Shocking True Story (17 page)

"Then what?" Raines asked when she stopped talking to draw in a big breath into her menthol-fresh lungs.

She thinks that this is it. She thinks she's ready to go get the burger.

With some prompting and the promise of a Big Mac, Janet continued. Deke was calling her name, saying he was bleeding. But she couldn't get to him. In the commotion of the shooting, she had fallen down the cliff that bordered the road. She had tried to claw her way up, only to hear the car start and drive away. Danny, she said, helped her up and the two drove down the hill.

She seemed shocked all of a sudden.

"I had no idea Danny would try to kill Deke," she said. "I thought they were just gonna fight."

Raines asked her to review and sign the statement.

"Can I go now?" she asked.

"'Fraid not," he said. "You're under arrest for the attempted murder of Deke Cameron. Janet, you're going to jail."

"But I didn't do anything. Danny did it. Ask Danny!"

The officers down the hall would never forget the sound coming from the interview room. It burst through the heating ducts like a twister.

"Thought those rooms were soundproof," one commented to the other.

"Haven't had a screamer this good in years. Wonder who Raines has in there."

"The girlfriend of the shooting victim at Pac-O. And, get this, she's also the girlfriend of the fat guy in room number two. The shooter."

"OH, GOD, NO..."

The officer had seen and heard it all.

"Ain't love grand?"

♦

WITHIN HOURS OF THE SHOOTING, the shotgun used to pump Deke Cameron full of birdshot was recovered. Danny Parker beat Janet Kerr in the race for the burger and led investigators to a weedy ditch along the highway. The weapon was hauled off from underneath a sodden covering of fast food wrappers and fall leaves. There was no way that it could have been hurled there to land in the position as Janet and Danny had both maintained when they made their initial statements. While their stories matched on most key points, it was clear to many in the sheriff's office that the suspects' statements were a little too closely aligned to be regarded as gospel. Everyone thought Danny had been duped by Janet.

One officer working outside the case scribbled across the local daily's account of the shooting:
Somebody's not telling the whole story here.

Martin Raines was at home snacking on a tuna sandwich and thinking about catching up on his sleep when word came from the Com Center by way of a doctor on rounds at Pac-O: Deke Cameron was agitated and wanted to talk as soon as possible.

"Be there in ten," he said. He hung up the phone, and grabbed the sandwich.

On the way to the hospital, Raines learned that two county deputies went fishing in the Dumpster at the mall. Inside five minutes, through the confetti of stale popcorn and dead bedding plants, the men pulled a pair of ladies' green and white
LA Gear
running shoes from the depths of the Dumpster. The laces were hot pink. They were Janet Lee Kerr's shoes.

And there was blood on them.

♦

Valerie underlined the word “burger” and wrote in the margin:
Reminder! We're out of buns. Get some more veggie burgers, too. Maybe some sprouts or something green and crunchy that we can pile on those oatmeal discs. —V

♦

DEKE CAMERON WAS A REMARKABLE young man. Not in the way any parent would be particularly proud. He had barely held down a job in an industry that only cared if the worker was strong enough to lift sixty pounds, breathe on his own and get to work every day. Deke had worked in the mill off and on since he dropped out of high school. What made him remarkable was not his looks, his brains or his personality. None of that. It was the very fact that by all reasonable accounts, he should be laid out in a coffin and not a hospital bed. But he wasn't. Deke was sitting up, propped with a pillow, tubes in his nose and his forearm. A Mylar balloon picturing a Band-Aid labeled with
SORRY ABOUT YOUR OWEE
fluttered from a ribbon tied on the steel tube of the bed rail.

"Detective Raines," he said, shifting his bulk in the bed and popping an IV line.

Raines acknowledged him with a concerned nod.

"Second time this hour," an impatient nurse complained. She reinserted the needle and triple-taped the line.

"Don't wiggle around so much, okay?" she admonished the patient before shutting the door.

"Heard you arrested Janet and Danny."

"That's right, Deke."

"Set me up, didn't they?"

"Looks like it."

"Well, I want to talk to you... I don't think you know what kind of people you're dealing with."

"We have an idea. A pretty good one."

