Chasing The Dead

Chapter Twenty-Six

Alex followed Rossi, both of them shooting past slower-moving vehicles. The sky had opened, hammering them with sheets of rain that reduced visibility until Alex could barely see Rossi’s taillights. She stayed with him, not wanting him to question Mathew Woodrell or Jared alone.

She opened her phone, put it on speaker, and called Grace Canfield.

“It’s me, Alex. What have you found on Mathew Woodrell?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“Not good. No luck in the probate clerk’s office?”

“That was my first stop. No one fitting his description was there yesterday or the day before or as long as anyone could remember. I called the Kansas City Veterans Affairs office and they’d never heard of him. My husband has an uncle who was in the Eighty-Second Airborne. They’ve got their own veterans association. He checked their membership directory. There were a couple of guys named Mathew Woodrell, but they’ve been dead for years.”

“Shit!”

“What’s the problem?” Grace asked.

“He just tried to kill Jared Bell.”

“Get out! How could he do that? Jared’s in jail.”

“Tell me about it,” Alex said and clicked off the call.

Ten minutes later, Alex parked behind Rossi in metered spaces in front of the jail. Rossi ignored the meters but Alex couldn’t bring herself to do that, searching her glove box for change and jamming quarters into the coin slot, getting soaked in the process. She raced into the building, cursing that she’d let Rossi get the jump on her, only to find him standing in the first-floor lobby talking to Kalena Greene.

Kalena was wearing the kind of black sheath dress designers promised would take you through the day and the night. Her makeup was perfect and her nails were freshly done. Reliably fashion-unconscious, Alex cringed, knowing her bedraggled, wet-rat look was even worse than usual compared to Kalena. That normally wouldn’t have bothered her, but Kalena was sporting more than fashion; she was radiating authority, something Alex had to undermine or risk being shoved aside. She joined them, interrupting their conversation.

“How’s my client? Is he okay? I want to see him immediately and I want to know how there could have been such a breakdown in security.”

Kalena took the interruption in stride. “Short story, your client is fine. He was stabbed in the neck, but he’s going to be okay. They stitched him up and he’s in isolation until we figure this thing out.”

“What about Mathew Woodrell?” Alex asked. “I met him yesterday at the courthouse. How’d he end up in jail today and why did he attack my client?”

“I can answer the first part of your question,” Kalena said. “Late yesterday afternoon, he walked into a liquor store, aimed a gun at the cashier, and walked out with a fistful of money and kept walking until the police arrested him a couple of blocks from the store.”

Alex shook her head. “Unbelievable. He seemed like a harmless old guy.”

“Not so harmless,” Kalena said. “Half an hour after he got on the men’s floor, he came up behind your client and stabbed him in the neck.”

“With what?”

“His glasses, if you can believe that.”

“Like in the third Godfather movie,” Rossi said, “when Michael Corleone’s kid is getting baptized and his henchmen are busy knocking off Corleone’s enemies. I think it was the Vatican’s banker that got killed that way, only the killer used the banker’s glasses. Woodrell used his own. Must have been pretty sharp glasses.”

“Wait until you see them,” Kalena said. “He filed down the ends of the frame on each side until they were like a shiv. Then he covered the ends with rubber caps, the kind you’d use to keep your glasses from sliding off.”

“Smart,” Rossi said. “The kind of thing that no one is going to check.”

“They will from now on,” Kalena said. “Jared was lucky. When Woodrell jumped him, Jared threw an elbow that knocked Woodrell to the floor. Otherwise, it would have been worse than the proverbial flesh wound.”

“But why?” Alex said. “Why try to kill Jared?”

Kalena sighed. “That’s the next crazy part of this. The corrections officers subdued Woodrell, put him in a single cell, and called the police and my office. Standard procedure when something like this happens.”

“Dispatch called me because Jared Bell is my case,” Rossi said.

“And I got here first. He’s waived his right to counsel but he won’t answer my questions.”

“Why not?” Alex asked.

“Because he says he’ll only talk to you.”

“Why me?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Kalena led them to a room on the second floor. A corrections officer was stationed outside the room and another was inside. Woodrell was seated at a table, legs and wrists shackled, his wrists cuffed to a steel hoop bolted to the table. He’d transformed from the dapper gentleman she’d met at the courthouse to an unshaven, disheveled, jumpsuit-clad inmate, though he was just as calm.

There were two chairs on the opposite side of the table. Kalena and Alex each took a seat. Rossi stood in the corner.

Alex thought for a moment, deciding where to start. An effective interrogation depended on either fear or trust. Woodrell had no reason to fear her, and his insistence on talking to her suggested he trusted her. Though they’d spoken only briefly the day before, she must have made a favorable impression, so that was where she’d begin.

“So, Mathew. Yesterday you told me that you wouldn’t need a criminal defense lawyer, but it looks like you do.”

“No,” he said, his voice quiet and sure, “I don’t.”

“How can you say that? You committed an armed robbery yesterday and today you assaulted someone with a deadly weapon.”

“I’m guilty of both, which makes a lawyer unnecessary, don’t you think?”

Alex shook her head. “It makes it even more important that you have a lawyer. Since the person you assaulted is my client, I can’t represent you. If you can’t afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for you.”

“Yes, yes, Ms. Stone. I know all about my rights. Ms. Greene read them to me and we had a nice discussion about them, after which I signed a waiver.”

“Fair enough, then. Ms. Greene said you wouldn’t answer her questions but that you would answer mine. Why is that?”

“Because there are things you need to know.”

“Such as?”

“Your client is a murderer.”

“My client has been charged with murder. He hasn’t been convicted.”

“I’m not talking about that woman in the creek.”

Alex cocked her head at him. “Then what murder are you talking about?”

“My daughter. Jared Bell raped and murdered my daughter.”