The Killer's Wife (11 page)

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Authors: Bill Floyd

BOOK: The Killer's Wife
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“I’m already going to have to be fighting all the time, Mom.”
B
y ten o’clock, when the evening news aired, I was so emotionally spent that I couldn’t even work up much ire against Jennifer McLean. Our interview was over before I really registered anything that I’d said, or how I’d come
across. And I didn’t really give a shit; I simply wanted all this to end, to go back to the anonymous and tidy life I’d worked so hard to put together in the years since Randy’s trial. I wanted Hayden to go back to making friends, to believing his father was just some loser who didn’t deserve our time or thoughts.
Impossible. I knew it, but in a way I was glad to be out from behind the lies; at least I would no longer live in dread of the day Hayden found out the truth. It had come and gone, and the consequences were what I had to deal with now.
Carolyn Rowe called just as the news was going off. “Wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be, was it?” she said with a forced perkiness that didn’t fit her in the least.
“The Dockery question came across like she wanted it to. She made it sound as if I’d had something to do with his disappearance. I looked guilty.”
“But you’re not. You actually looked like a decent person who just wants her life back. More people than you think will identify with that.”
“I guess a private investigator would know more about that than most.”
She laughed. “Which brings me to the reason for my call. I’m heading out of town for a few days, to chase down a couple of loose threads. I should be back by the first of next week, though, and we’ll want to get together if that’s okay. Maybe you and Hayden should get out of town, too, go rent a place at the beach or something. There shouldn’t be anyone down there this time of year.”
And it sounded nice, so I told her I’d think about it. After we hung up, though, I thought of the miles of empty, bleached sand, the steely look of the ocean under winter skies. If desolation was what I wanted, I could stay right here and save myself a hotel bill. Outside my bedroom window was an endless array of architecture repeated, kit houses for kit people, whose judgments after seeing my interview on TV would be as rote as their kitchen color schemes.
“I
think we’ve found a few things that might help get Pritchett off your case,” Duane said.
We were sitting by the window in a Champs restaurant, looking out at the open-air promenade that ran down the center of Southpoint Mall. The crowds were light in the early weekday afternoon, mostly salespeople seated in the courtyards smoking or talking on their cell phones. A jogger bopped by, thumbing his iPod. The Rowes had come to my house, taken one look at me, and told me quite soberly that I needed to get out for some fresh air. Not only had I not
gone to the beach over the weekend, I’d stayed locked down at the house, watching children’s films on DVD with my son. Neither of us had talked all that much and I kept telling myself it hadn’t been dismal, but I’d been ready for him to go back to school on Monday.
And then, damnedest thing; as soon as he left on the bus, I missed him.
Carolyn Rowe looked as poorly as I felt. She had dark patches around her eyes and her mouth was drawn. Her bleached blond hair was tied up in a haphazard knot at the back of her head, loose brittle strands sprung loose at every angle; she seemed worn and harried. For the first time I thought she looked older than I did.
I unfolded one of the heavy napkins and took out the utensils, then started refolding it. They were both watching me. “Okay,” I asked. “What do you have on him?”
Duane was pleased. “Atta girl,” he said. He pulled a laptop out of the shoulder-slung bag he’d brought along, and powered it up. The waiter came and took our orders. Duane tapped on some keys and turned the computer so I could see the screen. He scrolled past a booking photo of some hulking man with a shorn skull, who had one of those faces that seemed crammed into the comparatively narrow space between a cleft chin and a rippled forehead. The man was glaring into the lens. Following that was a load of data written onto standardized templates, several pages worth.
Carolyn smiled at me and said, “Ever seen a rap sheet before?”
I shook my head.
“That’s actually just a summary. His actual sheet would take an hour to upload.”
Duane left the forms showing on-screen and clicked on another window. This one was a document, verbiage only, again several pages in length. Duane scrolled past information until I saw Randy’s name. At the bottom of this page was a date—this past Saturday’s—and two more names. One was Carolyn’s.
“Who’s Alfred Odom?” I asked, squinting to make it out. I looked up at Carolyn. “Where have you been, anyway?”
“San Quentin. Al Odom is the man whose rap sheet summary you just saw. He’s on Death Row for the murder of a department store security guard nine years ago, and I’ve interviewed him twice during the past few days. He acted as the middleman who passed along Charles Pritchett’s hit money. Odom paid another prisoner named Lars Lindholm to try and kill Randy in prison.”
