“All right, well, we’ll need you to come down to the station. Jones, you take Mrs. Carter in.” It wasn’t a question, I could tell. And he was already back to calling me by my formal name. “Kingston, you come inside with me and walk me through the crime scene. Mrs. Carter, I will join you as soon as I’m done here. Shouldn’t be too long.”
Jones took a step forward. She had beautiful ebony skin and eyes to match. But those dark eyes were hard and focused on me with what I clearly read as suspicion.
“Can I change first?” I pulled at my t-shirt, which had stuck to my chest and stomach, thanks to my husband’s congealed blood.
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. Your clothes are evidence. We’ll be taking pictures when we get downtown. You can bring a spare set with you, though.”
“Great, I’ll just go--”
Dorne shot his chubby hand out in front of me, nearly knocking me over. “Sorry. You can’t go back in there. Just tell Jones where to find your clothes and she can grab something for you. Crime scene.”
Although I was frustrated at being barred from entering my own house, it made sense, so I just shrugged and said okay. Besides, I was so exhausted from crying, I had no fight left in me at all.
I sat back down on the hard concrete porch and waited while Jones rummaged through my wardrobe for the fresh t-shirt, yoga pants, and flip-flops I had told her about. She reappeared a few minutes later with them slung over her right arm. “Let’s go,” she said, pointing toward her squad car.
“Do I have to sit in the back?” I don’t know why I asked this, except that I was already feeling as if everyone thought I was guilty, and sitting in the back of a squad car would only make me feel more like a suspect, not a grieving wife.
“No, you can sit up front,” she answered, even though I could tell she didn’t want me to.
I had never been in a police cruiser before, so to say I was intimidated would be the understatement of the century. We rode in silence. No radio. No small talk. Besides, what was there to talk about—other than the fact that my husband was dead and I was clearly the only suspect?
To this day I wonder why I didn’t take the opportunity to proclaim my innocence to Detective Dorne and the other officers. I don’t know. Maybe I was too emotionally and physically drained. I guess back then I still believed in the system, and all that mattered was that I knew in my heart I hadn’t killed my own husband. At least, I was pretty sure I hadn’t.
Jones parked in the back lot behind the Nicholasville Police Station/Fire Department—a new, completely modern building that stuck out like a sore thumb in this drab little town. It was literally divided in two; one half was painted blue and said ‘
Police’
and the other half was painted red and said ‘
Fire’.
We walked in the back entrance. The lighting inside the precinct was so harsh I had to shield my eyes with my forearm until they adjusted to the brightness. Jones led me down the hallway and into the first door on the right, marked “Interview Room.”
“You can take a seat in there,” she said, pointing inside the small room that contained only a tiny wooden table and a few blue padded chairs. “Detective Dorne will be here soon to talk to you. Is there anything I can get you?”
“I’d love a bottle of water,” I said. I was parched from all the screaming and crying. Plus, I kind of wanted to see if she would actually bring me something.
The look on her face confirmed my suspicion, but she nodded and said, “I’ll be right back.”
I sat down in the seat closest to the door, folded my arms on the table, and lay my head down, trying to force the image of my husband’s dead body out of my mind so I didn’t break down again. I still had a bitch of a headache and realized I should have asked Jones for some Excedrin. But they probably only had aspirin and that never did diddly squat for my headaches. With nothing else to do, I strained my brain to think of anyone at all who would possibly want to kill my husband. With no real enemies, it seemed illogical for anyone to want him dead. Sure, he liked to gamble on the ponies during racing season, but it wasn’t like he was borrowing money from loan sharks or anything crazy like that. And we had no close neighbors to piss off. There was no crazy ex-girlfriend, either. The only ex he had was happily married with two kids and a proverbial white picket fence. His mother loved him dearly and they were closer now than ever since his father’s death.
His mother. Oh, my God. How was I going to tell his mother?
Who
was going to tell his mother? Would they let me call her?
Then I remembered my first instinct to call my own mother. I pulled my cell phone out of my waistband and clicked on her contact but then I realized it was nearly six-thirty in the morning and I just didn’t want to wake her up with this kind of news. At least not until I had more information to tell her.
I remember that day the way you remember a scene from a movie you just can’t get out of your head, no matter how much you hated it.