"No. There's more. I'm afraid."

"What about?"

"I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but considering what happened... I'm afraid of Janet and her mother. They know people...."

Deke Cameron's voice trailed off as he attempted to wipe some spittle from his chin.

"What
people
?'

"People... who hurt people."

The detective could see that the victim zonked out in the hospital bed was trying to frame his words carefully. He was so slow. He was pausing so often that the homicide cop wondered if it was the painkillers the man was on—or if it was that he was plain dumb and had a hard time thinking about whatever was on his mind.

"What are you getting at?" he asked. "Tell me so we can take care of this."

Deke's eyes drooped and he coughed up a wad of mucus.

"Those women," he said, "will stop at nothing to get what they want... they wanted to kill Janet's ex-husband so they can get custody of Lindy."

"How do you know?"

"Cuz I was gonna do it."

Raines was unsure he heard right. "Kill him?"

Deke breathed his words in. "Yeah. But I didn't. I chickened out and they told me they'd get someone else. God, they were mad at me."

"Mad enough to kill you?"

"You don't know them."

♦

I looked over my wife's edits. Very clean. I was on the right track. She'd gone through the material quickly—always a good “I-read-this-book-until-I-almost-dropped-dead” indicator. I didn't have to nudge, harangue or even pretend to be hurt that she wasn't plowing through the material at a fast enough clip. Good. She even added a couple of “smiley” faces on some lines she liked. I added buns and oatmeal burgers to the list.

The Finger of Guilt

"I lived with the Ryans for six weeks...
six of the most frightening weeks of my life."

—WANDA-LOU WEBSTER

Wednesday, August 28

I HAD AN AUTHOR BOOK SIGNING scheduled for the afternoon in Seattle and there was no way out of it. It was during a "soft" grand opening for a discount variety market that had just been converted into a food store called Bag 'n Save. It was in one of the worst, reader-less parts of the city: the kind of place where food stamps are the currency of choice. A "soft" opening meant there would be no publicity, no promotion.

No book buyers.

The sales representative from my publisher had set it up through the distributor.

"It'll be fun, Kevin," Susan, the sales rep, persisted. "And it'll be good for your career."

I highly doubted either. I considered a signing anywhere but a bookstore to be the ultimate in humiliation.

"I think I'm busy, Susan. Research, you understand. Gotta write that next book."

"Please," she begged, her whiny voice coming across the phone in what I was sure was an abuse of fiber-optics. "I've got C.J. Cunningham and Misty Dawn scheduled with you. It will be so much fun."

C.J. Cunningham was a Seattle writer who was always on the verge of great success. Her books were funny, well-plotted and under-published. I liked her just fine. Misty Dawn was a romance-queen wannabe from Vashon Island. Her real name did not approach the Live-Nude-Girls! name her publisher had bestowed upon her when they signed her for a two-book contract. She was born Diane Hornung. I didn't know her and I figured she wasn't much of a threat at a signing table. She had only written one book.

"Okay, Susan, I'll be there," I begrudgingly told the sales rep.

As I drove across the Narrows Bridge, then north on I-5 to Seattle's melancholy south end, I could not help but recall the miserable signings I had suffered through in the past. I had been humiliated in malls, airports, school libraries. I had endured some of the most incongruous of book-signing venues. The coup de grâce had been the time I was skunked at a friend's bed-and-bath shop. My friend put my table and chair next to a Granny Smith potpourri display and I smelled of the stuff for days. Worst of all, my own mother showed up, but got so enamored with the soaps of the world display that she forgot why she had come there in the first place. She bought everything but a book
.

[Valerie got a quadruple-pack gift set of Lavender of Kew Gardens soaps for Christmas that year. The scent reminded me of the miserable day when I sold no books and reeked of Granny Smith. I used to run hot tap water over the bars to make the damn things shrink faster. FYI, triple-milled lasts forever.]

I was the last to arrive at the Bag 'n Save. Misty was not exactly the image I had seen on the inside back cover of her book,
Neptune's Daughter
. With the exception of her hair, which was auburn and wavy, she looked nothing like a Misty Dawn. Her lips were thin. Her face sallow. Her eyes drooped. The woman was more in need of a Photoshop
and
Glamour Shots makeover than anyone I saw hovering around the photography/lingerie studio at the mall in Timberlake.

