Which makes me just about the luckiest woman in the world.
But Charlotte had never had that. So I lifted my hands, palms out, signaling peace, and turned to Jarvis. “Now that I have you here, Detective…”
He nodded, looking wary.
“Rafe told me that you came up here from Alabama with Chief Carter when he took the job.”
“That’s right,” Jarvis said.
“So you must have known Steve Morris already, when Natalie Allen died?”
“I didn’t know him,” Jarvis said. “I never met him. Not until I interviewed him after the murder. I never worked special victims cases in Florence, so I had no idea the report existed until Carter told me.”
“So it was Carter who told you to arrest Morris?”
“He told me that Morris might be involved,” Jarvis said. “And that I should see what other evidence I could find that might implicate him.”
“And that’s what you did.”
He nodded. “It’s not my job to convince the jury. That’s the prosecution’s job. I investigate the crime and arrest the most likely suspect based on the available evidence. This case wasn’t any different than any other in that respect.”
“Except that he didn’t do it.”
“The evidence pointed to him,” Jarvis said. “More than it pointed to anyone else.”
That was probably true. At any rate, it didn’t sound as if Jarvis had gone after Morris with any sort of malice. His boss had told him to focus on Morris, and he had. If anyone was at fault here, it was Carter, who must have known that the previous police report was bogus. And who had been concerned enough about making an arrest and making himself look good that he’d ignored it.
“Any news on Mrs. Oberlin?” I asked.
“She’s still dead,” Jarvis answered. He glanced at Charlotte’s kids, now fully invested in rubbing Chester’s belly and ears. “I should get back to work. But I can leave him here for a while. Give them something to distract them.”
Charlotte hesitated and glanced at her mom. Mrs. Albertson shrugged.
“Thank you,” Charlotte said politely, “that would be helpful.”
Jarvis pushed to his feet. “I’ll be back for him later, then.”
He nodded to Mr. and Mrs. Allen, spared me a look, and spared a longer one for Charlotte. It might be just because she’d been through an ordeal and he wanted to make sure she was all right, but it made me wonder. Then he excused himself, and headed for the hallway.
“I should probably go, too,” I said after we’d heard the sound of the front door open and close. “The sheriff should be here soon to take your statements and give you an update, but you don’t need me for that. Unless there’s anything I can do?”
Mrs. Albertson shook her head. “Thank you, Savannah.”
“My pleasure,” I said. “Charlotte? OK if I go?”
She nodded, her eyes on the kids and on Chester. “That was nice of Detective Jarvis.”
“I’m sure he’ll let you keep the dog permanently if you want to.” Otherwise, Chester might end up at the shelter. Unless Jarvis planned to keep the dog himself, I guess. But even if he did, he might give Chester up to Charlotte if she asked. “You can ask him when he comes back later.”
“You don’t think he’s coming to arrest me, do you?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t get the impression that he was thinking about that at all.” Quite the opposite, in fact. “I’ll check back with you later, OK? Let me know if anything happens.”
She promised she would, and I gathered up my baby and left them there, to watch JR and Michaela and Chester bond.
* * *
“I think Jarvis is sweet on Charlotte,” I told Rafe five minutes later, in the car on my way back to the mansion for lunch. “He showed up with Chester the Shih-Tzu—the dog that belonged to Mrs. Oberlin across the street from our house on Fulton; it was really nice of him to keep the dog rather than give him to the pound, I think…”
Rafe made an encouraging noise, and I derailed my train of thought and went back to where I’d been before the question of Jarvis’s kindness to small animals entered my head.
“I guess someone must have told him what happened this morning, or maybe he listens to a police scanner, or something—” He was the type who might. “—because he and the dog showed up at the Albertsons’ house not long after we got there. Charlotte and her mother were afraid he was going to arrest her, of course. But the kids were charmed. Chester gave them something else to focus on besides what had happened. They were both pretty devastated earlier. But Jarvis asked if he should leave Chester there for a while, and Charlotte agreed.”