The phone rang around seven-thirty a.m. I was headed out the door for school, but Mom was in the shower, so I picked up on the third ring. An automated voice came on the line and announced we had a collect call from the Fayette County Detention Center. I thought this had to be a mistake. We knew no one in jail, but I picked up the phone anyway. After I accepted the charges, I heard the unmistakable voice of my father on the other end.
“Libs? Is that you?”
“Daddy? Why are you calling from jail?”
“It’s a long story, baby, but I’m okay. Is your mother there?”
“She’s in the shower. What’s going on, Daddy?”
He exhaled and there was a long pause. “Baby, I don’t have long. I’ve been arrested.”
My father was an over-the-road trucker, but he was also a former preacher, so I couldn’t imagine him doing anything worse than speeding. But you don’t go to jail for speeding.
“What for?” I asked.
“Libs, I don’t have time to explain it all right now. Just please tell your mother where I am and that I’ll call her later today, if they’ll let me. I’m sorry, I have to go.”
And with that, my father hung up the phone and my life spun out of control. That was, until I met Ryan about eight years ago. Ryan was the one good thing in my life after everything my father had put me through. He was my rock, my true north, my everything. And he never once judged me for the sins of my father.
My thoughts turned from my father to Ryan. I still hadn’t had a chance to fully process the fact that my husband was dead. I thought of all the fun things we had done together–hiking Indian Falls, going to Scott Miller concerts, and summer trips to the Outer Banks. I thought of the way he used to kiss me on the forehead, the smell of Zest soap on his skin, and the way his goatee tickled me when we kissed. It wasn’t perfect, mind you. What relationship ever is? We had our squabbles over little things like the remote control, how long he stayed in the shower, how long I spent reading, and how often we did or didn’t have sex. But no matter how many little arguments we had, we loved each other. I had no reason to want my husband dead and there’s no way I could have put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. So then why was he dead? And why couldn’t I remember anything at all?
Jones returned what seemed like an eternity later with a room temperature bottle of water. I had forgotten I had even asked for it by then. I thanked her and asked her for something for my headache. She rolled her eyes. “I’ll be right back.”
I heard Detective Dorne’s deep monotone voice before I saw him. He was talking to Kingston as they walked around the corner to the entrance of the interview room.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said as he pulled out a chair across the table from me. It made a horrible screeching sound as it scraped the ground. “Has Jones gotten you everything you need? I see she brought you some water, but if you’d prefer a Coke, I can get you one from the vending machine.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine. She’s bringing me some aspirin for my headache.”
“Let’s talk about that,” he said with his hands folded in front of him. “You said you woke up with a terrible headache. Do you get headaches often?”
What kind of question was that? “No. I mean, sometimes, yeah…but not migraines or anything like that. I’ve never had a headache like this before.”
“Hmm. All right, now, I know you’ve been through this a bunch of times, but I have to ask you again…you said you just woke up and found your husband lying there dead. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“And you can’t remember
anything
at all that might help us figure out what happened to him?”
“No.”
“Let me ask you this…what is the last thing you remember?”
I hadn’t thought of that, so it took me a moment to ponder. “I guess the last thing I remember is going to bed last night. We went through our normal routine. I sat in the bed with a couple of Ryan’s beers, since I was out of wine, and read a book while Ryan sat in the bathroom for a couple of hours and then he came to bed. We watched
Shark Week
on TV and then I dozed off.”
“You said he was in the bathroom for two hours? Why is that?”
I couldn’t help but smile, despite the pain I was feeling in my chest. It was something that both frustrated the hell out of me and endeared me to Ryan. He couldn’t read anywhere but on the toilet for some weird reason. He’d turn the shower on to create a sauna-like atmosphere in the bathroom and then he’d literally just sit there and read. He never read traditional books, always e-books on his phone. Usually sci-fi or fantasy bullshit, but he loved it. It sounded stupid when I said it out loud to Detective Dorne, but to us, it was normal.
“I see.” He reached into the pocket of his tan suit, pulled out a tape recorder, and set it on the table between us. “Mind if I record our conversation?”
Well, if I didn’t think I was a suspect before, this certainly confirmed it. But I had nothing to hide, so despite my legal training, I agreed to be recorded. Hindsight and all that.
“Okay now, tell me about your relationship with your husband. What kind of marriage did you guys have?”
