Chapter 3
1
Trig expected bad dreams. He expected to see himself putting the gun to the woman’s temple over and over again, on instant replay and in slow motion. The poodle looking up at her as she sagged in his encircling arm, its eyes asking, What’s wrong with my mistress?
There were no bad dreams, at least that he can remember. He slept right through.
Now he makes coffee and pours himself a bowl of cornflakes. Sniffs the milk, decides it’s all right, gives the cornflakes a bath, and sits down to eat. He’s stepped over the line and he feels okay about it. Fine, in fact. Best thing to do, he decides, is go to work like any other day, then move ahead with his real work.
One down, thirteen to go.
He rinses out his bowl and leaves it in the sink. Pours more coffee into an insulated go-cup and leaves his trailer. It’s a nice doublewide in the Elm Grove Trailer Park, which is far out on Martin Luther King Boulevard, just before MLK becomes Route 27 and Upsala County becomes Eden County. Sticksville, in other words.
Mrs. Travers next door is loading her twins into the back of her car. She gives him a wave and Trig returns it. The kids are bundled into identical jackets, because the morning is chilly. They just turned three. Mrs. Travers had a birthday party for them the previous week, outside because the weather was warmer than it is now. She brought Trig a birthday cupcake, which was nice of her.
The twins wave to him, little hands opening and closing. Pretty cute. There’s no man in Melanie Travers’s doublewide, but the missus and her little bundles of joy seem to be doing all right. Trig guesses she has a good job of some kind in the city, plus what some men call hellimony. Trig would never call it that; he’s a man who believes you must pay for your mistakes. His father raised him that way.
Melanie’s got a Lexus, not brand-new but of fairly recent vintage, so yeah—she’s doing all right. Trig is glad for her. Also glad that he didn’t meet her yesterday on the Buckeye Trail. If he had, she’d be dead now. Her children orphans. He follows her in his Toyota out to MLK, follows her as she turns right toward the city. Two miles later she turns left into Wee Folks Daycare.
Trig continues on, leaving the countryside behind. On the radio, the morning DJ is saying last week’s warm weather was just a tease, a cold front is moving in and the next few days are going to be chilly. “Bundle up, Buckeyes!” he says, and then plays “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” by Simon it’s too chilly for that. They eat in a little café called Tessie’s, where they get a corner booth and can watch the pedestrians go by. In Love Plaza across the street, a busker in a motorcycle jacket is playing a guitar. You won’t do much business today , Holly thinks.
Sitting across from her, Izzy says, “Look at you, eating inside just like a big girl. You’re coming out of your Covid shell. That’s good.”
“I’m fully vaccinated,” Holly says, looking at the menu. “Covid, flu, RSV, shingles. Life has to go on.”
“Indeed it does,” Izzy says. “I got the Covid and the flu vaccines together, and they laid me out for two days.”
“Better than being laid out in a funeral parlor,” Holly says. “What do you suppose an Aussie Melt is?”
“I believe it’s lamb with pepper jack cheese and some kind of sauce.”
“That sounds quite tasty. I think I’ll—”
“Bill Wilson wasn’t just a random nut after all. He got one.”
Holly lowers her menu. “Are you talking about the McElroy woman?” She also reads the morning paper. She gets it on her iPad.
“Yes. I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but in the high nineties.”
The waitress comes. Izzy goes for the Reuben, Holly the Aussie Melt. They both order hot drinks, tea for the cop and coffee for the private investigator. Holly has tried to quit coffee, the caffeine sometimes makes her heart jump, but she tells herself that quitting cigarettes is enough for now.
When the waitress is gone, Holly says, “Tell me.”
“It stays between us, right?”
“Of course.”
“We held back some evidence. There was a piece of paper in Annette McElroy’s hand. Printed on it in block letters was a name—Letitia Overton. Does that mean anything to you?”
Holly shakes her head, but files the name away for later consideration.
“Me either. Tom Atta and I have talked to Cary Tolliver, the scumbucket who framed Alan Duffrey.”
“You think he really did that?”
