Shocking True Story (30 page)

I saw Valerie. Her brown eyes were popping out of her head, but she pretended to smile. She tried to send me a word of encouragement. I thought she mouthed:
You're flocked.

The music rose again and the announcer boomed:
“True Crime Writer or True Crime Killer? Today's Rita.”

The show was a nightmare. My defenders were Janet Kerr and Connie Carter once more via satellite from Riverstone prison. Jett, who had planned to come on the show but didn't feel well and canceled at the last minute, spoke over the telephone to support me.

“Can you be certain he didn't kill Mrs. Parker?” Rita asked her.

“I am positive. Kevin is not a killer. I know he wanted to interview Mrs. Parker real bad, but he would never kill her.”

The cameraman zoomed in on the talk show host.

“And your sister and mother—are you certain they are innocent, too?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“No one is to blame for the shooting of Deke Cameron and the plot to kill Paul Kerr? Look where they are, Miss Carter. They aren't in prison for nothing,” Rita said.

The audience laughed a little. There was no doubt that the poor girl was blind to the truth. She was the type that figured there was good in everybody. One of the old women from a New Jersey retirement home popped a Certs and shook her head in sympathy for the poor girl on the phone.

I looked up at the monitor at one point to see my face and I almost bolted from the stage.

Visa. Visa. Visa. It rang over and over. No money on Visa.

The producers made a split screen image of me: a front view and a side view. Underneath were the words:
Having the crime of his life?

Amid audience gasps of sympathy, Dwight Parker was wheeled out during the final segment. I thanked God he didn't have anything to say. I thanked God—and his surgeon—that his larynx had been removed. No one wants to be derided on national television by a man in a wheelchair. He had continued the long slide to become even more of a shadow of his former self. Mr. Parker's left hand had been amputated the month before and part of his nose had been removed, the result of melanoma.

At the end of the show that bitch Rita got up and spouted something about how I had been released and a phone call to Martin Raines had verified that I was absolutely no longer a suspect, but the victim of an unfortunate incident. What good would that announcement do then? By that point in any Rita show all of America was going to the bathroom. Two old ladies in the audience were thinking of shopping at Abercrombie & Fitch for their grandkids followed by drinks in the Rainbow Room.

“It got better at the end, honey,” Valerie said as we walked out to the taxi.

I was numb, Novocain from head to toe. I couldn't think of anything to say. It was almost like a nightmare that had been described it to me in such vivid detail that I could imagine it. A single thought came into focus as we rode a cab back to the hotel.

“Did they show the
Murder Cruise
cover?” I asked.

Valerie griped my hand and faked a hopeful smile. “Twice, Kevin. Two very long times.”

That afternoon I numbly took Valerie to see the Empire State Building.
Big building
. After that we saw the Statue of Liberty.
Big statue
. I tried to be enthusiastic for my wife's sake. I tried very hard. We skipped Ground Zero. I was already as low as I needed to go.

As evening came, we dressed, ate an overpriced meal at the hotel, and saw that Disney musical. It was such a perfect choice, given the
Rita
debacle that morning. I had never seen a more “uplifting” production in my life. When it got down to it, the heroine's mother was dead. Her dad was an oblivious dork. Her only friends were animals. No wonder she hooked up with the first guy she'd ever kissed. She wanted out of that damn castle. Her misery made me happy.

There was hope yet for someone with a made-for-TV miserable career like mine.

♦

Tuesday, October 1

THERE WAS A GOD AND IT TOOK only twenty-four hours for Him to answer my prayers. Ashlee from the
Rita Adams Show
called to tell me that the show we taped would not be airing during sweeps. In fact, it would not be airing at all. The producer who had left
Oprah
for the top spot at Rita's show had a new direction mapped out that no longer included what that newly anointed guru of gab called the ABCs of daytime talk: Assholes, Bimbos, Cretins.

I didn't ask Ashlee where I had fit into that list. I hoped that the new senior producer had deemed someone else on the show with one of those names. It couldn't have been me.

“Kevin, if you have anything softer that might work for a show, call me. We're switching to relationship and inspirational shows. Triumph through adversity, that sort of crap.”

