Family Ties (Flesh & Blood Trilogy Book 2) (6 page)

“What did he tell you?” Harper asked.

“Nothing, really. Let me think…” He tapped his temple with his fingertips as he pondered. “No, he never said anything to me other than what I just told you. I never even heard his story until the sentencing hearing, when he confessed in open court. Took me quite by surprise.”

“I was there,” I reminded him. “I heard what he said. He told everyone he had killed each one of those women. He seemed pretty confident about it at the time. Why do you suppose he would confess if he really was innocent?”

“That, you’d have to ask him. I didn’t get to know your father very well. But I will say this,” he said as he held up a crooked finger. “He never seemed like the type to me. Not that I’d ever encountered an actual serial killer before, but I had represented dozens of accused murderers when I was practicing, and most of them, well, let’s just say I am usually a pretty good judge of character. It did take me quite by surprise when he confessed. I thought we had a decent chance at trial.”

“Why do you say that?” Harper asked as she leaned her hip against one of the bookshelves.

“Well, if I recall correctly, it should all be in that file. The prosecutor never really had much in the way of concrete physical evidence. Their case was mostly circumstantial.”

“If they didn’t have any physical evidence, why was he a suspect in the first place?”

He seemed to ponder this for a moment. “You know, I really can’t recall. But it would all be in that file. All I remember was that there was one witness who claimed to see him with the last victim the same day she went missing. At a truck stop, I think. The rest of their case relied heavily on the fact that he fit a profile. Like I said, we had a decent chance, had the case gone to trial, but then he confessed. I had no choice but to honor my client’s wishes, and so I arranged his plea deal with the prosecutor. I’m sorry. That’s really all I can remember. One forgets quite a bit when they’re approaching a century on this earth.”

“Thank you,” I said, realizing I wouldn’t get much more out of B. Cecil Hayes. Plus, he looked very tired.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said as he strained to push himself up from the leather chair.

“No need,” Harper said politely. “You just rest. We’ll see ourselves out.”

“You’ve been very helpful,” I said as we turned and left the ancient attorney sitting at his desk, looking as if he was about to topple over with exhaustion.

Chapter 6

We arrived back at the house around five and immediately headed upstairs. I couldn’t wait to pore over my father’s file. It had nothing to do with any eagerness on my part to work on his case; rather, a burning curiosity about the contents of the file. My whole life, I had been in the dark as to the details of my father’s case. The only thing I had known was that he was accused, arrested, confessed, pled guilty, and then was sent to prison. It wasn’t because my mother had hidden anything from me; she didn’t know much, either. It was because my father had purposefully shielded us from the gory details, ostensibly to spare us any further pain and humiliation. For that alone, I had been appreciative to Randy.

But if I was going to stand a snowball’s chance in hell of clearing his name, I had to know it all.

Harper sat down on the grey overstuffed loveseat I had found at a yard sale and I sat down at my desk. I opened the file and began to sift through the documents. At the top of the stack were all the final pleadings from the legal case—the signed plea deal, hearing notices, and Randy’s commitment papers. As I finished reading each one, I handed them to Harper and asked her to start organizing the documents by category and date.

Next came Mr. Hayes’s nearly illegible notes, written on sheet after sheet of yellow legal paper. I skimmed through them, but there was nothing in there I didn’t already know. Held together at the top with a large black binder clip was a stack of papers, and on the stack was a yellow Post-it note that read,
‘Police Investigation file’.
I unclipped the stack and laid it on the desk. Slowly, I started to flip through the pages.

“What’s in there?” Harper asked without looking up, as she carefully organized everything I had given her so far.

“The investigation file from the police department. Some photos. Witness interviews. Wait…and his confession!”

“Oh, you
have
to read that out loud,” Harper said, looking up from her task.

“I, Randall Terrance McLanahan, do hereby make this confession of my own free will without coercion from police, my attorney, or any other individual. I hereby confess to the crime of murder against Linda McGovern, Sandy Williams, Lucy Culvert, Melinda Driver, Shalonda Johnson, Theresa Baker, Cindy Shoemaker, Bambi Walters, and Shiloh Blackwater. I strangled each one of them to the point of death and discarded their bodies in various locations along Interstate 75. Signed on this 1
st
day of October, 1996, Randall Terrance McLanahan.”

I laid the page down and looked at Harper. “I just don’t get why he would sign this if he didn’t do any of it.”

