The Wild Inside (27 page)

“Christ Almighty.” Lou pushed back from the table and stood. “You want to arrest me for killing my nephew?”

“I don’t
want
to arrest you for anything, but your vehicle seen in the vicinity of the crime combined with no alibi and now, Lou”—I paused until he looked me straight in the eyes—“you not being up-front with us about the amount of contact you’ve had with your nephew is obstruction of an investigation and I hate to tell you, but that’s a federal charge.” I sighed, holding my palms up and glanced at Monty to take over. I had briefed him earlier on this part.

“Wait, wait,” Monty offered calmly. “Let’s just back up a bit. Let’s not split hairs here. Please, sit down.” He gestured to the chair. Lou looked to the chair, then to each of us. He sat down slowly. “When was the last time you spoke with Victor?”

Lou pursed his lips for a moment, then exhaled forcefully. “On and off on the phone early in the fall. I don’t remember any exact dates.”

I picked up the phone records and read them. “How ’bout September twenty-fourth?”

Lou nodded. “I guess that sounds right.”

“So why was Victor calling you?”

“He wanted to borrow money. Like usual.”

“How much money?”

“Whatever I had to spare.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“What I always tell him: to stop calling.”

“I have records here that show you spoke frequently from January to March and from August until Victor’s phone got shut off in late September. How do you explain that?”

“The same way. He called for money often. He was persistent, and I kept telling him to leave us the fuck alone.”

“You speak to relatives that way?” I asked facetiously.

“To
him
I did,” Lou said. “Come on, even you have gathered by now that he was a pest.”

“Yeah, pesky enough to take out and tie to a tree in the woods to teach a lesson to?”

“No.” Lou smiled a half smile—the same kind that I do when I’m most calm and I took it as a very bad sign. This was not our man. He was too calm and confident. “You’ve got it wrong. All wrong. He wasn’t pesky enough for that. No one’s pesky enough for that.”

• • •

I kept Lou there for another hour and a half so that I could go have another chat with Becky. I had Monty give him a twenty- to thirty-minute break with some coffee, then go back in and go over all the details two or even three more times, recording and writing them all down to see if his story stayed the same with each retelling. I knew this was not going to make Lou happy, and Ford’s words to not piss him off rang somewhere in my ears, but really, I couldn’t have cared less.

Becky had cleaned up since I’d seen her earlier. She looked showered with her hair neatly pulled back in a shiny gold hair clip, a hint of makeup on, and a nicer pair of jeans and a sweater. But behind the cleaned-up version of herself, her eyes showed strain. She said she needed to leave in about twenty minutes to pick her son up from school. I told her it wouldn’t take long.

She nodded, folded her arms, and leaned against the porch railing without inviting me in.

“So you got the call from Officer Harris that we’ve got your husband at headquarters?”

“Yeah, why there? You said you were coming back here to visit Lou.”

“Let’s just say that there were some unfortunate discoveries on our part that are leading us to believe that your husband has been less than truthful regarding his level of contact with the victim.”

“Less than truthful?” Her voice suddenly smaller than when I arrived.

“That’s right. Seems your husband has been having fairly regular contact with Victor last winter and again in the fall. Did you know about that?”

Becky’s face hardened, and she peered out toward the lake, the water like glass.

“Mrs. Deats?”

“So what? Big deal—he talked to his own damned nephew. Where’s the crime in that?”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Your husband has no alibi at the time of the murder, his was the only vehicle in the area as spotted by a witness at Fish Creek Campground, has lied about having contact with the victim, which is obstruction of an investigation. And if I find out that you’re not being truthful, it’s the same charge . . .” I looked at her with wide eyes.

She didn’t speak, and I could see in her busy eyes that her mind was racing, weighing options, considering possibilities.

“So, Mrs. Deats, if you have anything to add that would make us feel better about letting your husband return to you by the time you and your son come back, now would be the time to offer it.”

“I told you, I didn’t even know they were speaking.”

“Why were you fighting?”

“The same reason ninety percent of the couples in the world fight—over money.”

