Shocking True Story (21 page)

"Hell, I don't want coffee. I want to know why Jett Carter says that you suspect I was involved.”

I could hardly even say the words.

"I couldn't believe it at first," he said, his tone turning a little combative. "Couldn't believe it. Now I wonder."

I stood up and slammed my notebook on the table.

"Could you tell me what you're talking about?"

"Yes, but you tell me something first."

I was losing my patience. I was tired. I hadn't slept. I wanted that coffee after all. I was also scared.

"What?"

"Did you kill Mrs. Parker, Kevin?"

"No! How could you even say that?"

"Kevin, it's not me—"

For a moment I thought he was going to be the affable Martin Raines that I knew. I was wrong, for the concern in his voice evaporated.

“—not
you
?"

"I better call Davidson in here. Just a second."

Davidson was a young deputy and I knew why Raines was calling him into the interrogation room. He needed a witness to back up what he said and what procedures he followed. Davidson was a skinny guy, dumber than pea gravel. He had sucked up to me the last time I came to interview Raines. He offered me a soda while I waited and hung around within earshot of the interview so that he could "figure out what this book writing is all about. " As if I cared, he spilled the beans on a romance he had with another officer.

When Davidson lumbered in, he nodded in my direction and slumped into a chair next to Raines.

"Kevin Ryan?" Raines said.

I stared hard. My eyes were bullets.

"Is that your name?"

"You know damn well it is."

And then he went on... my rights were read and I could barely hear them. If someone had quizzed me about them for a grand prize of one million dollars, I would have been as poor as always. I sat there stunned. I only saw his mouth. Not his eyes. Not the rest of his body. Just the movements made by a coffee-stained mouth spewing out words I could never have imagined in my wildest nightmares would have been meant for me.

"...for the capital murder of June Rose Parker..."

From what I gathered, as Raines began to question me, there had been an informant. An anonymous informant that had placed me at the scene of the murder an hour before I had said I was there. Okay, maybe a mistake. Big deal. But there was more. The cyanide, it turned out, was, in fact, an exact match to the poison used by the killer in my
Over the Counter Murders
book. A little damaging, but still hardly incriminating.

"Neighbor says he saw you throw some Weasel-Die out after Mrs. Parker's death."

"That's right. I did. I threw out what I had purchased when I did a demonstration on how easy it was to buy the lethal stuff. I did it and wrote about it in an article for
Redbook
."

"But you threw it out
after
the Parker murder."

"So? For God's sake, I was reminded I had the stuff when I talked to you at your house. I have kids," I said.

In your stupid fishing lodge office
!

Raines shrugged his shoulders. "Too bad we'll never be able to pull a match on the batch you had."

"Too bad," I echoed. I was terrified now. "Come on, what is the motive here?"

Raines refused to look me in the eye. "We don't need a motive," he said.

"Yeah, but come on, tell me why you think I would do such a thing. You owe me an explanation."

"Kevin, your career is going nowhere. Your latest book flopped. You're up to your neck in credit card debt. You need a winner. You said so yourself. Mrs. Parker didn't want to play your game. We know that you are broke and desperate and to our way of thinking around here, that adds up to a pretty good motive."

I was astonished by his ludicrous reasoning.

"Yeah, I'm going to kill so I can have a best seller! Some peripheral character doesn't agree to an interview, so I killed her. That makes a lot of sense. Let's see, why don't I just go into a classroom and gun down a kindergarten class if I'm so desperate to be a best-selling author? I could call it
The Death-Selling Author
.”

Raines shot an annoyed and impatient look in my direction.

"You're sick," he said.

"No, you're sick and you know better."

"We have more."

"What
more
?"

"Your fingerprints in the house."

"I know. I told you. I touched the faucet. I turned off the running water."

"Not just there."

"Where else?" I wondered what I had touched that I had forgotten to mention. I told them about the phone, the door, the faucet. I recalled her eyeglasses crushing under my knee, but I didn't think I had touched them with my hands. There was nothing else.

Raines stared me in the eye. "We pulled your prints off the scrap of paper in her hand. The slip with your name written on it... it has your prints all over it."

