Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) (21 page)

I glanced at my watch. “No, not really. I left Oak Grove at a quarter to nine last night. So we’re looking at fourteen hours at the most. Ask the Highway Patrol when the body was discovered. I expect it was fairly early this morning.”

Weaver nodded. “Will do, boss.” Somehow, I missed the irony.

“Well, keep an eye out around Adams’ place in Oak Grove when you go over it,” I added. “I doubt he was killed there, either, but he might have been. You might keep an eye out for a likely place between here and Oak Grove, too.”

Weaver gave me a look that was eloquent, but said nothing. It was a very gentle reminder that I was no longer in charge of CID. “Never mind,” I said. “I guess I’m being unreasonable, aren’t I.” Weaver answered with a smile and left to supervise his team.
 

Once the body was loaded, there was nothing more for us to do there, and we followed the crime scene van back to Oak Grove. About halfway between Ben Lomond and Mineral Springs, we were crossing the Saline River when something caught my eye. It was a turnout on the north side of the road, the kind that fishermen use to get to the river, and I could see two trucks through the brush about fifty yards off the road.

I asked Kruger to stop and go back. He gave me a strange look but did so, and I directed him down the primitive road until we came to a clearing. I asked him to stop before we got to the trucks. I got out and looked around the clearing and Kruger joined me.

I was about to give up and head back to the car when I spotted what I was looking for. It wasn’t much, just a small dark stain on the ground toward the middle of the clearing. I called Kruger over, and when he got there he nodded and handed me his phone. “I’ll get the tape. You call Weaver.”

I could tell Weaver really didn’t believe me when I told him I had a spot, but he humored me and came back, anyway. When he saw the faint tracks by the stain, his attitude changed. He very carefully took a smear of the stain and took it to the van to test it. A few minutes later he came back. “It’s blood, all right. Human blood. I can’t tell you for sure it’s Adams’, but it’s the same type—O negative—which is pretty rare.” He looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“The secret is mineral water and clean living,” I laughed. “Come on, I just got lucky this time, Ben.”

Weaver looked at Kruger. “You wouldn’t believe how often this guy gets lucky this way. His batting average is over seven hundred.”

“I believe it,” Kruger said.

“You guys are embarrassing me,” I told them. “Let’s see if we can get some plaster impressions of these foot prints.” I looked around and pointed. “Let’s try those tire tracks, too. They look like car tires.”

Weaver grinned and spoke to Kruger again. “If you ever want to get Jazz off your case, just say something nice about him.”

The crime scene team spent over an hour going over the site. There was more there than at the river side, but none of it was conclusive in pointing to the killer. One set of foot prints matched Luther’s shoes, but the others were from a major brand of running shoe sold in every department store in the country. The size was a bit small—nine medium—but that only gave us a rough idea of the size of the man. They could belong to a tall man with small feet, or a short man with feet to fit his stature, or even a woman, for that matter. One thing we did learn was that he was not as heavy as Luther. His tracks were not as deep.
 

When his team was done, Weaver came over to where Kruger and I were talking. He waved his hands in the air and bowed. “Where to now, oh Great One?” he said. Kruger laughed.

I played along, pulling my fingers together on the bridge of my nose and looking down. “The Force tells me...Oak Grove! I see an old shack and a lonely crime scene technician who wonders where in the hell his boss is.”

Weaver took off for Oak Grove, and Kruger and I debated our next step. It would take Crime Scene a while to go over Luther’s shack and take up the floor of the blacksmith shop. There was no one in Oak Grove we needed to interview other than the pastor, and he would be busy with his flock for a while. There was little else we could do and I suggested that we might head back to Texarkana and check out Slide’s alibi since we were so close. Kruger thought that was a good idea, and I called Ben Weaver on Kruger’s phone to let him know.

“Don’t tell me that you’ve found another one,” Weaver said when he heard my voice. I laughed and told him what our plans were and how to reach us.

Kruger was in a much better mood as we drove south. He even told me a little about himself, and I told him about me and Nellie. He was from a large family in a small town in North Dakota, the first in his family to go to college. He had been with the Bureau five years and was still unmarried, a point I asked about since Nellie would want to know. While he was not sure why; he was sent to Arkansas since his performance reviews were always excellent, he was glad it wasn’t Mississippi.

Since it seemed an appropriate moment, I told him what I thought about his doing better in private industry. He agreed and told me he was hoping to be able to take leave from the Bureau to complete law school soon. Once that was behind him, he thought he might find a place he liked to live and think about a family. Seattle interested him, as did Anchorage. He also liked Little Rock, too, but wasn’t used to the heat down here.

It was noon by the time we got to Texarkana, and I took Kruger to a little cafe in the original downtown business district that served good Cajun fare. He was fascinated when a table of young businessmen and women ordered boiled crawdads, or mud bugs, as they are also known, and the waitress poured them directly from the pot onto a sheet of newspaper in the middle of the table.

“I’ve heard of this, but I’ve never seen it,” he said to me quietly when one of the men made a production of sucking the juice out of the heads. There was a roar of cheers when one of the young women did the same with much more flair. When she was done, she raised an eyebrow and said something to the man that brought a round of laughter and teasing by the other men.

The new law enforcement center was just down the street from our cafe, so we walked the two blocks there. The center is unusual in a number of ways, one being that the state line runs down the middle. This joint effort required several special laws from both state legislatures before the building was occupied, and the building took several years to complete. One of the major issues which had to be resolved was jurisdiction. Under the old laws, it was foreseen that an inmate could simply cross a hallway and demand extradition proceedings before being moved back to the other side. Technically, an inmate could become a fugitive without knowing it, too.

