Justice for Sara (19 page)

Wednesday, June 12
5:45
P.M.

Luke excused himself, then led his dad to his office. He was pissed and worked to get a grip on the emotion as he shut the door behind them, then turned to his father. “What the hell, Pops? It couldn’t wait?”

“What are you up to?”

Of all the things he would have expected his old man to say first, none of them had been that. “Questioning a suspect. Danny Sullivan.”

“I ordered Reni to come pick me up.” His hands were curled into fists. “He was to inform you to hold off until I arrived.”

“You’re on medical leave, Dad. I’m acting chief until you’re officially cleared to come back to work.”

“You instructed Reni to disobey my direct orders.”

“At this time, Reni takes orders from me.” He felt as if he were speaking to a belligerent child. “I’m acting chief while you’re away.”

“I’m right here, dammit!”

Luke frowned. “You’re not up to this.”

“I’m just sitting in.”

“I can’t let you do that. It’ll undermine my authority.”

“Any authority you have came from me, boy. I’m the chief!”

The things Kat had said about his father the other night raced into his head. “Who are you trying to protect?”

“Who would I be protecting? That’s ridiculous.”

“You’re either protecting someone or trying to cover something up. That’s the way it seems, Pops.”

“I should take your badge! My own son, trying—” He burst into a fit of coughing. His face reddened as he tried to control it. “Trying to destroy me!”

“Danny was there that night. He admitted it just now. A moment before you interrupted us. He was there at Sara’s place, the night she was murdered.”

Coughing shook his dad again. Luke wondered if it was all an act. A ruse to get his way.

“That’s … not … possible.”

“He has a gambling addiction. McCall was his ticket to easy street. What if she turned him down? Think that might be cause for him to fly into a rage? The kind that can lead to murder?”

His dad just stared at him, mouth working, hand gripping the back of the desk chair.

“Why didn’t you find any of this? Because you didn’t look?”

His dad didn’t have answers, and Luke shook his head. “All my life I looked up to you. I figured I didn’t measure up, that I’d let you down. Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s you who doesn’t measure up. You who let
me
down.”

His dad didn’t meet his eyes. Luke took the lanyard with his shield from around his neck and dropped it on the desk. “Take it back. The authority. The badge.” He followed with his sidearm. “My gun. It’s all yours, old man. I’m done.”

Luke strode from the office, not looking back even when he heard the chair slam against the wall. Let his old man throw a temper tantrum. Luke had grown up on them. More than six decades of life under his belt, and he could still act like a two-year-old.

He was clear to his car when he heard Reni behind him. “Sarge, wait!”

He stopped, looked back. “Not anymore. I quit.”

“But your dad—”

“Is a pigheaded old son of a bitch. I’m through with him.”

“No, Luke. Your dad, he collapsed.”

Chief Stephen Tanner
2003

Five days after the murder

Tanner couldn’t sit still. He paced in front of his desk, sat, then popped back to his feet. Jeremy was bringing Kat in for another round of questioning. Everything was riding on this. He couldn’t screw up.

This time, he was prepared. The scene had been processed. He’d interviewed both the victim’s and the suspect’s friends, family, co-workers. Neighbors.

Things weren’t looking good. Not for young Miss McCall.

Tanner paused, drawing in a deep, calming breath, then slowly releasing it. Jeremy had hired the top criminal defense attorney in the entire Gulf Coast region to represent her. Robert Henry Clay III. He’d gotten more fish off the hook than Johnny Morris, the bass master himself.

Tanner knew he’d better bring his A game. Otherwise that shark would eat him like a guppy.

Trixie buzzed him. “They’re here.”

“Put ’em in the interview room. Offer ’em cold drinks, coffee, whatever. I’ll be out in five.”

Tanner used the minutes to organize his thoughts and shelve his nerves. He could do this. He didn’t need the sheriff’s department or anybody else to help him do his job.

Fact number one: Kat McCall hated her sister. She had publicly wished her dead. She resented the fact that Sara controlled her inheritance. If her sister were dead, she would have it all.

