Countdown (23 page)

‘So, hey, Drew,’ I said again as I came in, shutting the door behind me. I took a seat opposite him. ‘Sorry, but I gotta ask – what made you do such a crazy thing?’

He shrugged and looked away.

‘You got some big problems, huh? Financial?’

He shook his head.

‘You into drugs, gambling, any of those things?’

Again, he shook his head.

‘Then it must be your love life. Always room for that to go bad, don’t ya think?’

No response. Not a shake of the head or shrug of the shoulders. But then, after almost a full minute, Drew Gleeson broke into great big, less-than-manly sobs, complete with tears and snot everywhere.

I stood up and walked around to him, leaned down and put my arm across his shoulders. ‘I’m real sorry, Drew,’ I said. I squeezed his shoulders then went back to my seat. ‘It must have been real awful finding out about Joynell the way you did, huh?’

His head popped up and he looked me in the eye. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

It was time for me to shake my head. ‘Aw, come on, Drew. Why pretend? I know you were bonking Darrell’s wife. Everybody knows that – including, I’m sure, Darrell himself. Did he say something to you when you were in the cell alone with him? Something that provoked you? Darrell was a real asshole and God knows he didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. And you, just finding out he killed Joynell, the love of your life, you just couldn’t take his nastiness, isn’t that right, Drew? What did he say? Did he talk about Joynell being a great lay? Or maybe he said she was a lousy lay? That’s the kind of crap that would come out of Darrell’s mouth. And who could blame you, Drew? The guy was asking for it.’

I stopped talking. Let the silence build. Finally, as the tears again began to slide down Drew’s face, he hiccuped and said, ‘She
was
the love of my life. And she loved me, too. We were going to run away together.’ He tried to catch a sob but it came out anyway. ‘And that son-of-a-bitch killed her!’ He sighed, paused for a second and looked up at me. ‘I didn’t kill him but I wish I had. I’d like to shake the hand of whoever did.’

‘It’s real easy to say you didn’t kill him, but you were alone with him when you went back in for your medical bag. Easy enough to slip him something lethal.’

It only took a minute, maybe a minute and a half, for Drew Gleeson to say, ‘I want a lawyer.’

The service was being held in the largest room of the funeral home, which still wasn’t big enough. The usual suspects – the people from the viewing – were there, plus about a hundred others. It was standing room only.

Dru had grudgingly changed clothes in the back of the limo. Jean had guessed right that the girl wasn’t wearing a bra, and had bought one for her. This had led to Dru exposing herself to all as she pulled off her Dead Kennedys T-shirt. She didn’t seem to care. But she was in the family box now with the rest of them, dressed in a sedate navy-blue skirt and matching blouse and navy-blue flats. Unfortunately, the family box included Uncle Max and his wife, Serene.

The service was given by a clergyman who obviously had never even heard of Paula until that day, much less known her. Each time he spoke her name it was preceded by a quick glance at his notes as he was obviously unable to remember it. There were eulogies – too many to keep count. Uncle Max was the first and talked about Paula as a young girl. This piqued Jean’s interest, especially when he made statements about ‘what a beautiful child she was,’ along with her being ‘so obliging and helpful.’

After the last statement, Jewel leaned closer to Jean and whispered in her ear, ‘Did he just confess?’

Jean squeezed her hand and tuned back in.

‘I remember once when I took Paula and Constance camping with my own kids, how she loved the outdoors and kept asking me what the name of this tree or that tree was. She was so smart, so inquisitive, so ready to take on the world.’ Then Uncle Max choked up and his wife Serene went up to the podium and brought him back to the family box.

There were many more eulogies, but Jean only fixated on the ones given by those closest to Paula – like the long-time neighbor Neil Davenport.

‘My wife and I were not blessed with children of our own, so we opened our home to the two Carmichael girls. They loved to come over and eat the cookies that Emily baked for them, and sometimes helped her make more. They’d follow me out to my workshop where I played around with woodworking. Paula always wanted to use the circular saw, but I’d never let her. She was too small for that.’ He gulped in some air to steady himself, and went on: ‘When they were teenagers, the girls would come swimming in our pool, sometimes spending the entire day at our house. They were like our own children. But I have to disagree with what Max said. Paula wasn’t smart – she was brilliant. She had a mind like a steel trap. I don’t think anyone was surprised when she became a cardiac surgeon. It had been a joy, these last three years, having her back home.’ He stopped and looked over at the family box. ‘Vivian, I can hardly express how sorry I am that this has happened to your family. I will love and miss sweet Paula for all of my life.’

