McBeth shook his head slightly. He looked like a teenager whose father has made a stupid joke in public.
Lessiter flicked his eyes to his client, then jotted another note on his legal pad. After another few seconds of silence Lessiter waved his hand with a flourish. Proceed.
Wolf nodded. “Eagle, we asked you here because the more we’re learning about Mr. Sexton after his death, the more questions we have. We’re wondering if you might be able to clear things up for us.”
McBeth kept his eyes on the table.
Wolf picked up the remote control on the table. He pointed it at the flat screen television on the wall and pressed play.
A black and white video popped up on screen, showing the inside of a grocery store from a ceiling camera. There were empty check-out counters and empty aisles. The movement was the running ticker in the bottom right corner showing the date as June 24th and the time as 11:35 p.m. and counting.
“This is the inside of Lonnie’s Market up in Dredge on the Monday night of Mary Ellen Dimitri’s murder,” Wolf said.
A figure walked into view and down an aisle. The camera changed, showing the back wall of the market. The figure walked into view, straight to a meat case. He picked up a package, turned it over, set it down, then went to another package and picked it up.
Wolf paused it and used the arrows on the remote control. The image on screen zoomed in on the man’s face, enlarging it to fill the screen. It was a bit blurry, but clear enough to be unmistakable.
“As you can see, this is James Sexton.”
Sexton’s eyes looked just like Wolf remembered that night, the minute before he’d shot him. Animalistic. Feral. “He’s at Lonnie’s Market up in Dredge when he’s supposed to be at the Edelweiss Hotel. This is the night before you came in to speak with us.”
“We’re well aware of the timeline of events, sheriff,” Lessiter said.
“I’m just lining out the events for clarity’s sake.”
“I understand—”
“Keep going,” McBeth said, his robotic tone overpowering his attorney’s.
Wolf opened up the folder and pulled out copies of credit card receipts. “Here we have your signature for the hotel rooms’ security deposit. Here we have Sexton’s version of your signature for the T-Bone steak, which he purchased at Lonnie’s Market.”
Wolf pressed pause on the video, leaving an image of Sexton walking through an aisle of the market with a packaged T-bone steak in his hand.
Wolf looked between Lessiter and McBeth, then tried his first question. “Did you know Sexton had left the hotel that night?”
Lessiter turned to his client. “Do not answer that.”
“I did,” McBeth said, putting up a hand in Lessiter’s face. “But I thought he was out getting a drink.”
Lessiter sat back in his chair making another note.
Wolf considered the dynamic between these two. Why have a lawyer if he was only a hindrance? Wolf had learned the McBeth family money had paid for the last three losing years up at the mine. The lawyer must have been paid for by the Triple-O ranch as well.
Both Wolf and Sheriff Domino up in Jackson Hole had no luck speaking with Eagle McBeth’s mother, the sole beneficiary of McBeth’s father’s many holdings. She had her own lawyers that had kept her silent up to this point. Eagle McBeth, however, was rebelling. He was here of his own accord. Mrs. McBeth and her firewall of attorneys up there in Jackson Hole couldn’t stop that.
“I thought he was at a bar, you know?” McBeth said, his eyes meeting Wolf’s for the first time. He was sincere. “Koling was out drinking. I thought he had gone out with him.”
“What did you do that night?”
“I stayed in the room.”
Wolf nodded. “Thanks for telling me that.”
Lessiter blew a puff of air from his nose.
Wolf ignored him. “We’ve since tested this jacket he’s wearing in this video and we found gunshot residue matching that of Chris Oakley’s silenced G21. We also found blood spatter that matches Mary Ellen Dimitri. We know now that he fed this steak to Rick Hammes’s dog minutes after this footage was taken in order to get into the property and plant the gun in Hammes’s woodpile, making it look like Rick Hammes killed Mary Dimitri.”
McBeth stared into nothing, shaking his head slightly.
“Were you with him?”
His eyes latched onto Wolf’s. “No, sir. I was in the motel room.”
“Okay.” Wolf nodded, pulling out another sheet of paper from the stack. “We have your GPS phone records here that indicate you might be telling the truth. Your phone stayed in Rocky Points all night.”
“Might be?”
Wolf shrugged. “You could have left your phone in the motel room.”
McBeth shook his head. “I wasn’t there.” There was no anger in his voice.
“Okay.” Wolf flipped to the next page, pulling the folder closer. “We got extensive background information on James Sexton from Sheriff Domino up in Teton County. He did some digging over in Driggs, Idaho with the foster care agency that worked with James to find him a home.
“We learned he’s originally from Pocatello, Idaho. We learned he was in the foster care system because his birth parents had died. His mother died in a car crash when he was thirteen. Two years later his father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
McBeth’s eyes darted to the sheet of paper, to Wolf, and back to nothing in particular. “I never knew that.”
“You didn’t?”
“No.”
Wolf nodded. “Okay.” Wolf licked a finger and removed that sheet of paper, revealing the next. “I’d like to talk about the night of your father’s death.”
McBeth closed his eyes.
“I know your father burned you with the ranch brand,” Wolf said.
McBeth’s hand moved, but remained beneath the other.
“Do you think your father really killed himself that night?” Wolf asked. “Or do—”
“Eagle, we need to end this line of questioning right now,” Lessiter said.
McBeth opened his eyes, letting out a flood of tears. He turned to his lawyer.
