Shocking True Story (31 page)

Connie looked completely blank. “Not familiar with it.”

“My book,” I said with a smile, though I wondered why she hadn't read it. I considered it one of my best. A minor true crime classic, at the least.

She shrugged and pulled a piece of red licorice from her pocket and tore off little bits and ate them one at a time. “Sorry. Haven't read any of your books. I'm going to as soon as the prison's library orders them.”

“That's okay,” I said. “What I'm getting at—now, don't blast me for doing my job—is after talking with Paul and Liz Kerr, I get the distinct impression that the sexual abuse allegations made by your daughter were the sole catalyst for your hatred for your former son-in-law. I mean, before that you thought he was an okay dad, right?”

“Okay would be a fair assessment, I guess. Not great.” Connie picked at a piece of red candy that stuck to her upper molars. I watched her fight with the licorice until she liberated her teeth from the gooey bondage.

“Are you convinced that there was sexual abuse involving Lindy?” I asked.

Connie Carter did a slow burn. “What are you hinting at, Mr. Ryan?”

“Kevin, please.”

“What are you suggesting, Kevin? There is no doubt in my mind that there was abuse of my granddaughter. I saw the evidence with my own eyes.”

I said nothing. I let her fill the silence. Connie's posture stiffened and her eyes flashed a bitterness that I had not detected before.

“I saw it,” she said.

“Saw what?”

“The panties... that's what. I saw the baby's bloodstained panties. I never needed any backup beyond that. Would you?”

I didn't know what to say. She was in such denial. The panties were picante-stained! It wasn't blood from Lindy. Connie flatly ignored the lab reports and trial evidence. It left me with only one sad conclusion: Danny and Connie had been set up by Janet Lee.

Connie started to weep when I prodded her for information about Jett. She bit down on her lower lip, causing it to bleed anew. Her train of thought was scattered. I wondered where she was going when she began to ramble.

“I can't talk about Jett. I miss her. When God judges me—and God is the only one who can—he'll know that I loved her. She was gone so long and now she's back. During the times when life was better and I sobered up, I thought of my baby girl coming home again. I counted the days, I'll tell you. And now look at where I am? Just look at me. I'm in prison and she's out there. She's almost as much a victim as I am.”

♦

MY OFFICE LANDLINE PHONE WAS RINGING when I returned from the women's prison.

“I hate to sound like some CNN finance-babe reporter,” Martin Raines said without so much as a hello, “but to solve the Parker murder we've got to follow the paper...the
paper
trail.”

Of course, I knew he was referring to the Shantung Rag found in Mrs. Parker's hand. I wanted to tell him what I learned at the library, but something told me not to say anything about it. Instead, I turned it around, to seek information—not
give
any.

“What more do you know about the paper?” I asked.

“What more is there to know? It was never sold in the U.S. The only active market is the only place that ever had it—Japan. From what we know, this so-called Shantung Rag hasn't done all that well there. It is still made, but in very rare quantities. We figure that whoever killed her had access to it from a trip to the Orient.”

I didn't mention the reader response card from
Artist Today
. Instead, I changed the subject. I was worried.

“Any more on the signature?”

Raines didn't skip a beat. Maybe there was nothing to say about Shantung Rag.

“Yes and no,” he answered. “Yes, the signature shows similarities to yours, but it more than likely was made by someone else.”

“More than likely?” I wondered what he was getting at. Of course, I hadn't signed that stupid piece of paper.

“Yeah. It's an odd forgery, though. It is only
similar
to yours. If someone really wanted to screw you over and point the finger of accusation at you, the killer could have made it more of a ringer to how you normally sign....”

I felt my heart erupt through my T-shirt. My mind wandered over a number of scenarios. None were particularly pleasant. I sank so low into my chair that I had become part of the cushion, its loosely woven mesh fabric imprinted the back of my legs. I needed air.

“Kever?” Marty was the only one who called me that. I kind of liked it.

“Yeah?”

“I was asking you how the
Rita Adams Show
went? When's it going to be on the tube? I want to Tivo it.”

I snapped myself back to the conversation. “I don't feel so good,” I said. “I'll call you back later.”