“What about money?”

“’Bout there not being enough.”

“Not enough?”

“Is there ever enough for anyone around these parts?”

I shrugged. “Look, let’s stop toying around here. I’m going to give it to you straight: your husband could very well end up arrested for the murder of Victor Lance before this afternoon is used up. Now, before you say anything, let me tell you that I work in homicide. Gambling, drug trafficking—those are no longer my deal. In other words, I don’t care about ’em. What I do care about is who killed Victor Lance, and I don’t really think for one second that your husband killed his own nephew.”

I didn’t really know if I believed what I was telling her. A part of me had already nailed Lou Shelton from the day I met him, but another part of me sensed that we were barking up the wrong tree. “So let me put this straight, Mrs. Deats,” I said. “I need to understand why your husband and Victor were having consistent and regular phone conversations from January to March and from August until Victor’s phone got shut off in late September.”

Becky sighed, and I could tell she was close to breaking. She glanced nervously at her watch. “I really need to get my son,” she said softly, almost a whisper.

“I understand, but it hasn’t been twenty minutes yet.”

She nodded and sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs. “Betting,” she whispered and sighed again with more force.

“Goddamn betting. Basketball in the winter. Football in the fall. Some bookie in Buffalo. Lou’s gotten into trouble with it before.” She tossed her hand to the air. “He quit for a long time, but fairly large sums have been missing from our savings, so I figured he was at it again. That’s why we were fighting that night.”

“And did you know about the phone calls with Victor?”

“I did.” Becky looked up at me, her eyes drooping at the corners as if they were surrendering. “I figured he was dealing with his bookie,
but I had no clue why Victor would be involved, but I knew he was because I saw his number come up several times in September.”

“And you asked Victor about it?”

She nodded. “It just ended up in a horrible fight with him denying everything. Just like the old days.”

“Did he say that Victor was betting too?”

“He didn’t say that exactly, but yeah, I could tell that Victor was calling Lou to have him place bets to Lou’s bookie.”

“Have you talked about it since the fight?”

“No, I’ve not had the nerve to bring it up with all this going on.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Deats.” I stood and looked at my watch. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, you better go get your son.”

She didn’t stand, didn’t nod. Just sat still with her eyes fixed intensely on the gray planked wood of the porch. She looked deeply afraid, as if the natural markings in wood held secrets that would forever damn her and her marriage.

• • •

On the way back to headquarters, I had Monica fax Lou’s cell phone records to headquarters so that I could verify the calls to whoever his New York bookie was. Turns out that he was a guy named Donny Welsch, so when I went back in and saw Lou’s jaw set like stone, I started by leading into that tidbit of information.

“So turns out that we have reason to believe that you’re still not being completely forthright with us.”

Lou had his arms crossed and glared at me. Monty had followed me in, and I made a show of the fax papers in my hands, shuffling them loudly. Then I set them in a neat pile in front of me after I pulled out a chair and sat. Monty did the same. Lou said nothing.

“We have some new information that makes us think that Victor wasn’t simply calling to ask for money. Can you tell us more about that?”

“I’m not saying anything without a lawyer,” Lou said flatly.

“That can be arranged. We can get you to the phone and you can call him or her. Or maybe you need the Yellow Pages to look one up?” I lifted an eyebrow. “Yes? No?”

He nodded.

“We can do that. Monty,” I said. “Would you be so kind as to fetch a phone book for Mr. Shelton?”

“Sure, no problem.” Monty walked out.

I sat and waited patiently until he came back, not saying anything either. I could hear Lou’s breathing whenever he took a deep breath, and I detected a slight shakiness whenever he did so. Monty came back in and handed the phone book to him, but he didn’t pick it up or open it. He just sat with his arms still folded and stared at it.

“Look, this doesn’t have to be so difficult. I’ll tell you what I told your wife, I’m trying to solve a murder here. I don’t care about drugs, gambling . . .”

Lou looked at the floor.

“For example, I could care less about what Donny Welsch is running out of Buffalo, New York.”

He looked up, and I shuffled the fax papers again.

