January's Betrayal (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 3) Page 5

  “You were friends with Jeffrey Ayers?”

  She took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “More than friends?”

  “Yeah, more than friends. We were going steady.” Candace said the last bit with irony and a hearty laugh. She probably wasn’t any older than me, but life had already ridden her hard.

  “Wayne said that you could tell me why Jeffrey couldn’t have been the rapist.”

  “Wayne talks too much.” I thought that was all she was going to say, but then she went on. “My fault for pouring my heart out to that blabber-mouth. If any of you had asked me, I’d have sworn on a stack of Bibles that Jeffrey Ayers couldn’t rape no woman.” She suddenly seemed to be enjoying the dramatic effect of the moment. I realized that she was going to make me ask.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Why couldn’t he have raped those women? Was he impotent?” Not that that would prove anything. Some rapists were impotent with their girlfriends or wives, but they were perfectly capable when they attacked other women.

  Candace got up. “Follow me.”

  I got up and followed her warily through a dark hallway. When we came to a door, she stopped and seemed to think for a moment before flinging it open. Inside was a large king size bed with ropes and handcuffs strapped to all four posts. Various whips, ropes and chains hung on the walls throughout the room. I looked from the room to Candace.

  “It’s my thing.” She shrugged.

  I can’t say I was that shocked. During the time I was on patrol, I went into a lot of people’s houses and saw a lot of strange things. Once we had to rescue a guy who’d dressed himself head to toe in a rubber suit and then couldn’t get out of his bathtub.

  “And what exactly does this have to do with Jeffrey Ayers?”

  She sighed heavily and headed back toward the living room. When we were seated again she explained, “He was my boyfriend for five years. I wanted him to tie me up, whip me, even choke me. Nothin’. The few times that we tried it, he couldn’t get hard. He was just a nice guy, a really nice guy.

  “I got so frustrated toward the end of our relationship that I tried to piss him off. It worked a couple times. Once he even grabbed me. When he did that… Well, it didn’t excite him, if you know what I mean. In fact, he had a panic attack and it took me the rest of the evening to calm him down.” She sighed again, as though just the memory of it exhausted her.

  “Having it offered to you isn’t necessarily the same as stalking someone and assaulting them.”

  “You don’t get it… Or you don’t want to get it. The guy could screw. He liked it, but only if we talked sweet and hugged. At his house… Did you look in his room?”

  We’d searched his room when he was brought in for questioning. I’d actually helped go through his stuff. “Yes,” I said, not knowing where she was going with this.

  “Did you find anything unusual?” she asked, eyebrows lifted.

  I thought back. I remembered that his room was cluttered. “I know there weren’t any whips or chains.”

  “Damn right. You didn’t find anything you thought odd to be in a grown man’s room?”

  “There were some kid’s toys,” I remembered.

  “Big stuffed giraffe? A tiger?”

  “I remember the tiger. So?”

  “He slept with those. Any odd books?”

  “There were a lot of romances. I assumed they were his mother’s.”

  “You assumed wrong. The man was sweet. Really too sweet for my taste. When I first saw all that, I thought he was a fruit or something. But no, just a soft, cuddly oaf. Any woman who knew him would never, ever believe he could sexually attack someone. You all screwed the pooch with that one.”

  I thought about that. We went in looking for evidence to support our belief that he was involved in the attacks and skipped over all the odd stuff. And it made sense that he wouldn’t have used his own tenderness as a defense. He’d probably spent most of his life hiding it from other guys. What guy wants to admit that he sleeps with stuffed animals and reads romance novels? And would we have believed him anyway?

  “But we did release him. We realized he didn’t do it,” I said in our defense.

  “But now one of your deputies shot him ’cause he thought he’d attacked another woman. I don’t know much, but I know that Jeffrey Ayers didn’t attack that woman, sexually or otherwise.”

  We looked at each other for a moment. I believe her, and that changes everything, I thought.

  “You can shut the door on your way out,” Candace said, lighting another cigarette from the stub of the one she took out of her mouth.

  When I checked my phone there was a text from Dad asking me to come by his house at lunch. I was well aware that it said “at lunch” and not “for lunch.” Dad had a basic philosophy that it was every man for himself when it came to food and drink.

  Pete was going over reports from the night before. Even though we were working on the double shooting, we still had other cases to follow up on. Since the shooting was high priority and was going to involve a lot of our time, we needed to clear the others out of the way. Lt. Johnson had agreed to take us off of the on-call rotation, while letting us know that we’d be doing double duty in the future to make up for it.

  “I’ll have these finished up in no time. Luckily, Matt picked up that drug-related homicide a couple of weeks ago. I wouldn’t want to have to be dealing with that right now.”

  Hearing Matt’s name reminded me of our other grim outstanding issue. I wondered if that’s what Dad wanted to meet with me about.

  “By the way, how’d your meeting with Candace go?” Pete asked. I took him to the conference room and filled him in.

  “Damn,” he sighed.

  “Now you know why I wanted us to talk in here.”

  “Yeah, there are enough media vultures interested in picking the corpses clean. Not that I think someone in our office would give them the information.”