It took a while before we could see Louella Smith. The problem was that neither Kruger nor myself knew her last name and the jailer wouldn’t let us see their census. It took me a while to run down Denny Slade by phone, and when I finally got him, he was torqued.

“Those dumb sons of bitches!” he said. “Just a minute. I have my copy of the arrest record.” A minute later he gave me not only Louella’s full name, but her date of birth and the report number, too. “Call me back if they give you any more shit, Jazz,“ he told me. “I’ll rip those dumb bastards a new one! We have had nothing but trouble since they went with this new center.”

When the matron brought Louella Smith to the interrogation room, our prisoner was dressed in orange coveralls with an attitude to match. Nor did the jailer cuffing her to the table improve her disposition much. When he did, she started cursing the matron in a loud and shrill voice. “I’ll be in the observation room,” the matron told us, pointing toward the large mirror along one wall.

When the matron left, Louella turned her attention on us. Nor did she recognize us right away. When we got across who we were, Louella turned even more surly. “What you have them peckerwoods bust me for, anyway!” she demanded, glaring at Kruger.

Their dislike was mutual. Yet, Kruger’s way of showing it was to become very formal and very polite. “You assaulted a federal officer, Ms. Smith,” he said quietly. “You also resisted arrest. You’re here on several serious charges.”

“That was your fault!” she shrilled. “You come to my house, busting in with no warrant! What you expect!”

It went on that way for a while. The more strident Louella Smith became, the more correct Kruger was, which only egged her on. Subtlety was lost on the woman, and Kruger finally looked at me, got up, and left the room. “Where you going!” Louella demanded, but Kruger never looked back.

“What with him?” Louella demanded, turning her attention to me. I didn’t respond… just sat there looking at her. That precipitated a full rampage, but after a while, she fell silent and sat there glaring at me. “Who you? The fucking Sphinx?” she said.

It was too much. I started laughing. That inspired Louella to even greater efforts to offend me, but the more creative she became, the harder I laughed, and, at one point, I could see she was working hard at hiding a smile.

“You’re very good,” I told her, wiping my eyes. “You’re also very smart.” She started to frown and I waved it off. “Come on, Louella. It takes a good mind to cuss that well. You’re not dumb.”

I stopped and she took her time looking me over, evaluating her situation. “So, what is it you want, Dr. Phillips?” she asked in perfect English, and I was impressed. Hung over as she must have been, she was in complete control.

“Dr. Sphinx,” I said and a grin came and went quickly. “All I want is some information. It won’t cost you a thing, and it can get you out of here.”

“I see. What about the ‘serious federal charges?’” she asked, matching not only Kruger’s voice, but also his polite tone perfectly.

“You’ve got a good talent there,” I observed. “The charges can go away, but there’ll be a price over and above your cooperation.”

“I’m listening,” she told me. Had I not been looking right at her as she said this, I could have sworn I was hearing Kelsey Grammar.

“You agree to thirty days in rehabilitation and six months making two AA meetings a week when you get out.”

“Who pays for the rehab?”

“You do,” I told her. “It’ll take you a while, but you won’t have a booze bill then.”

She thought about this a long time. Then she sighed. “It’s more fun being Wild Louella. I don’t think I can live without drinking.”

“A high stepper like you?” I asked. “I think you can do just about anything you set your mind to, Louella.”

“Except stop drinking,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

“I need to know when Slide Jones got to town the day Smiley Jones died. I also need to know where he was the night before last.”

“So you think Slide may have shot Smiley?” Louella said. Since it was more of a statement than a question, I didn’t answer. I just shrugged.

After a moment, Louella told me she wasn’t clear exactly when Luther Jones arrived on her doorstep. It was late afternoon the day Smiley was shot, and she had been drinking all day. Her best impression was around four o’clock, and maybe a little later. I took her over this a couple of times, trying to pinpoint the time by asking about radio or television shows she might have been listening to, but there was nothing she more could add.

Turning to the night before last, she admitted she had been in a complete blackout. The last thing she could remember was taking a drink before starting out for a dance hall about six o’clock or seven. The next thing she remembered was waking up in her own bed the next day about noon with a terrible hangover and no memory where she had been or what she had done. When she woke, Slide was at the house but he was already dressed and said he had been up for a while. She couldn’t say for sure whether he was with her all night.

I asked for the names of the places she and Slide normally went when they were out, and she frowned, immediately suspicious. “I thought you said that was all you wanted to know, Dr. Phillips.”

“Would you think I was doing my job if I didn’t check it out?” I asked her mildly. “I don’t know if Slide shot Smiley or not, but if he didn’t, I need to check him off the list.”

“You know, Smiley wasn’t the saint people said he was,” she told me.

“That’s what Slide said. Do you know that on your own, or is that based on what Slide told you?”

“On my own,” she replied. “At least, based on what my mother told me. I asked her who my daddy was and he’s the man she named. She said she was a virgin until she met him. I was their love child.”

I thought about that for a moment. I was convinced Louella believed that was true, and if so, I had just turned up another suspect. Or, at least, someone else with a motive. Yet, Louella Smith didn’t fit the picture of our killer that was coming together.

“Look, I don’t want to offend you,” I said. “But do you think she was telling you the truth?” Louella nodded. “Do you think I could talk to her.”