A Reunion to Die For (A Joshua Thornton Mystery) (9 page)

Chapter Seven

“What could your client possibly have to offer us in exchange for a lesser sentence?” Joshua asked Tori Brody.

“Matt Landers’s killer.”

He sat up straight in his seat at the table in the conference room on the fourth floor of the courthouse. The courtrooms were two floors below them. A brick wall separated them from the prisoners housed on the same floor.

It was Monday morning and Billy Unger was scheduled to be arraigned for attempted armed robbery at ten o’clock.

On Sunday, Tori had called Joshua at home and asked that they meet with her client at nine o’clock to work out a deal. Billy offering up Matthew Landers’s killer was not what he expected.

Matthew was the college boy killed with the same gun used to kill Grace. The police withheld the information that the gun was used in both killings. Now it seemed that secret would pay off since Billy was offering himself as a witness to Landers’s murder to protect his own butt. By doing so, he was connecting the dots between the two murders: himself.

“My client witnessed the murder,” Tori told Joshua. “He’ll testify against Lander’s killer in exchange for immunity on the burglary.”

“You are aware that he’ll be admitting that he had a part in the murder?”

“He was a juvenile at the time.”

“So now, according to precedent, he can be tried as an adult for murder, which took place during a felony. How could he have witnessed the murder if he wasn’t taking part in the burglary?”

“But you can’t get Landers’s killer without my client. If you could, you would have before now.”

“Do you really think I’m going to let him walk away from all of this?”

“Listen to what he has to say.” Tori turned in her seat to her client.

“Walt killed him,” Billy announced.

Joshua showed no reaction. He waited for him to go on.

When her client didn’t offer any more information, Tori prodded him, “You have to give him all the details.”

Billy sighed, rolled his eyes, and sat forward to tell his story. “Walt and my brother, Bobby, knew each other since they were little kids. Well, Walt comes up with this bright idea that they break in these big old houses in Weirton, and they told me to be their lookout. That was all I did.” He paused for a sign from Joshua that he believed that he had had nothing else to do with the break-ins.

He offered Billy none. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“So one night, they were cleaning out this house up on top of the hill, and I see this truck pull into the driveway. So’s I get on my radio and I tell them to get out. That was what they were supposed to do.”

“But they didn’t.”

“It turns out there was like four computers in this place and all this really bitchin’ stuff, and Walt didn’t want to walk away from it. We didn’t even know that he had a piece on him. He waits for the kid to come in and he wastes him.”

“How did he waste him?”

Billy hesitated.

“Weren’t you there?” Joshua asked. “Then I can’t offer you any deal. For all we know you’re lying, and it was you who killed him.”

That was enough to make him respond. “I went inside when they hadn’t come out.” He laughed. “The kid was scared shitless.”

Joshua contained his distaste over Billy’s amusement at the boy’s terror in the face of death.

“Walt was knocking him around. He told him he wanted his watch. The kid gave it to him and said that he wouldn’t say anything if we took what we wanted and left. Then, Walt tried to grab this gold cross that the kid was wearing around his neck, and he tried to stop him. Walt punched him in the face and blood squirted out everywhere. Then, he made the kid get down on his knees. He was crying like a baby. He was saying this prayer, and Walt put the gun to the back of his head and blew him away.”

The room was silent while the defense attorney and her client waited for his verdict.

After pushing away the image of one of his own children experiencing Matt Landers’s fear when he felt the barrel of the gun pressed against the back of his head before it was discharged, Joshua broke the silence. “What happened to the gun?”

“Walt got rid of it.”

“Did he give it to Bobby?”

Billy shook his head. “Bobby got himself blown away about a month after that.”

“During another burglary,” Joshua noted. “You have to tell me what happened to the gun, Billy.”

Tori prodded him. “You have to tell him.”

“I don’t know,” the young man insisted.

Joshua shook his head at his denial. “One of the factors that we take into consideration when making a deal is the honesty of the defendant.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know.”

“No, you’re not. Where is it now?”

Billy shrugged. “Ask Walt.”

Joshua stood up. “Okay.”

“Have we got a deal?” Tori asked.

“No.”

“He gave you Manners.”

“He told me a story with no proof to back it up. I’ll go ask Walt, and I can tell you right now what he’ll say. Your client did it. Then he’ll want a deal in exchange for his testimony. It will be your client’s word against his. Now, you tell me, Counselor, who should I give the deal to?”

“What more do you want?”

“The murder weapon.”

She turned to Billy, who glared at her. “Give us a minute.”

