Shocking True Story (26 page)

♦

APRIL RAINES WAS ROLLING BEESWAX candles when she invited me in, the air heavy with the sweet scent of the honeycombed wax. She explained she was making candles for a Christmas wedding for one of the mothers in their church. She led me inside, past her kitchen work table, and pointed down the hallway.

“Marty's in his den. He's expecting you.”

I found my way to the faux fishing lodge. It was exactly as it had been last time I was there. Not a single new wooden pole or lure had been added. The detective was sitting behind his desk watching CNN. An electric hotpot on his credenza steamed.

“Your home inside your home,” I said, surveying the room. “Seems like you've settled in here for the fall.”

A wary smile slightly broke across his face. “Sometimes I wish I could. Make that, most of the time, I wish I could.”

His ears didn't seem as large as they had nor did he seem as fat. I was glad at that instant that I hadn't written him as some kind of human gargoyle.

“Marty, I'm glad we're still talking.”

“Since the incident, you mean,” he said.

“The arrest,” I said. “The fucking
false
arrest.”

He didn't blink. “Yeah, that.”

We talked a few minutes more, sizing up each other, wondering if the author/source relationship was still within our reach. I was still bitter. He was still doing his job.

“Kevin, I'm talking out of school here, but I have no choice.”

He had my interest. “Go on,” I said.

“What I tell you can never, never, never leave these walls.”

“Is this another
I'd love to tell you something, but it has to be off the record
speeches?”

“It is.”

I stood up. “I thought we were beyond this. Marty, you owe me. I hate to use those words, but it's a fact. Your arrest could have cost me everything.”

“Could have,” he said. “Those are truly the operative words.”

“It
still
can. I don't know what kind of long-term damage this has done. Monica Maleng of Green Light Pictures wants to make a goddamn movie out of this.”

“No shit?”

“No way. She wants the movie only if I'm rearrested and charged with Mrs. Parker's murder.”

He pretended to brighten. “Wonder what kind of percentage I could get?”

“It isn't funny. My family has been through hell... God, my own mother called me and said she'd still love me even if I killed the woman. My own mother!”

Raines told me to sit down. “What I'm about to tell you has to be off the record because there are people in the office who think you still might be guilty. I know you didn't do it. I have another idea about what's going on. It's an idea that I stand alone on.”

I sat on the edge of the chair. “What? “What is it?”

Raines got up and poured hot water into his cup and tugged on a used-up tea bag. The water barely registered a light amber hue.

“How many times do you reuse those damn things?” I asked.

“Too many. I'm trying to give up caffeine. Gave up lattes two weeks ago. April tells me I was getting too fat and too jittery. Want some tea?”

“No. I just want one thing. The truth. I want to know what it is that you're going to tell me.”

Raines shut the door and sat on the edge of his desk facing me.

“We thought the technicians made a mistake when they ran your fingerprints through Edgar's system.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“They were backwards.”

I was puzzled. “What do you mean, backwards?”

“The prints came back a perfect match for yours, with one exception: they were a mirror image of yours.”

“A mirror image? I don't follow you.”

Raines set his anemic teabag on a napkin. Liquid bloomed from the teabag, a slightly brown-edged circle formed on the white paper. It was time for a new bag.

“Want some? I can get another cup of this.”

I declined his offer for the second time. “What do you mean, a
mirror
image?”

My mind raced as Raines explained how the Edgar system worked. I wanted to tell him to get on with it—I had been to the same damn seminar he had. He said Edgar mapped out the prints off the paper, fed it into its mammoth brain, and spit out a match. My prints had the exact same configuration.

“You mean that someone out there has the same prints as I do, just in reverse?”

He shook his head with great adamancy. “At first we wondered about it, but then we figured the lab guys reversed the laminate that held the prints. It was a mistake, pure and simple. We went back and found that there had been no mistake. The prints had been made on the paper in reverse in the first place.

It still didn't set in. My mind continued to speed.
What did it mean?

“Kevin, the fact is, your prints were put on the paper found in Mrs. Parker's hand. Do you get it? Someone meant for us to, excuse the pun,
finger
you for the crime.”

I thought my head was going to explode. The room seemed small and claustrophobic. “How? I don't see how someone could put a person's prints on another object?”

