“I’d say close to eleven. Maybe a little after.”
“What happened next?”
“We drove to the barn.”
“How long did it take you to get there?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Was it raining when you arrived at the barn?” Laurie asked, scribbling in her notepad.
“No. But it had been raining cats and dogs an hour earlier. I remember being worried that Greg’s car might get stuck in the mud and we’d have to call someone to come pull us out. That would have been beyond embarrassing.”
“Describe the barn when you guys got there.”
“One end was badly damaged, but the other end, the one closest to where Greg parked the car, wasn’t damaged at all. I guess the rain put out the fire before it spread to that part of the barn. It was in the undamaged section that we saw the bodies.”
“Tell me about that.”
“Greg told me to stay in the car, but I said no way I’m staying in the car, not in this darkness. It was really creepy. The dampness, the flickering flames, the smoke. Oh, the smoke was so thick you could slice it with a knife. Just a real boogie-man, Stephen King kind of night.”
“So you and Greg went into the barn?”
“Yeah, unfortunately we did. That’s when… I took one look, turned around, and got the hell out of there.”
“Back to the car?”
“You bet. And locked all the doors.”
“How long were you in the barn?”
“Ten seconds.”
“What do you remember about the victims?”
“Not much, really. Only that their hands and feet were tied, and their eyes were open.”
“Was there much blood?”
“If there was I didn’t notice it,” Angie answered.
“Did you see a gun?”
“No.”
“Anything else about the victims-or the scene-that caught your attention?”
“No. But like I said, Detective, I didn’t stick around long enough to take notes.”
“Greg said he remained in the barn for maybe a minute before he returned to the car.”
“That’s not accurate. Greg was in that barn for a good ten minutes before he came out.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. I was petrified sitting in the car alone. In the darkness, with two dead guys thirty feet away? Are you kidding me? Those ten minutes felt like three hours. I let him have it good when he did get in the car. For making me sit out there alone for so long.”
“Did he say anything?” Laurie asked. “Give a reason why he stayed in the barn that long?”
“Not that I recall. He was just hell-bent on getting to a phone and calling the police.”
“Did you see any blood on him?”
“On Greg? No. Why do you ask?”
“I’m wondering if he touched or moved the bodies.”
Angie shook her head. “I doubt if he did that. That would be stupid on his part, and Greg wasn’t stupid.”
“I never spoke to a detective.”
“You never spoke with a Detective Bolton or Detective Matthews?”
“The only person I spoke to had on a uniform. The detectives talked with Greg.”
Laurie started to ask Angie if she remembered the officer’s name, but didn’t. That information would be in the file. She tapped her pen on the tabletop, thinking about what she had just learned from Angie. She didn’t like what she was hearing, that was for sure. Angie should have been interviewed by one of the detectives, and it was almost impossible for Laurie to believe that neither Charlie nor Dan had seen fit to do so. Those guys didn’t screw up like that.
Maybe Angie was remembering it incorrectly, Laurie reasoned. Maybe Charlie or Dan did interview Angie and she had forgotten it. That was a definite possibility. After all, twenty-nine years is a long time. Memories fade, details can get shuffled around, lost, or re-imagined entirely. This was especially true during stressful, emotional, and chaotic moments in a person’s life. To be sure, finding two dead bodies and being interrogated by the police was more than enough to cause stress and emotional chaos. Angie could be forgiven for not remembering events in perfect order.
Despite her concerns, Laurie decided to reserve judgment until she spoke with Charlie. At the very least, Charlie and Dan deserved to be accorded the benefit of the doubt. Both were decorated, celebrated cops. They had earned that much.
“Sam Spade-you have the look of a very troubled woman,” Angie said, softly, breaking nearly a minute of silence.
Laurie nodded. “As the prison warden said to Cool Hand Luke, ‘what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.’”
Sitting alone in O’Charley’s, her thoughts racing a hundred miles an hour and in fifty different directions at the same time, Laurie felt like she was being beaten up by some invisible force inside her. An inner tornado had been unleashed, resulting in a war among competing options, possibilities, and scenarios, none of which were positive or pleasant to contemplate. ‘What should be her next move?’ she silently asked herself. Her instincts said she should call Charlie and have him verify Angie’s recollection of what happened that night. She should also ask him to explain why neither he nor Dan had spoken to Angie at the crime scene. Her curiosity screamed the same thing. That those two excellent detectives had not done so was more than puzzling; it went against everything she knew about both men. Until that puzzle was pieced together to her satisfaction, she could not-would not-allow herself to believe that Charlie Bolton and Dan Matthews committed such a bonehead rookie mistake.
She speared a piece of lettuce from her Caesar salad, held the fork suspended above the plate for several seconds, and put it down. Her appetite had vanished, a victim of the swirling mass of thoughts and emotions ripping through her. She drank some water, took out her cell phone, and began to punch in Charlie’s number. Halfway through, she closed the phone and dropped it back into her purse. The voice in her head told her that calling him now would be making that rush to judgment she wanted to avoid.
There was an alternative option, one that made far more sense. She would phone Dantzler, fill him in on what she had learned, and find out how he wanted to proceed. That would relieve her of having to make the decision concerning Charlie. Let it be Dantzler’s call. Besides, there was always the possibility he had uncovered some information in the murder book that would contradict Angie’s memory of not being interviewed by one of the detectives. Laurie hoped that was the case. If it wasn’t, then Dantzler had no choice but to ask Charlie about it.
For now, though, she wanted to go home, put on a sweat suit and running shoes, and go jogging. Running was her way to escape the shackles of her job while also serving as the mechanism by which she calmed the storm raging inside her. Ultimately, she ran in order to remain sane.
Charlie Bolton, Eli Whitehouse, and Angie Iler would have to wait. Top priority now was Laurie Dunn’s mental well being.
She grabbed her purse and the check, paid the bill, and headed home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
