said something,’ he finally said.
‘Good. What did I say?’ I asked him.
Silence.
‘Dalton!’ I yelled at the top of my lungs. He swerved all over the road, but it was empty so we didn’t hit anything.
‘Milt, don’t yell at me!’ he said, once he had the car straightened out.
‘So, you can’t stand Holly, is that what you’re saying?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said, ‘that ain’t it.’
‘You just don’t like her much?’
‘Noooo,’ he said, ‘that ain’t it.’
‘Then what is it?’ I demanded.
‘Milt,’ he said, looking over at me, his face tormented, ‘it’s a Sadie Hawkins dance. You know, where the girls ask the guys . . .’
‘I know, I know!’ I said, and threw my head back against the headrest. ‘Shit,’ I said. To get off that subject, I asked him, ‘So how’s your ID of that DB going?’
‘Not so good,’ Dalton said. ‘But Anthony gave me an idea, and I think I can get Holly to help me with the computers . . .’
‘Good, good,’ I said, cutting him off. If you let Dalton go, he could talk your ear off and I wasn’t in the mood.
We rode the rest of the way in silence and once at the shop, I told Dalton to bring McKinsey to the interrogation room and went in there to wait for him.
He came in five minutes later, dressed in county-blue coveralls, hands cuffed in front, leg irons intact, and Dalton placed him in the chair opposite me. ‘Milt?’ Dalton said. ‘You want me to stay?’
‘No, Dalton, that’s OK,’ I told him. He left and I turned to McKinsey. ‘Bollinger find you a criminal attorney yet?’
‘Yeah. I talked to him on the phone. Said I shouldn’t answer any of your questions and to keep my mouth shut until he gets here. Which I’m doing.’
‘When’s he supposed to get here?’ I asked.
‘This afternoon,’ McKinsey answered.
I nodded my head. ‘OK,’ I said. I stood up. ‘I can tell him then about the murder charges.’
I started toward the door and McKinsey said, ‘Now, hold on, Sheriff! What murder charges? Rachael ain’t dead, is she?’
‘No, your – excuse the expression – wife is doing real fine, under the circumstances, those being that you beat the shit out of her and the kid, Melissa.’
‘The kid? I never touched that kid!’
‘Yeah, I figured Emily for that,’ I said.
‘I never said that!’ McKinsey shouted. ‘Who the hell you think I murdered, for God’s sake?’
‘Mary Hudson, of course,’ I said. ‘I figured she found out what you were doing with the Owen family – stealing their money and beating ’em up and all – and said she was gonna turn you in, so you killed her.’
McKinsey tried to stand up. ‘Listen! Listen, Sheriff! I never in my life even spoke to that Hudson woman, I swear to God! OK, I mighta done some of what you’re saying, I mighta been a little hard on Rachael for talking back and such, but I never, ever killed anybody! And I never stole anything from her! The woman didn’t have a pot to piss in, for God’s sake. Now that Hudson woman, I saw her in church with her family, that’s all. I barely spoke to her husband, and I’m a married man – I don’t talk to another man’s women.’
I sat down across from him and he too sat back down. He was breathing hard. ‘So, I can talk to you right now without your lawyer?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, sure! I don’t want you thinking I killed somebody, for God’s sake!’
‘So you never killed anybody?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you!’ McKinsey shouted.
‘So what happened to Nalene?’ I asked.
‘Huh?’
‘Nalene. Your first wife? The one before Emily? The one y’all had cremated in Oklahoma City, the one you told the church ran off, the one you collected $150,000 insurance payment for. You know, Nalene.’
McKinsey’s face turned red, a different shade than the one he turned when he got mad – I think this was the embarrassment shade of red. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that,’ he said. ‘Nalene just up and died in her sleep one night. I was with Emily so I didn’t find her. Emily found her when she didn’t come to breakfast and she went to check on her.’
‘How old was Nalene?’
‘Close to forty,’ McKinsey said, like forty was a good age for a first wife to die.
‘What did she die of?’
McKinsey shrugged his shoulders.
I rubbed my face with my hands, trying to keep patience with this dumbass. ‘Y’all had her cremated. Nobody’s gonna do that without a death certificate. So y’all had to call the ME or something. There had to be some record.’
‘Emily said we couldn’t call the ME here ’cause everybody would be snooping into our business. She said we should drive Nalene to Oklahoma City, check into a motel, move the body in at night, then call an ambulance in the morning. Which is what I did. Emily stayed in the bathroom so there wouldn’t be any questions. The ambulance guys said Nalene had a heart attack, a JP signed off on it, and I had a funeral home come pick her up. Told them we were from out of town and I wanted her cremated and I’d take the ashes home to bury.’
‘What did you do with the cremains?’
‘Ah, I haven’t exactly picked ’em up yet,’ he said.
‘What do you think Nalene died of, Michael?’ I asked.
‘I guess a heart attack, like the ambulance people said.’
