Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery) (20 page)

J
unior Feller was in the break room when we arrived, and Richmond handed off the evidence packages we had collected, along with a barrage of instructions.

“Compare these shoes to the ones in the video; I’m pretty sure they’ll be a perfect match. Then take them over to the lab at the ME’s office and have them test both the shoes and the clothing for any evidence of blood. Next, see if you, Jonas, Arnie, or anyone else can do something with this phone to determine if it’s Derrick’s. And there’s extra credit for you if you can figure out a way to resurrect the text messages that were sent to it. Finally, have someone scour through the kid’s laptop. Have them search his e-mails, any instant messages, and his browser history for anything that might be connected.”

“Will do,” Junior said. “And since Dr. Henderson brought in a bunch of lab folks to work on Mattie’s shooting, we have some extra hands on deck and might be able to get this stuff done faster than usual.”

“Nice to know the intrusion might be useful for something,” Richmond grumbled. “Where’s the kid?”

“He’s in the interrogation room with Brenda Joiner.”

“Did you read him his rights when you picked him up?”

Junior nodded. “I did, but it won’t hurt for you to do it again for the record.”

“Thanks.” Richmond then turned to me. “Do you want to be in on this?”

“Absolutely.” My interest in this interrogation stemmed from more than my need to get some answers with our case. I was also curious to watch the interactions between mother and son that were about to take place. The whole idea of raising a patricidal child both frightened and intrigued me, and I wondered if it was a nature thing, a nurture thing, or some combination of the two. I felt a need to observe and search for some kind of clue, some telling comment or interaction, some hint about what not to do when my own child finally came into the world.

Wendy and Stanley arrived, and they were escorted into the interrogation room to join Jacob. After a minute or so Brenda came out, and Richmond and I used that as our cue.

As soon as we entered the room, Richmond bent down and triggered the AV recording equipment before either of us took a seat.

Jacob was sitting in the same seat he’d been in before, with Stanley on his left and his mother on his right. He had an insolent, angry glare on his face, and his right leg bounced nervously.

As soon as he was settled in a chair, Richmond said, “Hello, Jacob. First off, let me inform you . . .
all
of you,” he stressed, glancing at first Wendy, then Stanley, “that I just turned on the recording equipment, so everything that is said or done in this room will be part of the record. You are here because you are under arrest for the murder of Derrick Ames, your father.” Richmond then read Jacob his Miranda rights. “Do you understand?” he asked when he was done.

Jacob glanced at Stanley, who said, “Yes, yes, we get it. Can we move on?”

Wendy stared at her lawyer with wide, fearful eyes. “Stanley, please tell me that this is all a joke.”

“I have no doubt that certain things here are a joke,” Stanley said with a forced smile. “But as for why these clowns have Jacob under arrest, I can’t tell you that yet.”

Richmond ignored Stanley’s insult and kept his eyes focused on Jacob. “We have some questions for you, Jacob,” he said.

“First things first,” Stanley said in his most pompous tone. “I assume you have some sort of definitive evidence against my client?”

“No,” Richmond said, tearing his gaze from the boy and giving Stanley a searing look. “We just arrest people willy-nilly here whenever we feel like it.”

Stanley’s jaw muscles quivered like a handful of hot popcorn kernels getting ready to explode, and his face was slowly turning the color of a ripe beefsteak tomato. “Frankly, I wouldn’t put something like that past you and the rest of the yahoos in this small-town police station,” he said.

Richmond once again ignored Stanley’s provocation and said, “We would like to ask Jacob some questions. Is he going to cooperate and talk to us or not?”

I glanced over at Jacob. Despite his attempts to display some bravado, he looked frightened and uncertain. The insolent smart-ass from two days ago was gone, and in his place was a kid scared out of his mind by an all-too-real bogeyman. I felt sorry for him and had an odd urge to walk around the table and give him a hug. Then I remembered that Jacob likely
was
the bogeyman and reined my maternal feelings back in.
Freaking hormones
.

