Shocking True Story (12 page)

"I only read romance," she replied as if they were based on some kind of reality.

"It's like romance," I persisted. "The woman kills her husband because she's so very much in love with another man."

It was one of those moments when you'd like to rewind the tape of what you said and start all over. The woman glared at me and moved on. I had lost another sale.

I had lost so many, yet I wasn't about to give up. Years later, I would say the feeling that I was
on the verge
was just as strong as it had been when I first started. I was going to make it. Yes, right out of middle class.

It was 10:45 a.m. I had fifteen minutes to catch up with my interview appointment. I gave into the charms of the Swiss Miss and grabbed some pretzel pieces before heading for my truck. They were greasy and good. I went back for another handful.

Thank God, I was tall. Sure, I was losing my hair. Sure, I swore each pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream would be my last. I thanked God, and I would never embody the triumvirate of the attributes of the dumpy—short, fat and bald.

At least I would always be tall.

♦

I FOUND DEKE CAMERON'S MOTHER in the back of the Timberlake Dairy Queen. The smell of chocolate and French fries overwhelmed the cold, overly air-conditioned restaurant. Blizzard indeed. A group of kids in baseball uniforms crowded around the counter; their faces either glum because they lost their late-season playoff game, or the fact that the soft serve ice cream machine was sputtering alarmingly as it swirled. Mrs. Cameron stirred a paper cup of coffee with one of those plastic sticks, oblivious to the kids overtaking the place. Five little containers of cream had been dumped into her cup. A wadded napkin indicated nervousness, maybe apprehension. The television camera at the talk show had been kind to Deke Cameron's mother. She looked a lot older than she had on
The Rita Adams Show
.

"Mrs. Cameron?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, looking up from her cup. She did not smile. "Mr. Ryan?"

I nodded. "Kevin. I'm sorry if you've been waiting. I went to the mall to kill some time. If I had known you would have been early I'd have been here sooner."

Anna Cameron was a heavy woman with strong arms and broken blood vessels on her face. Her hair was too dark to be natural and she wore it in a style that reflected the tastes of the mid-1960s. A bit of a bubble added a couple of inches to her hair height. It was a look that had been with her since she was a teen. Anna, a bus driver for the school district, was named Driver of the Year five years prior. She wore earrings that reflected the honor: on her right lobe dangled a gold #1, on her left, a gold school bus.

"I don't have much to say to you," she said. "I am only meeting you because I don't want you to make a freak show out of my son. He's a victim, you know."

"I know," I said.

"He didn't do anything wrong but get involved with the wrong girl. That happens every day. I suppose you're going to believe those inbred idiot Parkers. My son taunted their precious Danny? That's a laugh. That's the biggest laugh in the county."

I told her I hadn't talked with the Parkers yet, though it was my intent to do so.

Mrs. Cameron gulped her coffee. She watched the baseball players as they carried their banana splits and curly-topped cones to an adjacent row of tables.

"You people just want to write a book and make money and move on to the next freak show. You don't care what happens to anyone."

I had heard that argument before. Many times. The woman was half right. True crime writers wanted to make money, but we seldom did. Sure we eked out a passable living, but the smartest of us held down a regular job and did their writing on the weekend or in the evenings.

"I do care about victims," I told her. "Have you read any of my books? I don't exploit the victim. I'm trying to shed a little light here and help people come to grips with what happened—and why it happened in the first place."

Anna Cameron stiffened her already unyielding posture.

"Listen," she said, "if you mess with me, my boy, or anyone in my family, I'll take you down so fast you won't know what happened to you."

"More coffee?" I asked, hoping my interruption would slow her tirade.

"If you mess with Deke, you mess with me."

"I don't intend to mess with anyone. I'm just trying to get the story right."

"You are a long way from getting it right," she said. "You're getting your facts from known liars."

"Who?"

"Connie and Janet, that's who. I know for a fact that you have been seeing them up at Riverstone. Plus that Parker bitch and her clan of dumbshit mountain men... she's always whining about her poor son, victim of love."