“Prob’ly looking for another home for him,” Rafe said, which might be true. If cynical.
“I thought it was interesting that he showed up at all. What happened had nothing to do with his case.”
“And so you think he’s sweet on Charlotte.” My husband’s voice was amused.
“It would explain it. There’s no other reason I can think of why he’d drive all the way from Columbia to Sweetwater to see how she is.” And in the middle of the workday, too.
“Maybe he’s just trying to get rid of the dog,” Rafe said.
Maybe. “If that’s it, I think he may have succeeded. I don’t see any way that Charlotte, or even Mr. or Mrs. Albertson, can refuse to let those kids keep him if they ask. Not today.”
And if Jarvis left Chester there all day, the kids would be fully attached to him by nightfall, and would probably scream bloody murder if anyone tried to take him away.
“I asked him about Natalie Allen’s murder,” I changed the subject. “He told me that Chief Carter told him about Steve Morris’s police report for statutory rape, and that it was Carter’s suggestion, more or less, that he should focus on Morris.”
“Any particular reason you thought to ask him about that?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said, and ignored Rafe’s murmurs about the dangers—to him—of such an activity. “Is it possible that Carter killed Natalie? That the Skinners wasn’t the first time he committed murder so he could solve the crime and make himself—and his police department—look good?”
There was a pause. “I don’t guess it’s impossible,” Rafe said eventually. “Somebody should maybe take a look at some of the closed cases to rule that out.”
Including the Natalie Allen case. “More work for you.”
“More likely Tammy. I keep getting hung up on new cases.”
He did. And speaking of… “Are you back in front of the body shop? Is Rodney still there?”
“He was gone by the time I got back,” Rafe said.
Oh. Ouch. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. What you had going on was more imminent.”
Nice of him to say so.
“Now that I have a name for him,” he added, “I can track him down. And there’s no hurry on any of this. This case’ll take time to set up.”
“Are you sure they aren’t planning something you’ll have to prevent?”
“Nothing imminent,” Rafe said. “Not from what I can see. Scoggins is wandering around here like he has nothing on his mind except the next car to come through the door and the beer he’s gonna drink after work. If they’re planning to start a war in the next few days, he’s being very laid back about it.”
Good to know. Both that we didn’t have to worry about World War III erupting in quiet Middle Tennessee in the next week or two, and that the diversion of Charlotte’s rescue hadn’t cost Rafe the case.
“You on your way home?” he added.
“Unless you’re free for lunch. Or want me to bring you something.”
He sounded regretful. “Better not, darlin’. I don’t want nothing drawing attention to me sitting here. Getting a delivery prob’ly would.”
No question. “What do you do if you have to pee?”
“Didn’t we have this conversation before?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “I have an
empty soda bottle behind the seat.”
Lovely. “I’m going home,” I said. “I’m going to eat something, and feed Carrie in the privacy of our own home—or Mother’s home—our home now…”
I couldn’t see him, but I could feel the smile. “—and then I’ll probably run back over to the house on Fulton Street for a bit, to make sure I did the grouting right. I just want to make sure that it’s set and looks the way it should. And that the tile hasn’t fallen off the wall. I’ll probably check in on Charlotte again, too. Either by phone or in person. I’m sure they’ll all be just fine, but I want to know what’s going to happen to Richard.”
“I’ll be home by seven,” Rafe said.
“That’s a long day. Didn’t you start following Kyle Scoggins at six this morning?”
“Time and a half salary,” Rafe said lightly. And added, “there’s another SWAT meeting at five I gotta be at. I’ll be home after that.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. “So you’ll talk to Grimaldi about the possibility that Carter might have killed Natalie Allen?” And maybe even Ida Burns, if she was reconsidering her testimony about the argument she’d overheard.
He said he would. “That don’t explain who killed Morris, though, darlin’.”