I let the handset fall softly into its cradle. The clock face on the phone showed that I had been on the line for seven minutes. Seven minutes and my whole world had changed forever. I looked down at my hands as if they belonged to someone else. They were trembling. I clasped them tightly together to stop the shaking.

It could not be true. What had crossed my mind was so ugly, so gruesome, it could not be true. The laser printer with an output now as crisp and black as a priest's collar had stopped humming and I reached for the perfect little pages of
Love You to Death.
I doubted that I'd ever finish the book.

I doubted that I could live with myself if I did.

♦

Love You to Death

PART ELEVEN

CONNIE CARTER WAS NO LONGER a barmaid, those Good Time Gal years far behind her. She now cleaned up flatware and glasses behind the bar at the Rusty Anchor and mopped the floors of the restrooms marked: BUOYS and GULLS. Her hands smelled of Pine-Sol and the big white cakes of deodorizers wedged at the bottom of rust-stained urinals. Martin Raines parked in front of her little yellow house at 394 Seastack Ave. S. the morning after Danny Parker had implicated her in the murder conspiracy scheme.

He saw a woman sitting near the front window, a television on in front of her, a bank of cigarette smoke moored against the yellowed ceiling.

She answered the door right away. She had flinty eyes, roto-tilled hair, and a crinkled-bag mouth from a three-pack-a-day smoking habit. Connie Carter was exactly as Deke had described her.

Rode hard and put away wet.

“Mrs. Carter? Connie Carter? I'm Martin Raines. I'm the investigator handling the Cameron shooting case.”

Connie, of course, knew that, but he was required to identify himself. Proper procedure always meant repetition and stating and restating the obvious.

“Yeah? And it's about time you got your butt in gear and came to see me. I want to know when my daughter's getting out of your goddamn jail! You have some nerve in taking so long. I want my Lindy away from that pervert of a father of hers,” she said.

Such a pleasant greeting. Such a lovely woman.

“Mrs. Carter, I'd like to ask you a few questions.”

“Not without a lawyer, mister. My daughter told me what you've been up to and I'm not going to put up with your bullshit. You know why?”

Raines said nothing. He wanted her to keep going on her own. She had probably been sitting in her chair all morning, maybe all night, judging by her disheveled appearance, thinking it over. She had hours to come up with the words that would sting cops, but set her daughter free.

“I fuckin' don't have to talk to you at all. You can't make me say anything. You can't. You know it and I know it. And you know what? We've got an attorney for Janet and he's gonna get your badge for how you treated us. Civil rights. We got rights.”

-

OUT OF THE HOSPITAL AND BACK on his feet, Deke Cameron was waiting for Martin Raines. His recovery had been remarkable. So was his attitude. He was eating one of Moan-a-lot's candies and showing his grotesque wounds to everyone who passed by her desk.

“Look-ee here,” the young man said, pulling up his dirty sweatshirt to reveal a spare-tire stomach white-walled with ten yards of gauze. “Janet did this to me.”

When he saw the sheriff's detective, Deke pulled down his shirt and lumbered over.

“Detective Raines! I brought some proof for you.”

Raines, surprised to see Deke out of the hospital, ignored his remark at first. His face showed genuine concern. “Deke, what are you doing out of Pac-O?”

“They said I could go. I'm gonna be fine. Won't be looking good on the beach, but I guess I never really did. But I'll be all right.”

“You sure?”

He reached into his pocket and held out a letter written on pale lavender stationery. “Yeah, and like I said, I brought proof about Janet's plan to kill Paul.”

“What's this?” Raines asked, unfolding what appeared to be a letter written by a woman, a very young woman, judging by the handwriting. Raines recognized the penmanship instantly. It was the scrawl made by Janet Lee Kerr. A smattering of the i's had been dotted with hearts.

Deke urged him to read. “It's from Janet. You be the judge.”

The letter was dated more than a year ago.

Dear Sugarbutt,

I miss you when you aren't around. Every time a sad song comes on the radio, I think of you...I'm missing you and I can't wait for the day when we are a family. You, me and Lindy.