I pretended to write down her new direct-dial phone number. I was free of Ashlee and Rita and the nightmare in Manhattan. I even asked her to repeat it as I disregarded each digit she uttered. It had been for nothing. All of it. I wasn't going to get a bump from the exposure for
Murder Cruise
. As much as I wanted a bestseller, I knew it was better to be midlist than trashed in front of millions jobless TV watchers.

I had been grilled like a Whopper, but now I was free. I printed out a chapter and looked for another Kit Kat. Things were good.

♦

NOTE TO VAL: If ever you were going to make Mexican food again after that enchilada reference back in Part Two, I'm feeling pretty sure that's off the menu for good after you read this one
L
. Sorry, Babe, I write like I see 'em.—K

♦

Love You to Death

PART TEN

DANNY PARKER SHIFTED IN THE HARD plastic chair that could scarcely contain his bulk. He had three empty cans of Sprite, all turned on their sides, in front of him. He wanted something to eat and he had to go to the bathroom. Raines told him that their interview was over. Though the detective didn't say so, he would try his best to see that Parker's sentence was tempered with mercy.

The man deserved compassion. He had been used.

Raines went to Moan-a-lot's desk and took another piece of saltwater taffy. He just couldn't shake the stupidity of it all.

“No mother would delay contacting the police if she suspected child abuse,” he said. “Danny's too dumb to see that.”

“Too in love,” Mona offered, slapping her colleague's candy-stealing hands.

Raines ignored her and continued. “We need those panties. We can't run another search warrant on Janet's place.”

“We can make a report to CPS.”

A sly smile broke out on Raines' face. “Let's do it. Get the panties out of the woman's freezer and get them to the lab. Let's see whose blood is on them.”

Later that day, frozen Wizards of Waverly Place panties were taken from a mostly empty freezer in Janet Kerr's apartment and sent by legal courier to the state crime lab in Olympia for semen and blood analysis. DNA swabs from Paul Kerr were tagged and bagged and sent along. Paul Kerr had cooperated fully. He insisted he had never touched his daughter in any inappropriate manner. Never in a million years. He didn't need an attorney to advise him.

“I'm on the side of right,” he said.

Three days later, Raines got a call from the lab.

“Big surprise on the Wizards of Waverly Place panties you sent to us,” the lab tech said, almost with a sense of glee.

“Whose blood did you come up with?”

“No one's.”

“Not enough to type?”

“No blood at all.”

“What about semen?”

“None.”

The lab tech started to laugh.

“What's so funny, buddy?” Raines tone shifted from interested to annoyed.

“Picante sauce, dude. The panties were stained with, you know,
taco
sauce. Someone might be trying to pull a fast one, but who would fall for taco sauce?”

-

WORD CAME DOWN FROM THE county attorney's office an hour after the picante sauce news hit the Justice Center: Danny Parker would be offered a deal in exchange for testifying against Janet Lee Kerr and her mother, Connie Carter. He had been manipulated and misled. He was mentally impaired. Danny would still serve time in prison for shooting Deke Cameron, but the sentence would be light as a Twinkie. He would have five years to think about the next time he fell in love.

Danny was glum when Raines and a junior prosecuting attorney told him and his public defender the offer. The public defender who smelled of breath mints and hair oil assured his client that it was a good deal. All of it, of course, hinged on Parker's testimony.

“You shot Cameron, correct?” said the prosecutor, a recent law school graduate who wore the same Macy's suit every day.

“Yeah.”

“Was it planned?”

Danny nodded.

“We need to hear you say the words, Danny,” Raines said quietly.

Tears came from the lovelorn's deep-set eyes and he began to sob. “Yeah, I did,” he answered.

“Who planned it?”

Amidst his tears and delayed by a slight hesitation that had more to do with his brainpower than anything, the answer finally came. “Janet did. Janet did. She told me that he was beating on her. She even showed me bruises. She said we'd never get him out of our lives. The only way to save Janet was to kill Deke. The only way to save Lindy was to kill Paul Kerr. She promised she'd marry me in Las Vegas. She did.”