I stared hard at her. "I won't deny that I've interviewed Janet and Connie, but don't you see that it's my job to talk to both sides?"

Mrs. Cameron jumped up, shaking the tabletop with her palms planted firmly against its bright orange plastic surface. She was a curious blend of incredulity and anger.

"Job? I have a job driving a bus. I do four routes in the morning and three in the afternoon. I drive a ski bus on Saturdays to Crystal Mountain. It is a
job
. On Sundays, I cut lawns in the summer. In the winter, I clean apartments for move-ins. I don't see how you can call what you do a job of any kind."

"Mrs. Cameron!" I called after her as she stomped out of the Dairy Queen. "Sure you don't want another refill?"

Apparently she was certain. I reached down for my coffee and as I put it to my lips, I noticed it was nearly butterscotch color. She had left with my coffee and I had her cup. I loaded up her tray with her spent cream containers and cup and dumped the garbage into the swinging hatch of the Formica trash container. I considered Anna Cameron to be a somewhat hostile source. Even so, I wouldn't give up on her. I was convinced she didn't agree to meet me just to threaten me. She met me because she didn't want her family dragged deeper into the mire. I planned on calling her later. She would talk.

They almost always did. The TCD effect never failed.

♦

MY NEXT STOP WAS THE FLYING J FAST FUEL just off the freeway for seven dollars' worth of gas. Just enough to get me home. When I arrived in Port Gamble, it was dark. I slowed as a mother raccoon and her babies looked at me as they skittered across the road. Their eyes were a string of garnets in my headlights.

A beam of light soared from our front window, turning tree branches into spider webs of light. I found Valerie sitting in her chair, her drugstore specs sliding down her nose, and once again fiddling with the checkbook and calculator.

"Can we make it through this month?" I asked, putting my briefcase away.

"This week's a little iffy," she said, taking off her glasses. "Kevin, we've stretched it to the limits. We've got to have this book be your greatest success or we've got to find another way to live."

I knew she was right, so I didn't argue. Genuine desperation filled her eyes. I knew I had used up my quota of arguments to justify this life that I chose.

"I'm willing to do my part. You know that, honey. Just tell me what to do, Kevin. Tell me how I can help you make this book a success. I'll do anything."

I kissed her gently on the cheek. It was a sweet kiss, brief and soft. It drank the moment in. Her skin was still flawless. Her hair accented by sandy streaks, was full and shiny. I imagined that I could send all the love from my heart to hers. If a choice were ever forced upon me, I would choose Valerie Ryan over a serial killer or an ax murderer any day. I just didn't want to be forced into making that choice.

"Just keep reading the chapters and keep your fingers crossed. It'll work out. I know it will. This one's the one."

"I know," she said as she had countless times before. Sometimes I detected a sad and knowing look on her face; the kind that troubled people had likely seen when their friends plotted a drug abuse intervention.

"By the way, Anna Cameron phoned about an hour ago."

I brightened. "Great, she's coming around. She probably changed her mind about an interview."

Valerie didn't think so. "Let's see... her words were, 'Mrs. Ryan, tell your bloodsucking husband to stay away from my family.'"

"I knew Mrs. Cameron would come around," I said, ignoring the reality of the words relayed by my wife.

Val gave me an annoyed look.

"Well, she called, didn't she?" I shrugged as I turned to make my way to my own private hell, my office and the blank screen of my computer.

“I'll leave the next chapter on the kitchen table,” I said, knowing Val would fall asleep before I finished.

I started to type.

♦

Love You to Death

PART TWO

THE YOUNG MAN WAS IN AND OUT of consciousness. No one could get more out of him than his name and the name of the girlfriend he blamed for the shooting. At one point, Deke Cameron muttered the name of Danny Parker as someone involved in the shooting. He didn't know who was holding the gun, Danny or his love, Janet. For the most part, his admittance form remained blank. What hospital staff did know was that he had been the victim of a terrible shooting, the kind no one likes to see. The kind that usually ends in death.

