Shocking True Story (25 page)

I didn't think so.

Adena King, the producer who had screwed me over by stealing a copy of
Murder Cruise
before publication, had a soul mate in Monica Maleng.

I was just too blind to have seen it before.

♦

But not too blind to type. In fact, I'd been the only guy in a high school classroom of girls in Typing III, and a bonafide member of the Flying Fingers group that could type 120 words per minute without looking at the keys. I tried to calm down as I shook the fading toner cartridge and waited for the printer to spit out the next pages of
Love You to Death
. I handwrote a note to Val:
I promise you, baby, everything will work out. Tomorrow is Labor Day—I'm calling it Hard Labor Day now—and I promise not to work. But for now, read on:

♦

Love You to Death

PART EIGHT

DETECTIVE RAINES STOOD ON THE FRONT STEP of Jim Winston's G Street address, pulled open the screen door, and knocked. While it was clear that survivalist and mill hand Jim Winston had not killed anybody, the fact that he had been offered a sum of money by Timberlake's mother/daughter would-be murder team was sufficient to get him in deep enough to squirm. If Deke Cameron was to be believed, then Janet and Connie had only let their budget get into the way of their plans to use Jim as a hit man to kill Paul Kerr.

Timberlake was a small enough place that when Jim opened his door, the recognition of the cop was instantaneous.

“Jim Winston, I'm Martin Raines with the Pierce County Sheriff's office.”

He nodded.

“Can I come in and talk?”

“About?”

“Deke Cameron's over at Pac-O and he's given us a statement,” the detective said, fixing an intimidating stare.

Jim shifted his weight. Nervousness was setting in. Trouble was, quite literally, knocking on his door. “He, I had nothing to do with that. Nothing to do with any of it.”

Five minutes later, magazines still in place, room still spit polished, Jim Winston told the cop what he knew. He had not wanted to kill anyone.

“Hey, I was just having fun,” he said.

“Plotting a murder's a good time for you?”

Jim's eyes wandered over the wall behind the detective. His face flushed. “You know what I mean. I was just playing with those two. They had a problem and I wanted to see how far they'd go. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't mean anything.”

“Playing spy? Soldier boy?”

“Something like that.”

Then he told his story....

-

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS AFTER Janet, Deke, and Jim conspired to kill Paul Kerr, Mrs. Carter called them over to her home in Seastack when their shift concluded at the mill. It was two in the afternoon and she had been drinking since ten that morning. The garbage can in the kitchen overflowed with paper cups. Connie Carter never used the same cup twice, never a cup that could be washed. She told herself she wasn't drinking that much if the cups were small and disposable. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over the living room sofa like the grey belly of a UFO.

Connie Carter was not a happy drunk. She was never lampshade-on-the-head kind of fun. It wasn't her nature. Drinking only made her mean. Janet and Jett had felt their mother's drunken wrath: first, the sting and squeal of a rubber Old Mother Hubbard spoon; later, when they were older, the buckle end of a leather belt.

“We are running out of time,” Connie barked from the sofa when the trio arrived. “Do you know that Lindy is in danger of being raped again by that monster?”

Everyone knew it. They all felt the sense of impending doom. A clock was ticking. Louder and louder. If something wasn't done in time, there would be hell to pay. A little girl, a sweet and innocent little girl, was in danger.

Janet introduced Jim Winston and seated him next to her mother.

“You must think you're really something,” Connie said, stubbing out another cigarette in a black plastic ashtray that resembled a hedgehog from the proliferation of butts that overflowed from it.

Jim's eyes widened. “Come again?”

“Big shot. Mister-I-want-five-thousand-dollars-for-a-rat's-ass-hit.”

He sprang up. He was a marionette. “I don't need this. I don't want any trouble.”

“Sit down and shut up,” Connie instructed.

Jim ignored her and remained on his feet.

“I said, sit down. I have a compromise.”

Deke nodded at his pal from the mill. “Better listen to her.”

Jim slid back into his place on the sofa.

“I'm a little short on the down payment. I almost have it and I've been thinking that if you'd wait this out until after the job, I'd pay you ten grand when it's over.”

