What the hell, was I a woman or a mouse? Plus, I looked a sight better than I had last night. And maybe I’d run into Detective Anne Morrow and could weasel some info out of her about Peyton Tillman’s death.
The desk sergeant let me know that Bill Butler was indeed on duty, then phoned upstairs to see if I was on the A list. Despite my atrocious behavior, I was. I rode up in the elevator contemplating my own stubborn immaturity.
“Make it quick, Casey,” Bill said, pulling a chair up to his desk. “There was another rape out near Peace College last night. Do you know what it’s like when a serial rapist
starts hanging around a girls’ college? I’ve had calls from every trustee and damn near every parent between New Bern and Asheville. Never mind that the guy is raping homeless women down by the railroad tracks. Everyone’s afraid the purity of their daughters might be defiled.”
“Want me to act as decoy and kick his ass?”
He eyed me. “No thanks. I’d prefer to bring him in alive.”
“I came to apologize,” I said. “I’ve been a complete asshole and I don’t know why.” Actually, I did know why. But calling Bill a complete asshole instead was unlikely to get me what I wanted.
“You want something,” he said. “Is that why you’re being nice to me?”
I sighed. “Is there no trust between us?” I asked. “Whatever happened to simple human trust?”
“Can it, Casey. We’re both divorced. That’s what happened to it. When you come sniffing around my desk, apologizing, I start to get nervous. Forgive me if I’m blunt and just say that I prefer you as a ball buster. The southern belle act isn’t going to cut a lot of ice with me.”
“That’s a relief,” I said. “My eyelashes were getting tired from all that batting.” I leaned forward and fixed him with my best smile. “But I really am sorry about being such a jerk. Are you?”
“Am I sorry for being such a jerk?” he asked. “Is that supposed to be a friendly remark or something?”
“Something,” I said.
He tried to hide his smile but failed. “Okay,” he conceded. “We’re both jerks. Now what is it that you want?”
“I want to talk to someone on the Durham police force who knew Roy Taylor,” I said.
“Ah, Casey.” He was disgusted. “I told you to leave that case alone. You already stepped in it deep last night. I’m not saying it’s connected. I’m just saying it’s bad karma.”
“I can’t leave it alone, Bill,” I explained. “I know I’m not going to be allowed near the Tillman investigation. But what if it is connected? What if I helped it along in some way? I can’t just walk away. And what if Gail Honeycutt didn’t do it? You can’t undo putting someone to death.”
“I got a bad feeling about this,” he warned me. “A very bad feeling indeed.”
“So you won’t help me?” I asked with a sigh.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “I do know some people over there. And one of them worked with Taylor pretty closely. But that doesn’t mean he’ll talk to you. A guy’s not going to be too friendly to someone who’s helping the killer of his dead pal, know what I mean?”
“Just ask,” I said. “Pretty please?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He fiddled with some papers on his desk. “Going to Tillman’s funeral?” he finally said.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” I admitted. But I had. I had thought about walking into the funeral home and seeing all those old people from Peyton’s neighborhood there to mourn his death. I wasn’t anxious to see his old secretary again. I could almost feel Mrs. Rollins’s eyes on me, asking me why I hadn’t protected him better.
“It’s Friday, if you’re interested. Two o’clock. Church of the Good Shepherd.”
“Is this a date?” I asked. “How romantic.”
“Actually, I’m already going with someone, and I don’t think it’s a good idea if you meet. But, yeah, I’ll be there.”
Ouch. Who the hell was he going with? The lovely Detective Morrow? Some sweet babe from the administrative pool? Little green threads of jealousy tightened around my heart.
“I mean, anyone can come,” he offered helpfully. “It’ll be in the papers.”
“I might,” I said, rising to go while my dignity was still intact.
“You look a lot better than you did last night,” he offered, checking out my black T-shirt and black stretch jeans. I’d worn boots because, after last night’s events, I wanted to feel as if I could drive home a point or two against an assailant if need be.
