13
Friday, July 26, Afternoon
I met Terri at the dog park for an update. It was a good place to talk, with just a few benches eight or ten yards apart, overlooking a green slope down to the lawn where folks tossed balls or Frisbees for their pets. She was standing by a bench holding a ball for her new puppy to jump at. When we got close enough, Squatter got excited at the sight of his friend, so I stooped to set him down. Her puppy ran over and did happy circles around him.
I asked, “He’s not going to get to the size of a purebred rottweiler, is he? What’s he mixed with?”
“No, that would definitely be too big for me to control. His mom was a black Lab.”
“Still a full-sized dog, though.”
“Well, no offense,” she said, looking at Squatter, “but I wanted a dog that could scare people.”
“That’s understandable, in your line of work.”
“Mm-hmm.” She sounded like it wasn’t just work she was thinking about.
She didn’t continue. I didn’t want to intrude, but I said, “Some folks think lawyers are scary too, so if you need more help than that puppy can provide, you let me know.”
She laughed it off. “I’m good,” she said. “But, speaking of work, I got some information.”
“Oh, yeah?” We sat on the bench.
“So, first off, Jackson’s alibi. There’s about zero chance he spent the night on the beach.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I had my doubts.”
“Remember the ice cream stand that burned? Same night? The beach was crawling with cops and firefighters and all the tourists, plus the local gawkers. The cops swept the beach for witnesses, because it looked like arson right off the bat.”
“I take it nobody saw Jackson sleeping rough. Or otherwise.”
“Not a soul. I also checked with the shops near the marina, to see if anybody’d spotted him after Blount did. Or before, for that matter. No luck, although one cashier said Karl had bought a case of beer around 7:45.”
“What time did the ice cream stand burn?”
“The 9-1-1 call came in at 10:09 p.m.”
“Huh,” I said. “Mazie said she drove down to the marina looking for Jackson, but she didn’t mention seeing the fire.”
“Hmm.” She tossed the ball, and her puppy flung itself downhill. Then she pulled some papers out of her tote bag. “I also got some intel on that Mustang. It’s in Karl’s name, but there’s no car loan on his credit report. I checked all three bureaus.”
“You did?” I looked at the papers. “How? Is that legal now because he’s dead?”
She hesitated. Then she gave me a look and said, “Let me rephrase. Some intern of mine went crazy and pulled his credit reports.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Yeah, interns. Sometimes they just go rogue.” I added her credit-report maneuver to the list of secrets I planned to take to the grave. Then I realized what she meant about the lack of a car loan. “Wait,” I said. “You saying he paid cash for it?”
“Or someone just gave him a Mustang convertible.” We both laughed. She said, “Maybe if Karl was a cute young woman, but…”
“Yeah,” I said. “Karl definitely had a more limited appeal. What’s this address here?” The car was registered someplace a few towns down the coast.
“That’s his girlfriend, Kitty Ives, the Broke Spoke waitress. He registered it at her place.”
“Huh. I want to talk to her, but I thought barging into the strip club wasn’t the best approach.”
She laughed. “Yeah, you’d better be real discreet. I’ve had run-ins with the guy who owns that place, Dunk McDonough. He’s a control freak, doesn’t like anybody messing with his business. If he knows you’re asking questions, he’ll make trouble for her. He tried to get the Jumpstart halfway house shut down. It’s a block from the Broke Spoke, and he said it made the neighborhood look bad.”
“Worse than a strip club?”
“I know! It’s just women trying to get their lives together. But he was always calling the cops on fake noise complaints. I’ve got a feeling he’s why one of my ladies there got arrested the other week.”
“So Kitty’d probably be scared of him,” I said. “Okay. I’ll reach out to her someplace else.” Squatter, tired of playing, limped over and curled up in the sunlight. I scratched his ears and said, “I need to talk to Jackson too. Whatever he was doing that night, I need to know.”
“Yeah. It’s too bad he doesn’t understand that.” Her pup brought her the slobbery ball, and she hurled it back downhill. “Or does he? I know you can’t answer that. I’m just thinking out loud. Is he scared of something? What’s he trying to hide? Anyway. That’s what I’d be wondering.”
I was shaking my head, but not because I disagreed. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t even remember how long ago it was that I lost my faith in… in reason, basically.”
“How do you mean?”
“Folks don’t decide anything based on reason. They decide what they want to, or jurors believe what they want to, and then they come up with an excuse for it after the fact.”
She sighed. Even the wriggling puppy dropping his ball at her feet didn’t get a smile.
“Not to be depressing,” I said, leaning over to get the ball. “Although if you want inspiration and uplift,” I said, tossing it downhill, “you probably need friends who’ve never been prosecutors. Or criminal defense lawyers.”
That made her laugh. “Or cops,” she added. “I don’t think we realized, when we were in high school, that the careers we wanted came with a side of losing faith in humanity.”
“They never tell you that, do they. Speaking of cops, you find anything on Blount?”
“Not much. Nobody I talked to saw him at the marina that night. For background, I already knew he’s married, three sons in their teens, been a cop