Stanley puffed himself up and went into lawyer attack mode, his tone brisk, clipped, and aggressive. “I am asking that you reveal the evidence you are using to arrest my client. His possession of his father’s cell phone—assuming it even is his father’s cell phone—is hardly what I would call hard evidence. Other than that, the only things you collected from the house were some shoes, clothing, and a laptop. I know you haven’t had time yet to check into the phone or the laptop, so that leaves the clothing and the shoes. No one at the house checked those items for the presence of blood, so the only assumption I can come up with is that you are on a fishing expedition. Unless you can produce something more concrete in the way of reasonable cause for this arrest, I intend to take my client home and sue everyone in this place for false arrest and harassment.”

Richmond stared impassively at the other man for several seconds, and then a smile slowly stole over his face. It revealed a creepy, predatory side of Richmond that I’d never seen before. “If you want something from me, you’re going to have to play nicer. I don’t appreciate your insults, and they won’t intimidate us small-town hicks, so my advice to you is to back off, take a deep breath, figure out what you really want out of this, and then come back and talk to me again with your best manners in place. In the meantime, I’m taking your client to jail. If you want to know what evidence we have, you can talk to the DA.”

I think Stanley expected his blowhard attitude would make Richmond kowtow to him. When it didn’t, Stanley’s smug, self-assured expression faltered just a hair. “I’d appreciate some more time to talk with my client and his mother
in private
,” he said. “Turn off the recording equipment, and please leave the room.” Though this was said in a relatively friendly tone of voice, Stanley couldn’t resist tossing one more barbed comment at us. “And if I find out you are recording or listening in on anything we say in here, I will see to it that this entire department is sued and all of you are fired. Understood?”

Richmond got up from his chair, walked over to Jacob, and handcuffed him. Then he pulled him to his feet and led him from the room, out into the hallway. Wendy ran out behind him, looking frantic, with Sidney bringing up the tail end. I was the last one out. When we reached the hallway, I saw Hurley and Charlie standing off to our right, the video camera in Hurley’s hand. The little red light on the side of it was on, which meant the camera was filming.

“What are you doing?” Wendy cried as Richmond led Jacob down the hall toward the front entrance. There were two small lockup rooms outfitted with security cameras, along with a booking area in a part of the building that was off to one side of the dispatcher’s area so it could be monitored by whoever was on duty. I figured that was where Richmond was headed. “Where are you taking Jacob?” Wendy said, her voice growing shriller. Her eyes fixed on Stanley, and she started screeching at him. “What the hell did you do? I thought you said I’d be able to take Jacob home. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is I’m taking your son to jail,” Richmond said. “He is under arrest for the murder of his father, he’s been read his rights, and since he wants to talk to his lawyer rather than us, I have no reason to keep him here, especially since your lawyer seems more interested in insulting us than he is in doing his job.” Richmond turned to address Stanley. “You can arrange to speak with your client once we have him booked.”

Richmond gave Jacob, who looked even more frightened and bewildered than he had before, another nudge down the hall. But after a couple of stumbling steps, Jacob stopped and threw himself against the wall. “Hold on,” he protested, his voice frantic. “You can’t put me in jail. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill my father!” he yelled, tears welling in his eyes. “Yeah, I was there, and yeah we had a fight, but I didn’t kill him.”

“Jacob, as your lawyer I’m advising you not to say anything.”

“Screw your advice! You’re supposed to be my lawyer, but so far you’re doing a pretty crappy job, mister. You said I wouldn’t have to go to jail,” Jacob whined. Suddenly he seemed much younger and more vulnerable than he had before.

Stanley flashed him an appeasing smile. “You might have to spend the night there, just until your arraignment tomorrow. Then we’ll bail you out.”

“The hell you will,” Richmond said. “I already spoke to the DA’s office, and given the evidence we have and Jacob’s history of sneaking out of the house, there’s no way they’re going to agree to bail.”

“What evidence?” Wendy said. She looked at her son as if he was a stranger. “How can they have evidence, Jacob? What’s this video they mentioned before?”