Joshua welcomed the excuse to leave the room. During the statement, Deputy Hockenberry, who was watching through the two-way glass, went to retrieve the case file for the Landers murder so they could compare his statement to the facts.

Hockenberry was studying it when the prosecutor stepped through the door. “That kid was there.” He went on to report, “It was never released to the public that four computers were stolen from the Landers’. A watch and gold cross his dead mother had given him were taken. The victim was beaten up and had a broken nose. That was never released to the public, either.”

“So he was there. But did Unger witness or commit the murder?” While referring to the autopsy report in the file, Joshua studied Billy, who was in discussion with his lawyer on the other side of the two-way mirror. “The victim was six feet tall and weighed a hundred and ninety pounds.”

At eighteen, Billy had a build that lacked the bulk that comes with adulthood. He was still physically developing into a man. His flat stomach, which he displayed by wearing his orange overalls unzipped to his navel to show off his eagle tattoo, had muscle definition that the lawyer had given up on achieving in his own physical training.

“I wonder if at fourteen—his age at the time of the murder—if Billy could have taken on Matthew Landers.”

Walt Manners was a brute. Over six feet tall, with two hundred and forty pounds of muscle that he used to intimidate anyone who challenged him, the criminal could easily have terrorized and killed the victim the way Billy described.

Joshua rubbed his tired eyes. “But we need more than the testimony of a juvenile delinquent turned adult offender—and possible killer—to make a murder charge against Manners stick. We also need that gun to connect Billy to Grace’s murder.”

Deputy Hockenberry agreed. “That’s why he won’t cough it up.”

Joshua stepped back into the conference room. He could tell that Tori, who had yet to develop a poker face, had something to offer. “Has your client remembered what happened to the murder weapon?”

“Walt got rid of the gun,” she told him. “But my client does have proof that he killed the Landers boy.”

“What?”

She turned fully to her client. She placed her arm across the back of his chair and gestured for him to tell the prosecutor his proof.

“Walt wears a gold cross around his neck.” Billy chuckled. “He ain’t no Jesus freak. He says it’s a souvenir. Ask him what it’s a souvenir of.”

His information checked out. Two members of the gang, who were up on the same charges, admitted that Walt Manners had bragged to them about killing Matthew Landers and that he had taken the cross off the victim before shooting him in the back of the head. They were willing to testify against their leader in exchange for a deal.

Joshua Thornton postponed the arraignment in order to adjust his charges.

“Number one,” Phyllis Rollins shook her index finger at her visitors, “it’s laughable that Rex thought he could write a book. Number two, if I knew he was writing a book about me, I could not possibly care less.”

Tad looked at Joshua, who, he was surprised to notice, was not paying attention to their suspect, but observing the beams in the cathedral ceiling of the Rollins’ log-cabin home.

Phyllis was dry-eyed during the interview about her husband’s murder.

Doug, who sat on the sofa next to his sister, gazed at Tad with wide eyes. The doctor wondered if he understood the meaning of the news that they had delivered.

“Then you don’t know what Rex was talking about when he said he wrote a book about the wicked witch of Chester?” Tad asked.

She scoffed. “I have no doubt that he was talking about me. Big whoop. Like I care if he wrote a book about me?”

“This is a nice house,” Joshua interjected.

Tad started. It was not like his cousin to change the subject during an interview with a suspect. Joshua was like a dog with a bone when it came to murder. Maybe exhaustion had caught up with him.

“How many square feet is it?”

She answered, “Twenty-eight hundred. Double that if you count the finished basement.”

“You must do better business at the café than I thought.”

Phyllis Rollins was the owner and cook at the Rollins Corner Café, a diner, gas station, and market located on the country crossroad one hill before the Pennsylvania state line. Doug waited tables and cleaned up. The restaurant, which was frequented by truck drivers and other blue-collar workers in search of hot meals, was busy the first half of the day. After lunch, business would slow down to a crawl until she locked the door at eight o’clock.

Rollins also made a lot of business from the bean grinder Phyllis bought from a coffee house going out of business. After deciding that Chester’s residents weren’t the type to read deep literature over café lattes, she nixed the idea of turning her business into a coffee house. But she kept the grinder. Rollins Corner Café was the only local place to buy fresh ground coffee in assorted flavors.

Joshua lowered his eyes from the beams and returned to the reason for their visit. “Where were you Friday night?”

“Here with Doug.”

Joshua regarded her brother.

