Chapter 24
Atmore, Alabama
Holman Prison
Carson measured the interview room one impatient stride at a time.
Back and forth. He’d waited half an hour.
Warden Fallon hadn’t been too happy to hear from him, particularly on Sunday, but he hadn’t dared refuse Carson’s request. Having District Attorney Donald Wainwright as his mentor had its perks.
He’d gotten a call en route from Nashville PD. The lab had rushed the ballistics report on the slugs found in the body of his BMW. No matches. No witnesses had come forward. With no leads, there was little chance the incident would be solved.
The black sedan, possibly a vintage Crown Vic, hadn’t shown up in his rearview mirror in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe he wasn’t being followed.
But the shooting—that was a different story. That had to have been personal. No two ways about it. The BMW would be picked up for the necessary repairs. Meanwhile he was stuck with the rental.
Carson glanced at his watch. There was little if any possibility that he was going to get back to Birmingham in time for escorting Elizabeth to the Newton Ball. She would be disappointed. But he had to do this.
He let out a big breath. He had to prove Baxter was wrong.
The entire night before had been exhausted going over the Tanner case file.
Relooking at reports Carson had already analyzed a hundred times.
Every crime scene photo. Every lab report.
Every damned newspaper clipping related to Stokes.
Then he’d reviewed the Baxter/Fleming file again.
Nothing. He’d learned absolutely nothing.
All he had was her accusations. Accusations from a woman whose record made her an unreliable witness at best.
Carson had to be crazy even to consider her claim.
Agent Schaffer’s suggestion that Wainwright wasn’t being on the up-and-up with Carson echoed in his brain even now.
Wainwright had explained away that allegation.
Baxter’s bullshit story in no way backed up Schaffer’s theory.
Carson had only followed through with this ridiculous idea of talking to Stokes to prove to Baxter once and for all that she had one choice. Take the deal.
Ask yourself if you’ll ever really know what happened.
As certain as Carson was of his convictions . . . a part of him was absolutely terrified that she might be right to some degree. There were too many loose ends cropping up. Too many questions.
But . . . if he believed even part of what she suggested, then that meant everything he’d ever believed in was wrong.
The interview room door opened with a distinct clang, shattering the troubling thoughts. Two guards guided Joseph Stokes into the room.
“Stand back, Mr. Tanner, while we secure the prisoner.”
Carson backed away a couple of steps. Stokes kept his head lowered in feigned humility while the guards seated him and secured his shackles to the eye hook in the concrete floor. The monster looked frail and vulnerable in the baggy prison jumpsuit. But Carson knew better.
“We’ll be right outside, sir, if you need us,” the same guard who’d first spoken explained.
“Thank you.” Carson waited where he stood until the two had vacated the room and closed the door, leaving him alone with Stokes. As he approached the table Stokes raised his gaze to meet Carson’s.
He grinned as triumphantly as if he’d just been informed his conviction had been reversed. “I knew you’d come.” Laughter rumbled from his vile throat. “You can’t stand not knowing everything.”
Carson pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table and lowered into it. “Rule number one,” he said, his tone nonnegotiable, “no games. I want straight answers or this interview is over.”
Stokes narrowed his gaze. “And what’s in it for me?”
Carson had anticipated that reaction. “Warden Fallon has agreed to allow you one hour each week in the recreational activity of your choice.”
The sick bastard’s suspicion visibly mounted. “Why would he do that? He’s sticking strictly to the agenda you sons of bitches requested. Complete isolation. One hour per day outside with no less than four guards shadowing my every step. I can’t even look at any of the other inmates.”
Carson barely restrained the need to smile.
The piece of shit was already feeling the strain of perpetual isolation.
According to the psychological profile on Stokes, he craved people.
Needed social interaction to fuel his repulsive imagination.
Isolation was the worst kind of punishment for him.
It would slowly, surely push him over the edge into a place his contemptible ass wouldn’t be able to claw out of.
“Let’s not worry about the how or why,” Carson said. “You cooperate with me and I’ll see that you get what I promised.”
That sadistic grin appeared again. “You love the power, don’tcha? Feels good. Makes you hungry for more.”
Anger started to crowd in on Carson’s composure. He pushed it aside, but not without difficulty. “Is that a yes?”
“You want to know what really happened to that fancy family of yours, is that it?”