C.J. Cunningham, with whom I had endured other signings, pulled me aside and gave me a nudge.

"Check out her giveaway."

"Giveaway?" I asked, somewhat puzzled.

C.J. pointed at the display table. "In the basket."

I couldn't make out what the glittering golden shapes heaped inside a large, tulle-trimmed white wicker basket were supposed to be. "What are they?" I finally asked.

"Seahorse angels! She made a bunch of seahorse angel pins to commemorate the release of her book."

"Oh. God," I whispered, shaking my head. "What am I supposed to give away? Crime scene refrigerator magnets?"

Two hours later, I felt sorry for C.J. and myself. Misty Dawn had given away all her stupid pins and sold about sixty books. Maybe more. I sold two; C.J, four. At one point it was so slow at our end of the table that a store checker asked me to help an elderly lady out with her groceries. I did. C.J. gave store patrons tips on recycling. During one of the few times she was able to put her pen down, Misty Dawn told us that Nicole Kidman's people called her agent to say the actress was interested in playing the title role in the feature film adaptation of
Neptune's Daughter
.

"I'm so happy for you," I lied, as I forked over the money for a copy of the book my sister-in-law would devour in a sitting. She was one of those romance addicts who read three or four a week and never threw one away. She had a spare bedroom lined from floor to ceiling with books. On the back of the door was an autographed poster of Fabio (pre-margarine commercials and his goose-whacking on the roller coaster) that I got for her at a writers' expo in Portland. She gushed when she got it. There were millions of readers like her.

Nicole or not, I figured Misty Dawn ought to do all right. There was no justice in the world.

♦

I WAS HOME BY 3:15 THAT AFTERNOON. Despite the dismal book signing, the time by myself in the LUV gave me the opportunity to think about the Parker murder and how it related to
Love You to Death
. Of course, there had to be a connection. But what? Who would kill Danny's mother and try to suck me into the bloody crime by having me find her?

It came to me as I pulled up my driveway, Hedda barking from her dog run. The answer had to be somewhere within the book I was writing. Within the cast of characters in
Love You to Death
. As inane as the story was, somewhere it was real and undeniably evil. Somewhere within the bunch of low-rent losers I was interviewing was the killer of an innocent woman.

In writing
Love You to Death
, I knew that I just might solve June Rose Parker's murder.

Valerie left a note that took the girls to an early movie. They wouldn't be back for at least a couple of hours. Good. I gave Hedda a Milkbone and sat down at my desk. Valerie and I had a pact that I wouldn't work evenings and never on Saturday.

"Saturday is a family day," she said.

And while I pledged to keep evenings free, it was a difficult promise to keep. When sources agreed to an interview, I had to go. When a phone call came, I had to take it. When a book rep called to get me to a soft grand opening... well, I knew I would say no to that next time. The fact was that I was not in the position to put anyone off. I needed them far more than they needed me. They had the story. I took the notes.

I made a couple of calls. Anna Cameron's daughter told me that her mother was out shopping.

"You that novelist writin' the book about my big brother?" she asked.

I didn't see any sense in explaining the difference between nonfiction and fiction.

"Yes, I am," I said.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you. My mom says you're trying to write bad things about my brother."

"I'm sorry she feels that way. Will you at least tell her that I phoned? I really want to talk to her about Danny. I don't want to make any mistakes."

The girl told me she'd pass along the message.

I tried to get Jett on the phone, but all I got was her voicemail.

Finally, I tried Paul Kerr's number. Paul was Janet's ex-husband. Though he was outside of the main action of the story I was writing, he was very much a player.

"I'm trying to reach Mr. Kerr," I said. "Is he home?"

"This is his wife, Liz. Who's calling, please?" The woman's voice had a kind of southern sound to it. Her words were somewhat stretched.

"Hi! I hope I'm not catching you at a bad time. My name is Kevin Ryan and I'm writing a book about what happened with Janet, Deke and Danny. Do you think your husband would talk to me?"