“I do. We also talked to Duffrey’s colleagues at First Lake City, the bank where he worked. Every one of them said they never believed that pedophilia stuff in the first place… but what do you think they said when Duffrey was arrested and put on trial?”
Holly likes to believe the best of people, and does believe there’s good in just about everyone, but her time at Finders Keepers has also taught her that just about everyone has a shitty streak. “Most of them probably said, ‘There was always something weird about him’ and ‘I’m not a bit surprised.’?”
“You bet they did.”
The waitress brings their drinks and says their food will be right out. Izzy waits until she’s gone, then pushes her tea to one side and leans across the table. “We’re assuming it’s Duffrey who set this Bill Wilson off, but he could just be a wacko who thinks he’s avenging Taylor Swift or Donald Trump or… I don’t know… Jimmy Buffett.”
“Jimmy Buffett is dead,” Holly feels compelled to add, although she knows Izzy is just making a point.
“Annette McElroy’s husband, who’s totally grief-stricken, didn’t even know who Alan Duffrey was , and says he’s pretty sure his wife didn’t, either. He says they avoid the news as much as possible, because it’s all so bad.”
Holly can relate to that. “The Alan Duffrey part doesn’t matter, though, does it? Wilson said he was going to kill innocents to punish the guilty. If Letitia Overton is guilty, at least in this guy’s mind, you need to talk to her.”
“No kidding. She’s a real person, lived at 487 Hardy, but no longer resides in the city. She and her husband moved to Florida, according to her neighbor. The neighbor thought Tampa, or maybe Sarasota. Her husband got a better job, apparently. Regional manager for Staples. Except it might have been Office Depot or Stats she says once was enough.
“I haven’t seen a dead person since my grammy,” she tells Izzy, “and at least Grammy died in bed .”
Tom is around the corner, photographing the two dead men, the lawn chairs (one collapsed), the cans of Fuzzy Navel, and the container they came in. The forensics van will be here in short order with their cameras and brushes, but it’s best to get pictures as soon as possible.
Marie Ellis works as a cleaner, folder, change-maker, and all-around woman of work at the Washee-Washee. The men might have been murdered while she was at lunch… or not. Not is an idea that scares her to death. Even empty, the big driers run for five minutes out of every fifteen, she doesn’t know why, and they’re noisy. If there had been gunshots, she probably wouldn’t have heard them unless they were very loud.
She had a Twinkie in her smock for dessert, and once the last batch of clothes were folded, she went around back to eat it and have a smoke, because the drier exhausts keep that area warm. She thought if the two winos weren’t there, she could sit in one of the lawn chairs to eat her Twinkie. Only they were there, and they were dead.
“Do you know their names, Ms. Ellis?”
“One was Frank. I think he’s the one on the ground. The other one was Bruv or Dove or something like that.”
“You didn’t hear gunshots?”
Marie shakes her head. “Those poor men! Whoever did it could have come in and shot me ! I was all alone!”
“You didn’t see anyone?”
“No. Just… them.” She points around the corner, then jerks her hand back as if her finger were a periscope that might show her what she doesn’t want to look at again.
Tom comes back. “Ma’am, you’ll need to come down to the police station at Court Plaza and give a recorded statement, but not until later. Can you do five o’clock?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“For now, you can go back to work.”
Marie looks at him like he’s crazy. “I’m going home . I have a Valium in the medicine cabinet and I’m going to take it.” She looks at Tom defiantly, as if daring the detective to contradict her.
“Do that,” Izzy says. “Can I have your address?”
Marie touches the loose skin under her neck. “I’m not a suspect, am I?”
Izzy smiles. “No, Marie, but we’ll need that statement. Are you okay to drive?”
“Yes, I think so.”
When she’s gone, Tom says, “Each of the decedents has a piece of paper in his hand. I could make out TURN on one of them. What might be BY in the other guy’s. I was tempted to spread their fingers a little but didn’t.”
“Probably just as well. We’ll know soon enough. Is the lieutenant coming?”
“He is.” Tom glances around. “Thank God there are no lookie-loos. This is a zombie shopping mall if there ever was one. Of course that means no witnesses, either.”
