The Killing King of Gratis (23 page)

Delroy was impressed. Amy had been doing some digging.

“Anyway, his son is listed in the phone book as Samuel Stone, Jr. I called him and he remembered his dad’s old truck. It turned out that he went with his dad for a meeting at Judge Motte’s office. Motte demanded immediate payment, and all Stone had was the fourteen year old Ford pickup they drove up in. Long story short, dad signed the truck over to Motte as down payment on all legal fees. Junior says he still remembers Motte telling his dad he couldn’t give them a ride back to the house, and his dad cursed Motte as they walked the whole five miles home. That truck transaction was never listed by the judge with the DMV or any tag office. I guess he didn’t want to pay taxes on it, and figured nobody would ticket him when he became a judge, anyway.”

Amy took a deep breath and continued. “So you tell me. What are the chances of the judge owning a truck a lot like the one we’re looking for, and having access, along with his son, to the investigation. Like you said, it was someone close that was doing this. Well, the judge and his son are close as hell, I would say.”

Delroy nodded with the dawning realization that this case had just gotten bigger than it was only five minutes ago. He wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Amy smiled, “So how about you telling me where our dear Judge Motte lives? I think we need to make a house call.”

“His place is on Belle Row.”

Amy made a u-turn and pointed the BMW toward the judge’s house. When she was a little girl she dreamed of going to parties at Belle Row mansions. Now she had a good reason to go, invite or not, and was sure the host wouldn’t be very accommodating. She didn’t care. She felt like a real lawyer, someone who made things happen, and she wasn’t going to stop until she got what she wanted.

T
hey drove down Belle Row, surrounded on both sides by live oaks lining the way. The large old homes were separated from each other by acreage, fences, and all the privacy money could buy. The houses stared at Delroy, secure in the knowledge that he would never grace their entrance, at least not as their owner.

“There it is Amy.”

Delroy pointed to a white Georgian style mansion fronted by live oaks, backed by the Bird, and set seventy yards off the road. The structure was huge, surrounded by at least fifteen acres, and held up by columns that looked to have grown from bedrock.

Amy slowed to a crawl and entered the driveway. There was no gate at the front, but the “private residence keep out” sign was intimidating enough. She was starting to question her decision to come. Who the hell was she to demand that the lord of this place explain anything to her?

She pulled in front of the house, turned the car off, and sat for a moment. Delroy was sure she changed her mind until she opened her door and got out. He followed, every step to the judge’s front door made with heavy and unwilling legs.

They stopped together at the massive wrought iron door. On it was a sign that read “No deliveries will be taken this week or next due to vacation.” Underneath it another one read “Premises alarmed at all times.”

“Well, no wonder we didn’t have court this week, Amy. I guess I’ve been taken off that list informing me that the judge is out of town. What do you want to do now?”

Amy stared at the note for a couple of seconds and then rang the bell. After ten seconds with no answer she knocked on the door, lightly at first but then with both fists at least fifteen times. She seemed possessed to Delroy and turned to him, wild eyed, when she stopped.

“Well, I guess if you’re gonna crash a party you need to properly announce your presence,” she said, almost laughing. Delroy suppressed the urge to grab her.

Nobody came to the door. Amy looked around the yard for a moment. Scores of tall dandelions rose out of the lawn and stared back.

“Delroy, I thought the judge was a rich man. Have you heard about him having financial problems?”

“No, I haven’t. Shoot, when his son worked with me, he bitched that daddy took shit off Knox even though he was set. He hated it.”

Amy looked around again. “You’d think he would keep his yard service going even though he was on vacation, don’t you? I mean, this guy is very concerned about what others think of him, his status being a judge and all, right?”

Delroy nodded. “Amy, you got a point. This is not a man with weeds in his yard. Hell, there are usually more weeds in the cracks of the sidewalk in front of my office than in this yard.”

Amy studied the yard again and then walked to the side of the house, looking in every window as she went by. Delroy nervously followed. He was ten yards behind her when she stopped and looked back.