“We didn't either. I mean one guy in the lab said he read of a case where a dead man's prints were put on a gun by a killer to fake a murder/suicide. But you weren't dead.”

“My career is on its last legs, but, no, I'm not dead. Not yet, anyway. Besides, in that scenario they would be right-reading, not reverse.”

Raines nodded. “So we finally figured.”

Reeling, I got up to leave.

“One more thing,” he said, putting his cup down.

“Yeah, is this a
CSI
move?”

“Sort of. The paper found in June Parker's hand was manufactured in Japan. The company that produces it is Kubuta International Paper.”

I looked blank. “Huh?”

“Yeah, it isn't even available in the U.S. It is a high-grade cotton rag with an eight percent silk content. It's a paper admired by calligraphers because ink imbeds itself onto a surface unparalleled for its durability—or some marketing-type jargon like that.”

He had my interest. I asked if he knew where the paper could be purchased.

He didn't.

“Nowhere that we can find. We're still looking... and while the paper is important, it is not as important as what was on it.”

I was caught off guard.
What more?

“But you know my prints were put there,” I said.

Raines drew in a deep breath and then wheezed a little. I wondered for a second if he was hesitating or if he had started smoking again.

“Not just the prints—and I'm risking my pension if this leaks—there is an adhesive residue on the paper, too. We're still checking on it. There are about a zillion formulas from 3M alone.”

I was left to wonder who would want to frame me? And why? And when did they have the opportunity to do so? Why kill Mrs. Parker? I had plenty to think about and very little time.

A killer who wanted to frame me and do me irreparable harm was on the loose.

Wednesday, September 4

I HAD SO MUCH ON MY MIND THAT at first I didn't see her. I tried to bolster my shattered emotions after the meeting with Martin Raines with some overbearing self-talk.
I am fine. I am going to get to the bottom of this. I'm a survivor!
But no matter what I told myself, I felt sick inside. I could not imagine that someone would want to set me up for some woman's murder. My hands shook on the wheel of the LUV as I turned into the Columbia Mall parking lot. I knew it wasn't because of the lack of caffeine. It went deeper than that. The part I kept trying to stop myself from thinking was that Mrs. Parker had been killed to frame me. So that meant, in some way, I was responsible for her death. It had not been a crime of passion. It had been planned. It had been cleverly planned. I held my face in my hands. I would not cry.

Jett Carter stood in front of the kiosk as if she was waiting for a bus, her clear plastic purse over her shoulder. Her gaze was steady toward the mall's west entrance. She was a small figure with short, dark hair and pale skin even as the summer came to a close. She wore a lime and pink retro dress that I assumed was the spoils of an employee discount from her job at Ho!

She smiled and waved when I came into view.

“Your shoes are great,” I said desperately, observing her thick-soled black stompers.

“Doc Martens?”

“
Mock
Martens, $28.95 at—”

“Ho!?”

“Yeah, how'd ya guess?”

“Just a hunch.”

We chatted about Janet and Connie. Both remained miserable and frustrated that as the months passed since their appearance on
Rita Adams
no one seemed to care about them.
Inside Edition
sent Janet a letter, saying that her story simply wasn't for them.

“We're getting away from your sort of thing....”

Jett was shocked. She felt the story deserved to be on television. She was certain it was better than half the stuff the networks put on every day.

“I guess I'm a little surprised, too,” I said. “The other night they had a story about a woman who gave birth to triplets, each with a different father—two white and one black.”

“I didn't see that,” Jett said. “What's really eating at Janet is that she was promised a trailer visit with Deke, but the prison won't let her have one. They say she needs to be in the system for two years before she can be a trailer trustee.”

“Two years? That's a long time.” I changed the subject. “How's your mom?”

“I'm not talking to her—”

Just then, a familiar face moved toward us. It belonged to a hulking woman, with heavy foundation and bubble hair. The gold bus and #1 earrings jogged my memory of the failed interview at Dairy Queen. She recognized me long before it registered in my mind that she was Anna Cameron, Deke's mother.

“Too bad they let you out of jail,” she spat at me.

“Excuse me?”

