Shocking True Story (22 page)

"How you feeling today?" the detective asked.

The smelly, beached whale of a young man managed a fleeting smile.

"Better, I guess. Thanks. At least I'm alive."

"You up to talking?"

"Yeah. I've been laying here thinking about a lot of things... lots I wanna tell you guys. Wanna sit?" Deke indicated a chair next to his bedside.

The blueberry muffin inched upward through the detective's esophagus. He didn't need it to be any closer.

"Nah. Thanks, anyway. I'll stand. Been sitting on my butt all morning."

Deke Cameron understood. "Got a feeling I'll be lying on my ass for quite awhile."

Raines shrugged. "Maybe not. It took a lot of fortitude to drive down that hill after being shot. You might be the kind of guy who gets better fast. It's mental, you know."

Later when Raines recounted what was told to him in that room at Pacific Ocean Medical Center, he would joke that the patient "spilled his guts for a second time."

It started about a year and a half before the shooting....

-

CONNIE CARTER INVITED JANET AND DEKE for Easter dinner. It was the first time she had actually accepted the two of them as a couple. Though he never heard her say it out loud, Deke always felt that Janet's mother had considered him the lesser of the two evils. If it was a choice between her daughter's ex-husband and the mill worker, it seemed that Connie had decided in favor of the mill worker. Only by default. The luck of the draw. Better than nothing.

Connie Carter lived at 394 Seastack Avenue South. It was a forty-year-old, three-bedroom lemon yellow house trimmed in white. Outside of a pair of faded plastic gnomes under a dead rose bush, the landscaping was nothing more than a flat expanse of lawn that irregularly overlapped the edges of the sidewalk. The spring afternoon still held the bite of winter when Janet, Deke and little Lindy arrived.

Connie grabbed the baby the instant they came inside. The smell of booze wafted from her lungs.

"Baby should have a coat on! And shoes! For crying out loud, Janet, what on God's freakin' earth were you thinking?"

Janet made a face at Deke.

"Mama, it was just a five-minute drive! It's not gonna kill her!"

Connie shook her head in contempt. "I've told you fifteen times that a baby needs to be warm."

Janet said nothing more. She had learned long ago never to argue with her mother. It didn't matter that she would be left alone for days at the Seahorse Motor Inn when her mother was out partying. It didn't matter that she had crawled into a Dumpster to get Jett something to eat because the little girl wouldn't stop crying. It didn't matter that she had called more men "daddy" or "uncle" than any child had a right to endure. It didn't matter because Connie Carter had vanquished all of that from her memory. Booze had been an eraser. She could remember what she wanted to and what she chose to remember was a sanitized version of motherhood that held no basis in reality.

Arguing with Connie meant denial and anger. It was Easter. No need for that.

“Does Lindy want her Easter basket? The Easter Bunny hip-hopped to grandma's house early this morning.”

The little girl smiled and giggled, showing off two perfect, tiny white teeth.

Connie went into the back bedroom and retrieved an enormous store-bought basket festooned with curled ribbon and yellow cellophane. Through the plastic, a chocolate bunny could be seen nestled next to a tin beach bucket, a small sand shovel and a plastic sandcastle mold.

Deke Cameron was quiet for most of the meal of rolled and tied turkey roast, a cylinder of jellied cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes made from the real thing. Janet and Connie took turns holding the baby and lamenting the fact that Paul Kerr's family wouldn't ease up on their claims to Lindy.

“But the Kerrs are the other grandparents,” Deke said between big, mouth-stretching bites.

”They have other grandchildren. They don't need Lindy, too,” Janet said bitterly.

Connie put her fork down and deeply inhaled on her cigarette before extinguishing it in a swirl of potatoes on her plate.

“Does he know what's going on with those people?” Connie asked.

“Not everything,” Janet said.

“Time he did. If he's gonna be Lindy's new daddy, he'd better know in a hurry.”

Connie Carter proceeded to outline a litany of the Kerrs' minor and severe transgressions. They were low class, though they thought they were better than everyone else. Old man Kerr ran a five-and-dime and his missus was the volunteer coordinator at Pac-O.

“
Volunteer supervisor
! Big fuckin' deal,” Janet chimed. “They gave that to her so she could stay on her fat ass and be happy making six bucks an hour for the rest of her life.”