“I’ll bet I do,” I said. “Thanks for putting in a good word with Detective Morrow. She’s all right.”
“That she is,” Bill agreed. “She runs rings around the guys. Really knows her stuff. Not bad looking, either. Doesn’t have your unique sense of style, of course.” He grinned, and I could feel that smile way south of my border.
“She’s not bad at all,” I said. When he was being sweet like that, it was tough to resist mooning over him. Bill Butler had my number all right. I took one last look before I left. He had a great face, with wrinkles you could trace with your fingers. It was a face that had been lived in, and it made the young faces I was accustomed to waking up with in the morning seem bland and uninteresting. “Go home and get some sleep,” I ordered him. “You worked straight through the night, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I’ve got to protect the flower of southern womanhood.”
“Careful,” I told him. “Your northern cynicism is showing.”
He flashed me a smile, despite himself.
“See you,” I added, lingering in the doorway. Our eyes met and then I left, happy yet vaguely irritated at the way he could make me go soft with a single grin.
I returned to the office to pick up Bobby D.‘s little black book, then spent a solid hour dialing all the ladies in his life to let them know that he had suffered a mild heart attack. Keeping his code straight was a pain in the butt, but I think I managed to leave most of the marriages at stake still intact.
By the time I finished, it was too late to swing by the women’s prison to visit Gail’s friend. Instead, I picked up the cardboard box full of trial transcripts sent over by Nanny Honeycutt and told myself I could read them all in a night. Evelyn Wood had nothing on me.
The Durham Bulls were playing their season opener against the Wilmington Blue Rocks, and I was sorely tempted to take the night off and go. Last year, I’d spent two weeks with a severe crush on the hunky home umpire, until I realized that he was wearing his protective padding beneath his blue shirt and that was why he was built so impressively. Dreams dashed, I had turned my attention to the game and actually gotten into it. The thought of spending a chilly March night beneath the stadium lights munching on hot dogs, drinking beer and examining the tushes of twenty-something baseball players appealed to me. Unfortunately, duty called. It would have to be a night curled up in my salvaged armchair, paging through the transcript of Gail’s original trial.
Not that it wasn’t fascinating stuff. However, I was barely a third of the way through by the time I fell asleep.
The next morning, I stopped by the office, which had not been magically cleaned in my absence, and spent a few minutes idly combing through the replaced contents of Bobby’s desk for items of interest. It wasn’t often I got the chance. Other than a zillion fast-food coupons, I didn’t find much. The absence of condoms alarmed me, but then he probably bought them in bulk and used the cartons as side tables for his king-size water bed.
When I finished my snooping, I had to face the fact that it was time to return to the Women’s Correctional Center. I wouldn’t be able to talk to Gail again without advance notice, but her friend Susan Porter was a different story.
I locked up and was almost to my car when Ruby, the meter maid, stopped me to talk. Ruby was barely five feet tall, and her skin was so black it glowed with a blue sheen during the hot summer days. I’d seen her subdue men three times her weight and talk down even bigger brothers. Ruby didn’t screw around.
“What’s the story on Bobby?” she asked in her soft voice. “His car’s been parked at the corner for a couple of days now and the office is dark.”
I told her what had happened. Ruby let me slide on parking quarters most of the time. That made her a woman worthy of my trust.
She whistled. “No kidding? He got attacked? That’s rough. I’ve been attacked a few times myself, as you can imagine. But I was always able to see my attacker. You tell Bobby not to worry about his car. I’ll keep an eye on it for him.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Know anyone interested in getting the office back in order for us? I can’t face it. I’m on a big case.”
She thought for a moment. “My sister Keisha might be interested. She has a pretty good office job over at RD Construction, but she needs some extra money right now on account of her kid needs some kind of special glasses.”