It didn’t. Carter had been long gone when Morris was killed. Nor did it explain who had killed Mrs. Oberlin, if Mrs. Oberlin had been killed and hadn’t just died of old age.
But Grimaldi would figure it out, if there was something to figure out. She’d spent years solving homicides for Metro Nashville. If anyone could pick through the evidence and get to the bottom of this, Grimaldi could.
So I hung up with Rafe in time to turn the Volvo up the driveway to the mansion, and resolved to focus entirely on my dog, and my daughter, and my lunch—in that order—for the next hour.
It was easier said than done, naturally. I let Pearl out, and let her run and pee. When she came back inside, I sat down with Carrie on the peach velvet loveseat, while Pearl curled up on her pillow with a biscuit. And in the stillness of the early afternoon, with no sounds except the low humming of the electronics and Pearl’s crunching, my mind went back to the case.
The fact that Natalie had been raped bothered me.
On general terms, obviously, but also while trying to fit ex-Chief Carter into the role of murderer.
He’s killed the Skinners, yes. In cold blood and with malice aforethought. But the Skinners had been criminals, too. Maybe not on the scale of murder, but they’d run illegal dog-fighting rings. They’d grown pot on a commercial scale. They’d distributed said pot. I didn’t know the details of how—that had been someone else’s problem to figure out; Rafe had only been responsible for the murders—but there had been several greenhouses up on the Devil’s Backbone filled with plants, so their crop had been well beyond personal consumption. And then there had been Darrell’s womanizing—which wasn’t illegal, but made him a jerk—and Robbie’s spousal abuse…
So yes, while there was no excuse for killing them all, at least I could see the justification in Chief Carter’s eyes, even if it wasn’t justification in anyone else’s. He was ridding the county of a family of hardened criminals.
But Natalie… What could nineteen-year-old Natalie Allen have been involved in, to deserve to die?
And especially to die in such a way. The Skinners had been shot. All seven of them, in a matter of just a quarter of an hour or so.
Natalie had been raped first, and then strangled. And it was hard to reconcile ex-Chief Carter with that. Not only because it was way over the line if the point was to solve the crime and make himself and his department look good, but because it takes a certain type of person to rape and murder. Carter might have had a blatant disregard for human life, but he didn’t—hadn’t—come across as the type to do that.
I decided that Carrie had spent enough time on one side, and shifted her to my other arm. Down on the pillow, Pearl crunched the last of her biscuit and settled down with a contented sigh, her chin on her paws. I went back to cogitating.
So if not Carter, then who?
There was Jarvis. He had come up from Alabama with Carter, and although he’d told me he hadn’t known about Morris’s past until Carter told him, he might have been lying.
He was male, so he had the necessary equipment. There’d been no DNA on Natalie’s body, so no way to tie Jarvis, or anyone else, to the rape. But he was physically capable, so one checkmark in his column.
He knew Enoch, and Enoch lived on Fulton, so Jarvis might have had the opportunity to see, or meet, Natalie that way. That was another checkmark.
He had built the case against Morris, and had arrested him. That was a big checkmark right there. If he was the killer, he had every reason to want Morris to be arrested and go to prison. With Morris behind bars, there was no need to look at anyone else for the crime. And no reason for anyone to look at Jarvis.
And when Morris was acquitted, Jarvis would have been the first to know. If he hadn’t been in the courtroom, someone would have told him. As the arresting officer, that was probably standard procedure. And since he would have had no idea that Darcy had bought Morris’s house, and that Morris no longer owned it, he would probably expect Morris to show up at home that night.
As Morris had, in fact, done. And where he had ended up dead.
Jarvis was single, as far as I knew. Nobody would be able to alibi him for Friday night. Not that anyone would ask him for an alibi. He was the investigating officer. Asking for alibis was his job.
Carrie finished eating—or drinking. I lifted her to my shoulder and patted her back so she’d burp while my thoughts kept churning.