‘You don’t think Emily had a hand in it?’
‘No!’ he all but shouted. ‘Emily’s the love of my life! She’d never do anything like that.’
‘So why did you have Nalene insured for so much?’ I asked.
‘Insured?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. There was a $150,000 insurance policy on her,’ I sai
d.
‘No there wasn’t,’ he said, a confused look on his face.
I sighed. If he didn’t know about the insurance money, was it possible he didn’t know about the social security or pension money Rachael should have been receiving? Was little Emily that good? Maybe she was.
EIGHT
Jean Mcdonnell – Friday
We got the kids all straightened out – boys off to Carol Anne’s former home, where her mother and brother now lived, and the girls in Carol Anne’s new home, Sister Mary’s former home. Carol Anne explained to me that with her four boys and Mary’s three boys (not counting Little Mark), she and Jerry had thought seriously about making Carol Anne’s former home into a permanent home for the boys, with Denise and Dennis as chaperones, leaving the four girls and Mark at Carol Anne’s new house.
‘I still think of this place as Mary’s house,’ she said, looking around the kitchen where the two of us sat at the breakfast table.
I looked where she looked, and couldn’t help agreeing with her. ‘This is Mary’s house,’ I said. ‘You need to make it your own. If you’ll excuse my saying so, your house was very different from this one – more lively, more exciting. You need to make your mark on this one, even if it means moving some of your stuff over here. Or,’ I said, grinning at her, ‘maybe just mess up some stuff in these cabinets. That would be a start.’
Carol Anne laughed. ‘Sister Mary was very neat,’ she replied. ‘It’s like pulling teeth to keep all this the way she had it.’
‘You’re too young to have your teeth pulled,’ I said. ‘So don’t. This is no longer Sister Mary’s house. It’s yours and Jerry’s. Talk to him – ask him what he likes best about this house, and what he likes best about your old house. Compromise.’
Carol Anne was slowly nodding her head as I talked. ‘That’s a good idea. Now that we’re moving children around, maybe it is time to move some furniture and stuff around too.’
I squeezed her hand as the kitchen door swung open and Lynnie, Mary’s oldest daughter, came in. Her face was very serious. ‘Mama Carol Anne, we need to talk.’
‘We have company right now, Lynnie,’ she said.
I started to stand up but Lynnie shooed me down. ‘No, Dr McDonnell. Please stay. I think you might be a good referee for this,’ Lynnie said.
I sat back down. ‘If it’s OK with Carol Anne,’ I said.
Carol Anne nodded. ‘Of course, although I can’t imagine—’
‘I want to wear real clothes!’ Lynnie all but shouted. ‘June and Sammie and the boys wear real clothes, why can’t we? We stand out like sore thumbs at school. I don’t have any friends because they think I’m some sort of weirdo! We used to wear regular clothes before we moved here!’ Lynnie stopped and took a deep breath. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s what I have to say.’
Carol Anne nodded her head and looked down at her baggy black dress, the one she’d been wearing (or one of many she’d been wearing) since Mary’s death. ‘I’ll talk to your father.’
‘Mama Carol Anne, that’s not enough! You have to be on our side when you talk to him! Can’t you see how none of us have any friends because of these stupid clothes?’
‘Clothes do not make the person, it’s what’s in—’
‘Oh, bull!’ Lynnie said. ‘Even you don’t believe that! Think back to when you were a teenager! Would you have been accepted by your peers wearing this crap?’
‘Lynnie, your language. Please don’t use those words, they’re offensive.’ Carol Anne sighed. ‘Yes, I understand what you’re saying. And I sympathize. Like I said, I’ll talk to your father.’
‘OK,’ Lynnie said. Then she looked at me. ‘Dr McDonnell, do you have anything to add?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No, I think you covered the issue nicely,’ I told her.
She nodded and walked out.
Milt Kovak – Friday
I got a call from Charlie Smith, police chief of Longbranch. ‘Milt, Charlie.’
‘Hey, Charlie,’ I said. ‘What’s up?’
‘Tatum Barclay’s dander,’ he said.
‘What’s his problem?’ I said, not the least bit interested. Tatum Barclay was a lawyer, and a pretty bad one. I think he mighta won a case once, but it woulda been a long time ago.
‘Seems you got his clients in your jailhouse that should be in my jailhouse,’ Charlie said.
‘Oh, ’cause they live inside the city limits, you mean?’ I asked.
‘That’s Barclay’s point. Personally, I don’t need ’em and I don’t want ’em.’
‘Oh, I’d happily give ’em up, Charlie. Bring ’em over to you all tied up in a pretty bow. ’Cept the murder I think one of ’em committed was in the county, which is why I’m holding ’em.’
‘Good enough for me. I’ll call Barclay back and tell him to bug you and not me.’
‘You’re a peach, Charlie.’
‘I try to please,’ he said as he hung up.