Danny Parker pulled himself together and wiped his eyes. “Mr. Raines, I'm scared. Can I have a hug?”

-

MONTHS LATER, WHEN ALL THAT HAD HAPPENED in Timberlake was a vague memory for most, a jailer found a note rolled into a tube and shoved behind the plastic molding of the county jail cell. It was written in pencil on the back of a napkin. The handwriting was pitiful, letters in search of a baseline on which to anchor themselves. It had been written by Danny Parker.

Dear Janet,

Forgive me. They made me lie about you. The told me terrible things about you. I love you. When I told them about you and your mom they made it sound like you had tried to trick me. I know now that it was a big fat lie. I hope that when I get out of Walla Walla you and Lindy will be waiting for me. Hoping that you will be there for me is all that keeps me from killing myself. Mom tells me to forget you, but I can't. She tells me that you are no good, but I know better. I'm your man. You and Lindy are my family.

Love Danny,

Your Sugarbutt

NOTE TO KEV: You're right, honey. We're now officially a taco-free zone. Thanks for that. Why on earth doesn't Danny get off his sugarbutt and get some kind of reality check? His note to Janet is about the most pathetic thing I've read so far. No one will be waiting for him when he gets out of prison. —V

Wednesday, October 9

IT RAINED EVERY DAY THE WEEK after we returned from New York. I had not cleaned out the overflowing gutters which were hopelessly clogged with fir needles, badminton birdies, tennis balls and leaves. It was one of those late summer projects that was so easy to put off. I had waited too long. I put on an old sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and took a stepladder outside. The three steps that I allowed myself to climb did not give me sufficient height to see what I was fishing out of the gutters, even though I was over six feet tall. Black, stinky debris fell in sticky bunches onto the front step. The ladder teetered on the aggregate walkway and I held tight as I scooped out the mess with my bare hands. Two hours later, I showered, shaved and left for Riverstone.

If I hadn't made such a big deal about it with those snippy Community Relations toads at the prison, I would have postponed my interview with Connie Carter. I was not up to it and I was certain it would show in both my questions and my attitude. I decided to abandon going over the story—I knew she would say she was innocent—in favor of discussing her relationships with her daughters. Valerie had raised a good point during her last reading: Jett was on the outside, innocent; a victim of her mother and sister.

Muriel Constantine escorted me into the now-familiar conference room. This time the red-haired flack wore a powder blue suit that I thought was a Chanel knockoff. I allowed myself to believe that it was another quasi-benefit of her job. She probably sold another piece to the
National
Enquirer
.

Seated at the interview table, Connie looked thrashed. She didn't have a speck of makeup on, and her hair was either wet or oily. Her lower lip was swollen and as I leaned over the table to shake her hand I noticed that her wrist had been taped.

“What happened to you? Are you all right?”

“I'm okay,” she answered.

“What happened?”

She picked at the adhesive tape. Its gummy edges had collected dirt and sweatshirt fuzz. “Got in a fight with Janet and her lover, and it looks like I'm just a little worse for the wear.”

“Looks like you were beat up,” I said, shaking the picture of what she was describing from my mind.

Connie Carter asked the guard stationed at the end of our table if she could get a glass of water. The Buddha in the polyester uniform looked up from his Lee Child paperback and cocked his square head toward the water dispenser. He told her to be quick. I understood it wasn't because he thought she was going to make a run for it. It was simply that the prisoner was getting in the way of his reading. As long as she was sitting down talking to me, he didn't have to look at her. Warily, and impatiently, he watched while Connie drank two cones of water, returned to her chair and resumed her story. The guard and Jack Reacher were reunited in fourteen seconds.

“Those girls make me sick and I told them so,” she said. “That was it. It made 'em mad enough to attack me in the shower. Sometimes I wonder about Janet. I wonder if I even know her. She's selfish. She's stubborn. She'll let nothing stand in her way. She'd sell her mother up the river if she thought it'd do her some good.”

I turned on my recorder.

“She sounds a lot like Marnie Shaw's daughter in
The Over the Counter Murders
,” I said.