Husband and Wives (18 page)

Why would Bollinger hire him? I looked in the Longbranch phone book. Barclay was the first lawyer listed. Maybe that was why. Bollinger had been in Oklahoma, how long? I couldn’t remember exactly, but not long. So he picked the first lawyer he came to. Not very professional, I thought, but under the circumstances, a worthy attorney for the likes of Michael McKinsey and his little bride.

My private line rang and I sighed. Tatum Barclay had been a half-assed friend of my predecessor, Elberry Blankenship, and would have the private number to this office. I picked up the phone and said, ‘Sheriff Kovak speaking.’

‘Kovak, this is Tatum Barclay,’ he said. ‘I understand you’re in charge now.’

‘Yes, sir, have been for about six years now.’

‘Whatever. You got two of my clients in your jailhouse, Michael and Emily McKinsey,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir, I do,’ I said, although it hadn’t been a question but a mere statement of fact.

‘I want them released immediately. Anything you could charge them with would have occurred within the city limits of Longbranch, and therefore should be the purview of the Longbranch police department and not the county sheriff’s department. I’ll have the paperwork on your desk—’

‘Mr Barclay, excuse me for interrupting, but the most pressing charge against them is the murder of Mary Hudson of Bishop, which is under the sheriff’s department jurisdiction.’

‘You got any evidence against either Michael or Emily McKinsey regarding the murder of Mary Hudson?’ Before I could answer, he continued, ‘No, sir, you do not. Because there isn’t any. They barely knew the Hudsons. You need me to go before the judge today and have that charge thrown out?’ Again, before I could answer, ‘Because that would be no problem for me. Of course, you’d have to come up to the courthouse with what evidence you have – which you don’t – and that would look bad next time you need to go before that same judge with any
real
evidence on some other case. Make you look like an ass. So, Sheriff, and I use that term loosely, why don’t we get my people moved over to city jurisdiction?’

I sighed inwardly. ‘Tell you what I’ll do, Barclay,’ I said, like I was doing him a favor, ‘I’ll have the McKinseys transferred to the city facilities until such time as I have sufficient evidence against them for the murder of Mary Hudson. Then we’ll move ’em back.’

‘Whatever,’ Barclay said. ‘I’ll be over there in fifteen minutes.’

‘Fine. I’ll call Police Chief Smith when I get a minute. Which will probably be in about an hour,’ I said and hung up. Then the thought of Tatum Barclay hanging out in the station for an hour began to give me the shivers, so I called Charlie Smith to get the ball rolling.

‘Ah, fuck, Milt! I don’t want that asshole and his wife! And I sure as hell don’t want to have to deal with Barclay!’ Charlie said when I informed him of the situation.

‘They shouldn’t be there long,’ I told him sadly. ‘Judge’ll give ’em bail on the charges of assault and child endangerment. Mark my word, they won’t be there more’n a day tops.’

‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ Charlie said and hung up.

He thought bail was going to be a good thing. All I could think of was Rachael and Melissa all alone in the ICU.

The county had started up a program last year of auxiliary deputies, people we could call on to direct traffic at a wreck, in case of a national emergency or natural disaster, or the like. One of the auxiliary deputies was a guy named Roy Donley, a long-haul trucker who had a lot of down-time he wanted to fill with the excitement of directing traffic. Roy was six foot eleven inches (which had a lot to do with his down-time – he had serious back problems from the long-haul trucking), close to 300 pounds, had a full beard, a deep, gravelly voice, and looked and sounded like he had an attitude, which he didn’t. Roy was a hell of a nice guy; you just couldn’t tell that by the way he looked.

I called him up to see if he was on down-time, and he was. ‘Roy, I got an assignment for you,’ I told him.

‘Sure, man, whatever. Always glad to help out.’

‘I got an abused woman and her abused daughter in the ICU at the hospital, and their abusers are getting out of jail, probably today. I just need you to find a comfy chair and sit outside their room.’

‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ he said. ‘Hell, man, you got it. Son-of-a-bitch tries to get anywhere near them two he’ll be looking backwards for a time to come!’

I smiled. ‘That’s good, Roy. I’ll call you when they get out.’

‘Use my cell phone, Milt. I’m gonna head on over to the hospital and introduce myself. Get ready, ya know?’

‘That sounds good, Roy. I’ll call you.’ I gave him the pertinent information, then sat back in my chair with what I can only assume was a satisfied look on my face. And, Lord yes, I did want Michael McKinsey to try to get in that room.