“Including Marie,” Izzy says. “You think she’s lucky to be alive?”
“I do. And I think she knows it.”
Izzy goes around the corner. The body of one sits in his lawn chair with his head on his chest, as if sleeping. The other lies facedown in the weeds, one cracked and dusty loafer against the laundromat’s cinderblock back wall. “What a shitty place to die.”
“At least they died warm,” Tom says. “I brought six corpsesicles to the morgue after that hard freeze we had in January. Two with no IDs. One was a little kid.”
“Excuse me a minute.”
She goes out to the sidewalk and sees that Holly has left a voicemail. It’s two words, just call me , but Holly sounds excited.
She’s figured something out , Izzy thinks. Damn, that woman is so spooky. Sherlock Holmes in low heels, pastel blouses, and tweed skirts .
6
Holly finds some of the jewelry she’s looking for at O’Leary Pawn that was the son’s job.
I’ll wait a bit before taking the next one. A week, maybe even two. Give myself a breather, and give them time to realize the why of it .
In a way that’s funny, because it’s what he always thought about the drinking: I’ll take a week off, stay sober, just to prove I can do it. But this is different, of course it is, and the idea of taking time off lifts a weight from him.
He goes downstairs to the church basement, where folding chairs have been set up and the ever-present urn of coffee is chuffing out its pleasant aroma. His upbeat mood holds through the reading of the AA “Preamble,” and “How It Works.” It holds through the reading of “The Promises,” and after the rhetorical question “Are these extravagant promises?” he chants, We think not along with the rest. It holds through the chairman’s drunkalogue, which follows the usual pattern—rum followed by ruin, ruin followed by redemption. It holds until the chairman asks if anyone has a topic they’d like to discuss, and a burly man—someone Trig knows well, even though the burly man is in the front row and Trig himself is sitting in back—raises his hand and lumbers to his feet. “I’m Reverend Mike.”
“Hi, Reverend Mike,” the alkies and druggies respond.
Tell them you love God, but—
“I love God, but otherwise I’m just another fiend,” Reverend Mike says, and just like that, Trig’s upbeat mood collapses. Maybe it was just a freak rush of endorphins, after all , he thinks.
It’s true that the Rev is apt to show up at any meeting (although rarely this far out in the williwags), always standing so everyone can see him, running his mouth, going on at great length. For him to be at the Twilight Hour just after Trig has killed the two winos… that seems like a bad omen. The worst omen.
“As Chapter Seven of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tells us…” The Rev then goes on to quote, verbatim, from said chapter. Trig disconnects from this declamation (and judging by the glazed eyeballs he sees around him, he’s not alone), but not from the Rev himself. He remembers Reverend Mike catching him after a Straight Circle meeting sometime in late winter or early spring. Saying Trig had sounded upset when he shared.
How had he replied to that?
It was hard to remember exactly, especially while Big Book Mike is still holding the floor and spreading the polysyllables. Hadn’t Trig said he’d lost someone very recently? Yes, and that part was all right, only then he’d told the Rev that the someone he’d lost died in lockup.
I didn’t say that!
Except Trig is pretty sure he did.
Even so, he’ll never remember, and what difference would it make even if he did?
But that was just a day or two after Alan Duffrey died, it was in the paper, and if the Rev made the connection…
How unlikely is that?
Very unlikely… but unlikely isn’t impossible.
The Rev is finally sitting down. The gathering murmurs, Thanks, Reverend Mike , and the discussion finally begins. Trig doesn’t share because he doesn’t know what topic the Rev finally suggested when he finished blathering. Also because he’s focused on those broad shoulders and balding head.
Trig is thinking he might kill a fourth one after all before taking some time off. Just to make sure the unlikely doesn’t happen. And really, who is more innocent than a recovering addict—a fiend—who loves God?
An unworthy thought comes to him, but it’s also an amusing thought, and he covers his mouth to hide a smile. Shutting him up would be doing the recovery community a favor.