Then he went back to his seat, and Jean had an overwhelming urge to take a bath.

Jasmine took Drew Gleeson back to his cell after his phone call to his lawyer. He knew the number right off the bat, which made me wonder why. Did Drew have the need of a lawyer often enough to have memorized the phone number? When he hung up, Drew turned to me. ‘He’s driving in now from Tulsa. He has advised me not to cooperate with you in any way, which is just fine with me.’ He turned to Jasmine. ‘Will you take me to my cell, please, Deputy?’

Both kids were watching all this as Drew had had to use the phone on Holly’s desk. After he’d been taken back to the cells by Jasmine, Johnny Mac asked, ‘What’d he do, Dad?’

He does that now. Calls me ‘dad’ instead of ‘daddy.’ I don’t know what to do about it. I’d prefer he kept calling me ‘daddy.’ Hell, my own has been dead now for close to thirty years and I still refer to him as ‘daddy.’ What’s so wrong with that? Doesn’t make
me
any less manly. Just means I respected my father and still do.

‘Don’t worry about it, kiddos,’ I said. ‘How about I take the two of you over to the Longbranch Inn for some ice cream?’

‘Ah, Dad,’ Johnny Mac said as I looked up and saw the dubious expressions on both their faces. ‘Maybe the Dairy Queen? We don’t really wanna go to the Longbranch Inn any time soon.’

‘Oh, right. I forgot,’ I said. I hoped for the sake of Loretta and the other employees of the Longbranch Inn that everybody involved with the hostage situation there would get past it all and go back for at least lunch, if not a roll in the hay in the upstairs rooms.

When Jasmine returned I told her I was taking the kids for ice cream at the Dairy Queen and asked her if she wanted us to bring her something.

‘A Blizzard. An Oreo cookie Blizzard.’ She grabbed her purse but I stopped her.

‘It’s on me,’ I said. ‘Least I can do to make up for that dumb remark earlier.’

She gave me the good smile. ‘Yeah, the least you could do.’

I grinned back. ‘What’s the best?’ I asked.

She thought for a moment then said, ‘A raise.’

‘Ha!’ I said and ushered the kids out the back door to my Jeep.

The sun was shining as the family took seats under the awning at the cemetery. Constance’s comment about the cemetery no longer being in ‘a good part of town,’ seemed to mean that the area, which housed students and low-income families of varying ethnicities, was
not
good – i.e., bad. Driving slowly through the area in the funeral procession, Jean noted an active, lively community.

The cemetery was large enough, and the Carmichael plot far enough in it that sounds of that lively community went unheard. Nothing extraordinary happened at the graveside; nothing out of the way, nothing dramatic. They just buried Paula six feet down, and each person present planted a shovel full of dirt on her casket. Each person – except Jean. She kept her seat, even though Vivian had been rolled up in her wheelchair to do her honors. Jean stayed back.

They were beginning to get to her – this self-indulgent family with their need to hurt one another as cruelly as possible; this family that didn’t shed a tear for the lost Paula; this family who thought the whole thing was an ordeal they must go through for the sake of appearances.

Paula deserved something better than this. No wonder she’d rarely, if ever, spoken about this family, hadn’t had any pictures of them on her side of the dorm room, and had only gone home to them when life had kicked her to the gutter and she had nowhere else to go. Was this it? Was this the reason her friend had shunned her family and been so promiscuous? Had there been no sexual abuse, just hatefulness and neglect? Jean was beginning to wonder about her diagnosis. Had she wanted a quantifiable excuse for Paula’s behavior? Something she could point at and say, ‘That’s it! It wasn’t her fault! Someone abused her!’ Hatefulness and neglect are also considered abuse, but not in a family this rich, who could make sure there was someone other than parents to look after the children’s basic needs.

Jean wished she’d stayed in better contact with Paula. She would have known when she’d hit rock bottom and offered her solace in her own home, away from the Carmichael clan and their many issues.

The crowd had begun to file out of the shade of the awning when Jean felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Jewel standing there. ‘You OK?’ she asked gently.

Jean shook her head. ‘Not really.’

Jewel handed Jean her crutches and helped her stand and navigate the lumpy lawn of the cemetery. Before they got to the limo, Jean turned to Jewel. ‘Do you think we can call a taxi?’ she asked. ‘I really don’t want to get back in that car.’