“Seriously Delroy, they say you’ve practically yelled at the judge in court. I’d like to see that man right now, and the one who took me out on the Lola last night. This is not the time to start acting like a big pussy, so stop it.” She turned and started walking again.

Delroy should have been offended but, as always, his attraction to her only grew. She could call him anything she wanted to, especially if it was a bit profane. Also, she was right. Delroy overtook Amy as she came to the fence surrounding the pool and the back doorway. The gate was locked but he shimmied over the fence, grabbed Amy’s hand, and pulled her up and over behind him.

The two looked around the pool and then went to a pair of French doors that led into the back foyer of the house. Amy knocked. Getting no answer, she turned the knob and opened the door. It creaked, but no alarm sounded.

“Well, this is awesome Amy. We’ve gone directly from trespassing all the way to burglarizing a superior court judge’s home. I’m sure the State Bar will have nothing to say about this if we get caught, and I’m sure Tommy won’t either. Shit damn hell, Amy, this is just bat shit crazy.”

She ignored him and walked into the hallway from which several rooms opened. The vases crowding the small hall tables dripped with dead flowers, every bouquet weeks old. Several of the tables had empty or nearly empty tumbler glasses on them. It looked like someone had thrown a party and then forgot to clean up.

What they saw, however, didn’t compare to a stench that hit them like a wet cloth to the face. The cloying smell of death and Lysol hung in the air, causing them both to cover their mouths and noses with their hands.

Amy gagged, almost overcome, but then righted herself and proceeded down the hallway with Delroy at her heels. The first room they came to was the study. The stench coming from the room was almost unbearable, but they held their noses and went in. It was dark and the plantation shutters were closed, but they could still make out a figure in the room.

There, gawking at them, was the judge’s rotting corpse.

Delroy just stood there for a moment, not so much horrified as fascinated, looking up close at a murdered body for the first time. He had seen them in murder cases, but at a remove in pictures, and usually on the medical examiner’s table. This one was staring back at him, only feet away, until this moment someone’s terrible secret. It sported a dead man’s grin and a knife wound in the chest.

Then the moment was gone and the attorney in him took over.

“Amy, we have to call Tommy immediately, but first make sure not to touch anything else, at all. This is a crime scene and we want to leave it as pure as we can.”

Amy nodded and started to leave. Delroy took her arm, and whispered, “Wait.”

He went to the shutters and, with the cuff of his sleeve, opened them. “We had to have a good reason to come in here Amy. We need to tell them that we were concerned about the judge, saw him through the window when we were looking for him, and then came in. Can you remember that?”

Amy looked at him and nodded vigorously. She didn’t come here expecting to tamper with a crime scene, but didn’t want to be accused of breaking into this grand mausoleum, either. At this point the judge certainly wouldn’t mind.

They left the house and went back to her car. Delroy called Tommy. Amy listened as he told him that the judge was dead. He hung up and they sat there in silence, waiting for the Sheriff and all those who would come with him.

“Damn, Amy, that was some really fine detective work. I would never have done it. I was letting our dead judge’s son look into the truck and not looking myself. Evidently he was bullshitting me blind.”

Amy looked up at him, her eyes still a little watery from the house. Then she spoke.

“So the judge’s son, you think he’s our guy?”

“Oh hell yes Amy, I am fairly sure as hell. And my dumbass never saw it coming. Skipper, that son of a bitch.” He was referring to Tim Motte, II, nicknamed Skipper because he was named after his grandfather, with a middle name different than his dad’s. The name had skipped a generation.
That’s it
, Delroy thought,
I am just blind as hell if I like a person, and damn, I like Skipper, or at least I use to.

“Oh my, Delroy, this is crazy, just, well, I don’t know.” Amy looked at the dandelions dotting the lawn and wondered what Atticus would do. She had no idea and suddenly felt ill equipped for the situation. All she could do was wait. She listened to the crickets chirp, and soon the faint wail of sirens joined in.

“
W
ell Delroy, why don’t you and Ms. Delahunt explain to me why I don’t hook you two up and put you in jail on suspicion of murder, burglary, and anything else I can think of. Shoot, I bet I could come up with plenty of charges if I had the time.” Tommy was standing with the pair at Amy’s car, a swarm of deputies and crime scene techs pouring into the house behind him.