I didn't believe him. "You're lying," I said.

"'Fraid not."

"'Fraid so. I didn't touch that note. Are you trying to trick me? God, Martin. I don't know a thing about any of this. Nothing at all."

My accuser's face was frozen. "Your prints came up on Edgar."

Edgar was the nickname of the computer system that had millions upon millions of Americans' prints held within its vast memory bank. The fact that Edgar turned up my prints surprised me for a moment. I had not served in the military, the basis for most of the data. Nor had I worked for the government or in civil service. I never had been arrested for anything, though when I was eleven, my brother and I were questioned for shoplifting a U2 cassette tape at Kmart. We hadn't of course, and the fact that the tape was a U2 release was our saving grace. No true fan would shoplift Bono's stuff.

Then it came to me. I had been printed at my girls' elementary school when I became a volunteer there. It was such a fluke. I was flabbergasted. I was being named in a possible murder indictment because I brought granola bars and helped out in the classroom once a month.

"Marty, I never touched that paper."

My friend looked me in the eye. "Edgar doesn't lie."

"Why would I—
just what if
—why would I put my name and number in her hand and call the police?"

Raines remained unmoved by my pleas, my desperation. "I thought about that for a long time. Why would Kevin do that? It was a piece that didn't really fit. Not until you added in the other factors, like the poison, for example. And the answer came to me overnight. It woke me up out of a sound sleep. You wanted the press attention of finding the body and playing the hero. With your name in the dead woman's hand, you become
part
of the story."

My jaw hit the grimy floor.

"You're nuts," I said, finally raising my voice. I could feel my composure slipping away, retreating like small waves on the shore of Puget Sound. "I want to call my wife and lawyer."

"One call's all you get."

"Marty, I've known you for years. You
know
I didn't do this. You know I couldn't do this."

"I thought I knew you, Kevin," he said, crushing a Styrofoam cup and tossing it over his shoulder to the trash can without hitting the rim. It was a nice shot, but I didn't say so.

"And don't you know, more than anything, I hope I'm wrong," he said.

I didn't even want to look at him then.

"Just take me to the phone," I said.

♦

THE REST OF MY ORDEAL SEEMED as close as I would come to an out-of-body experience. I told Val to sit tight and everything would be fine. She said she'd call my lawyer.
My lawyer
? I didn't even have one. She was upset, but she reassured me that everything was all right. It was a terrible mistake.

An officer named Mona—"Moan-a-lot," Deputy Davidson had called her, as he bragged about a patrol-car liaison they'd shared—took down some information and rolled my fingers in an ink that I had always assumed was sticky. It was smooth and creamy. Almost like lotion. My fingertips were placed onto a card. Though it hadn't been in the cramped little room at Pierce County, others had been there before me. Erik, Lyle, Scott, Ted, O.J.... all of them and more. All had felt the ink, and the indignity of a hot, rubber-gloved hand as it pressed their fingers onto the little white card. The experience was as far as humanly possible from the fun I'd had pressing my fingers into the Silly Putty-like material Jett had brought over to our house that night. A night that now seemed impossibly distant.

Officer Moan-a-lot gave me a paper towel and a blob of a greasy gray concoction called Goop.

"This'll get that icky ink off your wittle fingers."

I wanted to slap her in her condescending wittle mouth. Her Elmer Fudd impression was over the line. Cutesy-poo was not needed, not appreciated. I felt my face grow hot. And as I rubbed the ink off and rinsed in a home wet bar-sized stainless steel sink, I spoke.

"Deputy Davidson says you're a real screamer."

"Huh?" She looked clueless.

"Screamer
," I stupidly repeated.

Recognition hit her hard. She flashed a hateful look. Her eyes were fastened to mine.

I pushed harder. "Does your husband call you Moan-a-lot, too?"

Another hateful look
.

"Get on the tape," she said, indicating a pair of gummy pieces of masking tape affixed on a floor so dirty I could not make out what color the linoleum had been.

Two blinding flashes emanating from behind a scuffed camera decorated with a dancing row of Mr. Yuk stickers from the poison control unit down the hall and I was done.
God, was I done.

