The Code of the Hills (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-­Three

A
S SOON AS
Nixon cleared the doorway, Elsie grabbed the office phone, dialing Ashlock's cell phone so fast that she pushed the wrong numbers and was rewarded by the blare of the misdial tone.

“Fuck,” she whispered, dialing again, squeezing her eyes shut as it rang. “Fuckfuckfuck.”

“What is this?” Ashlock demanded through the receiver.

“Oh Lordamighty, Ashlock, it's me. How do we get the information on pseudoephedrine purchases?”

“Elsie? Why do you need it?”

“Josh Nixon is calling Donita Taney a drug lord now. He says she's making meth. So we've got to try to prove the negative.”

Ashlock's voice was calm, even. “I can get the records. If she's been buying over-­the-­counter ephedrine, we can track it. If she hasn't, her name won't come up.”

There was a moment of silence, which was broken by Ashlock's observation: “She is awful skinny.”

“Goddamn it, I know she's skinny. Maybe she's got a fast metabolism,” she said irritably, though Elsie doubted that such a condition existed. She rubbed her eyes while she held the phone. “Do you think it's possible?”

“Hey, we're the capital,” he said.

“I know. I read that.”

“Missouri is the meth capital of the United States.”

“Yep.”

“We're number one.”

She laughed a little, despite her anxiety. “My mom always says Missouri is number one. Now I can tell her she's right.”

Ashlock suggested they ask Donita up front. He was taking JoLee's statement at four and could bring Donita in as well to see what she had to say.

“I want to be there. Where can I meet you?” Elsie knew that JoLee's testimony could be vitally important, and she was desperate to hear a denial from Donita regarding the meth accusation.

“I'll interrogate her at the department. Detective Division.”

“Okay, I'll come on over. Four o'clock?”

“Yep.”

“See you then.”

She hung up and stared at the roses on her desk. When the florist delivered them to the front office, there was a buzz of excitement. Stacie had called her to the reception area to receive them, and she felt a thrill of pleasure as she pulled the little florist card from its envelope amidst the green foliage. The card was printed with script that read:
THINKING OF YOU.
Under the script was scrawled,
Love ya!
Noah.

Elsie had borne the flowers back to her office like a trophy; ­people expected that. But now, as she set the bouquet on the corner of her desk, she regarded it with a jaded eye. In her experience, flowers signified three things: love, lust, or a guilty conscience. Was Noah apologizing for his high-­handed departure smack the other night? Or was it something else?

Her reverie was interrupted when Bree walked in.

“Got a minute?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Bree shut the door before she sat down. Elsie eyed her with surprise. “Closed door conference, huh? This must be super secret. What's cooking?”

“I just overheard something pretty interesting.”

“What?”

“Madeleine tried to pull Ashlock off the Taney case.”

Elsie shook her head. “No, Bree, that can't be right. He's still on the case. He's taking a witness statement today.”

“That's what makes it such a good story.” Bree didn't try to disguise her glee. “She told him that she needed his help on the trial she's got coming up; she told him to take himself off the Taney case, to hand it off to someone else. She said—­this is a quote, ‘Taney is not a priority.' ”

“Backstabber.” Elsie snatched up a pen from her desk and twisted it, fighting the urge to confront Madeleine. “So what happened then?”

“He said he was seeing Taney through to the end. That Madeleine didn't make the case assignments at the Barton P.D.”

“I bet that blew her away,” Elsie said with awe. “Where did you hear this?”

“The chief assistant was talking about it in Rountree's courtroom, giving a friend of his the blow by blow. I was in the jury room, looking up a statute, so they thought they were alone. I was quiet as the tomb.”

“Bet it absolutely curled her hair. Wouldn't you have loved to see her face?”

“I'll just have to imagine it,” Bree said, rising from her chair with a blissful sigh. “Guess old Madeleine learned that Detective Ashlock won't be kicking our Elsie to the curb.” She reached out and touched the petals of the roses on Elsie's desk as she turned to go.