If Jarvis was guilty, then it was imperative that he find someone else to arrest for Morris’s murder, the same way he’d arrested Morris for the crimes against Natalie back then.
Hell—heck—even if Jarvis wasn’t guilty, he had to arrest someone for Morris’s murder.
Charlotte was probably safe for the time being. I would defy even Jarvis to slap handcuffs on her after the morning she’d just had.
That left Rodney Clark—whose alibi was flimsy, to say the least—and the Allens, who alibied each other, and had every reason to lie when it came to the murder of the man they believed had killed their daughter.
Or maybe Morris really had killed Natalie. There’d been enough evidence to result in a hung jury the first time. At least some of the members must have believed he did it, or he would have been acquitted then. Maybe Ida Burns was right, and she had heard Morris and Natalie argue. Maybe he really did get away with murder when he was acquitted.
And maybe someone who cared about Natalie—her mother or father or old boyfriend—had killed him for it.
Just because Rodney was a despicable human being didn’t mean he hadn’t sincerely loved Natalie and hated the man he thought had taken her away from him. The fact that Morris was black would only make Rodney hate him more.
In fact, Natalie’s rape and murder by Morris might be the reason Rodney had turned toward the white supremacy group in the first place. He wouldn’t be the first one, after something like that.
He obviously still frequented this area. I’d seen him leave the Allens house just this morning, and nobody would have thought anything of it, if they’d seen him cruise by on Friday. Like Jarvis, Rodney would have expected Morris to go back to his house after the acquittal. If he’d wanted a showdown with Morris, that’s where he would have gone to look for him. And Kyle Scoggins would certainly have alibied him, and probably even helped him in other ways, if Rodney wanted to kill the man—the black man—who had raped and murdered Natalie.
Twenty-One
I put Carrie down for her nap and went back to thinking.
What I wanted to do, was track down the Allens, but from experience I knew that they weren’t home at this time of day, and I had no idea where they might work, so it would be better to wait until early evening and knock on the door then. Enoch wouldn’t be around, not with the
SWAT meeting going until six-thirty or seven, so he’d never know I’d ignored his request to leave the Allens alone.
Instead, I spent the time while Carrie slept trying to dig up any information I didn’t already have about Natalie Allen’s murder.
I’d done this search once already, several days ago, and there was surprisingly little to be found. Unlike the long and drawn out Katie Graves case, that had kept all of Maury County in thrall for weeks the year I was twelve, the story of Natalie Allen was short and poignant.
She’d been working the last shift at the sports bar where she waited tables the night she was murdered. A few patrons lingering in the parking lot had watched her walk down the street around 11:15 or so. One of them had offered her a ride, and she’d said no, that it was just a few minutes to walk. (He’d been investigated and cleared.) And she had been found a couple of blocks away, not quite on the route she’d have to walk between the bar and Fulton Street, but not too far off, either, early the next morning.
An update the next day said that the police had eliminated Natalie’s boyfriend as a suspect, and were looking for anyone who might have seen her walking between the bar and the place she was found. The article was accompanied by a picture—high school senior portrait, at a guess—of a pretty girl with dimples and lots of fluffy, fair hair.
Two days later, the paper reported that the police had arrested a suspect in the Natalie Allen murder. They named Steve Morris, said a neighbor had heard him argue with the deceased a few days before the murder, and revealed that he had a history of sexual misconduct. And his grainy black and white picture, in juxtaposition to Natalie’s blonde prettiness, probably did its own job of playing on the stereotypes of the old Southern racial relations.
That was the end of the coverage until the first trial had ended in a hung jury the following year. The paper had reported it, and done a quick recap of the story—with no information I didn’t already know, with the same picture of Natalie, and one of Morris from the trial, in an orange jumpsuit and with his hands cuffed. That image probably hadn’t done anything to help his case in the public opinion, either.
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