Vendetta Stone (11 page)

Herb, tears streaming down his face,
pulled dry-eyed Jackson into his arms. “Oh man, I am so, so sorry.”

Jackson
returned the genuine bear hug.

“You’re a good friend
,” Jackson said. “I just can’t believe this happened. It’s unreal.”

“I know what you mean.
” Still embarrassed for having to explain his wife’s absence, he added, “Sarah sends her love, too. She’s still too broke up to make it this morning. You know how close they were.”

Jackson
understood. He didn’t like funerals himself. “No problem. We all handle grief in different ways. We’ll come visit Angela whenever Sarah thinks she can handle it.”

“She’d like that. So what are you doing the rest of the day? Angela wouldn’t want you to be alone right now. C’mon home with me.”

Jackson looked around the sun-splashed grounds, feeling Angela’s presence in the serene setting.

“Thanks
, Herb. Maybe I’ll see you guys later. The rest of the family’s headed over to Patrick’s, and I’m going over a little later. Right now I’m going to talk to the press. If I’m going to find Angela’s killer, I need to keep this in the news. Maybe somebody will see or hear or read about it and divulge something they wouldn’t tell the cops. Say, why not pick up Sarah and come over—if she’s up to it, that is.”

“I’ll check
—if she’s talking to me, that is.” He hesitated, then continued. “I guess Angela told you we’d been having some problems.”

Jackson
nodded.

“Well, it got pretty nasty a couple of weeks ago .
. . it was right after that last trip with y’all out on Old Hickory Lake. You remember,” Herb said, “We all probably had too much to drink. All but Angela, that is. Well, we got home, and Sarah started right in on me for not trying very hard to find a steady job. You know what this economy’s like. But I was half-drunk and overreacted. I swear, I almost felt like hitting her.”

The
last sentence felt like a death sentence for his marriage, and his shoulders slumped. Jackson put a hand on his shoulder to say something sympathetic, but Herb beat him to it.

“Aw
, man. I’m feeling sorry for myself and look what you’re dealing with. You’re a rock, Jack. You inspire me. Life’s too short. I’m going home and talk to Sarah and straighten this mess out right now, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Jackson Stone recognized Clarkston, several other reporters, and me in the visitation room. I flipped through the registration book. Reporter Shelley Finklestein and Casey the photographer were on the other side of the room. The TV station cameramen took strategic spots about a dozen feet in front of the lectern where their microphones were scrunched together. Shelley and I added our microcassette recorders to the pile, all aimed at Stone as he stepped forward.

“I know this isn’t something the media hears very often, but thank you for the professional manner in which you all conducted yourselves during the visitation a
nd services. It was a fitting, emotional, and proper farewell to my darling wife, Angela, whom I know I’ll see again someday in heaven. Our family has suffered through a tragic week, and my comments yesterday reflected that nightmare. Clearly, none of you—nor my attorney, nor the police, nor my fellow Nashvillians—expected that reaction, and I didn’t anticipate some of the backlash I’ve encountered.”

Hi
s anger rose close to the level reached when Chief King visited earlier that morning. He pondered calling out King in his press conference and decided against it. As he needed the media, Jackson might someday require the help of the cops—and didn’t wish to alienate them.

But that was in the future
, and for now Jackson focused on the next phase of his plan.

The idea to use his advertising skills to honor Angela
had popped into his head earlier that morning.

It was a peaceful drive back from the cabin to
West Meade and the perfect time to think about acting as a force for good in her memory. He thought Angela might approve of that use of her name, even if she disapproved of the method he used to keep the spotlight focused on her death. Jackson looked around the room. He had the media hanging on every word, waiting to hear his next outlandish statement. We didn’t wait long.

“I said it yesterday
, and I’ll say it again now. I’m not interested in justice. I will find the animal that killed my wife and burn his eyes out with a hot poker.”

In that instant, no trace of the fog-headed,
sympathetic widower remained. Only a cold-blooded, ruthless avenger. Menace hung in the air.