Jim Winston refused and he backed off. His little game had gone too far and he was desperate for a way out of that smoky living room and away from that bleached blonde with red chipped fingernails and murder on her mind.

“How much have you got?”

“I'll give you $420 now and the rest later; when I can get my hands on it. And, trust me, I can get it. Lindy is a beneficiary on a policy I bought for her and I'll use her money to pay you off.”

Jim said he'd think it over. He wanted out of there. He made up an excuse about calling his brother who was working offshore in Australia.

“Got to call him before it gets too late their time.”

Jim Winston, of course, had no brother.”

-

“I LIED TO THEM TO GET THE HELL out of there. I had never seen such stupid people in my life. Speaking of stupid, God, was I dumb,” Jim Winston told Martin Raines when they talked that first time in his living room.

The detective agreed. “I won't argue with you there. You know, you're going to have to come in to make a statement down at the Justice Center.”

“But I didn't take any money. Not one dime. I didn't even really consider it. Connie tried to hand me $420, but I left it on the coffee table. Like I said, I just wanted to get out of there.”

An enormous tortoise shell brown tabby leapt up onto the investigator's lap and Jim jumped up to shoo his pet away.

“Soldier! Get down!”

The cat hit the floor and Raines stood up to indicate it was time for the two of them to leave.

“Am I going to be arrested?”

Raines didn't think so.

“I can't promise anything, understand? But I think it's fair to say I don't think you'll be in too much trouble if you cooperate with us,” he said.

Jim Winston fed Soldier and grabbed a navy pea coat before locking the door.

“Hey, I thought of something that'll back up some of what I told you.”

Raines stopped in his tracks. “What?”

“Are you sure you're not gonna arrest me?”

“I told you it isn't likely, but I can't promise.”

“I guess I'll go with that. I won't need a lawyer, right?”

“Not if you're not going to be arrested. Remember, cooperation is key here.”

Jim Winston went to his Cavalier and retrieved a State of Washington vehicle registration.

“We're not impounding your car, either,” Raines said, offering a laugh to break a little tension. He was an expert at putting people to ease. It was a skill that served him well and probably kept him younger than his colleagues who couldn't make—and certainly never take—a joke.

Jim grinned slightly. “I know. Look at the back of it.”

The detective flipped over the green and white sheet.

“So?”

“Look right here.” He pointed to some pencil marks along the right hand edge of the document.

“Yeah?”

“It's Janet's handwriting... it's from the night when she and Deke came over and they wanted me to kill Paul Kerr. We—
they
—were mapping out how far things were from each other ... making a plan for the hit.”

The detective could distinctly make out words tied to local landmarks. If the handwriting checked out, the hot water Janet Lee Kerr was sitting in was about to rise to a boil.

Two-tenths.

Half mile.

One mile.

“You know something, officer?” Jim confided during the short ride to the Justice Center. “I hate to admit it, because by doing so might make you think less of me than you probably already do, but I'm not surprised Danny Parker is mixed up in the Cameron shooting.”

Raines hated when people called him
officer
, but he had grown weary of explaining the difference over and over. At least by using the term officer, it was a measure of respect.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I saw Janet not long after I turned her and her mother down. She was at the Hammer 'n Nails. She was playing pool for beers and had a couple of empty schooners balanced on the side table. She wasn't sloppy drunk, just real mouthy.”

Raines was beginning to put together a picture of the young woman he sent kicking and screaming to a jail cell. It was an ugly picture.

“I hear she gets that way,” he said. “What'd she say?”

“She flat out told me that I was a coward—her exact words were 'Jim Winston, you're as fuckin' big a weenie as Deke Cameron.' I asked her what she meant and she told me—and I'll never forget her words—'Boys like you and Deke pale next to a real man. You need a
big
man to do a man's job'.”

“Did she say if she found a
big
man to do the job?”

Jim shook his head up and down. He had been talking so fast that spittle formed at the corners of his mouth and the force of his movement sent a bubbly spray into the air and landed white against the near black of his coat. He was dying to point the finger at someone else.