Fact number two: She had been lying to Sara for weeks. Telling her she was going to softball practice when in actuality she was hanging out with friends she had been forbidden to see.

When Sara found her out, they’d had a huge argument. Sara had taken away her phone, car and computer, then grounded her for the foreseeable future.

Fact number three: Sara McCall had decided to send her sister away to boarding school. The way Tanner figured it, that was what had sent Kat McCall into a rage. She had beaten Sara to death with the very bat they had fought over.

It made perfect sense. She had the means, the motive and the opportunity.

In addition, the manner of death fit the crime. This wasn’t the impersonal work of a stranger. This had been personal. Fueled by rage. Hatred. The fact that the perp had pulverized Sara’s face. That she had continued to beat her after she was dead.

Tanner smiled tightly.
You’re on, Stephen. Do this thing.

A moment later, he stepped into the interview room, his gaze landing on McCall. She looked young. And scared. The lawyers stood to greet him. Webber introduced him to Clay, whose appearance was the antithesis of the tall, commanding figure he’d expected.

Instead, Robert Henry Clay was short and disheveled. Towering over him, Tanner decided that he was the shark, about to gobble up the unsuspecting attorney.

They shook hands. Tanner turned to Webber. “I’m sorry, Jeremy, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Conflict of interest.”

Fear raced into McCall’s eyes. She grabbed his hand. “Cousin Jeremy, no.”

“She’s a child, Tanner. And as her only living relative, I’m now her guardian.”

Tanner appreciated his concern and told him so. “But you know as well as I do, in the eyes of the state of Louisiana, at seventeen Miss Kat here is an adult. And she has good counsel. She’ll be just fine.”

“I’ll take good care of her,” Clay said.

Webber bent down and kissed the top of her head. “It’ll be okay, Kit-Kat. I’ll be right outside that door.”

She watched him go, flinching slightly as the door clicked shut.

Tanner began. “I appreciate you comin’ in, Miss Katherine. I know how awful, and how scary, this must be for you.”

She nodded, swallowing hard.

“But you don’t have to be scared. This is a formality. Do you understand what my job is?” he asked.

“To find the person who killed Sara,” she whispered.

“That’s right.” He smiled. “And to do that, I need to gather all the information I can about what happened. Think of the crime as a puzzle with many pieces. I’m collecting all the pieces, so I can get a clear picture of what happened.”

“Yes, sir.”

He saw Clay glance at his watch.
Check away, Mr. Big City Attorney, but I have no intention of rushing this.

“When I questioned you last time,” he continued, “you told me you were home all night, the night Sara was murdered.”

“I was.”

“You never left?”

“No, sir.”

“When did you last see your sister?”

“Five thirty. Six.”

He nodded. “That’s right. And what did you say you talked about?”

She drew her eyebrows together. “I don’t remember exactly what I told you, but we didn’t talk much. She said dinner was ready and I told her I wasn’t hungry.”

“And that’s it.”

“Pretty much. Then I went to my room.”

“Because you were grounded.”

Tanner made a show of flipping through his notes, though every word she’d said to him was burned onto his brain. He’d scoured through the notes every night since the murder.

“Refresh my memory, why were you grounded?”

“Just because.”

He glanced at the notebook again, then back up at her. “Last time, you said your sister was punishing you because of your grades and not keeping your room clean, and because she didn’t like the people you were hanging with. Do you stick by that?”

When she agreed, he went on. “No phone, no TV. No computer.”

“Yes.”

“But she didn’t take away your iPod.”

McCall frowned. “No. I was listening to it that night.”

“Why do you think she let you keep it?”

“I don’t know.”

“That seems odd to me, Katherine. Does it seem odd to you?”

Clay spoke up. “It may seem odd to you, Chief, but that’s what she said happened. Can we move on?”

He was in control of this interview, not Robert Henry Clay. And he was going to prove it. “Those reasons you gave me for Sara grounding you, you weren’t being truthful, were you?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Not according to your cousin or his wife. Not according to Miz Bell across the street. What’s the real reason she grounded you?”

Kat flushed. She glanced at her lawyer, then back at him. “She found out I’d been lying to her.”