Amy spoke up. “Sheriff, do you really think we would kill the judge and then come back here a week later, with his body just rotting away, call and let you know? Is that where your investigative expertise is taking you?”

Tommy grinned. “It’s not my expertise you have to worry about. It’s my handcuffs, my jail, my badge, my angry inmates, my damn back seat of my by-god sheriff’s car. You need to worry about that.”

Amy smiled back, her eyes flashing. “Well Sheriff, this seems a very odd time to be asking me out on a date, or at least into a back seat of a by-god sheriff’s car. I would even say it’s highly inappropriate.”

Before the sheriff could explode and arrest them both, Delroy interrupted. “Tommy, we found out that Judge Motte owned a truck very similar, maybe exactly similar, to the one Millie Knox was seen getting into the night of her murder. We came here to ask him about it face to face. We didn’t want to embarrass him about anything.” The last sentence was a total lie but Delroy kept talking.

“When we got here we noticed the yard was overgrown and that nobody was answering the door. We got concerned, walked around the house looking into windows, and then saw the judge sitting there and not moving. We went inside and you know the rest.”

Tommy considered the two for a moment, kicking his worn out boots on the judge’s once neat Bermuda lawn. He finally fixed his gaze on Delroy (
this son of a bitch gives me bad news like it’s his job or something),
and replied.

“Well hell, it looks like we need to talk to Skipper. He told everyone that they were out of town taking a vacation. Knox raised hell about it, but Skipper told him that was how it was, and that his dad needed rest. I’d never known Skipper to have stones like that, to tell Knox what the deal was. I didn’t know they still took family vacations, either. Looks like the judge is having one very damn shitty vacation at present.”

“I’d say talking to Skipper is exactly what you have to do,” Delroy replied. “You know Skipper had access to everything. He would have been able to get Newt’s number from me and set him up. He knew enough about the tunnels to take Millie down there and knew her well enough to get her into his truck with no fight. He would have known when to get after Althea, and where to find Merry. He’s the man, Tommy, he killed them all while stroking us on the sidelines. Son of a bitch, I was even getting to like him.”

“I’m not saying it was him, Delroy. We don’t even know if this is related to all the other killings. As far as I know Skipper’s dead himself, just like his asshole dad.” Tommy got quiet as if he remembered to be ashamed of speaking ill of the dead. He told them to wait and went inside to see how things were progressing. A judge was dead and he needed to be seen taking charge in a very public way.

“Really, you thought asking him about his investigative expertise was going to spring us out of here? That telling him you didn’t find his backseat comment appropriate was the thing to do? That’s what you had for him, Amy?”

“Well Delroy, we didn’t need to seem weak, like we had something to be ashamed of. Maybe I could have changed my delivery a little bit, maybe.”

Delroy laughed and wished this was an appropriate time to take her hand. He wanted to say the perfect words to her but they were in the middle of a murder scene, not an eighth grade dance. They had been there now for a couple of hours and it was getting close to 9:30. He was thinking about 9:30 the night before and the way she looked beside him on the Lola, gliding over the lake.

His phone rang.

“Hello Cozette, what’s up?”

Amy watched him as the fragile smile he wore tightened into a hard mask. She saw his eyes go blank and heard him say, “I’ll meet you at the hospital in fifteen minutes.” He slid the phone into his pocket and closed his eyes.

Amy took his hand, appropriate or not. “What’s wrong, Delroy?”

He was still for a moment and then opened his eyes. He rasped out his answer. “Skipper has Meg and Peck.”

“What do you mean he has them?” Things were starting to move a bit fast for Amy by now. Suddenly her dreams of being a real lawyer were crashing into the reality of the situation.

Delroy looked at her, the fear replaced with calm. “It means the scariest thing in the world has happened. It means I have to go.”

With that he let go of her hand and strode into the house to get Tommy. They needed to stop investigating and start hunting for Skipper.
It’s time to find that son of a bitch and put him down
, Delroy thought.
I hope I’m not too late.