“Doesn’t make sense to me, either.”

“But…”

“But what? What’s going on in that head of yours?” she asked.

“It’s awfully succinct, isn’t it? I mean, yes, he admits to the murders. Yes, he names them all. And yes, he specifically says he strangled them and disposed of their bodies. But that’s it. No more details than that. You would think for a case with nine murdered women, there would be a lot more detail than that. And it looks like it was typed up by someone else and he just put his signature at the bottom.”

“Well,” Harper said, seemingly pondering this thoroughly. “I don’t know anything about the law. That’s your department. But I’ve seen plenty of
Law & Order: SVU
episodes and they almost always type up the confession and have the suspect sign it. I’ve rarely seen them write it in their own hand. Have you?”

“Yes, I’ve seen it done both ways. But you’re right. It just strikes me as very odd that whoever typed this wasn’t more specific.”

“Probably because, like his attorney said, they really didn’t have much evidence. They probably didn’t know any more than that.”

“I need to read some more of this file. I’ve got to figure out why they suspected him in the first place. How did they go from no evidence to arresting Randy?”

“That’s what we have to figure out. Here, hand me the confession.”

I handed it to her and then returned to the investigative file. When I flipped to the next page, I was stunned to see a stack nearly an inch thick of eight-by-ten glossy photographs. First were autopsy photographs of each victim. In my many years as a criminal defense paralegal, I’d seen countless autopsy photos. Plus, before Ryan’s murder, I’d harbored a strange fascination with all things murder-related. That fascination had fallen by the wayside, but I still had a pretty strong stomach when it came to looking at things that would make most people ill.

All of them were white except two, and all were young and looked as if they might have been attractive when alive. Stapled to each photo was a copy of that particular victim’s autopsy report. Each one was almost identical to the rest. The only wounds were the strangulation marks across the neck. The coroner opined that, given the lack of defensive wounds or DNA under their nails, the attacker likely caught each one of them unaware and then strangled them each from behind with a soft cloth, such as a shirt or blanket. There were no fingerprints on any of the bodies.

The next set of photographs were of the bodies as they lay in their dump sites. Most of them were lying in grassy patches in the woods along the interstate; some were in the river; all were left where they could easily be found.

I handed them to Harper, who looked them over, then let out a whistle. “Looks to me like whoever did this didn’t really care if the bodies were found.”

“Either that, or the killer wanted them to be found.”

“True.”

“I think it’s time we talk to the lead detective on the case, don’t you?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Harper said as she finished organizing the photographs into separate folders.

I turned around to my laptop and pulled up a new Google Chrome search page. In the search bar, I typed “Detective Joe Chambers Lexington Police Department.” There were several results. The first was the department’s website, but Detective Chambers was not on the current roster of detectives. The second result was an article from the Lexington Herald-Leader, entitled
Veteran of LPD Hangs Hat after Thirty Years
.
I clicked on the link, opened the article, and read.

According to the article, Detective Joe Chambers had retired from the Lexington Police Department a little over five years ago. The department had thrown him a big farewell party at the Griffin Gate Marriott. At the party, he had been given the standard gold watch and many commendations from the mayor for his years of “exemplary service to the City of Lexington.” There was a photo of Chambers receiving one such commendation with one hand and shaking the hand of former Mayor Jim Gray with the other.

At the bottom of the article, the writer mentioned briefly that Detective Chambers had signed on with Alltech Distillery as their new head of security. The article was old, but it was the only lead I had to find the retired detective. I tried to look him up on WhitePages.com, but there was no listing that came close to matching. I looked up the number for the Alltech security office, scribbled it down on legal paper, tore it off and handed it to Harper.

“Call over to Alltech tomorrow morning. They’re probably closed by now. See if you can set up a meeting with Joe Chambers sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

“On it,” Harper said as she took the piece of paper. “But what should I tell him if he wants to know why you want to meet him?”

“Tell him the truth,” I said with a flip of my hand. “Tell him I’m Randall McLanahan’s daughter and that I just have some questions about the case.” I thought for a moment, then turned back around to face her. “But don’t mention that I’m a private investigator.”

“Okey dokey,” she said with a smile.

I went downstairs and looked into the fridge for something to make for dinner. I hadn’t been to the grocery in over a week, so there was nothing I could throw together for a decent meal. I hollered up the stairs at Harper.