“So why don’t you tell us why Victor was
really
contacting you?”

Lou exhaled loudly, then nodded slowly. “Victor knew I bet on basketball and football. I had quit for a while, but then got back into it over the past two years. I’m not proud of it, but it’s just one of the few things I haven’t completely kicked in my life. Victor latched onto it around the fall before last and said he wanted in on the action, but I told him absolutely not. But he kept pestering me about it, so I finally gave in.”

“So you placed bets for yourself as well as for him?”

“Yes,” Lou said.

“How much did Victor bet?”

“Not much. Sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundred or two. Sometimes he’d come out ahead, sometimes not.”

“And so your foolish nephew, who you knew needed money all the time, was betting through you. Who paid his debt when he came up short?”

Lou shrugged. “That was his problem. I told Welsch that I wasn’t covering for the guy. That if he wanted the weasel’s bets, that he had to deal with him himself.”

“But you placed the bets for him. Why didn’t Victor just call him himself?”

“Donny’s particular about how many clients he has calling him. He didn’t want me to give his number out, and I knew better than to fuck with Donny’s request. He said he’d take Victor’s bets and see how payments went for a while, but if it didn’t go so well, that it would be my responsibility to get Victor out of the game.”

“And so how did it go?”

“At first okay, Victor was on a winning streak for the first part of the season, but then he started to lose and owe Donny money.”

“How much money?”

“About eighteen hundred or so.”

“And did he pay up?”

Lou shook his head.

“So Donny never got paid?”

“No, he got paid.”

“You paid him?”

Lou nodded.

“So you covered for the guy even though you said you wouldn’t.”

“Look, he was my nephew, good or bad, and I felt responsible since I placed the bets for him. I paid and figured I wouldn’t place any more for him.”

“And did you?”

“Only one or two more in the fall, before his cell got cut.”

“And why did you do that?”

“I don’t know.” Lou shook his head. “’Cause I’m stupid, I guess. I’m
a gambler. We do stupid shit.” He looked at the floor, shaking his head back and forth.

“Did Victor come out ahead on those last bets?”

“Yeah, but I told him he owed me the money and anything that came from Donny would be payback for the eighteen that he owed me.”

“Did he come to see you after his phone was disconnected?”

“No, I told him that if he came by my place, I’d never place a bet for him again.”

“And he listened to you?”

“Yeah, honestly, I didn’t think he would.” Lou looked sincere, his eyes wide. “But you have to know Victor. He was like a kid with ADHD, crazy and wired on the drugs. Always going from one thing to the next. He had forgotten about me for the time being, but I knew he’d be back.”

I looked at him, my eyes narrowed, and I think he must have sensed what I was thinking—that he’d taken care of it so that Victor wouldn’t be back—because Lou looked at me wide-eyed, then Monty, and back to me. “No, no, it’s not what you’re thinking.” He held up his hand. “I swear to you, I have no idea what happened to Victor in those woods. I wasn’t forthright with you only because of the gambling. Becky doesn’t know and, well, we’ve been fighting a lot and, I just . . . I just . . .” Lou hung his head, deflated. “I just didn’t want to get in trouble for the gambling. I’ve quit before; I will quit again. In fact, I sent Donny what I owed him and haven’t placed a single bet since your visit earlier in the week. I swear to you.”

I looked at Monty, his face showing no emotion, then back to Lou, his expression sincere and pleading. I nodded once, then stood up and walked out. Monty followed me into the hallway.

“What’s your gut telling you?” I whispered.

“That he’s telling the truth.”

I bit my lip. “Mine too. Plus we don’t have anything specific to tie him to the crime. You can go back in and let him go home. In the meantime, we’ll see what else we can come up with.” I grabbed my
quarter. “Damn, if I could get just get that damn slug, we might be able to tie it to his weapon.”

“He had a gun?”

“I saw it in its case when I talked to his wife. He owns a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 19. Which, as you know, is a revolver where the casing stays in the gun. So the slug would be hugely helpful, and if it looks like it could be a match, then we could get a search warrant.”