To look at the two men, it was hard to believe they had graduated the same year. Doug Barlow was a wisp of a man. Worry lines etched deep into his face made him appear years older than his former classmate.

While Joshua studied the man whom he had expected to become a scientist or scholar, Doug’s unfocused eyes, hidden behind thick glasses, were drawn to his face.

“How are you doing, Doug?” Joshua’s question was sincere.

He responded with a nervous smile. “Okay.”

“I heard that you work at the diner with your sister?”

“Yeah, I wait on the customers and grind the coffee, and she even lets me cook sometimes.”

“That’s good. I guess that’s one of the perks of—”

“Any other questions?” Phyllis inquired sharply.

“No.” Joshua stood up and gestured to Tad for them to leave. “Thank you very much.”

The Corvette raced around the curves of the country road through Birch Hollow while Tad voiced his confusion over Joshua’s lack of conviction while interviewing the victim’s widow. “What was that all about? You gave up back there.”

Joshua gestured towards the home back in the hollow they had just left. “Unless we can find a viable motive, Phyllis didn’t kill Rex. If she wanted to kill him, she could have done it and gotten away with it weeks ago when he broke into her house and violated the restraining order.”

“She tried to shoot his balls off, but missed her target by two inches.”

“That was a simple domestic dispute,” Joshua said. “Whoever killed Rex went to the boardinghouse to get his book to make sure no one read it. What murder could Phyllis have committed that he would have known about?”

“Come on, Josh! The Barlows lived right next door to Tricia Wheeler.”

“Why would Phyllis kill Tricia?” Joshua offered another theory. “Margo Sweeney Connor bailed Rex out of jail. She isn’t known for her charitable nature. Now I want to know why Margo would send her lawyer to defend and bail out an employee she had fired.”

He continued, “We can’t make assumptions about which murder Rex was writing about. He spent most of his life on the wrong side of the tracks. There are a lot of murders, solved and unsolved, that he could have happened onto.”

“Then we need to find that book,” Tad said, “which our chief of detectives swears doesn’t even exist.”

“That’s because he’s an idiot,” Joshua muttered. “Cavanaugh has already chalked up Rollins’ murder to a drunken brawl over an unpaid loan. Do you think Rex was smart enough to back up his book onto a disk? Maybe we can find that.”

With a shake of his head, Tad declared that Rex wasn’t that smart.

Jan was waiting at Joshua’s office to invite him out for a cocktail at Dora’s.

His solemn expression when he plopped down in the chair behind his desk contrasted with hers.

“What’s wrong?” She slipped onto the corner of his desk.

“Tad and I went over to the Rollins place to talk to Phyllis. Doug was there—”

“Of course,” she said, noting that the siblings were constant companions.

Joshua shook his head. “I think of what he used to be and I see what he is now, and it just breaks my heart. The guy was a certified genius. He never had to study. He knew everything.” He looked up at her. “What happened?”

Jan shrugged. “Tad says that it is clinical depression. Doug has been on antidepressants ever since his only semester of college. He went nuts one night and broke all the windows in his dorm. They had to take him away in a straightjacket. His family didn’t have the money to send him to school, so after he lost the scholarship, he had to make do the best he could.”

“I remember him crying all the time, out of the blue, for nothing, during our senior year.”

“That’s the first time I ever noticed anything not quite right with him,” Jan recalled. “He’s tried to kill himself, I don’t know how many times. I think it was over a woman.”

Joshua chuckled, “Why is it that every time someone gets messed up you blame it on a failed romance?”

“Doug was pretty fragile to begin with. He meets a woman who shows him the ways of the world. She ups and leaves him high and dry, and he can’t handle the pain of a broken love affair. It won’t be the first time someone’s life was ruined because of unrequited love.”

“Are you blaming me for Gaston firing you and ruining your life?”

Jan glared. “Tad told you.”

“No, there was another journalist from The Vindicator at the courthouse to cover Manners’s arraignment—”

“And the detective who screwed up a stakeout that almost got a hostage killed until the first-born son of our county prosecutor single-handedly captured the county’s baddest bad guy.”

“It’s in the genes,” Joshua said proudly.

“It’s an irresistible story. Can I have an exclusive interview with J.J. that will let me write a story that will get me my job back?”

“Ask him.” He patted her knee. “Don’t let it get you down, Jan. I’ve gotten fired myself. When God closes one door, He always opens another. You just have to find that open door.”

“Did you get fired for throwing a milkshake in someone’s face?”

“No.” Joshua tried not to look surprised. When Tad had told him that Jan got fired he mentioned nothing about an assault with a milkshake.