“I don’t know,” Jacob said, shaking his head. Then he gave his mother an imploring look. “I did go back to Dad’s house that night, and I did get mad at him, but I didn’t kill him. I swear!”

“Shut up, Jacob,” Stanley said. Then he turned to Richmond. “The kid’s a juvenile.”

“I’m sure the DA’s office will want to try him as an adult,” Richmond countered.

“What?” Wendy shrieked. “Stanley, do something, damn it!”

Stanley had lost all his puff. His eyes darted back and forth between Richmond, Jacob, and Wendy. The only person who didn’t look panicked was Richmond. “Okay, let’s backtrack a little,” Stanley said. “Detective Richmond, I’m sorry if I was a bit, uh, rude in my approach with you. Can we perhaps start over?”

“What did you have in mind?” Richmond asked.

Stanley scratched his forehead and thought for a few seconds. “I would like to go back into the conference room and talk to my client some more. Based on what he has said out here, we might be willing to talk with you. But I need to talk to him first. Please?”

So Stanley did have some manners after all.

Richmond contemplated the request, and I suspect the length of time he took to do so was a well-calculated play. “Fine,” he said at last, and there was a collective sigh in the hallway. “You may take Jacob back into the conference room for now. But he stays cuffed, and barring some miracle from heaven, he’s going to jail tonight.”

Stanley opened his mouth as if to object, but then, wisely, he snapped it shut. “Let’s go,” he said, steering Wendy back toward the conference room. Richmond led Jacob along behind them, and once they were all in the room, Richmond shut the door and stood outside in the hallway waiting.

“Nicely played, Richmond,” I said. “You handled Stanley like a pro.”

“Thanks. Gasbags like him are always easy to manage. You just have to find a leak, light a fire under it, and watch them explode.” He looked past me then and said, “Did you get everything he said out here?”

I turned and saw Hurley and Charlie watching the playback on the video camera Hurley was holding. “We did,” Hurley said. Charlie was leaning against him, her face against his arm. “Including Jacob’s admission that he was at his father’s and fought with him on the day he was killed,” Hurley said with a satisfied grin, finally snapping the video screen closed. He looked at Charlie then and said, “I like this video stuff more and more every minute.”

My feelings on the topic remained mixed. My earlier excitement over the videos making it possible for Hurley and me to work together had all but vanished. What good was it going to do me if some gorgeous redhead that came with the program ended up stealing Hurley away from me? I watched the interplay between the two of them carefully, looking for those subtle touches, the lingering glances, the flirtatious mannerisms. And judging from what I saw, Charlie was definitely interested in Hurley. I didn’t see any reciprocation on Hurley’s part, and that reassured me for now, but I didn’t think I was out of the woods yet. Charlie was a beautiful, likable woman.

“You did much better that time,” Charlie said to Hurley in a happy, atta-boy tone. Then she looked over at Richmond. “We were out here in the hallway practicing with the camera because some of the pans Steve did at the house were erratic and jumpy. I wanted him to get a better feel for keeping the camera movements nice and smooth. You guys came out right in the middle of it. I guess it was lucky we were here.”

“I guess it was,” Richmond said.

“Let’s go download this latest bit,” Charlie said, taking Hurley by the arm and steering him toward his office. I followed and watched as Hurley sat at his desk and Charlie leaned in on one side of him, her bosom practically in his face.

As Hurley hooked up the camera to start the download, I walked in and nudged in close on Hurley’s other side. “Mind if I watch?” I asked.

“Of course,” Charlie said, cheerfully. “The more the merrier. In fact, it’s probably just as important for you to become familiar with the equipment and the techniques as it is for the cops to do so. Anyone you partner with on an investigation may need you to be behind the camera part of the time.” An image popped into my head of Hurley and I making a video together, just the two of us.

The imagined end result was a video with no evidentiary value . . . unless someone happened to be investigating a porn ring.