Carson resisted the impulse to jump at that line of discussion. He had a carefully laid-out agenda. He’d analyzed forward and backward how he should go about this on the way here. He couldn’t deviate. If he did, control would be up for grabs. He would not allow Stokes any measure of that control.
“District Attorney Wainwright visited you in Mobile once you were in custody. Do you remember the date?”
The suspicion was back. “I don’t know. Maybe. What difference does that make? You could just ask your boss the answer to that one.”
Carson ignored Stokes’s comments. “You were taken into custody on August twenty-first. Is that when Wainwright visited you?”
Stokes shrugged his hunched shoulders. “Sounds about right. All that should be in the file.”
“Are you afraid to answer the question?” Carson leaned forward. “Your deal can’t be revoked now. There’s nothing to fear.”
Stokes leaned back in his seat and eyed Carson. “You think I’m afraid? Fuck, I ain’t afraid of nothing.” His disgusting laugh reverberated in the room. “Well, maybe I don’t like the idea of dying, but you got no power over that. Like you said, the deal’s done. You can’t go changing your mind now.”
“Then tell me the truth, Joseph.” Carson swallowed back the bitter taste associated with calling the monster by his first name . . . as if they were friends.
Stokes smirked. “Personally, I don’t think you really want to know the truth.”
Let the games begin. Carson mimicked his opponent’s posture, leaning back in his seat and pretending to be relaxed. Like two old buddies catching up. “If you don’t tell me, then there’s nothing I can do.”
That beady gaze narrowed again. “What would you do?”
Carson shrugged. “I can’t answer that without additional information.” He placed his palms flat on the table between them and stared long and hard at the other man. “What do you want me to do?”
One corner of Stokes’s mouth twitched. “Your big-shot boss is running for governor.”
Carson nodded. “That’s right.”
That disgusting twitch evolved into a curling of lips. “He wants it bad, don’t he?”
“He does.”
“What if I told you, he’s as crooked as a Georgia back road?”
“I wouldn’t believe you.” Carson paused.
“Not without evidence,” he qualified, more to see where the bastard was going with this than because he put an ounce of weight in the suggestion.
Or Annette Baxter’s. The fact that she had made statements word for word like those of Stokes told Carson the two had been in contact at some point since this nightmare started.
Stokes leaned forward another inch or two. “You want Wainwright’s job.”
Carson tensed. “I do.”
Strangely, that answer seemed to appease the bastard. “You don’t know for sure what happened that day, do you?”
A muscle in Carson’s jaw jerked. He fought the reflex, but it continued.
Tick. Tick. Tick. “No. I don’t remember much before the police arrived.
” He’d drunk himself into oblivion with a bottle of Bacardi after the argument with his mother.
A total alcohol blackout had never happened before . . . but that day it had.
Stokes chuckled. “Poor bastard. That’s a hell of a thing to live with.”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five . . . ten. Don’t lose it. Stay cool. “It is.”
More of the obscene chuckling. “I tell you what. You get me two hours a week with the others and I’ll tell you what you’ve waited fifteen long years to hear.”
Carson’s tension rocketed to a higher level. “Done.”
Stokes hesitated a moment as if he was skeptical. But then he spoke. “You’ll make sure there’s no backlash from that bastard Wainwright?”
“You have my word.”
Stokes bent his head down to rub his nose. “First off,” he began, “you weren’t nowhere in the house when your people was butchered.”
Carson flinched.
“I don’t know where you was, mind you. ’Cept what the papers said about you being passed out drunk in your car at some teenage hangout.”
A moment of silence . . . then two.
“Go on,” Carson urged.
“But I know you didn’t kill nobody.”
“You confessed,” Carson countered, a tight lid on half a dozen emotions whirling inside him. “I believe any question about who committed the murders has already been answered.”
Stokes’s expression literally beamed with anticipation. “I said what I was told to say.”
Adrenaline fired in Carson’s veins. “Who told you what to say?”
Stokes harrumphed. “Don’t take no rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Relax. Don’t let him see any reaction. “Just answer the question.”
“Your boss told me what to say. Who else?”
“Don’t make statements you can’t back up,” Carson warned. He knew all too well how this guy liked manipulating, playing head games. He wasn’t going to blindly believe anything Stokes related without indisputable evidence.
“Three days before the law picked me up on that anonymous tip, Wainwright came to see me.”