Jett took a few steps back. I tried to ignore the vitriolic remark. After the meeting with Raines, I needed no more trouble that day.

“Hello, Mrs. Cameron. How are you?” I asked.

“Fine, until you came into my life.”

“I've hardly
come
into your life. I've stayed away, respected your wishes.”

“My boy told me you stood up for him and Janet at their little prison wedding. What kind of idiot are you? Apparently you have no regard for anyone. Everything you do is colored by your own ambitions.”

“That's not fair. I went because they asked me,” I said. “They had been counseled. Your son knew what he was doing.”

“My son's a victim.” She leaned so close I could smell her hazelnut latte breath. “Do you get that? He's a victim of that woman and he can't see straight. He loves her... it's like a victim of abuse who keeps coming back for more.”

“She's not an abuser!” Jett cut in.

“Who are you?” Anna Cameron grimaced at the girl she apparently believed was some mall-shopping bystander.

“I'm Janet's sister. Connie's
my
mother. If you think either one of them is capable of murder, or attempted murder—”

Anna Cameron laughed. “I didn't know there were any more at home like Janet and Connie Carter. Good Lord, Timberlake's not safe.”

“Mrs. Cameron, please. Leave her alone.” I lowered my voice after noticing a small group of shoppers congregating nearby to listen to the school district's top bus driver read me the riot act.

“You make me sick!” Anna Cameron said loudly as she turned around to leave. Her Kohl's bag clipped my side. I didn't react. I chose to believe that she hadn't meant to hit me. It was an accident.

“You people will do anything to make a dollar,” she went on. “I'm smarter than June Parker, because I'll have nothing to do with you...and you know what? I'll live longer.”

I was sure she sneered as she walked away. The small crowd shook their heads in horrified unison. I wanted to crawl behind the kiosk. I wanted to give back the money my publisher was advancing. I wanted to work at McDonalds.

You'll do anything to make a dollar.

♦

IF I THOUGHT THE DAY MY FRIEND Marty Raines had questioned me for murder was bad, the day officer Moan-a-lot inked my fingers and took my mug shot, I hadn't been able to compare it to the day Raines told me someone had attempted to frame me for murder—the day the world's greatest bus driver told me to kiss off. I drove north on the interstate until I found a gas station with a grocery. I bought two rolls of Rolaids and a bottle of diet peach tea Snapple. I had wanted Tums, but that was the way the day was going. By the time I approached Port Gamble, I was ready to throw up the chalk I was certain was the main ingredient of the antacid remedy.

Taylor ran out to the LUV beaming when I arrived home. I slapped a smile on my face and took a deep breath and told myself to relax, to set aside Timberlake.

“Daddy,” she said, nearly jumping with enthusiasm. “Guess what?”

I climbed out of the truck and hugged her. “I can't. How was your first day?”

“Mine couldn't have been better... Hayley's, I don't think, was quite so good.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Renny Ann Quinn transferred into Hayley's class! Mrs. Alexander seats her kids alphabetically. Alphabetical order for the whole year!”

I knew where she was going with it, but as long as Hayley wasn't around I could prolong the joy her sister was so obviously reveling in.

“Any kids with B last names?” I asked.

Taylor let out a surprisingly wicked little laugh. “Nope...Ryan falls right after Quinn. Right
after
! Booger-eater is sitting next to Hayley!”

We went inside. On anyone's scale of reality, I knew that my day had been far worse than Hayley's. Yet when I saw her sullen little face, framed by an unraveling ponytail, I set aside my own troubles. If there were any justice on God's green earth, the murder frame-up that had sent my heart pounding and stomach turning would be sorted out soon enough. I had faith that Raines would figure it out and put it all to rest. There would be an end.

Hayley's sentence, however, was nine grueling months. Renny Ann Quinn was going nowhere until June.

♦

I CALLED MARTIN RAINES AT HIS HOUSE every night for a week. I wanted to know if any more information had come in that might provide a clue to the identity of the killer. The first conversations brought the usual response: They were “working” on it. The only good news was that the lab tech that had botched the fingerprints and nearly sent me to prison was on unpaid leave pending an internal investigation on negligence. I hadn't even considered a lawsuit, but in the event that
Love You to Death
tanked, I was relieved that there was something to fall back on.