Chapter 3 #3
“No, no, thank you. We’d like to get right to it,” Grant assured him.
“Let’s do this then,” Perry said.
Grant looked at Shelly. “Watcher or talker?” he asked her quietly as Perry walked ahead of them.
“Watcher, I think. You know more about curse tablets than I do,” she told him. She gave him a small smile and shrugged. “For now. I’m a good researcher.”
He smiled in return. “I’ll just bet you are,” he told her.
She slid into the observation room as the two men walked ahead.
Cecil Cartwright was a man of perhaps fifty-five or sixty, with close-cropped white hair and wrinkles garnered through the years. He was dressed in a navy-blue business suit and looked more like a beardless Santa Claus than a cold-blooded murderer who would burn up a corpse in the woods.
But Ainsley Drake had said herself that the man had been courteous to her, even when he had been under attack.
Was he the wrong man? Should they be concentrating on his assistant?
Maybe they’d soon know.
Shelly watched as the two men entered the room, and Perry dropped a folder on the table before speaking.
“Mr. Cartwright, as you know, I’m Perry Banyan with the FDLE. This is Special Agent Grant Markham. He’s a fed, and naturally we’ve invited him to take charge of the investigation,” Perry said.
“Of course, when a man like George Maynard is attacked, well, yes, the entire country will be watching,” Cecil Cartwright said, nodding his head sagely.
“Agents,” he said firmly, “I came in as soon as I heard Maynard was presumed dead. I know I’m an obvious candidate for someone coming after him.
But I’m innocent of any evildoing. Yes, I’ll lose everything, and if a daughter doesn’t take me in, I’ll be living on the street.
But I swear to you on all that is holy, I would never have harmed another human being. ”
Grant nodded, looking at the man. “Sir, we spoke with Mr. Maynard’s fiancée.
She believes you’re a good and courteous man despite the problems with the company.
But you know, of course, that everyone claims they’re innocent.
Perhaps you could help us out. Do you have an alibi for last night from say eight or nine o’clock until this morning? ”
Cartwright leaned forward. “I do; I was with my wife,” he said solemnly.
“And, sir, of course, we’d need a little more verification from your wife, swearing that you were with her,” Perry said.
“Well, my wife was with me, and she will swear to that,” Cartwright said.
“No disrespect intended, sir, but—” Grant began.
“No, no, no, I understand.” Cartwright’s face pinched as if he was in pain.
“My wife was with me, but she’s not my alibi.
Well, she’s partially my alibi. We were together.
But I was out of the state last night; I was at a meeting in Atlanta.
I was with several people in a popular restaurant until midnight.
At that time, Geena and I returned to our hotel in the heart of the city, where we were seen at the counter and where they have one of those scan devices on their room keys.
You can verify with the hotel that we returned at about midnight, and the door to our room didn’t open again until seven o’clock this morning.
We came down and ate breakfast and then drove back down here.
It’s about five and a half hours, and we stopped once at a rest station.
I got home, saw the news … and came right in here.
I’m sure it can all be proven between the restaurant and the hotel, and I’m sure there were some traffic cams along the way as well.
I didn’t do this. I swear to you. I didn’t do this.
But as I said, I wanted to come right in and talk to you because …
well, yes, because the man was turning my life into hell. ”
They would verify everything that the man had said, Shelly knew.
But even without that …
She believed him.
Maybe it was because of their lunch with Ainsley and her sister.
But it was more than that. The man simply sounded sincere; his body language seemed to support the sincerity of his words as well.
“Thank you, Mr. Cartwright,” Grant told him. “But maybe you could help us out more. We understand you have an assistant who isn’t as civil as you are when it comes to what may well be the destruction of your company. A Mr. Andy Jeter?”
Cecil Cartwright nodded, looking perplexed.
“Well, Andy didn’t see any reason for us to be polite to the man or his fiancée,” he told them.
“But Andy is … well, you know. He’s one of those people who is all talk and bluster.
He would never physically harm anyone! Honestly, of course, he’s angry.