“
A quick death won’t happen, whoever and wherever you are. Preying on defenseless women, does that make you feel like a man? Let’s see how you do against me. You know where I live, tough guy. Anytime, anywhere. Gutless.” He spat out the last word before changing his tenor. “Now I’ve saved some money and if anybody out there has any—”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Allenby shouted from the back of the room as he strode to the
lectern and all but pushed Jackson aside, “you must forgive Mister Stone for his emotional outburst. He just buried his wife and is under great strain. I hope you all take that into consideration when you file your stories. But this press conference is over. Now.”

“That’s bull
,” Jackson shouted as Allenby grabbed and pushed him toward the door. Allenby, a Navy officer thirty years ago, clamped his iron grip on the nape of Jackson’s neck and pulled him down nose-to-nose and whispered in harsh tones. The fight left Jackson as he obeyed marching orders and calmed down. It made, as they say, for great television.

Away from the microphones,
the shocked reporters viewed a heated dressing-down from the bulldog lawyer and angry gesticulations from Stone. In the back of the room, Darrin Jensen flipped open his cell phone and speed-dialed his boss, who’d just sat down to lunch. “Chief, you won’t believe what’s happening.”

Allenby approached
the microphones as the transfixed media waited to see what transpired next. Jackson straightened his tie and smoothed down his hair. Looking disheveled and acting crazy would not do. His rage had gotten the better of him, and despite the way Allenby treated him in front of the cameras and reporters, Jackson appreciated his being there. The fit of anger evaporated, and it might make him a more sympathetic figure to the public, Jackson thought, going into his spin-doctor advertising mogul mode. Allenby took off his glasses and wiped at smudges before beginning.

“Since I don’t know all of you, let me introduce myself. My name is Stan Allenby
, and I am Jackson Stone’s attorney . . . and his friend. Against my advice, Jackson wants to continue this press conference. I can’t stop him, and I can’t tell you what to write or say.” Allenby paused and glanced at Jackson before addressing the media as if addressing the jury instead. “But it would be a mischaracterization to paint Jack Stone as some obsessed, revenge-minded, Rambo-type lunatic whose stated desire to find his wife’s killer makes him a public menace. An upstanding citizen, Jack has served his country proudly and his community well. A terrible tragedy has now taken place, and he is grieving and expressing his anger. Does he want to find the person who killed his wife? Of course. Would he take the law into his own hands and resort to torture if he were to find the murderer? Of course not. Jackson is a law-abiding citizen who respects the police and wants to see his wife’s killer caught in a swift, timely manner and then prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The persuasive lawyer then turned all his
oratory skills on the media, addressing each of us as if we were jurors, not journalists.

“Mister Clarkston, have you ever lost a loved one to a horrific crime?” he asked.
“How about you, Mister Hilliard? Or you, Ms. Jones? Or any of the rest of you? Have any of you ever arrived home late one night to discover no one home, then go upstairs and find your bedroom splattered in blood?”

Jackson chewed at his lower lip and visibly shook as his attorney continued.

“I pray to God none of you ever walk in Jackson Stone’s shoes over such an act of violence. Unfortunately, it happens every day somewhere across the U.S.A., and everyone deals with tragedy in his own way. Jackson is emotional right now and has every right to be angry.”

Allenby sipped at a
glass of water. He hoped the media would swallow his explanation and continued closing arguments in the media versus Jackson Stone.

“I’d be worried about him if
Jackson wasn’t upset, grief-stricken, outraged, and to a certain degree vindictive,” Allenby said. “The difference is that most citizens don’t call a press conference to express that outrage. Jackson has done so, and struck a raw nerve with the media, the police, and his fellow Tennesseans. I’ll now turn this over to Jack, who gives me his personal assurance that he will cooperate with the police in every step of this investigation in every way.”

As
Allenby moved back to his right and Jackson stepped to the lectern, nobody noticed the police spokesman in the back of the room talking into his cell phone.

“Yes
sir, you heard that okay? This is Stone,” Jensen said, taking a seat on the back row and holding aloft his cell phone so Chief King could listen in on the press conference.

Wolfe worked up a good sweat while dragging Sarah’s body down to the basement. The stairs creaked and groaned with every step. She’s going to commit suicide, the poor thing, he giggled. Her husband said she’d been depressed since the death of her best friend. Herb could testify to her recent mental state. It sounded like he might even be happy she disappeared
.
Wolfe threw the piece of rope over the old plumbing pipes near the washing machine, looping the end around again and fashioning a noose. He figured a broken neck and a rope around her throat would cover up the way she died. He grunted as he lifted the body, so he could slip her head in the noose. That’s when he heard the back door open and close.