“Oh.” I barely remembered Lindholm’s name, although I should have; he was Randy’s thirteenth victim, the man who’d died attempting to murder him. It hadn’t received much press at the time, beyond what I’d seen on a nightly news summary, the impetus behind that unfortunate lie I’d told my son. “Did you see Randy while you were there?”
“I requested a meeting but he declined.” Carolyn watched my face carefully. “I know I should’ve asked you beforehand but I didn’t want you stressing on it. Anyway,
there wasn’t much I could do after he refused to meet with me. I have no proof of his being involved in any new crimes, so there’s no legitimate investigation I could claim to be a part of. I’d have thought he’d like the company—he’s been on Death Row for, what? Six years? Those guys are separate from the general population so they don’t get much socializing time. Still, he might’ve heard through the grapevine that I’d been talking to Odom. News travels fast in lockup.”
I stared out the window. A security guard lazed against the wall of the Barnes & Noble, tracking a tall, lithe salesgirl as she strolled past. “Aren’t you scared, going into a place like that?” I asked Carolyn. “Aren’t you scared for her?” I asked Duane.
“Terrified,” she answered.
“Which is the only reason I let her go,” Duane said. “She’s got the sense to be wary. Al Odom wasn’t directly paid off by Pritchett, but he’s the one who gave Lindholm his assignment. Lindholm was awaiting execution for strangling two teenaged girls, so I guess Randy inadvertently did one good deed in his life. The original payment passed through another man—a prison guard—before getting to Odom. Odom is willing to go on record, basically because he thinks he can get the guard in trouble. Apparently there’s been a falling out of some sort.”
Carolyn picked it up. “Everyone took a third of the payment apiece, except Lindholm didn’t know that. He thought he was getting over fifty percent. Typical jailhouse
accounting. I didn’t approach the guard and I don’t think we’ll have to. I think if we tell Pritchett we know this much, he’ll back off.”
“What if this Odom guy just made it up?” I asked.
Duane shrugged. “Still, I’m pretty sure it would give us enough leverage. It would taint his cause in the public’s eye, either way. And although I can’t quite prove this, either, I think he used his company’s own cash to finance the whole thing. The exact amount that Odom named as the payoff was listed in Pritchett’s books for that quarter as having been spent on some mobile freezers that turned out not to function at all. Believe me, it was a fairly substantial write-off.”
“All this information in five days?” I said.
Carolyn shrugged, mock sheepish. “We’re very good.”
Duane frowned. “None of it would stand up in court. We wouldn’t want things to get anywhere near that point, if you know what I’m saying.”
I knew. There had been some surreptitious hacking on Duane’s part, and God only knew what kind of story Carolyn had told to get access to the tiers at a maximum security prison. I asked her and she said she’d played it straight the whole way; the warden had been the one to point the way to Odom. He’d suspected the con’s involvement in Randy’s attempted murder, but had never been able to prove it.
“And he’s had plenty of problems with Randy—fights with other inmates and guards, repeated trips to solitary
confinement. He also mentioned something else I thought you should know about.” She raised her eyebrows at Duane and he nodded for her to continue. “The warden has suspicions that Randy is carrying on some sort of illegitimate relationship with someone outside the prison; all his mail, except his exchanges with legal representatives, is read, and apparently some of the content is rather disturbing. The warden wouldn’t show me any of the letters, he said they’d need a warrant in order to hold them back or make copies, but the content he described is striking, especially with regard to Pritchett and Lane Dockery. The name on the letters is ‘CB Taylor.’ Ring a bell?”
I shrugged. “No.”
“The address is a PO Box. We can’t investigate the identity of the person Randy has been communicating with, because that would require a warrant as well, and as yet there’s no proof that any crime has been committed. But apparently the letters include references to ‘the caterer’s house,’ and ‘the writer’s house.’ That’s what tipped the warden that there might be some issue of concern, particularly after the attempt on Randy’s life.”
They both watched my face while I considered it. “So Randy bears a grudge against Pritchett and Dockery. Considering that one tried to have him killed and the other tried to exploit him, that’s no real surprise. Randy is what you’d call the vindictive sort.” I tried to laugh but it came out sounding choked and strained.
Duane asked, “And you have no idea who he might be in contact with?”
I shook my head. “I can’t even begin to imagine. There are plenty of sickos out there who get fascinated with people like Randy. I mean, aren’t there women who seek out imprisoned killers for relationships, things like that?”
Carolyn nodded hesitantly. “That’s not nearly as widespread as you might have heard. This is an angle we need to be thinking about, though. I hate to think Randy’s got an outside actor working on his behalf.”