“Want Wah Mei for dinner?”

“You know it,” she shouted down at me. “Beef and broccoli. Steamed rice. Extra sauce.”

I called Wah Mei, the only Chinese restaurant in town that delivered, and placed an order for Harper’s beef and broccoli and my General Tso, also extra sauce.

We ate on the sofa with our feet propped up on the coffee table as we watched
Dancing with the Stars
, marveling at Valentin Chmerkovsky’s physique.

***

Harper had used her magic skills to talk the retired Detective Joe Chambers into meeting with me the next day on his lunch break. I left the house and headed toward Pine Street. Alltech was one of the largest corporations in Lexington, and one of the many companies they held was the Town Branch Distillery, where the former detective was now posted. As soon as I entered the brewery, the smell of fermented yeast and barley went straight to my head and nearly knocked me over. I wondered how anyone could work with such strong smells surrounding them, but reasoned you must get used to it after a while.

I went to the reception desk and gave my name.

“Yes,” said the spindly young girl sitting on a small rolling chair. “Mr. Chambers is waiting for you in his office.”

She guided me down through the brewery, past the large vats of brewing beer and up a flight of stairs to a large door with a sign that said
‘Joe Chambers, Chief of Security’.
She knocked on the door with her knobby knuckles and announced my presence.

“Come in,” said a gruff voice behind the door.

Skinny Girl opened the door to reveal a portly man, who sat behind a metal desk covered in paperwork and dozens of golf-related trinkets, and then turned to leave. He wheeled around in his chair and pushed himself up out of the chair with some effort and a groan.

“These old knees,” he grumbled as he half-limped around the desk and extended his meaty hand toward me. “Name’s Chambers, Joe Chambers. You must be Mrs…”

“Carter,” I answered for him. “But you can just call me Libby.”

The retired detective ambled back around to his chair and plopped down heavily, like a sack of potatoes. “Your assistant told me you wanted to speak with me about your father’s case. Randall Terrance McLanahan. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I have to admit, Libby. It’s not very often I am contacted by the relative of a man I put behind bars. At least not twenty years after the fact. What is it I can do for you?”

“I just, well…” How was I going to explain my interest in Randy’s case without telling him my real purpose for interviewing him? “Well, I only recently went to see him for the first time this summer. I have intentionally avoided hearing or thinking about his case for twenty years. Now, I guess I’m just curious.” I didn’t want to tell Chambers that Randy was proclaiming his innocence.

“I get it. Really, I do. So what can I help you with?” He leaned back in his big leather chair and crossed his hands behind his head.

“For starters, what made him your first and only suspect?”

This seemed to catch him off guard. The look on his face changed from one of helpfulness to indignation. “What makes you think he was our only suspect?”

I couldn’t tell him I’d already read the investigative file. There had been no mention of any other suspects from beginning to end. Instead, I had to wing it.

“Oh, I’m just assuming, since he was arrested so quickly after the last murder. That’s all.”

His face changed again. He appeared satisfied with my answer. “We had other suspects, of course…”
Lie
. “But in the end, your father was seen arguing with the last victim, Shiloh Blackwater, at a truck stop near Dry Ridge. We did some background digging on him and realized he had no alibi for the times the women disappeared. Plus, he fit the profile.”

“Profile?” I put on my best dumb-blonde performance. “What does that mean?”

Chambers leaned forward on his desk with a smile. I could see the pleasure he was taking in reliving his old cop days. “The FBI put together a profile for us of the I-75 Strangler. White. Married with kids. Traveling job that kept him away from home. Religious. Highly intelligent. Once we dug into your father’s history and interviewed him, well, he fit the bill.”

“And so you thought he was guilty, just because he fit a profile? Aren’t there thousands of men who could fit the same description?”

If he was offended by my question, it didn’t show.

“Sure, that’s true. But those thousands of other men didn’t live smack dab in the middle of the kill zone and—”

“Kill zone?”

“Yeah, we had this big map, you see, with red push pins where each woman had been abducted and a black one for where they were dumped. It made a big circle and your father lived and worked right in the middle of that circle. Make sense?”

“Sure.”

“Anyway, not only was he in the kill zone, but as I said earlier, he was seen with Shiloh Blackwater at the truck stop from which she vanished. The witness picked him out of a lineup. With no alibi for any of the abductions, it was obvious he was our guy.”