Deke Cameron was anesthetized and put under the knife twelve minutes after his arrival at Pac-O. With his clothing cut from his body and most of the blood swabbed away, it was easier to see the extent of his injuries. They were severe. He had been hit three times at close range—or so it was initially believed—with what the doctor who hunted guessed was a .20-gauge shotgun. Chunks of flesh had been blown from his chest and leg, and his left arm was shot halfway off. With his arm laid flat against his side, it was clear Deke had been shot once there. The blast damaged both arm and torso. Two shots total.

The dull clink of pellets hitting a stainless steel tray was the sound of the tedious collection of evidence.

An X-ray had revealed a spray of pellets spread throughout his lower torso like measles. It would not be medically necessary to remove each bit of metal from the victim, nor would it be necessary from a police perspective. The silvery tray was peppered black on the bottom.

"Looks like he'll make it, though he'll be setting off airport metal detectors for the rest of his life," an ER surgeon said as he exited the operating room.

"When can I talk to him?" Detective Raines asked.

"It'll be a while. Have some coffee."

Martin Raines passed on the coffee and cooled his heels outside in the waiting room as Deke Cameron was wheeled into recovery. A nurse told him that Deke might be able to make a brief statement, provided the anesthesia had worn off sufficiently.

Twenty minutes later, the detective was shown inside.

"Deke? I'm Detective Raines. I'm here to ask you a few questions."

The young man winced as he nodded. Though he was flat on his back, still feeling the effects of the drugs that had delayed the pain he would feel for weeks to come, Raines judged the victim to be at least six feet tall and 215 pounds. His hair was dark and wavy; his eyes were blue, dull and heavily lidded. Under the unforgiving fluorescent lights of the hospital, the lines underscoring his eyes and the subtle cracking around his mouth indicated he was a man close to thirty. Cut in an exaggerated mullet, his medium length hair was either too young for him or indicated he was stuck with the hairstyle he wore in high school—a common occurrence it seemed in Timberlake.

He was awake.
Weak
, but awake. There was no telling if he'd live long enough to give a statement. Some might have considered forcing him to do so at such a time bad taste. Poor judgment. Cruel.

Martin Raines called it a job.

He wasted no time. "What I'd like to know, is, where were you when you got shot? Do you know?"

"I think, the Edge Road there by Ruston, I'm not sure."

"The Edge Road by Ruston?"

"Uh-huh."

"You were in your car when you got shot?"

Deke shut his hooded eyes and nodded. The sharp smell of vomit wafted from his lips.

"The whole thing of it is," he said, as if a picture of what had happened snapped him back to attention, "I was with my girlfriend, we were driving along fine. She hops out, so I get out, and when I get out, I get shot. She takes off, I was screaming and hollering for her. She's nowhere to be found. I get hit twice. I didn't realize what happened."

"Do you know who shot you?"

"All I can say is, I think it was Danny Parker, because his car was there, too. I turned my car around... his car was there."

Raines asked what kind of car Parker was driving, and the man in the hospital bed said something about a Ford Escort hatchback.

"Hatchback?" the detective asked.

Deke Cameron's eyes rolled back for a second. "Yeah. Blue and white."

The investigator knew it was time to leave, time to let this guy get some rest before he died in the middle of a police interrogation. It wouldn't look good in the papers.

"I haven't got too much more time here," he said, "but is there anything else you can tell me, like why you were there?"

Deke tried to lift up his head, but seemed unable to gather the strength.

"I was set up, man, swear to God," he whispered. "We'd been drinking a little bit, and I was getting sick. I don't know why, I jumped out of the car for some reason. I should never have got out, 'cause that's when I got... I think I got hit once in the car. I think so."

"You got out of the car and were hit?"

"I got hit
twice
, after I got out of the car."

"Do you know if Janet got hit?"

"No. I think she was in on it, 'cause she disappeared. I couldn't... I was screaming for her to take me to the hospital."

"Did you hear the car leave?"

"Uh-huh. Yeah."

"Okay. Do you know why they would shoot you?"

"Danny don't like me. I mean, he wants to be her boyfriend and whatnot, and they been friends for years."

"Okay. Janet was with you all evening? You picked her up at her house."

"Yeah... uh-huh."