‘No problem,’ Jewel said, guiding Jean to a bench as she took out her cell phone. She found the number for a taxi service and called.

We’d had a lively time at the Dairy Queen – me and my two young’uns. They told jokes to each other then started gossiping about people at school. Petal hadn’t gone to school with Johnny Mac until this year. She’d been going to a private Christian school that got itself in trouble last year, so Emmett was bound and determined that his daughter went to a public school where he figured she’d belonged in the first place. Jasmine was the one with the grand idea of private school. But even Jasmine had to admit that Petal was happier now in public school, and I could tell, just by listening to Petal and Johnny Mac gossiping, that that was the case.

We walked in the back door of the shop just as Drew Gleeson’s attorney was walking in the front. Jasmine gave me the eye and I deposited the kids in my office with a go ahead to play on my computer (as I rarely used it, I doubted they could do it any harm), and headed into the foyer.

The guy was Drew’s age, tall and slender, wearing blue jeans and a western-style shirt, his feet clad in Tony Lama snakeskin. We shook hands and he said, ‘Harry Joyner. I’m Drew Gleeson’s brother-in-law – and his attorney of record.’

Well, I thought, that explained Drew knowing the phone number right off the bat and all.

‘Sheriff Milt Kovak,’ I said. I turned to Jasmine and said, ‘Deputy, please get the prisoner and put him in the interview room. And make sure the equipment is off in the observation room.’

‘Certainly, Sheriff,’ Jasmine said, trying to repress a smile at my new-naming of the break room and the interrogation room. But I figured one sounded classier and the other a whole lot less offensive.

As Jasmine walked off to the cells, Harry Joyner said, ‘What are the charges against my client?’

I walked him over to a bench in the foyer and we both sat down. ‘Well, now, we’re gonna start with him stealing that Oxy to try to kill himself. If he’d succeeded we probably wouldn’t be pressing charges, but as he didn’t, well …’ I shrugged my shoulders.

‘This is ludicrous, Sheriff. My client was obviously in an irrational state of mind or he wouldn’t have attempted suicide in the first place, and taking the Oxy was only a means to that end. He’ll repay the hospital for that and go to treatment, but I’ll make sure he retains his job and his status as chief EMT,’ the lawyer said.

‘Well, that’s all well and good,’ I said, ‘but there might be another matter.’

‘What other matter?’ Joyner demanded.

‘Ah, here’s my deputy now. You get Mr Gleeson all settled in the interview room?’ I asked Jasmine as I stood up. I’ve noticed that standing up is easier now I’ve lost thirty-five pounds. But I still miss chicken fried steak. Just saying.

‘Snug as a bug,’ she said. Turning to the lawyer, she said, ‘If you’ll follow me, Mr Joyner, I’ll take you to your client.’

He looked at me, I guess half-expecting me to continue with that ‘other matter.’ I didn’t, so he followed Jasmine into the interrogation room. I really wanted to be a fly on the wall in that room, but that’s not allowed. Attorney/client privilege and all that bullshit. I know, I know, I sound like a right-wing small town sheriff, huh? Well, I
am
a small town sheriff. And I figured I could probably wind this whole thing up if I could just hear what Gleeson was telling his brother-in-law.

But that was a no-no, so I pushed that thought out of my head and went back to the office to see if I still had a computer. Personally I’d have been as happy as a clam if the kids broke the damn thing, because the county commissioners had us on a real tight budget and replacing it wouldn’t be an option – which meant I could turn all the damn paperwork that I had to fill out in the hunt and peck system over to Emmett. He actually
liked
computer stuff.

Emmett came in the back door right about then and we conferred in my office with our kids. The upshot of that was that Johnny Mac was going home with Petal and Emmett until I was finished here. Worked for me.

Once Emmett and the kids were gone, I sat down at my desk and put on my thinking cap. I really needed to interview Drew Gleeson’s partner, Jasper Thorne. I still needed to check with Anthony to see if he’d made a date with Jasper and if he’d interviewed the ER employees about Drew and Joynell. And maybe I should interview that pizza delivery guy. Not about the girlfriend so much as about what might have gone on back in the cells when he was there. Maybe he didn’t realize he saw something, but my astute questioning skills could bring that out. Maybe. If I had astute questioning skills. All I could do was consider the two of ’em possible witnesses and interview ’em both.