“If she’ll get that damn office back in order, the glasses are on me,” I promised. “I don’t care what it costs.” Nanny Honeycutt would never know what a good cause she was contributing toward.
“Done,” Ruby said and we shook hands on the deal. “I’ll call her and let you know when she’s available.”
On the drive to the prison, I was so busy watching the sun trying to peek out from behind a mass of gray March clouds, that I almost ran into the side of Kentucky Fried Chicken at a tricky intersection off New Bern. My brain was starting to mildew from all the cool, damp air. Spring sunshine was a badly needed remedy.
I’d never seen the guard at the front gate of the prison before. He was a stocky Hispanic man with a jolly face. When my name checked out on the approved visitors’ list for one Susan Porter, he waved me through. “Dolly’s usually in back of the cafeteria this time of day,” he told me. “She’s a smoker.”
Who wasn’t a smoker when they were stuck in prison? I’d gone through enough packs during my eighteen months to give an entire third-world country lung cancer. It was one reason why I never even touched a cigarette today.
I followed the tidy brick walkway to the general population area. My heart was pounding far less than it had been on my previous visit. Maybe time really does heal all wounds. Or maybe bigger ones just come along to replace them.
Many of the prisoners were eating lunch. I passed by the cafeteria and could hear the clink of silverware and the hum of voices. Women’s prisons are noisy, much noisier than men’s. All the inmates had to do all day was talk—and talk they did: at each other, with each other, to the guards and to themselves. And people woh and peopnder why I don’t like to sit around and make conversation these days. You try spending eighteen months listening to nonstop chatter and see if that doesn’t transform you into a voluntary deaf-mute.
I found Dolly sitting on a concrete bench beside a huge black woman with a large pink scar running down her cheek from her ear to her chin. Both women wore white aprons over their prison garb and had jammed their hair into fine mesh nets. They were smoking cigarettes and talking to each other in low tones. As I drew near, the black woman rose to go, slapping a high five with Dolly as she headed for the kitchen door.
“Dolly?” I confirmed. She seemed even skinnier and more haggard than before. I sat on the bench beside her. It was still warm from the large woman’s body.
“That’s me. You’re the lady detective.” She blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke and examined me from head to toe, taking her time. Her voice was even reedier than on the telephone, its Appalachian twang unmistakable. She had at least three teeth missing in the front of her mouth and tried to cover the remaining teeth with her lips when she talked, making it even harder to understand what she was saying.
“The guard called you Dolly,” I told her. “He even knew where to find you.”
“That’s Herman for you,” she said with a thin laugh that turned into a cough. She was crouched over nervously, like a cowering dog. I had no idea how to get her to relax.
“Sounds like the guards are pretty friendly here,” I said. “That’s good.”
“How do you know Gail?” I asked when she remained silent.
“The kitchen,” she explained. “For a while, they let Gail work in the kitchen, until her first appeal was turned down. Then they moved her into isolation.”
“To protect her?” I asked.
The girl looked up at me. “What from? You don’t have to worry about being hurt in here, lessen you can’t mind your own business or you done something terrible and brag about it. Like boiling your babies in hot water.”
“Ouch,” I said. “Someone did that?”
Dolly looked surprised. “‘Course not. I was just using an example.”
“Isn’t shooting your husband considered pretty terrible?” I asked.
She shrugged and took a drag on her cigarette. et cigare”Depends on the husband.” She laughed, and I waited while it turned to a cough and she recovered. “Not me, though, I never killed nobody.”
“Why are you in here?” I asked.
“Jury says I shot a man working at a 7-Eleven up at Black Mountain,” she said. “He lost his spleen. But I didn’t shoot him.”
“Mistaken identity?” I asked dryly.
“No mistake so far as I was concerned.” She looked up at the gray clouds. “It was my brother done it. We look a lot alike. I was driving the car. I didn’t know he was going to rob the place. He told me he was going in for an RC Cola.”
“The jury believed him over you?” I asked, mystified.