W
hile we were busy downloading the latest video, Trooper Grimes came into the station through the front entrance. I watched from Hurley’s office as he and Richmond shared a whispered conversation out in the hallway, and when I saw the two of them look over at me, I figured Grimes had an update on my case. And if the troubled expression on Richmond’s face was any indication, whatever they were discussing wouldn’t bode well for my future.

Stanley emerged from the conference room after about ten minutes. “Jacob is willing to talk to you,” he told Richmond. “He has a perfectly plausible explanation for how he came to have his father’s cell phone.”

Richmond and I followed Stanley back into the conference room, and since it has its own audiovisual setup, Charlie and Hurley remained behind. Again.

As soon as we were settled in and Richmond started the tape rolling, Stanley looked over at Jacob and said, “Tell them what you just told us.”

Jacob nodded, picked at a fingernail, and squirmed in his seat. “I went to my dad’s house twice on Saturday. The first time was when my mom was over at Donna Martin’s house. I climbed out my bedroom window and walked over to Dad’s place. I have a key, but the door wasn’t locked, so I just went in. At first I didn’t think Dad was home because I couldn’t find him anywhere. But then I heard some noise coming from upstairs, so I went up there to look for him.”

Jacob paused, swallowed hard, and clamped his hands together. “I found him in his bedroom. He was with Mrs. Terwilliger. They were . . . you know . . .” Jacob’s face flushed red, but I couldn’t tell for sure if it was from anger or embarrassment.

“They were what?” Richmond prompted.

Jacob swallowed hard again, and his lips pinched so tight they momentarily turned white. “They were doing it,” he said in a tone of disgust. “Dad saw me and called out to me, but I cursed at him and then ran down the stairs.”

“It made you mad,” I said. “Your father being with another woman meant that he and your mom weren’t going to get back together, right?”

“That’s right,” he said. “I was really mad, and I didn’t know what to do. Dad came downstairs after me, and he tried to talk, but I didn’t want to hear it. I just yelled at him. And the whole time
she
was up there, listening. Probably laughing.”

“Oh, Jacob,” Wendy said, putting a hand on her son’s arm. “I’ve told you that your father and I aren’t going to get back together.”

“Why not?” Jacob snapped, shaking her hand from his arm. “You aren’t running around with someone else like he is. If he just would have stopped . . . if he just would have tried. I hate him!”

He pounded his fists on the table and then seemed to realize what he had done. He shot looks at us, then at his lawyer. “I mean I hated what he was doing. I loved my dad.”

“What time was this?” Richmond asked.

Jacob shrugged. “Sometime in the afternoon, two or three, I think. I’m not sure.”

“Tell him the rest,” Stanley said.

Everyone stared at Jacob, waiting.

“I felt bad about some of the things I said, and how I left, so I went back over there while I was at Sean’s house. Sean covered for me, and I went out his window this time. When I got to my dad’s house, he was in the kitchen. We started to talk, and I told him how it made me feel, knowing that he didn’t care enough about us to try to work things out with Mom. He said it was complicated, and that there were things I didn’t know or understand.”

I shot a glance at Wendy, who was chewing on one side of her fist, tears rolling down her face. The adults in the room knew the reason why the marriage had fallen apart—though I wasn’t sure if Stanley was aware—and it had little to do with Derrick or his new girlfriend, Mandy. It would have been easy for Derrick to throw his ex-wife under the bus, but to his credit, he apparently hadn’t. I wondered if and when Wendy was going to come clean. Now that her husband was dead, it would be easy to keep letting him take the blame for everything, but I hoped she wouldn’t do that.

“What time was it when you went over to your dad’s house for the second time?” Richmond asked.

“I don’t know. I think it was around six or six-thirty maybe. Anyway, we were talking in the kitchen, and I asked him to please break it off with Mrs. Terwilliger. He said he planned to do just that, but that it still wouldn’t make any difference with him and Mom. Then his phone chimed, and when he looked at the text message he said he was sorry but I had to leave. That made me even madder because I knew it was probably her texting him and now he was blowing me off for her, the same way he kept blowing Mom off. I said something like,
Are you making me leave so you can be with her?
But he didn’t answer me, so I walked over and grabbed his phone and looked at the message.”

