Chapter Five
Talon
When we pull into the clubhouse, Smoke and his wife, Serena, are standing anxiously out front waiting for us. Both are attorneys and it looks like I’m going to need all the help I can get.
When we walk up onto the porch, Smoke steps forward. “Holy shit, Talon. You’ve had the day straight from hell, haven’t you?”
“Yes. This is by far the shittiest day of my entire life.”
When we enter the clubhouse, they take me straight back to Siege’s office. Tank and Dutch join us, and we all sit down, I realize that I’m unbelievably tired although it’s technically still morning. I barely got any sleep, as I spent most of last night staring at my fire wondering where my life went wrong.
“So where do we start?” I ask.
Smoke responds, “We need to fully understand your situation. Just start at the beginning and walk us through the last twenty-four hours.”
“As some of you already know, I came home from work early yesterday afternoon to an empty house. At first I wasn’t too bothered, because Sandra is a pretty active person. It’s not unusual for her to come home later in the evening. I got a shower and then decided to check on an order for one of my construction sites. When I sat down at the computer in our bedroom, I discovered that she had left her social media account open. I was getting ready to shut it down but noticed that a private message box was open, and my name was being mentioned.”
“Naturally, that led to you reading through the chat. Is that correct?” Serena asks.
“Yes ma’am. That’s exactly what happened. I discovered that my wife had been talking trash about me to other men, and that she’d slept with at least three of them and made arrangements to spend the night with a fourth. To say I was pissed would be an understatement. Sandra and I have been married for coming up on seven years. It’s been nothing but arguing, fussing, and fighting. Every time I thought things were going to smooth out some other kind of drama would pop up. It’s been absolutely exhausting, and I’ve tried my best to make it work. But then to find out that she had been cheating on me with different men during the entire length of our relationship really aggravated me. Not because I’m jealous or because I was really still so deeply in love with her. I was pissed because it felt like she wasted years of my life, basically using me as an ATM.”
Both Smoke and Serena are scribbling down every word I say on those extra-long yellow legal paths that attorneys use. Smoke mumbles, “What did you do after you found out about your wife’s infidelity?”
“I took screenshots of everything I could find and sent them to myself. I was thinking I might need it as evidence if I filed for divorce. As I was trying to figure out what to do, I got a text from her saying she was at her sister’s house and was probably going to spend the night. I knew that was a lie because she’d made arrangements to meet up with some guy last night. I don’t know what got into me, but I rode over to her sister’s house to see if she was there. I had a nice long conversation with Silvia who verified that Sandra had been cheating all along. She said Sandra had been this way her whole life and had never once been faithful to any of the man she’d dated.” I then decide to add the bit I’d left out when talking to Rigs and my club brothers yesterday, “Silvia actually put the moves on me and tried to get me to spend the night. Naturally, I wasn’t about to do anything that fucked up, so I came to the clubhouse to talk to Rigs about it all. Siege, Tank, and Dutch were also present for the conversation.”
“What exactly did you talk about?” Serena asks.
“It was mainly a pep talk from Rigs, he pretty much explained that cheating was a character flaw that would take years of therapy to overcome. I was pissed at the men she had been cheating with, but the brothers got me to see that the other men weren’t the problem it was her. If it hadn’t been them, it would have been someone else.”
“That’s a lot to take in all at once,” Smoke states. “Did you feel better or worse after your conversation with the brothers?”
“Better. I mean I was still wildly pissed but at that point I decided that I would be divorcing her. Once I made that decision a lot of my anger dissipated. I decided it was an issue of mind over matter, as in, if I didn’t mind it didn’t matter. It didn’t make much sense to angst over a relationship that had basically been a struggle for years.”
“So, I’m assuming you spent the night at the clubhouse,” Serena guesses.
“No. I decided to go pitch my tent by the river at my favorite fishing spot. Rigs thought it would be better for me to take a time out and calm down before approaching my wife to talk about a divorce. That made sense to me.”
Smoke slams his pen down on his legal pad. “Are you fucking telling me that you actually spent the evening alone in a pop-up tent in an isolated area by the river?”
“I wasn’t expecting to need an alibi,” I answer.
Smoke lets out an exasperated sigh and Serena fixes me with a concerned look, “That could be a real problem for you.”
I rub my chin as I try to figure out what to do about not having any way to confirm my whereabouts last night.
Siege speaks up. “Maybe the park has cameras showing who comes and goes. That’s worth a try, right?”
“Absolutely,” Serena answers. “I’ll text Zen to see if he can get his hands on security footage from the park. Maybe he can get a read out of your truck’s GPS too. Obviously, that only places your vehicle at the park and not you, but it’s a start.”
I suddenly remember the woman I helped, the cute blond with the busted ankle. “There was one person who saw me there when she first pulled in. I came across her a few hours later when I went to hunt rabbits. She’d gotten a flat tire pretty far along the trail and couldn’t get a cell phone signal, so she decided to walk down to the park office. She ended up twisting her ankle. I noticed she was having a hard time of it and went over to see if she needed any help.”
“This is great news,” Serena said excitedly.
