I held my hands up signaling her to stop. “Tina, let me help. I can interview Chet.”
Randy nodded vigorously. “And I can sit on Chet’s trailer until you get there with the warrant.”
“Thanks, Randy. I’ll take you up on that.” Tina turned to me. “You
really
wouldn’t mind interviewing him?”
“Tina, at the risk of ruining my reputation as a manly man, I like teddy bears. But I like catching murderers even more. Did Chet agree to talk when you read him his rights?”
“He said we could ask him whatever we wanted. He had nothing to hide.”
“In fact, he swore on his mama’s grave,” said Randy.
“When a crook says something like that, it’s always wise to demand to see the grave and then dig it up to make sure his mama is actually there,” I said with a nasty chuckle. “So, let the digging begin.”
Twenty
I’ve heard that some hunters deliberately avoid taking showers. Their theory is that when wild animals detect the faint scent of soap and deodorant they recognize it as belonging to a predator—man—and flee the area. Obviously, Chet Lincoln had embraced that concept and taken it to a smelly extreme. The interview room stank so badly of unwashed clothing and flesh that my eyes almost began to water.
Chet was wearing the same attire I’d seen him in yesterday morning . . . and likely the same clothing he’d been wearing last week, and the week before that. He sat at the table looking bored while he cleaned his left ear with his little finger. Removing the digit, he examined the debris he’d pulled from his ear, flicked the stuff onto the table, and then looked up at me.
I set the recorder on the table and leaned over to plug the cord into the electrical socket. Turning the device on and sitting down, I said, “Good morning, Mr. Lincoln. My name is Brad Lyon and I work for Sheriff Barron.”
“You’re Lolly’s son-in-law. You used to be a cop in California.” Chet’s voice was a gravelly baritone.
“That’s true. It’s nice to see you again.”
“Sorry, mister, but we ain’t ever met.” He gave me an innocent smile and I suppressed a shudder. His teeth reminded me of the double-decker portion of the Nimitz Freeway after the big San Francisco earthquake of 1989; they were gray, broken, and entirely gone in places.
I said, “Technically, that’s true. We’ve never actually talked, but we did see each other yesterday at the Massanutten Crest Lodge right before you took off like a bat out of hell.”
He shrugged slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was at the lodge yesterday, but I never seen you.”
It was a fairly clever lie. No one else had witnessed our brief encounter, and even if the security cameras had been working, it was unlikely that we’d both have been in the camera’s field of vision. Unwashed obviously didn’t mean unintelligent.
I said, “So you don’t remember me yelling at you to stop, even though I was less than thirty feet away?”
“You might have yelled, but I didn’t hear anything.” He pointed at his right ear. “I got hearing loss in both ears from all the shooting I’ve done over the years.”
Or from all the rubbish impacted in your ears,
I thought. It was another falsehood disguised as a plausible excuse. Chet gave me a placid smile, and I think he was waiting for me to explode and call him a liar, which might be what many cops would do, but I actually prefer a suspect to fib early and often during an interview. Lying during the course of a police interrogation is like getting rid of the old stuff in your refrigerator’s vegetable drawer by running it down the garbage disposal all at once. It’s convenient for the moment, but sooner or later you’re going to gum up the works.
I asked, “Why were you at the lodge?”
“I was looking to apply for a job.”
I sat back in the chair and studied him. “No offense, but you and I both know that the hotel management wouldn’t let someone like you within a half mile of their snobby guests.”
“And I don’t want to be around none of them rich people. It’s a part-time gamekeeper job. They have problems with deer eating stuff from the gardens and groundhogs messing up the golf course.”
Again, the answer was reasonable and likely bogus. I suspected that Thalia Grady had told Chet about the vacant gamekeeper position so that he could use the information as an alibi to explain his
problematic
presence at the lodge. What’s more, I noticed that Chet appeared to be growing progressively more relaxed. He seemed to think that he was in control of the interview, which is exactly what I wanted.
I said, “Interesting. However, I noticed that you didn’t come out of the employee services office.”
“I know. I went in the other door by accident. They told me where to go.”
“But you didn’t go to employee services after that. You drove off.”