The company is going to hell and all thanks to George Maynard.
But don’t you see? It wouldn’t make any sense for any of us to do anything at all to the man now—the damage is done!
In fact,” he added, leaning forward anxiously, “people believing that we might have had anything to do with this would just make everything worse for everyone involved with Gen-Zec. No, no, no! We desperately need you to find the truth of the situation. That’s the only way that anyone who worked with us in any way will ever get a job again! ”
The man sounded so sincere, and there was truth to what he was saying.
But did his friend and assistant, Andy Jeter, feel the same way? Some people didn’t act in a logical, thought-out way.
The world was occupied by those who did believe in decency, who wouldn’t bring physical harm to others.
But in their line of work, they knew too well that the world was also populated by those who longed for revenge when they felt they’d been slighted.
And were never deterred in the least by common decency.
“I need to … I need to get home. And rest. And then try to deal with what’s going on with the business, with the lawsuits, and to”—he shook his head—“to just believe that this has happened. You’re not holding me, are you? I’ve done my very best to give you ways in which to verify where I was when.”
Shelly noted that Perry and Grant didn’t even glance at one another. They all knew they had nothing on which to hold the man. And she wasn’t sure they needed to. She believed him and she was a pretty good judge of character.
Of course, they would verify everything he’d said.
“We’re not holding you, sir, and we’re grateful you did choose to come in because, yes, you would be on the top of anyone’s list of suspects.” Grant paused and winced, looking at the man. “There is, of course, murder for hire—”
“There is murder for hire,” Perry murmured, shaking his head thoughtfully. “And it seems—”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Cartwright interrupted. He didn’t sound angry.
He sounded desperate as he continued telling them, “If you don’t prove who did this, people will think forever that it was me, that I was hateful … and I may die broke, but I will never die with something so horrible as murder on my soul, I promise you that!”
Could he be as real as he seemed?
Whether he was or wasn’t, it was true; he was free to go.
Perry and Grant both stood, smiling at the man. He rose as well, asking them, “This is it? I’m free to go?”
“Sir, indeed, you are free to go. And we know you believe in Mr. Jeter’s innocence, but we’ll be interviewing him, too, and perhaps others, I’m afraid,” Grant told him.
“That’s to be expected. I thank you both for listening,” he said. “And thank both you for believing in me. I know you must verify everything and check my financials up and down to make sure I didn’t pay for a murder, but I honestly think you know I didn’t do it.”
“Of course, Mr. Cartwright,” Perry told him.
“I’m counting on it,” Cartwright said.
“Our desk sergeant will see you out,” Perry told him.
They were met by a uniformed man outside the room. Cartwright politely followed him. Grant and Perry turned back to Perry’s office, and Shelly slipped from the observation room to join them.
“Well?” Perry asked her.
“He seemed to be sincere,” she said. “And apparently, this man Andy Jeter might well be worth our efforts.”
“I already have agents looking for him,” Perry said. “He’s not at his home, he’s not at what remains of the Gen-Zec offices, so … before you got here, I was going through files. Of course, we will check with the hotel, look at traffic cams … he didn’t physically murder George Maynard, but …”
“Yes, it seems whoever did this might be a professional, but I would like to meet Jeter. I guess you call it gut,” Shelly said. “I don’t believe Cartwright did this.”
She glanced up at Grant.
He gave her a slight nod; he agreed with her.
“I think we need to be out there looking for Andy Jeter,” he said. “I’m sure we have reports from Angela and tech on his social media, where he hangs out—even where he might be in hiding. Like Cecil Cartwright, he must know he’s going to be a person of interest in this investigation.”
Perry didn’t get a chance to weigh in with his thoughts.
The lights suddenly blinked and then went off.
“What the hell?” Perry began.
They heard someone come hurrying toward them and a voice calling out, “It’s just me, sir—there’s been an accident!”
The backup generator sprang into action.
They saw the desk sergeant looking at them, blinking.
“It was Cartwright! There was an accident—right out on the road. Cecil Cartwright just slammed his car into the power pole that’s just out on the highway!”