“Tell them what the message said, Jacob,” Stanley said.

“It was from her, from Mrs. Terwilliger, and she was asking him if she could come by. See? He was making me leave just so he could talk to her. It made me so mad, and I started yelling at him, telling him that he didn’t love us. And I told him . . . I said that . . . I said I hated him.” Jacob’s angst was clear in his voice, but now it manifested itself in fat tears that welled in his eyes and then meandered down his cheeks. “I just kept yelling at him, and he kept trying to get me to calm down. He told me to give him back his phone, but I told him no. So he tried to take it back. We ended up wrestling for it, and things got pretty physical. I . . . I punched him in the face and made his nose bleed,” Jacob said, looking embarrassed and ashamed. “We knocked over a chair, and some stuff got knocked off the table and the counters, but in the end I was able to push him away long enough to smash his phone against the corner of the counter. Then I ran out, taking the phone with me. I thought Dad might try to stop me, but he didn’t, and after I got home, I kept expecting him to show up and ask for the phone back, but he never did. I was so mad at him I smashed the phone with a hammer until the battery popped out of it.”

Jacob paused, and the tears in his eyes welled again. “It was pretty stupid to think that breaking the phone would keep him from seeing her because all he had to do was e-mail her on his laptop or drive over to her house. It doesn’t make sense now, but at the time it seemed like it did. I know I shouldn’t have broken his phone, but that’s all I did. When I left his house, he was fine.”

I had to admit that Jacob’s story and earnest pleas of innocence were very convincing, but the tale he’d just told was essentially a confession. It fit with what was on the video, and the time of the video was mere minutes before the Ames’s neighbor had called 911 for Derrick, not the time Jacob had just mentioned. Between the video evidence, the shoes, and the cell phone, Jacob’s future was looking rather grim. He had killed his father—a horrific crime—and yet my heart went out to him.

I wanted to feel sorry for Wendy, but the only sentiment I could muster up for her was anger. If she had been honest with her sons about the reason behind the breakup, none of this would have happened. Derrick Ames had paid the ultimate price when all he was trying to do was keep the peace and get on with his own life.

I wondered about Jacob’s comment that Derrick had said he was going to break up with Mandy Terwilliger. Was it true, or was it wishful hearing on Jacob’s part? If it was true, why hadn’t Mandy said anything about it? Had she not known? I figured it was worth talking to her again to check out Jacob’s story, though I couldn’t see how any answer she might provide would change the outcome for Jacob.

That’s when something else Jacob said hit me. I thought back to my walk through Derrick’s house, snapping pictures of each room and its contents, and searched my memory for a particular item. When my mental search came up empty, I decided I would go back and look through the photos I had uploaded to the computer. Since the discussion in the conference room had turned to a debate over where and how Jacob was going to be detained, I decided to excuse myself, thinking I could make better use of my time following up on the question in my head rather than watching the sad, slow demise of the Ames family.

I walked out of the conference room and headed for Hurley’s office, expecting to find him and Charlie still there. But the office was empty. So was the break room. Hurley and Charlie were nowhere to be found, and when I checked the back parking lot, I saw that both of their cars were gone.

That was just great. Now the two of them were off to God knew where doing God knew what with one another. I walked the block to my office, determined to put Hurley out of my mind at least until I could answer the question that was nagging at my brain.

Cass, our receptionist-slash-secretary-slash-file clerk was seated behind the front desk shuffling papers. She was very involved with a local thespian group, one that Dom also participated in, and the group put on plays in town in an old refurbished theater located around the corner from our office. Cass always had a part, and she was very serious about her roles. In order to “get into the character’s head,” she said she had to live twenty-four seven as that character, including altering her appearance, mannerisms, speech, and clothing. Today she was dressed in a dowdy old dress, and either she was wearing a body suit, or she had the dress strategically stuffed to give herself an overweight, dowager’s build. Her hair was gray, her makeup was done to make her look soft, pudgy, and older, and she was sporting a pair of granny glasses.