“Sure did. As bold and ballsy as could be, she said Danny Parker was going to do the deed for her. And she said she didn't have to pay him one red cent. I remember she even laughed at that. She said Danny Parker was going to do it for love.”

-

THE JUSTICE CENTER HAD NEVER been more convenient, which of course, was the very reason it had been designed as it had been. Raines handed off Jim Winston like a Frisbee to another deputy, whom he briefed, to make the veneer maker-cum-misbegotten hit man's written statement. It was time to see if Danny Parker was ready to talk some more.

♦

Note from Val:
Two things. Your toner is about dead. I heard you shaking it like a maraca last night and I'd say you've squeezed every last bit of black out of the thing. Get a new one. You're a professional, Kevin. Act like it. Look like it. Toner is the answer here. OK, that was item no. 1. Number 2, Connie is scary! She's actually got the nerve to bitch slap a hit man and then dicker him down to a $420 down payment? She's treating him like a sales clerk at Loehman's. Poor Jett. I even feel sorry for Janet. Make that everyone who's ever met Connie Carter.

Tuesday, September 3

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL CAME just in time, as it always did. I was so thankful for its arrival and the relief it would provide. From morning to afternoon, I'd be back to a routine that would allow me to get my work done. Valerie had Taylor and Hayley line up in front of our weather-beaten rose arbor with Hedda as she photographed the event for posterity. Our girls were lovely. Low teased fishtail braid on Taylor and swept bangs on Hayley. New jeans and tank, one covered with hearts, the other peace signs. The festival style from Coachella had traveled up the coast and had finally reached Port Gamble preteens —a sure sign the look was officially over. They looked like high-schoolers, more so to me, than sixth-graders beginning their final year at Breidablik Elementary. Valerie had taken photos of their first day since preschool. Only fourth grade was a battle. By sixth, both girls knew that the First Day photo was something they'd have to accept until they graduated from college.

“At least mom doesn't make us stand beside the bus anymore,” Hayley said as she squinted into the morning sun and smiled for five more shots.

“Don't even say it, or she might try,” Taylor warned her sister.

After big hugs and near tears, Valerie loaded the Honda for a client presentation in the city and the girls and I took the LUV to school. Hedda was left with a new rawhide bone to occupy her day in the backyard. I was so glad for things to be returning to normal. I was so happy that the days of blue raspberry Mr. Freezes were over for another year. This summer, more than any I could think of, had been a frighteningly wild ride. It had been rough on all of us, especially Valerie. Her temper had flared at the slighted provocation. I took it for what it was: the stress over her job and mine. The worry about money. School clothes had tapped out the bank account and we were back on charge cards until my publisher sent the money for signing the contract on
Love You to Death
. Valerie's business was picking up, however. She had several new artists to rep and a strong shot at an online catalog for an outdoor gear-maker in Seattle.

“The client wants no photos, only computer-generated illustrations. We're talking about eighty to ninety images,” she said that morning.

“Maybe we'll have Christmas after all,” I said.

Valerie looked a little doubtful. “Christmas? I'm worried that we'll be about to pull off Thanksgiving.”

“Should have the advance money by then,” I said.

“Don't those people in New York understand that writers actually live on their advances?”

We both knew from experience that they hadn't a clue. They had no idea that their writers were actually trying to make a living out there.

I dropped off the girls into a living and breathing sea of brand-new clothing and fresh-scrubbed hair and skin for their first day of class. Neither was crazy about the teachers they had, but both were relieved that Renny Ann Quinn was not in either's classes. Renny Ann Quinn was a booger-eating ditz who had latched onto the Ryan girls like a barnacle on a rock. This year was the first year one of my girls didn't have to deal with her. They could not have been happier.

The girls would take the bus home after school. Taylor had a house key she kept on the zipper pull of her black canvas backpack.

I had arranged for a couple of appointments in Timberlake. At lunch time, I was going to see Martin Raines. After that, Jett Carter and I were going to meet at the kiosk in front of the Hotdog on a Stick stand at the Food Circus in the Columbia Mall.