F
OUR O'CLOCK FOUND
Elsie at the police department. She hurried up the short flight of stairs to the Detective Division on the second floor, eager to finally get a look at JoLee. Patsy, manning the front desk at the investigative unit, pointed toward the interrogation room in the northeast corner. Elsie headed to the door and knocked.

Ashlock let her in. A girlish looking woman in her mid-­twenties sat quietly at a metal table with her hands clenched in her lap, out of sight.

Elsie glanced at Ashlock. “Will we be taking two statements?” she asked.

He returned the look. “A minor complication with the other statement. I'll explain later.” She nodded.

“JoLee,” he said, “this is Elsie Arnold. She's handling the case against Kris Taney.”

“I know who she is.” The woman fixed a hostile eye on Elsie. She returned the gaze, surprised to observe that JoLee was rather pretty, despite her Goodwill castoffs and ragged haircut. When JoLee brought a hand up to rub her eye, Elsie saw dark blue polish on fingernails that had been chewed painfully short.

She tried to sound friendly. “I'm really glad to meet you, JoLee,” sitting down at the table across from her, a few feet from Ashlock. “Thanks for agreeing to talk to us today.”

“I ain't agreed to talk to nobody,” she said. Her eyes had a hunted look. “Is she going to read me my rights? You ain't read me my rights.”

Ashlock spoke in a soothing tone. “JoLee, you're not a suspect. This is an interview for the investigation. We just want to talk to you, ask you about Kris Taney.”

“Plus, this isn't custodial interrogation,” Elsie blurted. Ashlock turned on her with a look and she shut up. Her mother had an old Missouri saying that Elsie now repeated to herself:
Jesse
,
who's robbing this train?
She needed to let Bob do his job.

Ashlock turned back to JoLee. “You don't mind if I record this, do you?” he asked in a voice that would melt butter while gesturing at the tabletop record. “I'm just doing it so there will be no chance, no way, anyone could put words in your mouth or claim you said something you didn't say.”

“Like her?” JoLee demanded, jabbing a stubby blue-­tipped finger in Elsie's direction.

Elsie opened her mouth to speak, but Ashlock laid a warning hand on her arm.

“Like anyone,” he said in a soothing voice. He continued, “So I'm going to record this, right?” When JoLee didn't voice an objection, he turned on the machine.

Ashlock started the interview with some preliminary questions, which she answered readily enough: her name, age, address, education, occupation. So far she had not been asked to reveal anything damning, so her responses about failing to finish high school and intermittent employment in food ser­vice should have been easy to provide. Still, she seemed edgy. Elsie watched JoLee fidget with the zipper on her hoodie jacket, her leg restless under the table, her heel tapping on the floor in a continuous dance.

When Ashlock asked JoLee whether she knew Kris Taney, the process became choppy.

“Yeah.”

“Yes, what?”

“I know him.”

“Have you lived with him?” When she didn't respond, he added, “Under the same roof?”

JoLee didn't answer. She turned her head and studied the cinder-­block wall, as if an answer could be found in its rough surface.

Ashlock came at the subject from another angle, and asked whether she had any children. After a moment's consideration, JoLee's demeanor relaxed.

“I got a little boy.”

“How old is he?”

“Nine months.”

“What's his name?”

“Kris.”

“Who's the father?”

She fixed Ashlock with a defiant stare. She did not speak.

Patiently, he asked whether she knew Donita Taney. After a period of silence, JoLee nodded. Ashlock told her that she would have to speak, that the machine could not record a nod, and JoLee said, “Yes. I know Donita.”

Ashlock followed up and asked her whether she had ever met Charlene, Kristy, or Tiffany. JoLee admitted that she had. He inquired whether she had ever been at their home on High Street in Barton. After a prolonged silence, during which JoLee stared at her lap as she ran the zipper up and down a dozen times, she allowed that she had been to the residence before.

“And I can tell you something about that Charlene,” she added, looking up. “She's no good. She's a liar and a whore. Biggest slut in town.”

“Tell us about that,” Ashlock said smoothly.

JoLee gave him a sly look before she added, “Should've seen how she carried on with Al. You would've thought he was her boyfriend instead of her uncle. Said she could be a movie star.” JoLee scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

Elsie shifted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable, anxious about things JoLee might reveal that the family had hidden thus far.