  “Of course not. They’d be sure to sell or trade it,” I said, only half joking.

  “Sad state of affairs.” Pete shook his head dramatically. “I had Edwards go door to door last night when he had some downtime, checking the houses close to the shopping center to see if anybody heard or saw anything.”

  “And…?”

  “A couple people think they heard the shots, but aren’t sure.”

  “Sounds very helpful,” I said sarcastically. Eye- and ear-witnesses are only useful in a small percentage of cases. That doesn’t mean that prosecutors and defense attorneys don’t use them in most cases. They use them for the very reason that they aren’t usually reliable. Witnesses can be suggestible and they often have their own agendas. A lot of the time they just want to be helpful, but that in itself is problematic. When you’re investigating a crime, you don’t want a witness to tell you what they think you want to hear, but often that’s just what they do.

  “We should check them out anyway,” Pete said. He loved talking to people, which was one of the reasons he was as good an investigator as he was.

  Then Pete got real quiet.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “We’ve got a mess. I’m convinced that Ayers didn’t assault those women. So the question now is, did he kill Angie Maitland? Maybe. But why was he lying on top of her, if he wasn’t capable of rape? And why didn’t he just drive her behind the store after abducting her from the bank?”

  “And how did a deputy who is a crap shot manage to get off two shots on a moving target under stress? I checked his gun and magazine and those were the only two rounds fired.” I could hear the frustration in Pete’s voice

  “And if Nichols is lying, why? And about how much? Maybe he came up on Angie and Jeffrey while they were having some sort of affair, recognized Ayers, thought that he was assaulting her and killed him.”

  “And then killed Angie? That seems a little far-fetched. Why didn’t she have more bruises or show signs of a struggle?” Pete wo
ndered.

  “Nichols holds the gun on her and has her wrap the rope around her neck. Then he strangles her with it.”

  “Maybe.” Pete didn’t sound convinced. “We need to interview Nichols. I think he’s had enough time to get himself together. I’ll call him and ask him to come in this afternoon.”

  “Just let me know when. I’ve got to go meet Dad for lunch,” I said, getting up from the table.

  Chapter Eight

  When I pulled up to his house, I could see Dad walking out to the barn. He looked up and gave me a small wave. As I followed Dad to the barn, Mauser came bounding from the back of the house and almost knocked me down with his ridiculously enthusiastic winter greeting. If it had been summer, I’d have only received a couple of barks from the shade of the house.

  “We eating hay?”

  “What?” Dad asked distractedly as he got a halter off the rack and an alfalfa cube from a bucket of treats by the door.

  “You invited me to lunch,” I pointed out.

  “Working lunch, without the food,” he said soberly. It was clear that he wasn’t going to be kidded into a good mood. He went to the gate that separated the barn from the turnout and called for Finn and Mac.

  “Grab Mac’s halter,” he told me.

  “I’m wearing my good clothes,” I pointed out.

  “You’ve got some old ones in the house. Go change and I’ll help get Mac ready for you.”

  I looked around, trying to come up with an excuse, but nothing came to mind. Better just relax and go with it, I thought. The weather was beautiful for January, a brisk sixty degrees and a clear blue sky from one horizon to the next. There were worse ways to spend the next hour.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said as Finn and Mac, a pair of seven year-old bays, came cantering up to the gate.

  By the time I’d changed into jeans, a thermal shirt and a corduroy jacket and made it back to the barn, Dad had both the horses brushed and Finn was saddled. I finished up with Mac and we led them outside.

  The horses, a rare set of twins out of champion old-stock American Quarter Horses, had been given to Dad by a grateful friend. Dad had tracked down and recovered the man’s stolen horse trailer and a large amount of tack. They were named after the mythical Irish folk hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and had very different personalities. Finn was curious, courageous to the point of recklessness and was constantly restless under saddle, ready to break into a canter at the first request. Mac, on the other hand, lived for mealtimes, was always happy to be twenty paces behind his brother and took a nap at every opportunity.

  “Wanted a little saddle time before the parade.” Dad answered my unasked question, referring to the upcoming Great Americans parade in Calhoun. I also knew that riding took him away from his troubles. My grandfather had had a mean streak when he was drunk and Dad learned early that a horse was a great way to put some distance between himself and an ugly situation.

  We headed out on a trail that went around the pasture and into an area of longleaf pines and palmettos. I trotted Mac a little to catch up to Dad and Finn.

  “You all find out anything?” he asked when I finally came abreast.

  “Just that Ayers didn’t rape those women,” I said, relishing the reaction I’d get. I wasn’t disappointed. Dad’s head whipped around and he looked me square in the eye, trying to tell if I was making a joke.

  “How can you be sure?” he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “What I’ve found out isn’t evidence, but it’s pretty solid. Ayers was a big baby. His ex-girlfriend said that he couldn’t even pretend to be aggressive and get it up.”

  “Could she be protecting him?”

  “Didn’t come across that way at all. I think we can find other people who’d back her up.”

  “But it’s anecdotal.”

