Chapter 32
Jojo had layered her clothing when she got dressed the morning after she’d missed getting shot by a bump in the road. It’d been bad enough when her old truck just had a dead heater. But the blown-out window had taken the cold interior to a whole new level.
The ATF had been called in to go over her truck with a microscope. And gratefully, they didn’t have to tear the whole thing apart because the hole in the Navajo blanket and the old vinyl seat behind it showed the obvious location of the bullet that had come crashing through the window.
It was in far better shape than the bullet fragments they’d been able to recover at the ski resort.
But it had smashed into the metal frame of the seat and bore little resemblance to a pristine bullet that had been fired into a water tank leaving crystal-clear striation lines all around it.
The ATF said they might be able to make an ID from it.
It would depend on the rifle they’d be comparing it to.
That was the problem with forensics. They usually didn’t help officers find the perpetrator, were only good for proving in court the accused was the guy who did it.
Meanwhile, Jojo was driving around in a pickup truck with a piece of clear plastic duct-taped over the driver’s side window. She had an appointment at Milligan’s Garage to get the window replaced on Wednesday, but that didn’t do her any good today as she drove into Somerset to meet Conor.
Gratefully, his cruiser was toasty warm as they drove to the Vanguard Construction Company building.
It was on a large plot of land right outside Somerset.
And Jojo could imagine that when the weather was warm, the big bays housing equipment and materials would have been humming with activity.
But, either because of what had happened to Tom Garner, or more likely because the weather was cold, the place was almost deserted.
There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot.
Jojo didn’t know Celeste Simmons, who was Tom Garner’s secretary.
Or administrative assistant—the politically correct term.
But Jojo suspected that Celeste was not a woman who cared what title she was given.
She was what a wife would consider the perfect secretary—short and, charitably speaking, dumpy, with eyes that were too small set in a round face.
Though she didn’t exactly exude competence, when Conor explained why they had come, she demonstrated a command of facts and figures that Jojo was sure had been the reason Tom Garner had kept her in his service for more than twenty years.
She was dry-eyed, and if she was upset by the passing of her boss, she had either gotten over it or was good at hiding it.
She answered their questions matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing a project and Garner would walk through the door at any minute to give it his stamp of approval.
“Let me understand what you’re saying here,” Celeste said, spreading her hands out on her desk in front of her. “You believe that whoever it was who shot all those people was really trying to kill only one person, and the rest were just to cover up that crime?”
“That’s the working theory,” Conor said. “It’s definitely up for debate. But right now, all we can do is trust the process and ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m happy to answer anything you want to know, but?—”
Jojo spoke then for the first time. “You don’t appear to be surprised that we might think Tom Garner was the shooter’s intended victim. Why is that?”
Celeste let out a sigh. “Tom Garner was,” she paused for effect, “difficult.”
“Define difficult.”
“He was a crusty old bird. He could be as hard as granite. He had very high standards, held everyone to account, could not tolerate incompetence. And …” She paused. “Cycled through quite a few employees over the years as a result.”
“So you’re saying he was?—”
“Hard to work for. Yes, he was. He used Amish carpenters a lot because they were contract labor, not employees. They were dependable and trustworthy to a fault. And didn’t appear to mind his gruff exterior.”
“I’d like to circle back to the ‘cycling through employees’ you mentioned,” Conor said. “Can you think of anybody among those employees who had a particular ax to grind against Mr. Garner?”
“Well.” She smiled a little. “It’s kind of a big list. But I’d say at the top of the disgruntled employees list would be Kyle Barnes.”
“Who’s Kyle Barnes and why is that?”
“Not actually Kyle, but his father, Greg. Mr. Garner just won a lawsuit that Greg Barnes had filed against Vanguard Construction Company over the injury of his son. The case was settled a week ago.”
Jojo and Conor exchanged a look.
“Tell us about it,” Conor said.
“Kyle Barnes fell off a roof. And his father claimed it was because his safety harness was defective.”
“Apparently, the jury didn’t buy that explanation.”
“It wasn’t a jury trial. Tom was a cagey old bird, and he knew the sight of an injured man would draw sympathy from a jury. He asked for and got a trial in front of a judge.”
“So, Mr. Barnes thought that Garner’s company was using defective equipment.”
“That was his claim. I remember a year and a half ago, when his son got hurt, he came roaring in here, madder’n dammit. I heard him yelling at Mr. Garner through the office door, and it’s solid oak.”
“Yelling what?”
“That his son would never be the same, that it was Tom’s fault, and he ought to pay for it.”
Celeste Simmons shook her head. “Mr. Barnes could not have made a greater tactical error than to come storming in here making demands. Tom Garner was stubborn, and he was always right. And I think maybe he might have been amenable to some kind of settlement. The boy really was hurt, after all. But, as soon as Mr. Garner was challenged by the boy’s father, it was over.
He would fight to the death, because he had to win. ”
“You say the verdict was just delivered a week ago?”
She nodded. “The trial didn’t last but two days.
I was in the courtroom on the second day.
That was the day that Mr. Garner testified.
And our attorneys had taken a picture of the harness the boy had been wearing the day he was injured.
The picture was right behind the witness stand.
And the harness looked brand new. There certainly wasn’t anything wrong with it.
You could tell by looking at it there wasn’t.
Right before Mr. Garner took the stand, our foreman testified that it wasn’t that the harness didn’t fasten properly.
It was that the kid unfastened it because he couldn’t reach what he was working on with it fastened. ”
“He unhooked the harness himself?”
“Our attorney asked Mr. Garner, ‘Did you or anyone in your company instruct the plaintiff to unclip his harness while he was working that day?’
“Of course Tom said no. And he said that the kid had been warned on three different occasions. It was in the site logs that he’d been told repeatedly not to unclip his harness.
Our attorney”—she shook her head—“he was a shark and he got right down in Mr. Garner’s face and said, ‘Are you telling this court that Kyle Barnes injured himself? That it was his fault?’ And Mr. Garner sat for a few seconds and then he said, ‘My employees are grown men. They behave like grownups. Kyle Barnes was a kid, and he behaved like one, an irresponsible teenager who didn’t follow the rules.
If he hadn’t fallen that day, he wouldn’t have lasted until the end of the week.
The foreman was already working on the paperwork to fire him.
’ The judge only considered the case for two hours and then called everybody back in to announce the verdict. ”
“So, Kyle and his father were in the courtroom when the judge handed down the decision?”
“Yes, and Greg Barnes lost it. Stood up, yelled at Mr. Garner, swore he was going to kill him.”
“He threatened Mr. Garner?”
“Said he’d blow his brains out the first chance he got. The sheriff’s deputies had to haul him out of the courtroom.”
When they stepped back out into the cold, Conor said simply, “Now, we go find out where Kyle Barnes was the night of the shootings.”