Marcie's Murder (20 page)

“Ever get physical with her? Hit her?”

“Jesus Christ!” he exploded
, half-rising behind his desk
. “Is that where you guys are going with this? The husband did it? Fucking son of a bitch!”

“
Sit back down and a
nswer the question
!” Hank shouted, matching Askew’s heat. “Did you ever strike or physically injure your wife? Yes or no!”

“No! No! A thousand times, no! Never! That woman was my entire life!”

“And yet you had an affair.”

“Yes! Once! Christ, I’m only human! It was a fucking nightmare. Our daughter
was
dead
and we were
blaming each other. I needed someone real bad, it lasted
a month, couple months
.
I ended it
.
T
hat was it. Once. Eight years ago. End of story.”

“The autopsy showed a pattern of recent injuries consistent with abuse,” Hank said. “Broken wrist, separated shoulder, cracked jaw, loose teeth. Going back three to six months.”

Askew leaped out of his chair
again and strode around his desk to
confront Hall. “What the hell’s he talking about, Hall? What’s all this fucking bullshit?”

“It’s true
,” Hall
whispered
. “Somebody was beating her.”

Askew raised his fist
s. “Son of a bitch, I’ll
. . .
” He realized what he was about to say and snapped his mouth shut.

“Do you expect us to believe someone was battering your own wife and you didn’t have a clue?” Hank asked, an edge in his voice.

“I,” Askew faltered, “she, ther
e was an infected tooth. And she hurt her wrist, I forget how. We haven’t seen each other very much lately. She’s been avoiding me all the time.”

“There’s more,” Hank said, “so you might as well
get a grip and deal with it
.
”

“More? What the
hell
you talking about?”

“She was three months pregnant.”

Askew’s eyes grew wide and his mouth opened. He stopped breathing, as though Hank
had punched him in the stomach.

“Deal with it,” Hank snapped. “You’re a cop. Deal with it.”

“No.”

“You didn’t notice she was starting to show?”

“No. No! I haven’t seen her much lately. She’s never been around the house when I got home, and we haven’t been sleeping together for a while. I didn’t know! Christ, I didn’t know!”

“Did you have your vasectomy reversed?”

“What?”
Askew frowned. “
N
o
!
”

“Were you aware she was having an affair?”

“No!” He looked at Hank. “With who? Who was it?”

“That’s the
million
-dollar question, isn’t it
, Chief
?”

“Whoever it was
.
. .
” Askew whispered,
tears
forming
in his
eyes, “he killed my wife.”

1
5

Hank and Karen stood beneath the flagpoles outside the station listening to the flags snap above their heads in the afternoon breeze. There were three flags: the Stars and Stripes;
the flag of the Commonwealth of Virginia, featuring the state seal on a blue background; and the flag of the municipality of
Harmony, a bright yellow rectangle with the corporate seal of the town in the center. Snap hooks
pinged
against the flagpoles as the halyards vibrated. Traffic on Bluefield Street rumbled in the background.

“The air smells fresher around here,” Karen said.

Askew’s Ford Explorer roared around the building from the back parking lot and barreled out onto the street without slowing. He ran the stop sign at the corner and disappeared down the next block.

“He’s in an awful damn hurry.”

“He’s under a lot of pressure,” Hank said.

“He’s full of shit.”

“I’m not so sure.”

T
hey had two suspects in front of them. Brother Charles
had
initially
looked
solid
,
given the fact that he
’
d been there at the time and wouldn’t talk about it, but the gas receipt had introduced a
n
element of doubt that could prove fatal to
the
case against
him
. Not to mention that they could only guess at a motive. Billy Askew, on the other hand, had motive coming out his ears but no evidence tying him to the
scene at the time of the murder
.

Hank listened to the flags for a moment and wondered if Karen were right.
One of the primary skills a cop develop
s
is the ability to distinguish between honesty and dishonesty. Officers receive extensive training in the detection of verbal and non-verbal indicators of deception.
Hank had worked with cops who seemed to possess an uncanny ability
to detect
deception
at a subliminal level
,
as though
they
had truth radar built into
their
brain.
When a person
said something
during an interview
,
it
either
pinged
on the truth radar or it didn’t. How the hell did
they
do it? It was almost supernatural.

Everyone lies
. On the other hand, everyone also at some point says something that’s true. The art of the investigator
is
the
ability to
separat
e
the two and
respond accordingly
.