“About joining the girls’ softball team?”

“I guess.”

“Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“And when she found out, you had a huge fight about it. Right on the front porch. A witness said you were screaming at her.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Yes or no?”

“Yes,” she managed.

“Why did you lie about that?”

“About joining the softball team?”

“Yeah. Why? You have something better to do?”

She was searching for an answer. He saw it in her eyes. “Not really.”

“Not really? You just lied to you sister for the fun of it? Created this big ruse about softball for … nothing?”

“I didn’t want to tell her where I was.”

“And where were you?”

“With my friends. Hanging out.”

“Your friends?”

“She didn’t like them.”

“Names?”

She looked at Clay. “Do I have to say? I don’t want them to get mad at me.”

“You do,” he replied. “They won’t be angry, go ahead.”

“Dab Holt. Sheila Thompson. Joe Patron. That group.”

“And they’ll confirm what you’re telling me?”

“Yeah, but—” She hesitated. “I didn’t hang with them every minute. Only some of the time.”

Fact was, he’d already talked to the folks in that group. Kat McCall did hang out with them, but in the last three weeks they’d seen her only sporadically. They’d also confirmed that she hated her sister, had complained bitterly about Sara controlling her inheritance and had even wished her sister were dead.

“Okay, Miss Katherine. You’re lying to your sister so you can hang out with kids she didn’t approve of, only most of the time you weren’t with them. So what were you doing those afternoons?”

“Nothing.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Just hanging out.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. Alone. Why don’t you believe me!”

Tears flooded her eyes. He’d bet his badge they were manufactured. “Because you’re a liar, Miss McCall.”

“I’m not. Really! I just—”

“You just admitted lying to your sister. Your guardian. Not a little white lie. A big lie.”

“She was always watching everything I did! I just wanted to do what I wanted to!”

“Did you want that badly enough to kill her?”

“No! Please, stop saying that!”

“And you lied to me. Why’d you do that?”

She stared, a deer caught in headlights. “You know why.”

“You have to tell me.”

Moments ticked past. Clay gently nudged her. “Kat? It’s okay to tell him.”

“Because it would … make me look guilty.”

“Are you guilty? Did you kill your sister?”

She shook her head. “No, I did not.”

He changed tack. “You found your sister the next morning?”

“That’s in the record already,” Clay said. “She called 911.”

“So, you know how she died?” She nodded, head down. “It wasn’t a quiet crime, Kat. She would have screamed—”

“Tanner—”

“The sound of the bat hitting the body. Of bones breaking.”

“Tanner! Enough!”

“But you heard nothing?”

She lifted her head, looked blankly at him. Then she blinked. Twice. “I had my earbuds in. Listening to music.”

“On the iPod your sister conveniently didn’t take away from you. Do you remember who you were listening to?”

She thought a moment. “No.”

“Were you listening to the same artist the whole time?”

“I don’t think so. I like to skip around.”

“Tanner,” Clay interrupted, “is this really taking us anywhere?”

“And you never left your room. Never got hungry or thirsty—”

“Established,” Clay said.

She answered anyway. “I told you before, I had a Snickers and a bottle of water. Besides, I couldn’t leave the room.”

Tanner jumped on that. “Couldn’t?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“She locked me in.”

Tanner nearly choked on his own spit. “Your sister locked you in your room?”

“So I wouldn’t sneak out.”

“Sneak out? You didn’t mention that before. Had you been sneaking out?”

“I didn’t say that. She was afraid I might.”

Caught again.
Kat McCall was a liar. Just not a good one. “You’re saying you didn’t leave your room, but you tried to?”

She looked at Clay, as if confused. The attorney stepped in. “Less obtuse, if you don’t mind.”

Tanner hid his annoyance. McCall was confused because her lies were beginning to overlap. “My question is, if you didn’t try the door, how did you know it was locked?”

“I just knew.”

“Did she lock you in every night? That doesn’t sound like the Sara McCall we all knew.”

“No. Never before.”

Beside her, Clay involuntarily sputtered.

Tanner’s lips twitched. “So, why that night?”