No way out

Chapter Sixty-four

The Municipal Farm felt like a summer camp gone to seed compared to the Jackson County Jail with its two-person cells, barred slits cut high in the cell wall masquerading as windows, armed guards, and body cavity searches. I left my driver’s license and gun with a sheriff’s deputy, pocketing my claim check, and followed another deputy to a room where Jimmy was waiting. The room was not much bigger than a closet, with a wall-to-wall table and glass panel subdividing it and a phone we could use to talk to one another, someone else listening and watching, sight unseen.

He was shackled, hands and legs, his face bruised, his nose bent, probably broken, the down payment he’d made for attempted escape and assault with a deadly weapon. Twice before when I’d seen him at the Farm, he had carried himself with a swagger, relishing his defiance of the system, certain he could do the time and thumb his nose at his wife, the court, and anyone else who tried to tell him what to do. That was gone, the chains and the beating he’d taken bowing his stiff neck, leaving him tense, looking over his shoulder even though we were alone. He sank onto his chair, cradling the phone on his shoulder, anxious and jittery.

Adrienne Nardelli had questioned him and gotten nothing. Kate had tried manipulating him, then trusting him, and had a bandage on her neck to show for her trouble. It was my turn.

“You don’t look so good,” I told him.

“Bad night.”

“Escape and assault aren’t exactly good career moves.”

“Like mine was going anywhere.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, Frank Crenshaw and Nick Staley were in the same boat, career-wise, that is.”

He flicked his eyes at me, then down at the table. “I wouldn’t know nothing about that.”

“’Course you wouldn’t. How do you see this whole thing working out for you now?”

“What’s it to you?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. I won’t lose any sleep over you. I’m just wondering how you see your options now that you’ve tacked two big-time felonies onto your theft charge. Your lawyer might have been able to get you a decent deal on the theft, maybe even probation, but now you’re looking at a serious stretch. And the whole thing with your kids, you not helping with finding them, the judge is going to screw you down tighter than tight.”

“I did what I did. Can’t do nothing about it.”

“True, but doing the time is the least of your problems.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying your biggest problem is living long enough to do the time. Nick Staley is dead.”

He squirmed in his chair, his color up and his eyes wide, then narrow and wary.

“Too bad.”

“You interested in how it happened?”

“Make a difference?”

“Not to Nick, maybe to you because he didn’t die peacefully surrounded by family and friends. He was shot to death in the middle of the night at his store.”

He sucked in a quick breath, pushing it out, fighting to stay calm. “Dead is dead. Got nothing to do with me.”

“Actually, I think it does. See, I’ve been piecing this together, trying to figure out what was going on between you and Nick and Frank Crenshaw.”

“Nothing’s going on. I knew them, that’s all.”

“A lot better than you let on. That’s the way it is in Northeast. Everybody knows everybody, at least that’s true for the families that have lived there a long time and you’re third generation.”

He jolted forward in his chair, the phone falling into his lap, fumbling with shackled wrists to pick it up.

“What if I did, so what?”

“So you lied about your relationships with them or at least you tried to make it sound like you hardly knew them, and there has to be a reason for a man to lie about a simple thing like that. Only reason I can think of is that the three of you were into something you wanted to keep private, something illegal, like stealing copper so that Frank could sell it for scrap.”

“I got nothing to say about that. You’re not my lawyer.”

“The three of you didn’t have two quarters to rub together. Frank and Nick were going out of business, and you were out of work. Stealing was one way to get by, and construction materials made sense because Frank could move the stuff for you. But what was in it for Nick? Why cut him in on it when he’s not taking any risk or bringing anything to the table? So I think maybe it’s just the two of you, you and Frank. Then someone killed Frank and Nick, which leaves you the last man standing, only you’re at the Farm, where it’s not as hard to kill a man as you might think. A Mexican kid named Ricky Suarez lands there on a drunk and disorderly, you get into it with him before he has a chance to say hello, and the next day you try to escape. There’s no way to paint that picture that makes you anything but a marked man.”

“I got antsy, that’s all. Saw a chance and took it,” he said.

“You told Kate Scranton that you knew you couldn’t escape and that you just wanted off the Farm. Only county lockup isn’t my idea of an upgrade. Lot more bad guys in here, guys who’d put a shank in your back as a favor or just because they’re bored. Man has to be pretty damned scared to take a chance like that, and after what’s happened to Crenshaw and Staley, I’d say you had good reason.”

He looked around again, licked his lips, and edged closer to the glass, his voice a whisper.

“I thought they’d put me in solitary.”

“Where you’d be safe.”

“Safer, anyway.”

“From who? Ricky Suarez, the Mexican kid?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. How could you not know?”

“Listen, I’m telling you,” he said, his shoulders hunched. “I don’t know. I just did my part and kept my mouth shut. I learned how to follow orders in the Army.”

“What was your part?”

“Steal the copper. Frank said he could move it, no problem; just mix it in with a bunch of different loads of scrap. We’d done it a couple of other times, small loads, just to see if we could make it work, pick up a few bucks, and it went okay, so Frank, he says it’s time to go big. I got a buddy working a job east of downtown. He tells me there’s no weekend security on account of the general contractor is going broke and laid them off. Saturday comes, and I drive right onto the site, load my truck, and I’m gone. Not twenty minutes later, some eager-beaver shit-head nigger with a badge pulls me over because I’ve got an expired tag. Can you believe the shit that happens to me, man?”

“Doesn’t seem right.”

“You’re damned straight it isn’t right!” he said, catching himself, pulling back and shutting down, realizing I was pimping him.

“What happened between you and Ricky Suarez?”

“Nothing.”

“How did Frank Crenshaw get his gun?”

He stared past me if I weren’t there.

“Who was giving the orders?”

He turned his head and coughed, looking at the ceiling.

“You left your house with Evan and Cara at eight-thirty in the morning, and you were busted four hours later. I don’t think that was enough time to kill them, bury them, and load your truck with stolen copper. You figured you’d do the job and go get them. Tell me where you left them. It may not be too late.”

He folded his arms across his chest, turned his head away, not saying a word. I let the silence work on him, watched him start to squirm, realizing at last there was another possibility.

“Look at you, Jimmy. You haven’t had it easy. Guy like you gets hit a lot growing up by an old man whose old man hit him a lot, I’d bet my last nickel that you’d do the same to your kids. That’s the way it works. We become the people we hate. And you’re full of hate and mad at everyone. I get that. But the people I talked to say you loved your kids; that you lived for them. That may be the one and only good thing about you. A man like that wouldn’t hurt his kids and wouldn’t just dump them while he pulls a job. No, a man like that would leave his kids with someone he trusted to take care of them. Who was it, Jimmy? Who did you give your kids to?”

“Do I look that stupid?”

“You tell me. A gun dealer named Eldon Fowler was robbed up at Lake Perry last month. The thieves were chasing him down a gravel road in the woods when he hit a deer. Fowler died of a heart attack, but that’s enough to make a case for felony murder since he died while a crime was in progress. The crime-scene investigators found paint on the trunk of a tree that came from a Dodge Ram. If Nick Staley, Frank Crenshaw, or you own a Dodge Ram, it won’t be hard to tie you to his death. Be better if you tell me now than if you make the prosecuting attorney put it together.”

His eyes burned, full and wet, as he spat on the floor. “You go to hell.”