After the meeting, Trig shakes the Rev’s hand and tells him how much he enjoyed listening to him. They talk for quite awhile. Trig confesses to the Rev that he’s having a serious problem making amends, then listens patiently while the Rev quotes (verbatim) from Chapter 5 of the Big Book: “We must be willing to make amends where we have done harm, provided we do not bring about still more harm in so doing.” So on and so forth, blah blah blah.
“I need some counseling about this,” Trig says, and watches as Big Book Mike almost visibly expands. They make an appointment for Trig to stop by the Rev’s little house at seven PM on the 20th.
“It’s near the Rec Center.”
“I’ll find it.”
“Unless,” the Rev says, “you think you might drink over it. Then you can come tomorrow. Or even right now.”
Trig allows that he’ll be okay until May 20th, mostly because he doesn’t want to continue his mission so soon. He grips the Rev’s meaty arm. “Please don’t talk about it to anybody. I’m ashamed of needing help with this.”
“Never be ashamed of reaching out,” the Rev says, his eyes sparkling with juicy disclosures to come. “And believe me, I won’t say a word.”
Trig believes this. Reverend Mike is a bore and a windbag, but he’s also good AA. Trig has heard him declaim from the Big Book ad nauseum , but never a story or even an anecdote about a fellow sufferer. The Rev takes that end-of-meeting command, “What you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here,” very seriously.
Which is good.
8
While the murderer of Annette McElroy, Dov Epstein, and Frank Mitborough is attending an AA meeting in Upsala, Isabelle Jaynes is in her cubicle at 19 Court Plaza, calling Letitia Overton. Tom Atta located her through Overton’s ex-sister-in-law, who said she only had Letitia’s number because she forgot to delete it from her contacts. She called Overton “that bitch,” but the soft-voiced woman who answers Izzy’s call doesn’t sound in the least bitchy.
Izzy identifies herself and asks where Overton is currently located.
“I’m at the Trellis Apartments, in the town of Wesley Chapel. That’s in Florida. Why are you calling, Detective Jaynes? I’m not in trouble, am I? About that… thing?”
“What thing would that be, Ms. Overton?”
“The trial. Oh, I’m so sorry about what happened, but how were we to know? Poor Mr. Duffrey, it’s just awful.”
Izzy has what she called for but wants to make absolutely sure. “Just to be clear, you were on the jury that convicted Alan Duffrey of a third-degree felony, to wit trafficking in pornographic material involving the sexual exploitation of a child or children?”
Letitia Overton begins to cry. Through her tears she says, “We did the best we could! We were in that jury room for almost two days ! Bunny was the last to give in, but a bunch of us talked her around. Are we in trouble?”
In a way yes, and in a way no , Izzy thinks. Is she going to tell this woman, who did the best she could with the evidence she had, that a woman was found murdered with Overton’s name in her dead hand? Chances are excellent that she’ll find out eventually, but Izzy isn’t going to tell her now.
“No, Ms. Overton—Letitia—you’re not in trouble. Do you know who else was on the jury? Remember any of the names?”
There’s a hearty sniff, and when Overton speaks again, she sounds a little more in control of herself, maybe because the detective calling from her old hometown has told her she’s not in trouble.
“We didn’t call each other by our names, only our numbers. Judge Witterson was very strict about that, because of how sensitive the case was. He said in other trials there had been death threats. He mentioned one about a man who killed an abortion provider. Maybe to scare us. If so, it worked. We had these stickers we put on our shirts. Mine said Juror Eight.”
Izzy knows that the identity of jurors in high-profile cases—and Duffrey’s was front-page news—is often kept from the press, but she’s never heard of it being kept from the other jurors.
“But ma’am—Letitia—weren’t you called up for voir dire by name?”
“You mean the questions they asked when they took our names out of the pool?” Before Izzy can answer, Overton bursts out, “I wish to God I’d never been picked! Or that one of the lawyers had said, ‘She won’t do!’?”
“I totally understand that, Letitia. It’s just that the usual procedure is for the court clerk to call out the names of the jurors who might be—”
“Oh yes, they did that, but then Judge Witterson said, this was even before the trial started, that he wanted us to forget our names. Like, you know, when he said a few times during the trial that the jury should disregard what just got said because it was improper for some reason. Although that was very hard to do.”