I sighed. I truly did not want to have a pow-wow with Tatum Barclay. But I had to wonder, why in the world would David Bollinger hire that nincompoop? Barclay had to be the worst lawyer in Oklahoma, maybe the entire Southwest, if not the United States of America. Hell, maybe the universe, I don’t know. But he was bad. He was the kind of lawyer who sounded good – a real fast talker, but when it came right down to it, he didn’t know a brief from his shorts.
Why would Bollinger hire him? I looked in the Longbranch phone book. Barclay was the first lawyer listed. Maybe that was why. Bollinger had been in Oklahoma, how long? I couldn’t remember exactly, but not long. So he picked the first lawyer he came to. Not very professional, I thought, but under the circumstances, a worthy attorney for the likes of Michael McKinsey and his little bride.
My private line rang and I sighed. Tatum Barclay had been a half-assed friend of my predecessor, Elberry Blankenship, and would have the private number to this office. I picked up the phone and said, ‘Sheriff Kovak speaking.’
‘Kovak, this is Tatum Barclay,’ he said. ‘I understand you’re in charge now.’
‘Yes, sir, have been for about six years now.’
‘Whatever. You got two of my clients in your jailhouse, Michael and Emily McKinsey,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir, I do,’ I said, although it hadn’t been a question but a mere statement of fact.
‘I want them released immediately. Anything you could charge them with would have occurred within the city limits of Longbranch, and therefore should be the purview of the Longbranch police department and not the county sheriff’s department. I’ll have the paperwork on your desk—’
‘Mr Barclay, excuse me for interrupting, but the most pressing charge against them is the murder of Mary Hudson of Bishop, which is under the sheriff’s department jurisdiction.’
‘You got any evidence against either Michael or Emily McKinsey regarding the murder of Mary Hudson?’ Before I could answer, he continued, ‘No, sir, you do not. Because there isn’t any. They barely knew the Hudsons. You need me to go before the judge today and have that charge thrown out?’ Again, before I could answer, ‘Because that would be no problem for me. Of course, you’d have to come up to the courthouse with what evidence you have – which you don’t – and that would look bad next time you need to go before that same judge with any real evidence on some other case. Make you look like an ass. So, Sheriff, and I use that term loosely, why don’t we get my people moved over to city jurisdiction?’
I sighed inwardly. ‘Tell you what I’ll do, Barclay,’ I said, like I was doing him a favor, ‘I’ll have the McKinseys transferred to the city facilities until such time as I have sufficient evidence against them for the murder of Mary Hudson. Then we’ll move ’em back.’
‘Whatever,’ Barclay said. ‘I’ll be over there in fifteen minutes.’
‘Fine. I’ll call Police Chief Smith when I get a minute. Which will probably be in about an hour,’ I said and hung up. Then the thought of Tatum Barclay hanging out in the station
for an hour began to give me the shivers, so I called Charlie Smith to get the ball rolling.
‘Ah, fuck, Milt! I don’t want that asshole and his wife! And I sure as hell don’t want to have to deal with Barclay!’ Charlie said when I informed him of the situation.
‘They shouldn’t be there long,’ I told him sadly. ‘Judge’ll give ’em bail on the charges of assault and child endangerment. Mark my word, they won’t be there more’n a day tops.’
‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ Charlie said and hung up.
He thought bail was going to be a good thing. All I could think of was Rachael and Melissa all alone in the ICU.
The county had started up a program last year of auxiliary deputies, people we could call on to direct traffic at a wreck, in case of a national emergency or natural disaster, or the like. One of the auxiliary deputies was a guy named Roy Donley, a long-haul trucker who had a lot of down-time he wanted to fill with the excitement of directing traffic. Roy was six foot eleven inches (which had a lot to do with his down-time – he had serious back problems from the long-haul trucking), close to 300 pounds, had a full beard, a deep, gravelly voice, and looked and sounded like he had an attitude, which he didn’t. Roy was a hell of a nice guy; you just couldn’t tell that by the way he looked.
I called him up to see if he was on down-time, and he was. ‘Roy, I got an assignment for you,’ I told him.
‘Sure, man, whatever. Always glad to help out.’
‘I got an abused woman and her abused daughter in the ICU at the hospital, and their abusers are getting out of jail, probably today. I just need you to find a comfy chair and sit outside their room.’
‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ he said. ‘Hell, man, you got it. Son-of-a-bitch tries to get anywhere near them two he’ll be looking backwards for a time to come!’
I smiled. ‘That’s good, Roy. I’ll call you when they get out.’
‘Use my cell phone, Milt. I’m gonna head on over to the hospital and introduce myself. Get ready, ya know?’
‘That sounds good, Roy. I’ll call you.’ I gave him the pertinent information, then sat back in my chair with what I can only assume was a satisfied look on my face. And, Lord yes, I did want Michael McKinsey to try to get in that room.
Husband and Wives Page 14