“I remembered there was someplace else I had to be. I figured to go back on Monday.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be in court on Monday.” I decided it was time to shift gears. “Tell me, what were you doing on Everett Rawlins’s land on Thursday night?”
Chet exhaled dismissively and interlaced his fingers across his chest. “I wasn’t anywhere near Rawlins’s place on Thursday night.”
“Game Warden Kent saw you.”
“Then he must have damn good eyes, because I was up in the Alleghenies near Reddish Knob, hunting,” said Chet, naming a spot about twenty miles west of the Rawlins farm.
“Ev Rawlins saw you, too . . . right before you murdered him.”
The attitude of casual indifference vanished in a flicker as Chet’s jaw dropped. “What? Rawlins is dead? Nobody said nothing about no murder!”
“With those bad ears of yours, you must not have heard when Sheriff Barron mentioned that we’re looking at you for the murder of Ev Rawlins. Oh well, maybe the prison doctor can get you a hearing aid.”
“I didn’t kill anybody!” said Chet, and for the first time since we’d begun to talk I had the sense that he was providing an unrehearsed and honest answer.
I replied, “Maybe, but before you say another word, let me give you a little advice: Start telling me the truth, because your life may depend on it.”
Chet swiped at his suddenly sweaty pate. “I didn’t kill Rawlins. Hell, I didn’t kill nobody.”
“Convince me. But understand this: Right now, the commonwealth’s attorney is gathering up the nails and lumber to crucify you. And the
only
thing you accomplished by lying to me was to give him more ammunition to show a jury that you were trying to cover up your crime. He’ll have no trouble convicting you of murder.”
Chet was growing pale. “Look, Ev and me may have had a little feud going, but that don’t make me a killer.”
“Actually, as far as the prosecutor is concerned, it does. He’ll say that there was bad blood between you two, that you were there the night Everett Rawlins was murdered, and then you ran. And you
were
there, weren’t you?”
“Only up on the hill, and I never saw Rawlins. I was just hunting, and I swear to God, I didn’t even know that Rawlins was murdered, but—”
“I’m glad you didn’t swear on your mother’s grave.”
“—I can tell you who did it.”
I leaned forward. “You have my undivided attention, but this better be good. More importantly, it better be the truth. Otherwise, I’m out of here and you can take your chances with the prosecutor.”
“It was that neighbor of his, Tice.”
“The husband or wife?”
Chet looked at me as if I were soft in the head. “The man, of course. Wade Tice.”
“It was as dark as the inside of a cow on that hill. How could you see anything to hunt, much less the supposed killer?”
“I got me a pair of night-vision goggles like the soldiers wear.”
“Of course, because that’s how Dan’l Boone used to hunt. Okay, let’s start the story at the beginning and you can tell me exactly what you saw.”
“I will, once you answer me a question.”
“Shoot. Ooh . . .” I held my hands up in mock surrender. “
That
probably isn’t the best thing to say to a poacher.”
He glowered. “Okay, so I’m white trash. How come
you’re
so interested in showing I didn’t kill Rawlins?”
“I’m interested in doing the job properly.” I paused to collect my thoughts, intrinsically understanding that Chet would reject a Horatio Alger-like explanation of why I was committed to seeing justice done. Finally, I said, “Look, both of us are hunters. You hunt game; I hunt killers. Now, let’s say you were up in Alaska and you went out looking to bag a ferocious Kodiak bear. If you couldn’t find him, would you feel right about shooting a skunk instead?”
“No.”
“I feel the same way. The skunk may smell, but he hasn’t really hurt anyone. I want the predator. Does that explain it?”
“I guess.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
Chet took a deep breath. “I’ve been hunting on Rawlins’s land for a long time.”
“Let’s be precise. You mean trespassing and
poaching
, right?”
He gave me an aggrieved look. “My people been hunting in those mountains for over two hundred years. It’s a family tradition and, hell, I wasn’t hurting anyone. Anyway, I was up on the hill above Rawlins’s house early Thursday night.”
“What time?”
“It was getting dark. It was maybe around five-thirty when I got there. I was out of my truck and walking through the woods toward . . . You been out there?”
I nodded.