“Hey, Mattie,” she said. “Awful thing about Dom’s dad, ain’t it?” She drew the words out with a thick southern drawl.

I nodded.

“And I heard you had some excitement last night, too. Thank goodness you’re okay. Dr. Henderson finished up the autopsy on that guy who shot at you a couple of hours ago. He brought in some diener from Madison to help him, saying something about how none of us could be trusted. He seems like a bit of a jerk.”

While I agreed with her, I also understood why Henderson was doing things the way he was. “He’s just trying to make sure everything is on the up-and-up. It’s annoying but necessary.”

“Yeah, well, try telling Arnie that. He’s fit to be tied. Henderson has a bunch of geeks from Madison upstairs messing around in Arnie’s lab, and Arnie’s none too happy ’bout it, let me tell ya. He cain’t even get in there to do his own stuff, so he’s turned everything over to the new guys, and he’s out in the field working with Jonas. He said he’s afraid that if he stays here he’ll say or do something that he’ll later regret.”

I didn’t want to have to deal with Dr. Snoopy Henderson or any of his honchos, but I also didn’t want anyone thinking I was poking my nose in where it didn’t belong. The last thing I wanted to do was compromise my own investigation. So I said to Cass, “I need to look through the shots I took of the Ames house Saturday night. Do I need to check in with Henderson for that, do you think?”

“I don’t know. But if you’re planning on using your usual computer in the library, you’ll have to convince the Henderson geek who’s in there to let you do it.”

“Someone is using my computer?” Technically it was the library computer, but the library did double duty as my office.

I started to head that way, but Cass stopped me. “Here, you have to sign in,” she said, sliding a clipboard and pen toward me. “Henderson wants everyone accounted for, so y’all have to sign in and sign out. And you have a message,” she said, holding out a pink slip of paper. “Alison Miller wants you to call her.”

I took the message and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I scribbled my name down on the sign-in sheet and headed for the library, prepared to do battle with whoever had invaded my territory. Some subliminal part of my brain hinted that I might be looking for a hapless victim on whom to vent the frustration that had built up inside me over the Hurley/Charlie thing, but I ignored it.

Inside the library I found a woman with long black hair seated at my desk, working on my computer. She was so focused on whatever was on the screen that she didn’t hear me come in. I walked up behind her and cleared my throat, making her jump.

“Oh, hell!” she said, whirling around and clapping a hand over her heart. “You scared the bejesus out of me! Who are you?” She stared up at me with huge, questioning brown eyes that looked too big for her face behind the glasses she had on.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Mattie Winston. I work here. This is my desk and my computer.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She hopped out of the chair and gestured for me to take it. I hesitated and instead looked at what she’d been doing on the computer. She had the word-processing software open, and I saw she was typing a footnote at the bottom of the page, citing some kind of reference book. She saw me studying the screen and reached over to grab the mouse. “Just let me save this and then you can use the computer. It’s part of my doctorate thesis,” she said, clicking the save icon.

I was surprised to hear she was working on a doctorate; she looked barely old enough to be out of high school.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. I doubted it, but then she proved me wrong. “You’re thinking, is she a girl genius or what because she can’t be old enough to be pursuing a doctorate, right? I get that all the time. My mother says it’s all the youthful genes on her side of the family. All of us women in the family look much younger than we are. How old do you think I am? Come on, take a guess.”

I thought a moment, gave her a few years for her good genes, and said, “Twenty-six.”

She let out a loud, boisterous laugh. “Heck, no, I’m thirty-two,” she said. “I’m already working on my second career. I have a master’s degree in business. Yep, an MBA. What the heck was I thinking when I did that? It turns out business is a real snore. The whole thing bored me to tears. So I decided to start over and do something I love. I figured it’s never too late, you know. A lot of people thought I was crazy, and maybe I am, but I don’t care because I’m happy. And happy is what it’s all about, don’t you think?”