“I wrapped up her ankle and drove her down to the park office in my pickup truck. She was a little standoffish. I didn’t blame her because she was young, and I’m a stranger after all and I think she thought I was homeless—she gave me twenty dollars and a card for the men’s shelter in town.”
“How young is she,” Smoke asks.
“I don’t know, maybe mid-twenties. She has blond hair and blue eyes. She looks a bit like an athlete.”
“What was her name?” Smoke asks.
“Her name? I didn’t get a name. Like I said, she was a bit standoffish.”
“So, you came back from taking her to the park office and then what happened?”
“I cooked the fish I’d caught earlier. And then I packed it in for the night.”
“Did you go straight home or stop for breakfast somewhere?”
Smoke’s questions were getting to be a lot, but I answered them as best I could.
“I packed up my truck and went straight home. I knew from my wife’s private message she was planning to stay out all night with the man she met online, so my plan was to beat her home, shower, get some coffee and get ready to tell her I was divorcing her. When I arrived home, my plan turned into absolute shit.”
“Yeah,” Serena says, “I can imagine, when Siege called Smoke and I, he filled us in.”
“When I rolled up on my house and discovered a fuck ton of police, I tried to barrel up in there and see what was happening.”
“Law enforcement officers are generally protective of their crime scenes. They don’t typically let people contaminate it before the crime scene techs have had a chance to finish processing it.”
Shooting him a knowing look, I nod. “Yeah, I learned that the hard way. Then there is the fact that I was so shocked that Sandra was dead that my brain went on hiatus. I just stood there like an idiot saying they made a mistake, and she wasn’t dead and maybe it was a case of mistaken identity and tons of other stupid shit that came to mind. I don’t know why I was rambling like that. I actually thought she’d overdosed or something.”
“It was just the shock, I imagine.” Tank chimes in for the first time.
Dutch speaks up next, “We need to get a hold of the security footage if there was any, and find that young lady you helped. Nothing else matters because those are the only two things that will give you and iron clad alibi.”
Serena spoke up. “There are other things that could be considered corroborating evidence. Things like the tracking on Talon’s cell phone as well as his truck’s GPS. Of course, that will only prove his phone and truck were there and not him, but we need to start thinking outside the box. Every scrap of information can be used to build layers of believability in his alibi.”
“My brilliant wife is right,” Smoke says, beaming at her. “We can’t afford to let any information slip through our grasp that might prove your whereabouts last night.”
Siege’s phone jingles and he picks it up to read the text message. He scowls, “It’s our contact inside the Las Salinas police station. He says they are picking Talon up, they think they have enough for probable cause on Sandra’s murder.”
Serena frowns. “Isn’t this whole thing moving a little fast? They can’t possibly be finished processing the crime scene, much less running DNA and blood samples. Not to mention that no coroner has ruled the death a homicide yet.”
Smoke responds, “I suppose they can consider it murder based on prima facie evidence, such as the manner of death.”
“I saw her,” I say, and once more that last image of her face that I’ve been trying to forget, crosses my mind. “The side of her head was bashed in, like someone attacked her from behind. I’m not a coroner, but it’s not the type of wound you get from hitting your head on a table or something.”
“Death by blunt force trauma is almost always a result of murder.”
“When they take you in, I’ll probably be able to get you out on bond, so don’t freak out when they cuff you, alright?”
I nod, because what else can I do. “I probably should have been more cooperative earlier when they wanted to ask me questions.”
Smoke shakes his head, “Not without your attorney present. While refusing to answer questions might come across as being obstructive, in situations like this you don’t want to say anything that could be twisted or used against you. No matter how innocent you are. The cops in this town have a hard-on for bikers and they’ll be looking for an open and shut case.”
***
We spend the better part of the morning talking about my case, stopping only long enough to eat. I’m saddened, worried about going to jail for a crime I didn’t commit and angry some asshole killed Sandra. I wanted to divorce her, not for her to fucking die a horrible death. I eventually head upstairs to Rigs’ old suite and bed down for a nap. I’m logistically fucked because everything I own is now off limits until the crime scene is cleared. I don’t have clothing, a charger for my phone or any damn thing else. At least I’m still alive, I remind myself, that’s more than I can say for my poor wife. I try to imagine what led to her death. If it was a simple home invasion, it could have just as easily been me. My mind keeps circling back around to the dude she was going to meet. My gut tells me he’s the one responsible for her death. When I get my hands on him, he’s a dead man.
When the police pick me up in the early afternoon, they take me down to the police station, charge me, book me and I tell them all the same things I told Smoke and Serena. Smoke is by my side and keeps redirecting them on their lack of evidence linking me to the crime. I don’t wind up getting an arraignment because they end up cutting me lose. Smoke says it was for lack of evidence. I just think they were trying to scare me into admitting to shit I didn’t do so they could close the case. The fucking cops in Las Salinas don’t seem all that interested in solving crimes. They just want to close cases and move on. I blame the fact that they were operating under a dirty chief of police for a long time before he was taken down. That bastard Pope, has a lot to answer for, but with any luck now he’s burning in hell for what he did.