“I was kind of prowling toward the road that leads to the sand quarry.” Like many of the folks who lived their entire lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he pronounced
quarry
to rhyme with
marry
.
“I know the place. You were going down there to hunt bear, weren’t you?”
Apparently there was something that changed slightly in my expression. Chet jutted his jaw out a little and said, “Hey, city boy, meat don’t just appear magiclike at the market. Someone’s gotta kill it. Any meat I eat, I done the killing myself. Can you claim the same?”
Although I strongly suspected that Chet Lincoln was killing bears to harvest their gall bladders and sell the meat to the lodge, I decided not to pursue that line of questioning for the moment. It might derail the interview, and I needed his statement about Wade Tice’s actions that night. However, before we finished chatting, we were going to revisit the topic.
I said, “Hey, my wife’s family are all hunters. I’m not making a judgment about hunting. Now, getting back to Thursday night. You were armed, right?”
“Right. I use a old Remington Model Seven Hundred. It’s bolt-action and three-oh-eight caliber.”
“That’s a big rifle bullet.”
“You need something with some muscle to drop a bear.”
“I can imagine. Have you ever hunted with a bow?”
“Nope. Tried it once, because it was more quiet.” Chet gave me a swift sheepish look that told me why he’d wanted silence. “But I couldn’t hit the damn side of a mountain with it.”
“So when the sheriff searches your house, she isn’t going to find a bow and hunting arrows?”
“Depending on how much crap she wants to move, she might find a bow. If she does, I’ll thank her, ’cause I got no idea where it went.”
“How about the arrows?”
“Hell, I lost them all in the forest. I told you: I ain’t no Robin Hood.”
“Okay, so you were creeping through the woods on the hill. What happened then?”
“I heard a quad-runner kind of puttin’ along that road, real slow.” Chet mimed gripping an ATV’s handlebars. “It didn’t have no lights on, but that actually helped me see it.”
“Because night-vision goggles work best in complete darkness. What time was this?”
“Maybe six o’clock. I figured it might have been the game warden. So I hid behind a tree and tried to get a better look.”
“And obviously you did.”
Chet nodded. “Yeah. That’s when I saw it was Wade Tice. He was riding down that dirt road all slowlike toward Rawlins’s house.”
“And even though it was dark and rainy and you were using those goggles, you’re absolutely certain it was Wade Tice?” I quietly demanded.
“I’m positive, mister. At one point, I was maybe ten yards from him. Course, he couldn’t see me.”
“Would you testify to that under oath in court?”
“If I had to.”
“You will.” I nodded toward the cassette recorder. “And you realize that if you change your story you might be charged with interfering with a homicide investigation?”
“If I’m swearing by the Holy Book, I tell the truth.” Chet sounded a little irate.
Unlike swearing on the grave of your mother,
I thought. I said, “And all I want is the truth. Was there any particular reason you continued to hide from Mr. Tice?”
“I hunt on his property, too. Wade never had no problem with it in the past, but I figured there had to be
some
reason he was sneaking around in the dark. I reckoned that things had changed and he was looking for me.”
“Did you notice anything else?”
“I’m betting that he has the bow and arrows y’all looking for. He done had a hunting bow slung over his shoulder.”
“What happened then?”
“He rode past me and then stopped the quad-runner. I was curious, so I kept watching. Wade got off the motorbike and started tiptoeing toward Rawlins’s house. ’Cept I didn’t know he was heading toward the house.”
“What do you mean?”
Chet locked eyes with me. “Mister, the first I ever heard of Rawlins being dead was when you told me a few minutes ago. So I didn’t know where Wade was headed that night. I thought maybe he was hunting.”
“What caused you to think that?”
“Wade was carrying his bow like he was ready to shoot.” Chet pretended to hold an invisible bow and nocked arrow.
“Did he ever shoot an arrow?”
“Yes, sir, he sure did. I watched him pull that bow back and let rip. Couldn’t see the arrow, ’twas too far away. But I know he shot one.”
Chet’s clarification that he hadn’t actually seen the arrow told me that he was still providing a reasonably truthful account of what he’d seen. I asked, “What direction did he shoot?”