  “Afraid so. Funny how that can be more convincing than hard evidence sometimes,” I said, as much to myself as to Dad.

  “True. People have core values, and it takes a lot for them to go against their own nature.” He paused. “Knowing he wasn’t the rapist makes me feel better. But it creates a whole ’nother set of problems.”

  “Exactly. Pete and I have raised the question of who the rapist was back up to the top of the list, just below who killed Angie Maitland. And, of course, those may or may not be the same person.”

  “You and Pete can have all the resources and time you need. I’ll tell Lt. Johnson not to give you all any other cases for a couple of weeks. I can always move someone off of patrol to handle some of the burglaries and auto thefts.”

  “We’re on it,” I said sincerely.

  “I know that and I appreciate it.” He was quiet for a couple of minutes. I encouraged Mac to keep up. I could tell there was something else on Dad’s mind.

  “I checked over the report on Matt’s movements,” he finally said, not looking at me. “It doesn’t look good. He’s up to something… I’m going to open Finn up a little.”

  That was said as a warning. As soon as Dad gave Finn his head and put a little bit of leg on him, the horse launched into a canter. I pushed Mac into a faster trot and finally a reluctant canter, trying to at least keep Finn and Dad in sight.

  We wound our way through the pine trees and palmettos. Mac was sweating and blowing by the time Dad reined Finn in. Honestly, I was panting a little too. Riding is more work than most people realize.

  “I thought I’d better put him through his paces a little before the parade. You’re going to be riding in it this year.”

  “That sounds like an order,” I joked.

  “It is,” he deadpanned. “This is an election year. I’m putting pressure on all of the posse to be there.”

  The Adams County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse was one quarter ceremonial and three quarters practical. Made up of volunteers with their own horses, the posse was vital for searching for missing persons or for hunting evidence in terrain where cars or even four-wheelers couldn’t go.

  “Bob’s got them looking pretty good,” Dad said. Bob Muller was a retired deputy with a love of horses and law enforcement who’d volunteered to be the posse’s coordinator.

  “I’ll be there. At least it’s only the one parade.”

  Five years ago there had been two parades within a month—one for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the other for Presidents’ Day. The county sheriff, the city police, the fire department and all the rest of the city and county departments had had to participate in both parades. The cost and time drove both governments crazy, but politically they had no choice. The two parades were basically segregated, with both sides of the civilian population refusing to celebrate with the other. Finally the Presbyterian minister and the good reverend from Bethel First Christian Church got together and came up with a plan to consolidate the parades. Their proposal called for a Great Americans parade that would fall between MLK Day and Presidents’ Day. The city council and the county commission gaveled the motion through so fast that it was a done deal before anyone had a chance to nitpick it to death. Honestly, I considered it one of our local governments’ proudest moments.

  We reached the far end of the trail and began to circle back. Mac knew we were headed home and was now more than willing to keep up with Finn.

  “What are you going to do about Matt?” I finally asked.

  “He’s been hanging out in some seedy parts of the county. One place he’s been spending time is about half a block from the Sweet Spot,” Dad said through tight lips.

  I knew that betrayal was the one thing that could drive him to violence. I’d once watched him break his fist slamming it into a wall. The wall had been a stand-in for a captain who’d disobeyed an order and purposely sent his men into a situation that could have gotten them killed.

  “I’ll call Eddie and see if he has any new information.” Eddie was my one and only confidential informant.

  “Do you really think he’s trustworthy?” Dad asked.

  “I do.”

 
“But he’s a Thompson,” he said, referring to one of the largest and more notorious families in the county. They weren’t all bad, but they were all strange, and more than a few of them were involved in the local drug trade.

  “I told you, he has personal reasons as well as financial ones for helping me.”

  Eddie, the grandson of the Thompson patriarch, was also a cross-dresser who had been emotionally and physically abused by his family. He’d know all about the Sweet Spot. It was a dive bar that, on any Saturday night, saw more drug sales than the Walgreens did in a month. Most of the drugs were distributed by a black gang, but the drugs were imported, cut and managed by members and associates of the Thompson clan. This had been on Dad’s radar for a few years now, but he’d never been able to get enough evidence on them to make the charges stick.

  “I’m not sure you and I can handle the situation with Matt,” Dad said, sounding pessimistic.

  “You could let a few more of our people in on this.”

  “Not yet. I want some clear evidence before I reveal this pile of crap.”

  I trusted Dad’s instincts. He had been a good deputy and a great investigator because he knew when to bring the curtain down on any given situation. That’s one of the hardest calls to make as a law enforcement officer. Bust the door down too soon and you won’t catch all the bad guys; do it too late and a firestorm erupts and people get hurt.

  “Talk to your informant and let me know if he has anything. One way or another, we need to get in closer and get a clear picture of what Matt is doing,” he said through more gritted teeth.

  Mauser greeted us as we came back to the barn, his big brown eyes asking if it was lunch time yet.

  “You ate breakfast and went back to bed, and I know you didn’t move while we were gone. How the hell can you be that hungry?” Dad asked him. Mauser went over to the shade and fell over, pretending to die of starvation. Finally I saw Dad smile.