“Sarah
, I’m home. I hope you’re not still in bed. We need to talk,” Herb said.

Wolfe
lowered her body to the floor and crept up the basement steps, cracking open the door into the kitchen.

“Sarah?” Herb’s voice echoed from the bedroom or maybe the bathroom.
He tried a gentler tone. “Where are you, hon?”

Footsteps approached from down the hall
, and Wolfe ducked out of view on the far side of the refrigerator.

“
What great timing. I decided his death would be what drove Wifey to commit suicide,” Wolfe would write in his diary entry of Fletcher’s last trip home.

Herb re-entered the kitchen and looked aroun
d. The lid of the mustard jar lay on the granite counter, the twist-tie to the loaf of bread on the floor. He saw the basement door ajar

and wondered if she might be downstairs doing a load of laundry.

“Sarah, you down there?” he said, opening the door and flipping on the lights.

Wolfe
squatted and waited until Herb reached the door before rising, then tapped Fletcher on the left shoulder. Expecting to see Sarah, Herb got the shock of his life, or what remained of it. The odd man in the visitation line stood right behind Herb in
his
house.

An evil smirk touched the wide-open, gleaming eyes
. “Have a nice trip, Herb.”

Wolfe
gave Herb a hard, two-handed shove down the steps.

H
e thought it comical the way Herb’s eyes popped open so wide and his arms flailed like windmills as he tried to balance to no avail. Tipping over backwards, Herb’s head cracked hard on the edge of the fifth step and bounced off the next three before splitting open on the concrete floor. Just like a small melon smacked with a mallet by that half-crazed comedian Gallagher. Momentum had carried heels over head in a bizarre death somersault.

Wolfe’
s hands shot over his head, holding an imaginary sign.

“A perfect ten.” His laugh bordered
somewhere between hysteria and insanity. “Way to stick that landing, Herbie.”

Wolfe
worked fast. He turned and grabbed a carving knife out of the utensil drawer, then headed down the stairs. Neighbors could return home from the funeral any minute. After several minutes, he stood and surveyed his handiwork. Herb’s twisted body lay at the bottom of the stairs with the knife sticking out of his back between the third and fourth ribs. The bloody knife bore Sarah’s fingerprints all over it. Sarah’s body hung limp in the noose. Her dress was torn in several places and deep scratches marred the left side of his face. Red fingernails, but not from polish, and damning evidence caked under them. Wolfe grinned.

Now for the coup de grace.

H
e slipped out the back door and used the shrubbery wall to cover his swift trip next door to the Stones’ house. He picked the back lock and entered the same way as when he assaulted Angela eleven days before.

Light on his fe
et and careful not to leave traces of his second visit, Wolfe made his way to the upstairs bedroom and took three pairs of Angela’s underwear from the lingerie drawer. He then slipped back downstairs and out the back, relocking the door and leaving no evidence of his brazen daylight panty raid. Wolfe put one pair in Sarah’s purse in the upstairs den, then went to the master bedroom and put a pair in Herb’s sock drawer, stuffing them in the back where investigators would be certain to find them. The third pair he took back downstairs with him. He bent over Herb’s body and shoved the bikini briefs into Herb’s mouth the way an angry, humiliated, jealous wife would after she discovered indisputable evidence of her husband’s torrid affair with her best friend.

Wolfe
imagined how the investigation would all play out. Sarah confronted Herb with her suspicions. He denied all accusations until shown what she found. Wolfe could hear Sarah asking if he killed Angela. And Herb lashed out! He struck Sarah and chased her through the house, knocking over a lamp and other items. In the kitchen, Sarah got hold of the knife and stabbed Herb. And then she pushed the staggering man down the stairs. Finally, in her moment of despair over just what she’d done, Sarah hung herself. Yes, that’s just how it happened.

Wolfe
slipped out the back, and made his way to his old car. At the fleabag motel, he took a long hot shower then tossed his blood-splattered shirt and the Latex gloves in separate garbage bins.