“It was a great marriage. Not perfect, but great. We loved each other very much.”
“What do you mean by
not perfect
?”
I could see I had sparked his interest, so I was careful what I said next.
“You know, typical marriage stuff. We would argue about what to watch on TV at night or what to have for dinner, but nothing major. We were very happy together.”
“And how long have you two been together?”
“Let’s see…we met in 2007, married in 2008…so about seven or eight years.”
“And how did you meet?”
“We met at a concert at High on Rose in Lexington. Very cliché, I know. But we hit it off pretty quickly. We had so much in common, like our love of history, music, and movies.”
“So would you say the two of you were in love?” he asked with arms folded across his massive chest.
A distant memory washed over me in that moment—our wedding day.
Low on funds, we opted for a low-key ceremony in Mom’s backyard garden. There were only a couple dozen guests, comprised mainly of both our immediate families and a few friends. Ryan waited, smiling, at the other end of the porch, as I walked out the back door and toward him. With no father to walk me down the aisle, I walked myself to Scott Miller’s cover of the Statler Brothers’ folk song, “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You.” Little did I know just how accurate that song would turn out to be. The ceremony itself, officiated by Mom’s preacher, was brief. It began to rain immediately after the ceremony and I started to cry. Ryan pulled me close, held me tight, and told me it was good luck. When the reception music began, we danced in the rain. It was a memory that I would always cherish.
“Yes, very much so. He was my best friend and I was his. Ryan made me laugh at least once every day. He was quite a character. And he supported my career. Yes, we were definitely in love.”
Detective Dorne leaned back in his chair. I was afraid the legs would break under the strain. This would normally be something that would make me laugh hysterically, but in that instant, I thought maybe I’d never smile again.
“And you can’t think of anyone who would want to harm you or your husband?”
“No. I’ve told you all several times. Ryan had no enemies. No one was pissed at him. No one threatened him. There’s nobody. I don’t have any idea who killed my husband.”
He leaned forward and placed his meaty hands on the table in front of him. “Mrs. Carter, did you kill your husband?”
Well, he certainly didn’t mince words. Straight to the point. “No, I did not kill my husband.”
“What did you do with the gun?”
“I told you, I did not kill my husband!” I was trying to convince myself as much as I was the detective. The old quote from Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
, “The lady doth protest too much, me thinks,” came to mind so I sat back in my chair and willed myself to calm down.
Just then Jones reappeared with her palm extended. In it were two tiny white pills which I assumed—and hoped—were aspirin. Tucked under her other arm was a manila folder with a blue label, but I couldn’t read the writing on it from my vantage point. She handed it to Dorne and then dropped the two pills into my hand. I threw them back in my throat and took a big swallow of lukewarm water. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the file folder.
“Thank you, Jones,” he said by way of dismissing her. He laid the folder on the table between us and tapped it with his chunky finger. “This is a file with all of your information, Mrs. Carter. Credit check. Background check. Cell phone records. Anything in here you want to clarify for me before I read them?”
Well, that was quick. My heart began pulsating in my throat. I took another drink of water and thought. No, nothing I should be worried about. My credit was average. We weren’t in debt, but we certainly couldn’t take on anything else. My cell records wouldn’t show anything because the only people I ever talked to were my husband, my mother, and friends—mostly my best friend Dani. My background check would show my shoplifting charge from when I was eighteen, just two months shy of being able to have it expunged, but that was it. Unless you count the handful of traffic tickets I had accumulated over the years, thanks to my lead right foot.
“No, nothing,” I said as confidently as I could.
“Mmm-hmm. Well, let’s just take a peek, shall we?” He picked up the file folder and flipped it open so I couldn’t see what he was seeing. “Credit score is 650. Have you guys been having money problems?”
“Nothing substantial,” I said, feeling a bit disturbed that someone could see the most personal details of my life. “We’re a little slow on some of our payments, as you can see, but we don’t owe anybody any money other than our car payments and mortgage. Ryan’s working…sorry…
was
working a lot of overtime lately to try to help us catch up, but it’s not that bad.”
As he continued flipping through the pages, I looked at his face. His skin was red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the sun or if he was just one of those people who was always red because of high blood pressure. Considering his size, I assumed it was the latter.
“Says here you were convicted of shoplifting back in 1998. What happened there?”