As in finished.

Late Friday, August 30

Not really
finished
, but a little obsessive, that's for sure.I'd left Val with the latest chapter of
Love You to Death
and even though circumstances had sent the random images of my lackluster life flashing before me like a roller rink strobe light, I wondered what my wife thought about the next chapter left for her to read. I know that's sick. But that's how writers are.

As we're lowered into the grave, we yearn to call out, “What did you
really
think of the scene on page 88?”

♦

Love You to Death

PART SEVEN

IT HAD BEEN FEWER THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS since Janet and Danny had been picked up for questioning in the Cameron shooting. Both were settled behind bars in the impossibly tiny Pierce County Jail. With no separate provisions for female prisoners, a pair of deputies stretched a blue plastic tarp between the two cells that made up the jail. The tarps were a ubiquitous commodity among the folks of Pierce County. Often the water-resistant sheets were used to keep a cord of alder firewood dry, or a leaky shake roof from rotting everything in the attic. The backwoods of the county was dubbed Blue Tarp Country for the proliferation of the plastic coverings found there.

Danny Parker huddled his heavy, hulking frame in the corner furthest away from the love of his life's cell. The blue plastic shield, of course, did not stave off words from Janet.

"Danny, how could you do this to me?" she seethed as she held her face against the cold, black grate of her cell.

She waited, but when there was no response, she called out again. This time her voice was more plaintive than angry.

"Danny, how come?"

"Didn't do nothing," he finally answered.

"Danny, how could you? We're gonna be married. You know that. You know I love you, Sugarbutt."

"Don't know much of anything," he said.

Bitterness rose in Janet's throat. "You stupid son of a bitch! You ruined everything. You didn't stick with what I told you, did you?"

Danny started to cry. It was the blubbering sniveling of a big kid. Fits and starts. His was a herky-jerky cry that reverberated through the jail.

"Grow up," Janet demanded. Her eyes were cold steel buttons.

"I need you to grow up and get us out of this mess. Think of Lindy! Lindy's in trouble. She needs her mama and her new daddy! Buck up, dipshit! Think of Lindy!"

Years after it was all over, Danny Parker searched for the words that would convey how he felt that first day in jail, as a victim of love.

"She kept telling me over and over that if I didn't stick to the story, Lindy would end up as a ward of the state. She could end up with that asshole Paul Kerr. Janet never let up, never stopped," he recalled. "It was 'do this, say that, or else.' I was mixed up. Mixed up more than I ever had been. Never been book-smart, but I know I was in a world of hurt. I was worried about that little girl. She was gonna be
my
little girl."

-

MARTIN RAINES GUIDED HIS FORD TAURUS up to the little window of a drive-thru espresso stand called Turning Javanese. He ordered a double, tall non-fat latte with one packet of Equal—and a blueberry muffin. He knew that the nonfat milk and fake sugar only offered a slight reprieve from the advancing circumference of his waistline. The muffin was more than a thousand calories. But he didn't care that morning. He was irritable and tired. Only a jolt of sugar and caffeine could boost his flagging energy level.

He gave a fifty-cent tip to the dog-collared slacker who dispensed the hot drinks and drove toward the hospital.

The nurses at Pac-O had flipped a coin to determine who would watch the patient in Room 113. The combination of medication and the birdshot in his gut had left Deke Cameron with bowels looser than a six-year-old's front teeth. Every fifteen minutes someone had to mop him up. None of the nurses wanted to do it.

"Maybe we can just leave him until the girls from the high school class come tomorrow?" one suggested with false hope.

"You wish," her co-worker replied. She handed over the clean-up gear, which consisted of a stainless steel dish, warm water, and a solution called Orange-Fresh. It was a citrus-scented product that cleansed, disinfected, and left the room smelling of "Citrus Groves in Florida."

No one who used the product ever bought an Orange Crush soda again.

Martin Raines arrived in Deke Cameron's room just as the nurse had cleaned him for the umpteenth time. The room smelled of oranges and feces. Raines could feel his blueberry muffin battling to stay in his stomach. He had been around decomposing bodies that smelled better.