Jean Mcdonnell – Friday

I went up to the ICU to check on Rachael and Melissa. Melissa was sitting up in bed, her head newly shaved, talking a mile a minute. When she saw me, her smile broadened and she pointed to her head.

‘Look!’ she said. ‘I asked the nurse to fix my hair and she made it look just like Mama’s!’

‘Wow!’ I said. ‘You both look great! We can put some lotion on your heads and make them both shine!’

‘Ooo, Mama, let’s do that!’ Melissa said, bouncing in her bed. ‘You’d look real pretty with a shiny head!’

Rachael laughed. ‘What a grand idea,’ she said.

I pulled up a chair between the two beds so we could talk for a while. I’d only been there for fifteen minutes or less when I saw the strangest thing: a giant man walking toward Rachael’s room. Melissa saw him about the same time as I did, and for the first time since my arrival, stopped talking. Rachael turned to where both Melissa and I were looking, and her smile faded.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ the giant said in a deep, gravelly voice, as befitting a giant, ‘my name’s Roy Donley. Sheriff Milt said I should come over here and sit. Something about your husband getting out on bail.’

Rachael and I looked at each other and both sighed our relief. He wasn’t a giant hit man; Milt had sent him.

‘Mr McKinsey’s out of jail?’ Melissa said in a whisper.

‘Now, don’t you worry, little darlin’,’ the giant – excuse me, Roy Donley – said, moving closer to Melissa’s bed. ‘I’m not a mean man, I’m just big. But guys like Mr McKinsey don’t know that. They take one look at me and run like the cowards they are.’

Melissa held out her hand. Roy took it and placed it on his palm. ‘Boy, you’re big,’ she said, her little hand in the center of his palm, with lots of room left over.

‘Yeah, little darlin’, I am big, that’s just a fact of nature. Like a skunk’s got a white stripe, and a porcupine’s got quills. And you’ve gotta a pretty bald head.’

Melissa giggled. ‘That’s not nature! The nurse shaved it so I’d look like Mama.’

Roy Donley looked over at Rachael and smiled. ‘Two of the prettiest bald-headed women I’ve ever seen,’ he said.

Rachael smiled back.

Milt Kovak – Friday

I got Holly to do the paperwork we needed and by the time Tatum Barclay slithered through the door we had the prisoners out of their county-blue jumpsuits and into street clothes, and the paperwork sealed in a manila envelope. It took less than five minutes to get them out of there and I was grateful for that. I hadn’t seen Tatum Barclay in a while. Ten years ago I woulda sworn it was impossible, but the man was even uglier than he used to be. Short to begin with, he was even shorter now, his back hunched up with osteoporosis, his head poking up like a turtle’s, his long, thin nose sticking out of his face like an antenna. He looked like a caricature of himself. Even Emily McKinsey shied away from him, and that woman liked to inflict ugly.

But they were gone, and that was some sort of good news. I called Charlie to tell him they were on their way, and he said, ‘We’re gonna have to keep ’em the night. Judge is out of town till morning. Got any recommendations on how to treat ’em?’

‘Don’t let ’em get wet and don’t feed ’em after midnight,’ I said as I hung up, not caring really if Charlie got my movie reference or not. It was an old movie, after all.

I called Roy Donley next. When he answered the phone, I said, ‘Roy, Milt Kovak.’

‘Hey, Sheriff,’ he said.

‘You at the hospital?’

‘Yes, sir. Everything’s copasetic here.’

‘Well, the prisoners have been transferred to the city jail, but they won’t even go before a judge to set bail until morning. So you can go on home,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ he said, sounding dejected. ‘OK, then.’

‘You gonna be OK to come back tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘You got me twenty-four/seven, Sheriff Milt,’ he said.

I thanked him and hung up, thinking, bald or not, Rachael McKinsey was still a pretty woman and that maybe Roy Donley had picked up on that.

Which still left me with trying to prove that Michael McKinsey, or possibly Emily McKinsey, had killed Mary Hudson. Somebody sure had, and if it wasn’t the McKinseys, which I was kind of afraid it wasn’t, then I was right back where I started. Which was nowhere.