One of Hank’s favorite
detective
s, an old-school homicide cop named Cedric Jones, had been particularly good at
sensing
bullshit
,
and Hank had studied him closely to try to understand his secret.
An important element of
Jones
’s technique
was
the ability to
minimize his own contribution to the noise level around him.
When he
listen
ed
to a suspect
he
kept quiet and
remained as
still
as possible
. No expression on his face, no unnecessary movements. Very still. Very attentive. Asking only short, simple questions
with
as few words as possible.
He created
so
much free space around
them
that
the suspect
inevitably
felt compelled to
fill it
with
his
own words and body language
. The bullshitters usually brought their own rope
;
Jones merely sat back and gave them the room to hang themselves with it.

Karen used a different technique, preferring to crowd suspects, disrupt their equilibrium, invade their personal space
,
and suck all the oxygen out of it. Her aggressive, combative approach often caused suspects to respond in kind, and an angry suspect is a careless suspect. Hank had watched her provoke admissions
of guilt more than once during the course of a heated exchange
.

Different techniques, but backed by the same ability to sense deception and doggedly root it out.

“I don’t know, Lou,” Karen said
.
“He’s carrying some kind of load.”

“Grief.”

“Guilt,” Karen insisted, “about something.”

Hank
removed a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket
. It was
written
authorization
, signed by Askew,
to provide Detective Hall with complete
access to
all of
Marcie Askew’s medical
information
. Askew had
signed it
on the understanding that Hall would
use
it
to obtain access to
Marcie’s
medical
files kept
by
Dr. Diane Gervais,
her
physician in Tazewell,
as well as
her medical insurance company
and any other source that might turn up in the course of their investigation
. They
also
needed to know what Marcie may have told her doctor
that she hadn’t written down
.

Hank handed
the authorization to
Karen. “Go with Hall to talk to the doctor.”

“All right, Lou.” She took the
paper
and folded it in half. “What are you going to do?”

Hank
smiled
. “I’m going shopping.”

1
6

The
house into which Bill
y
Askew had moved Pricie
on the outskirts of Bluefield
was in fact a duplex, a two-story box originally built a hundred years ago as a rooming house for miners. At some point it had been divided into side-by-side dwellings with two front entrances and
short
driveways
on
each
side
.

After signing the disclosure of information document for Hall, Askew had been fuming at his desk when Pricie called to tell him that Jimmy was there to take her home. One of Jimmy’s buddies had apparently seen her and told Jimmy where she was.

“What should I do, Billy?” Pricie asked. “I should go back home where I belong.”

“You stay put until I get there,” Askew
told her
.

He
parked
his
Ford Explorer
behind the pickup truck in
Pricie’s
driveway and got out.
A middle-aged man
sat
sideways
in the open passenger door of the pickup truck, his feet on the ground. He was drinking from a bottle hidden in a paper bag. Askew didn’t know him. He stared at Askew and didn’t react when Askew
pointed at
him
in
warning.

The aluminum screen door opened and another man looked out at Askew as he walked across the lawn to the front porch. Askew didn’t know him, either. The screen door closed quickly and opened again as Askew started up the porch stairs. This time it was Jimmy Neal.

“Fuck off, Billy,” Jimmy said,
glar
ing
at Askew. “You’ve caused enough trouble for my wife as it is. Now fuck off.”

Askew kept moving up onto the porch and with both hands slammed the screen door so that Jimmy’s head
banged
between the metal edge of the door and the door frame like a nut in a nutcracker. Then he jerked the door open as Jimmy went down, braced it open with his hip
,
and reached down to pull Jimmy out onto the porch.

With both hands he hauled Jimmy down
the steps and pitched him onto the lawn, where he stepped into him with a brisk kick
in
the ribs.

“Hey, fuck, leave him alone, man!” shouted the man
behind him on
the porch. “Are you fucking nuts?”

Askew went back up onto the porch, grabbed the guy and threw him bodily off the porch onto the lawn next to Jimmy. He went back down the stairs and kicked the guy in the mouth hard enough to split his lip open.

By this time Jimmy had made it to his knees. Askew grabbed him by the belt and the back of his shirt at the neck and half-carried, half-dragged him across the lawn to the pickup truck.
H
e was vaguely aware
that
Pricie
was
on the porch,
screaming at him to stop. Jimmy was not a large man, about five
-
nine and one hundred fifty pounds, and Askew’s anger fill
ed
his arms and legs with strength, but for the sake of his back he paused, hauled Jimmy upright and draped him over the back of the pickup, then stooped and scooped his legs and swung him
over the fender
into the box of the truck. Jimmy hit his head against a chain saw. Askew grabbed the chain saw and threw it into the bushes. Then he turned to go back for the other guy.