“You got that right, honey.” Connie twisted off the top of another Bud.

Worst of all, the reason for the Carter women's ire was the family's insistence at keeping tabs on Lindy. As mother and daughter saw it, the Kerrs had tried to hog Lindy. They had wanted her for Easter dinner.

The thought of it made the older woman bristle.

“I told them hell no! The baby is staying with her Nanna and her mommy.”

“Pissed off my ex-mother-in-law real much,” Janet said.

Deke leaned back from the table and loosened his bulldog belt buckle. He saw the anger. He understood it was genuine. Still, he just could not grasp the reason for the hatred; the depth of it puzzled him.

“Well, Lindy's his daughter, too,” Deke said.

Mrs. Carter slammed her fist on the tabletop, jiggling the tube-shaped cranberry sauce nearly out of its dish. She shot a bitter look at Deke. Janet dropped her jaw, as her mother unleashed a verbal assault on her boyfriend.

“Don't you get it?” Connie asked, punctuating each word with a pounding of her fists. “Are you dense? Paul wants to take Lindy from Janet. He wants to take her away from me. His stupid parents want that. They are out to get us and if we don't do something we'll lose Lindy. We'll fuckin' lose her forever!”

“How do you know that?” Deke asked.

“Do I look stupid or are you looking in a mirror? They have said they want custody. Full custody of our beautiful Lindy. But they're not gonna get it. Not at all. She's not safe there! He'll try to sell her for a fishing pole and a sleeping bag!”

“He's scum. Fuckin' scum!” Janet yelled as she held her now-wailing daughter. “Your daddy's fuckin' scum!”

“We've got to find a way to stop him,” Deke finally said.

Connie sucked on a toothpick. “Only one way I know.”

Janet spoke up. “For good, Momma, for good.”

“Yeah. We've got to kill him.”

Deke didn't know what to say.

“Sugarbutt,” Janet said, her tone jarringly sweet after the tirade, “you gotta help us. You got to.”

“I'm not killing nobody.”

“If he's gone, we can be a family. Get married in Vegas. Have kids of our own.”

Deke blanched at the idea of murder. He wasn't that kind of a guy. He didn't want to get caught and didn't want to go to prison.

“Ain't gonna kill nobody,” he finally said.

Janet got up and put her hands on Deke's shoulders.

“We have to... for Lindy,” she said.

-

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, THE MILL was going full blast when Deke Cameron pulled his buddy Jim Winston aside near the veneer manufacturing platform. The noise was too loud to allow for a private conversation. Deke worried that the machinery would shut down as his secrets were yelled over a nonexistent din. Jim was one of those men on the fringe of the survivalist movement that had brought undue attention on the Northwest. During the day, the compliant forty-year-old fellow wore dungarees and flannel, but at night, he donned army fatigues and an attitude. His hair had receded since he was a junior in high school and for the last few years he had shaved his head, leaving a gleaming pate that shined up on the sides where the leather inside his hard hat rubbed against it. The fingers on his right hand had been sliced off at the first joint during a work accident, making them appear as short as a bunch of Vienna sausages.

Deke leaned over to speak
.

“My fiancé's ex gonna take the baby away from us. We've got to stop him.”

“How can I help?”

“You got to help me get rid of him. Once and for all.”

Jim Winston leaned close enough to kiss.

“What do you mean?” he asked quietly, nearly in whisper.

Deke calmly gave the answer.

“Got to waste him, I guess.”

Inside
—that's the term the incarcerated call
their digs
. Slammer. Big House. Hoosegow. The Pen. I sat in my cell, thankfully alone and therefore without the prospect of being someone's soap-dropped-in-the-shower bitch until I got bailed. The cell had the vibe of a really bad high school detention room. There was no tin cup. No porn splattered with ejaculate from the lonely men spanking away the hours. Not really much of anything. Three cinderblock walls marred with graffiti of varying skill and merit, and an old-school steel-barred gate that ran the length of the cell fronting the corridor to the jail and police offices.

I wanted to cry. Not because there wasn't any porn, of course, but because I'd done nothing to deserve this gloomily austere guest room. I'd always been on the side of law and order. My whole middling career had been about that. In my books, the good guys always triumphed over evil. To think that I would hurt someone for any reason made me want to hurl. It wasn't who I was.