“I can’t think of anyone I know who would want that task,” I answered. Although, given my own experiences with Pritchett and Dockery, the vindictive part of
me
wished that actor success.
She’d promised to share whatever information she uncovered with the warden as soon as her client approved. “If that’s cool with you,” she finished.
I nodded absently, trying to get my bearings. “So Pritchett spent all this money to have Randy killed and he failed. And then the old bastard came after me instead?”
“It wasn’t just the money,” Duane said. “Odom thinks the old guy was actively trying to recruit someone to do the deed for years. Rumors had gone around among the prisoners that a contract was being offered, but unless someone’s got some measure of reliability or trust with the inmate population, no one’s going to take them up on it. Too big a chance that it’s a setup. We think there were several ‘goodwill’ gestures during the courtship, including a new motorcycle for the guard and some compensated legal work for Odom. It wasn’t easy. But to answer your question: yes. It was after the failed attempt on Randy’s life that Pritchett
contacted my friends’ firm and began trying in earnest to locate you.”
The food arrived and the Rowes started in as though they were famished. I picked at my salad and felt queasy. Two years he’d been stalking me. Frustrated at his original goal, he’d taken it upon himself to frustrate all of mine.
Carolyn covered her mouth and belched into her palm, then shrugged girlishly. The color was coming back into her cheeks, and I realized that this was a woman in her element. She’d told me that she’d been a reporter in her prior vocation, and I guessed she’d likely been a fearsome one.
“I spent some time with the extended Pritchett clan while I was out there,” she said now. “Not many of the people in the immediate circle are too fond of Sir Charles, and they aren’t shy about sharing with strangers. New money, a couple of bad marriages tied into the family tree, is the vibe I got. There was apparently an established history of serious personality conflicts between Dad and Carrie. They got into a big fight the night before the murder. An ex-brotherin-law told me that his ex-wife said Charles had gone to confront his daughter about her lifestyle. She was enrolled in her fourth college in as many years, she kept flunking out and reenrolling the next tier down. Her record shows two arrests for misdemeanor possession. So Dad confronts her, tells Carrie she’d better get it together or he’s going to cut her off financially. Most of the family members agreed that she was a little too ‘carefree,’ as one of them phrased it, to pay her own way. It was a big fight, Dad thinking he’s just being stern, but Carrie thinking she’s being disowned. Her
friends said she was upset, crying, when Pritchett left the apartment.” Carolyn paused, seemed to remember we were talking about a young woman. “Next time he saw her, Randy had been there first.”
Everyone was silent for a moment. Duane softly said, “I got in touch with Lane Dockery’s publisher and agent, trying to confirm if he’d been working on a book about Randy at the time of his disappearance. They weren’t willing to give me anything. I think they thought I was working for another publisher. But I did get in touch with his sister, Jeanine, who’s pretty much been losing her mind since her brother disappeared. She’s sure he’s dead, and she’s sure there was foul play involved. It isn’t in his nature to be out of contact for so long, is what she told me. She’s going through the things in his office, claims she knows his system. She’s going to get in touch if she finds anything.”
I only halfway heard him. I was thinking about Randy. Sometimes I wondered at how long it was taking for them to kill him. I wanted him dead, and judged, and condemned to an afterlife where his soul would remain intact, hypersensitive and hyperaware, while his victims shredded his mind and turned him inside out over and over while he watched, helpless, not allowed to disassociate himself from it. Sentient, with no hopes for respite or redress, while they took their vengeance over and over again.
I wished it; in my heart, I demanded it. I supposed it was a sin to pray for it, but all the same I most fervently prayed that there was justice in another world. What little there was in this life seemed arbitrarily distributed, parsed
out meanly and without apparent regard to who deserved what.
“It sounds to me like Pritchett doesn’t believe in God,” I said quietly, after the waiter had cleared our plates. “He has to take justice upon himself.”
“He has the means,” Duane said. “Most victims would do the same, if they could.”
“None of the rest of them did,” I said. “They all did the best they could to move on. I have some familiarity with denial, guys. What this whole vendetta means is that Pritchett is already doomed.” I saw their eyes and said quickly, “Let me explain. In the years between Randy’s being caught and now, I’ve tried to move on and build something apart from him, apart from what he did and whatever culpability I share in it. I haven’t succeeded completely, but my son still has a chance to. I believe the effort is worth it. With Pritchett, what he’s doing shows that he’s never got clear of it, never got free, never let it out of his head. Imagine how exhausting that must be. You couldn’t help but go crazy after a while. I can’t do him any more harm.”

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