“I guess I need to apologize to Gail.”

“I should say so,” he told her in a paternal tone.

Jan slipped down off his desk. “I guess I better do it now.” She went to the door.

He muttered for her to hear, “Don’t take any loaded milkshakes with you.”

Of course, Gail’s house would be more beautiful than Jan’s own two-bedroom cottage in which she had lived since birth. Even though her rival was renting, Jan felt a pang of jealousy when she pulled up the drive to the redbrick ranch house that was sprawled out across the lot tucked back into woods next to the Pennsylvania state line.

It was secluded. The way a writer’s retreat should be.

Jan gulped down her envy. She remained in her car to work up the nerve for another encounter with Gail. Now she had to humble herself and apologize. She walked up the brick sidewalk to the front stoop and rang the doorbell. The glass-paned storm door was shut. The inside door was ajar, which allowed her to see through the great room to the patio doors on the other side of the house.

Anticipating her hostess’s arrival to let her in, Jan waited. “Gail!” She rang the doorbell a second time.

All was silent.

She stepped inside.

“Gail,” she announced herself when she went into the great room. “It’s Jan. Are you here? I came to apologize.”

She listened to the silence.

A lunch counter separated the great room from the U-shaped kitchen with a pantry behind it. The bedrooms and bath were in a wing to the left. The contemporary furniture was cheap. Jan wondered if it came with the lease on the house. It wasn’t the type of furniture that a successful journalist would have.

A sickening sweet scent met her nostrils. She sneezed and rubbed her nose. “She needs to take out her garbage more often.”

A folder lay open on the coffee table. An empty bottle of wine and wineglass were sprawled on the floor next to the sofa. A blue ink pen rested between them.

Recognizing the writing instrument, she picked it up. Joshua Thornton’s name was engraved along the side. Her eyes narrowed with jealousy.

When she threw the pen down onto the coffee table, she noticed the label on the file’s tab. It was the research folder on Tricia Wheeler. Jan glanced around. Seeing no one, she opened the folder to study the pages inside.

An Associated Press news article downloaded from the Internet lay on top. Not touching it so that she could make a quick get away if Gail walked in and caught her snooping, she read the first paragraph from where she stood above it: “Bingingham.com vice president, Randall Fine, was charged with two counts of sexual assault. The charges came as a result of a complaint filed by his administrative assistant . . .”

Randall Fine? Jan repeated the name while trying to recall who Randall Fine was and what connection he would have to Tricia Wheeler. She put it together. Randy! Randy was Tricia’s boyfriend and now he was up on two rape charges.

Intrigued, Jan picked up the folder.

Then, she saw the photo album underneath the folder. Curious still, she flipped open the cover of the book. Pasted inside was another article. This was a yellowed newspaper clipping. The headline read, “Bears Undefeated—14 to 0.” The sub-headline read, “Thornton leads the Bears to State Semi-finals.” A picture of Joshua in his football uniform was under the headlines.

She turned the page. At first, she squinted to make out what was glued to the cardboard. When she did, she flushed. It was a used condom.

She turned the page to the next article. They were all clipped from newspapers. Then, there was the front-page article about Joshua being accepted to the Naval Academy.

The album had many pages filled with articles. She flipped to the next page to find even more articles from The Vindicator reporting his achievements after Joshua left Chester. There were snapshot pictures of him. None were of him with his family. Jan concluded when she saw by his expression and the candid nature of the poses that he didn’t seem to be aware that his picture was being taken. Mingled with the pictures were other articles about court cases that made the news as his career flourished.

Swoosh!

She found that she was so immersed in the album that she forgot she was holding the folder and had dropped all the contents. She dropped to the floor to pick up the papers and stuff them back into the file.

While she was on the floor, she saw the framed picture on a table up against the wall. That one was also of Joshua. He was with a woman in this picture.

Jan put the album and folder back where she had found them and scurried over to study the picture. Joshua was several years younger. He held the woman from behind as they stood sideways for the camera. In profile, she showed off her pregnant stomach. They were both smiling at the camera.

Jan had never met Valerie, Joshua’s late wife, but she had seen many pictures of the woman whose image was displayed in the Thornton home.

This woman was not Valerie Thornton. It was Gail Reynolds.

Suddenly afraid of what Gail would do if she caught her snooping through her things, Jan dropped the picture back on the table. Her hands shook as she tried to make sure it was in the same position she had found it.

Then, her heart pounding, she ran out the door, got in her car, and raced back into town.