“Do you remember any of the names?”
“Bunny, of course. I remember her because at the end she was the last one holding out for not guilty, and because at the beginning she said, ‘I’m Belinda, but everyone just calls me Bunny.’ And the foreman, Juror One, said, ‘No names,’ and Bunny put her fingers over her mouth and popped her eyes in a funny way. Bunny always had a smile or a joke.”
Izzy writes Belinda aka Bunny on her pad. “Anyone else?” Although she wonders why, exactly, she’s asking. The jurors aren’t the targets, after all.
“There was a guy named Andy… another one named Brad… I think… I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do. It was a long time ago. Almost three years. I’m sure there’s a list somewhere. Don’t you have it?”
“Not yet,” Izzy says. “The Clerk of Courts is on vacation, and Judge Witterson says he doesn’t remember. He sees lots of juries.”
There’s a tinge of alarm in Letitia Overton’s voice as she says, “Is someone out to get us?”
“No, ma’am, not at all.” Izzy is glad to say it. Overton’s ex-sister-in-law may think Letitia is a bitch, but based on this phone conversation it’s not Izzy’s opinion. “I’m going to let you go back to whatever you were doing, but before I do, tell me if the names Turner Kelly and Philip Jacoby mean anything to you.”
“Yes, Turner was on the jury. The other one I’m not sure of. Both Turner—he was Juror Six, I think—and Bunny were talkative. She was Ten. Some of the others were more like listeners, you know. Philip Jackson—”
“Jacoby.”
“Jacoby, yes, he might have been one of those. More of a listener than a talker, I mean.”
“You said it took you two days. Why so long? I would have thought, based on the evidence, it was open and shut.”
“Mr. Duffrey’s lawyer kept saying that all of the evidence could have been planted. I think he even mentioned that man Tolliver, who wanted a job Mr. Duffrey got. He was very good. The District Attorney—I guess he was actually the Assistant District Attorney—said that was unlikely because Duffrey’s fingerprints were found on the magazines that were hidden behind his furnace. Still, there were two or three who thought the case wasn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Bunny was one. Number Seven was another one. She was another woman.”
“Were you one of the holdouts?”
Another watery sniff. “No. Those images, the ones on Duffrey’s computer, convinced me. So, so horrible. One I’ll never forget. A little girl with a doll. She had bruises on her arms, Juror Nine pointed those out, but that little girl was still trying to smile. To smile !”
Izzy has everything she needs, and she could have done without that last—the bruised girl with the doll. No wonder they convicted him , she thinks. And no wonder he got shanked. She thanks Overton.
“You promise we’re not in trouble? Or any danger?”
“None whatsoever.”
“I came down here to start a new life, Detective. My husband was… mean. But when I listened to Buckeye Brandon’s podcast about how Alan Duffrey was framed, it seemed like that old life was following me. I can hardly eat, thinking about what we did to that poor man.”
“It was a miscarriage of justice, Letitia. They happen.”
“What is this about?”
“I’m not free to go into details. Sorry.”
“I’m going to go back to my maiden name,” she says. “I don’t like this one anymore.”
Izzy says she understands and means it. She’s been through bad marriages herself.
She rings off and calls Tom Atta. After she’s recapped her conversation with Letitia Overton, he says, “Now we know. Jurors, judge, prosecutor. Pack your bags, guys, Bill Wilson’s sending you on a guilt trip.”
“What he’s doing is so pointless,” Izzy says. “The woman I talked to feels plenty of guilt already. God knows how much more she’ll feel when she finds out Annette McElroy was murdered for her sins. At least her sins in the eyes of this Bill Wilson freak.”
“Overton will be an outlier,” Tom says. “Most of the others on that jury won’t feel bad at all. They’ll say they followed the evidence, rendered a verdict, and won’t lose any sleep over it.”
“I hope that’s not true.”
But when they finally get all the names of the Alan Duffrey jury, it turns out that it pretty much is.