I sat back and contemplated the situation as I knew it. The city police forensics guy found no fingerprints in Mary’s kitchen other than hers, her children’s, her husband’s, and the two sister-wives’ and their children’s. In other words, so many damn prints he probably lost track. The only footprints in the blood were those of Lynnie Hudson, Mary’s daughter who discovered her. Basically, no forensics evidence to point at anyone, much less specifically at the McKinseys. Michael McKinsey’s alibi (being at work) could be fudged; he didn’t clock in, being a supervisor, but this or that employee saw him most of the day. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t have much of an alibi. She was at home abusing Rachael and her kids, and since none of them were allowed to see a clock, they certainly couldn’t vouch for her whereabouts at any given time. Since she took breaks from her torture of the family, she would have had the opportunity.

The only motive I could come up with for either McKinsey having done the deed was the obvious one: Mary had found out about the abuse or the theft of funds or the death of Nalene McKinsey, or any of the other nefarious stunts pulled by the couple, and was going to turn them in. As more and more information about the torture of Rachael and her children came out, suspicion fell more heavily on Emily than on Michael. Michael was a beast who beat his wife; Emily tortured the wife and the children and stole money from them, as well as from Michael, and may be responsible for Nalene’s death. Emily was not a very nice young lady.

Any other suspects, I asked myself? Just church people. Like their preacher, or whatever he called himself, Earl Mayhew, or his boy Earl Jr, or Thomas Whitman, who Jean said probably had nothing to do with it. He didn’t talk to women unless he was married to them, she’d said, which was the same thing Michael McKinsey had said. ‘I don’t talk to the wives of other men.’ Then there were the Bollingers. They were more modern – wore street clothes, had normal haircuts, etc. So maybe David Bollinger didn’t have a problem with talking to other men’s wives. Have to look into that. And Bollinger brought it back full circle to Earl Mayhew, as one of Bollinger’s three wives was Earl Mayhew’s daughter, Naomi Ruth. Who was also Earl Jr’s sister.

Interesting, I thought. Interesting enough to take another look at the Earls. Earl Sr knew something was wrong at the McKinsey house and never said anything. If he wasn’t directly involved in Mary Hudson’s death, he was surely guilty of not reporting child abuse. Earl Jr had been spying on or stalking Mary Hudson. And then he up and lied to me about it. I’d like to talk to him alone.

And then, of course, there was Brother Bob Nathanson, pastor of the United Brethren of the Holy Church of Jesus Christ in His Almighty Goodness, or just the Brethren as they were known locally. Brother Bob was the one who burst in my office demanding I arrest somebody for the killing of that ‘wanton woman.’ That being Mary Hudson. I never did find out what he and his congregation were up to that Monday.

I thought about the whole thing for way too long. After about an hour, Holly called me to tell me there’d been a wreck right in front of the station and I was the only one here. I sighed and headed outside to deal with it.

It was a two-car wreck, and I knew both participants. Kyle Davies was seventeen and he and his family went to the Catholic church where me and Jean go every other Sunday; the kid was a straight arrow. The other vehicle belonged to Jessica Anderson, who was twenty-two, a party girl, spent most of her nights at the Dew-Drop Inn and her days nursing a hangover while checking out groceries at the Stop-N-Shop. I only knew her because she’d been the cause of several bouts of fisticuffs at the Dew-Drop over the past couple of years. Longer than she’s been of drinking age, that’s for sure. As it was her quitting time at the grocery store, I figured she might be in a hurry to get to the Dew-Drop.

‘Hey, y’all,’ I said, as I looked both ways while crossing the highway to get to where they’d pulled their vehicles off to the side. Kyle drove an antique 1980s Ford F150 pick-up truck; Jessica drove an antique 1980s Datsun (before they were called Nissans). Kyle’s truck didn’t have a dent; Jessica’s Datsun looked totaled. ‘What happened?’

I shoulda known better. They both started talking at once, pointing at each other, their voices getting louder and louder. I did a two-fingered whistle and they stopped. ‘Ladies first,’ I said.

‘He pulled out in front of me and slammed on his brakes!’ Jessica said.

‘I did not!’ Kyle all but shouted. ‘I pulled in front of her back by the courthouse, and then we get here, and a car’s turning in front of me, so I put on my brakes and she slams into my rear!’

I thought,
He should be so lucky
, but didn’t let my garbage mind spill out of my mouth. ‘That’s the way it happened, Jessica?’ I asked.

‘No! Well, not exactly!’ Hands on hips, she blustered a bit.

‘You speeding, Jessica?’ I asked, since she’d been stopped for that a couple of times.

‘No! Not really,’ she said.

‘What does not really mean?’ I asked.