Marty Raines, damn you for doing this to me!

But as I sat there, head spinning, stomach turning, wondering what had happened at 2121 Old Stump Road, I knew I couldn't argue two things. June Parker was dead. And someone killed her just as I was about to interview her for my new book. It wasn't a big leap to think that there was a connection between me and the victim. Who would have done this? And why?

As I sat there waiting for Val to get me out of there, I played that scene at the Parker place over and over. I could see no clue written in her blood. No finger pointing to anyone who would want to do her harm. I put my head on the pillow and looked at the wall, my eyes immediately locking on an equation written by an unsteady hand.

DP + JC = Luv

It hit me then, I was in Danny Parker's jail cell. JC was Janet Carter, of course. They'd stripped me of every sharp object that I'd had in my pockets when they processed me, of course. No pen. No pencil. I looked around the cell for something I could use to leave my mark, too.A broken toothbrush caught my eye. It was in the corner, by the stainless steel sink and toilet fixture. I picked it up and started scratching on the wall.

KR + VR = Love

I put my head back down on the thin pillow. I wanted to die. I wanted to stage a prison break. I wanted, really, more than anything, for Valerie to get me the F out of there.

“Ryan!” the gravelly voice of a jailor came from down the corridor.

I looked up. The man had squinty eyes and, apparently, a department-issue moustache that swept under his nose with a quarter-inch dip below the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah?”

“No choice on the entree for your meal. Swiss steak and mashed potatoes. You want Jell-O or a slice of pie for dessert?”

I wanted freedom!

“What kind of pie?”I asked.

“Apple. Jell-O is lime made with Sprite instead of water.”

“Pie, then.”

I never got the slice of county jail apple pie. An hour later, the same corrections officer came back with a key jangling and a smile on his face.

“You're out of here. Go home.”

Saturday, August 31

Home.
Where the dirty dishes were stacked until five minutes before Valerie and her un-air-conditioned car pulled up to the driveway.
Home.
Where Hedda stretched out on my clean carpet to dig for fleas at the base of her tail.
Home.
Where Taylor and Hayley threatened each other over who was more powerful on Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite TV lineup—Samantha on
Bewitched
or Jeannie on
I Dream of Jeannie
.
Home
, where I was free. Sort of free. Martin Raines ate crow when the prosecution abruptly backed down on the case against me in the murder of Mrs. Parker. I was home. The anonymous tip was rescinded by whoever it was that had said I had been there earlier. A receipt for my two dollars' worth of gas at the Flying J was time/date stamped. I was exactly where I said I had been. The girl in the gas station's glass booth identified me. She had read
Murder Cruise
.

But she wasn't a fan. She thought my books victimized the victims.

“I'd rather pump gas than do what he does for a living,” she reportedly told investigators. “At the end of the day, I can wash off my stink.”

By then I was a cocktail of emotions: Bitter, relieved, mad, tired. I thanked God I didn't need the attorney I didn't have.

My wife and daughters put their arms around me so tightly that if I had wanted to breathe in, it would have been impossible. I didn't want to. I just wanted to stand there frozen in time with Valerie, Hayley and Taylor. Valerie had been crying and I let her face brush against my chest, leaving a swipe of mascara. We had talked on the phone from the jail and she had called an attorney for a criminal referral. Thankfully it was not needed. Not then, anyway. Valerie had alternated between tearful and stoic.

“Better take a look at this,” she said, releasing me from her arms. In her hand she held a copy of a Seattle daily newspaper.

I studied her eyes for a clue about the content of the paper.

“Not good, huh?” I said.

“Not good.”

She unfurled the front page. The headline was below the fold.

MURDER, HE WROTE
CRIME WRITER HELD IN SLAYING

Beneath it was a publicity photo I had sent in for the “Library Chats” series held for children at the Seattle Public Library. The editors had published it the size of a postage stamp back then. This time it was larger than a playing card. I smiled my authorly smile from the page. I was thankful that Moan-a-lot's mug shot had not been used. Even so, I was sure that someone would characterize my photo as “the picture of evil... Those eyes... they are almost otherworldly.”