We gotta do what we've been talking about. Court is coming up soon and mom says that if we don't take care of our problem, we're in deep shit. Sugarbutt, you know that I'm depending on you. Lindy, too. Even mom thinks you are a real man (she doesn't think that about too many guys!)

I want him dead (bang! bang! and its over). We can make it look like a robbery or something. God, he'll probably be drunk anyhow. Better burn this little note! If you don't, could give us some trouble later.

Love you,

Janet

P.S. There's a monster truck show in Seattle on Saturday. I really, really wanna go!

Underneath the postscript, in another's handwriting were the words:
Don't disappoint me or my Janet. I want this done right!

Raines asked the obvious, to be one hundred percent certain. This would be filed under the too-good-to-be-true category.

“Janet sent this to you?”

“Yeah, she did. But I didn't burn it. I saved it. I saved all of 'em.”

“I'm glad that you did, but why?”

“Because I loved her. God, no woman ever wrote me a love note before. I guess...I guess I still love her a little bit. I just wanted you to see that I wasn't lying about nothing.” His voice caught a little and it seemed for a moment that he might cry.

“You all right?”

Deke fought for composure. “Yeah, when I think about all that Janet and I could have had...our own trailer...our wedding in Vegas...taking Lindy to the beach to dig in the sand and shit.”

“I'm sorry,” Raines said, as the two walked back toward his office, out of view of the others.

“I guess even though she tried to kill me, I just now realized how much I still love her.”

Those were dangerous words. Raines had heard them before. A woman whose second husband had beaten her with more black bruises than a garbage can full of spoiled bananas came immediately to mind. She had made a complaint from her hospital bed while her teenage daughter stood in loving support.

Never again, Mother, never again.

Forty-eight hours after her release, the woman called Raines to announce that she would not be pressing charges. It had been her fault. The medication at Pac-O had clouded her judgment.

“I realize how much I still love him,” she said.

Six months later, on Christmas Eve, the daughter reported her mother was missing. The husband said she went shopping and never returned. The girl put up posters. She ran ads. She even called TruTV. Her mother was never heard from again.

Probably dead
, Raines thought. Probably buried in a shallow grave somewhere off a logging road in Pierce County. Probably because she realized how much she still loved him.

Raines changed the subject. He didn't want Deke Cameron to labor over the love of his girlfriend. He wanted to nail Janet and her mother to the wall. Again, the question was an obvious one.

“Do you know who wrote the last line?”

Deke looked surprised. “Of course, Mr. Raines. It was Connie. Connie wrote that.”

The detective knew handwriting analysis would bear it out. Welcome Wagon reject Mrs. Carter was up to her neck in a conspiracy to commit murder.

The detective scooted papers off an office chair and motioned for Deke to have a seat. He wanted a better handle on the relationship between mother and daughter.

Deke Cameron was only too glad to oblige. “Like I said, it was a love-hate, really hate-hate relationship, half the time, anyway. It was like they were there for each other and against each other at the same time. Weird. One minute it was I love you, the next I wanna kill her. Janet thought her mother fucked up her life, her sister's, too.”

“What's with the sister?” Raines asked. No one knew much, if anything, about Connie's youngest daughter.

Deke shifted his weight and grimaced. The pain pills were wearing off and he needed more.

“What's to say? I never met Jett. She was in and out of foster homes and when they didn't work out, they shipped her to her aunt's east of the mountains. It was like they didn't want her around. Connie used to say that Jett reminded her of the bad old days.”

-

THREE HOURS AFTER WAITING AROUND for a judge to sign an arrest warrant, Martin Raines returned to Seastack Avenue. Connie was still in her bathrobe when she opened the door and peered through the mesh of a torn aluminum screen. Alcohol vapors strong enough to be a fire hazard came from her heavy, smoky breath.

“Connie Carter?” the detective asked.

“You again?” she snarled. “Yeah, you know who I am. I guess you're here to apologize, but I'm not accepting it. Not on your fat butt will I accept it. I'm gonna sue.”

Raines smiled.

“You're under arrest for the conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation of first-degree murder,” he said.