Warming to the topic, JoLee said, “I know Donita's been feeding you horseshit. That whole house is a pack of liars. It's an outfit, is what it is.”

She fell silent, fiddling with her zipper. Ashlock waited for her to begin again. When she didn't, he resumed his questions: “Were you at the house in November—­”

She cut him off. Looking straight into Ashlock's eyes, she said, “That Kristy plays like she's Miss Goody-­goody, but she ain't. I swear. She's mean. I seen her knock the snot out of Tiffany before. Then lie about it.”

As Elsie digested the statement, Ashlock asked, “Did Tiffany ever tell you anything about her relationship with her father?”

JoLee hooted in disbelief. Looking from Ashlock to Elsie and back again, she said incredulously, “Tiffany? Tell me anything? Ain't you seen her with your own eyes? Tiffany's a half-­wit. Can't hardly talk.”

The denouncement stirred something in Elsie, forcibly reminded of the silent child and her Barbie. She fought the urge to lash out at the woman sitting across from her.

Ashlock asked, “What is your relationship with Tiffany?”

“I ain't got no relationship with Tiffany. Or Kristy. Or Charlene. I wouldn't sit in the same room with that Charlene, if I didn't have to. She's the devil.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she's a lying, stealing, dirty whore. With the filthiest mouth in town. If it wasn't for her daddy keeping her in line, she'd be in jail.” JoLee caught herself. She froze and fell silent, looking fearful, as if she'd said too much. She cast her gaze down.

Trying to keep a neutral face, Elsie pondered JoLee's violent dislike of Charlene. It seemed an extreme reaction. But the only explanation followed from Kris Taney's valentine: Charlene was JoLee's sexual rival.

While JoLee sat, looking at her lap, Ashlock waited. The woman looked up again, a flash of inspiration in her eyes. “Donita ever tell you about the time she wore Charlene out with an extension cord?”

Elsie leaned back in her seat as far as she could, her throat tightening. The woman's voice had the ring of truth.

“Striped her up so bad, they had to keep her home from school for a week. She tell you about that?”

Frowning, Ashlock asked, “Did you witness the event? Personally?”

JoLee regarded him with a knowing smile. But when Ashlock pressed her to expound on her statement, JoLee shrugged, shook her head. “Nothing more to say.”

Ashlock then asked whether Kris Taney had been present at the time.

No answer.

He asked whether she was Taney's girlfriend. She picked at her nails. When he asked whether she'd had sexual relations with Taney, she was nonresponsive.

“Does he whip you?” he asked.

Her head jerked up; JoLee looked at Ashlock with apprehension. Ashlock and Elsie saw that he'd touched a nerve. He pursued it.

“Is it true that he hits you when you talk back to him? Gives you a whipping?”

She started to shake, but did not speak.

“You don't have to put up with that kind of treatment,” he said gently. “It's against the law, JoLee. A pretty young woman like you should have a good guy, somebody who treats you right.”

Tears ran down JoLee's cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut to stop them. When Ashlock offered her a Kleenex box, she knocked it away and dried her eyes with the back of her hand.

“You don't know what you're doing,” she said finally in a grim voice. “You got no clue. Nobody hits me. Somebody's spreading lies.”

“He's in jail, JoLee,” Ashlock urged in a comforting tone. “He's locked up, behind bars. He's not going anywhere. Right, Ms. Arnold?”

“Right,” said Elsie, trying not to think about the bond reduction motion on her desk.

Rigid, JoLee sat in her plastic chair, fists clenched, her voice shaky but determined. “You can't make me say nothing about him. You can beat my head in and I won't do it. Besides, I know the law. You can't make me say nothing. Not a word. I'll take the Fifth.”

Ashlock played his trump card. “I know you love your baby, JoLee. Social Ser­vices lets you see him, what, once a week?”

She eyed him murderously. “Every other week,” she spat.

“They were real encouraged at Social Ser­vices to hear that you were talking to us. They'll be taking it hard over there to hear you won't cooperate. Don't know what they'll think about that.”