“Nah, can’t say that I do. Anything else?”
Decker was looking at the tats on the man’s forearms. Words and symbols.
When Stevens noticed this, he lowered his arms to below the tabletop, his shackles rattling as he did so.
“Which gangs do you belong to in here, Karl?” asked Decker.
Stevens grinned. “Hell, I’m Switzerland, man. Neutral. Most guys in here are Hispanic, or they got his skin color.” He pointed at Mars. “They belong to the gangs, not the white guys. We’re in the minority.”
“You’re not the only white guy in here,” pointed out Lancaster. “Not by a long shot.”
“Well, most days it seems like I’m in the minority. We got to do something about that.” He grinned. “Take back our country.”
“How? Lock up more white guys?” said Mars.
Stevens’s lips curled back. “No. Just keep your kind out.”
“I was born here.”
“Ways around that,” said Stevens, with another smirk. “We done here?”
Lancaster said, “If you’re straight with us, Karl, we might be able to help you out.”
He glanced up at her, all attention now. “Help me out, how?”
“Your sentence? It has some flexibility.”
“I’ve done five on a ten to twenty. What can you do about that?”
“That depends on what you can do for us.”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s always the same old shit with you people. I got to tell what I know, if anything, and then you tell me the deal, take it or leave it. What other businesses negotiate that way?”
Decker said, “This isn’t a business. This is you marking fewer years in here than you otherwise would.”
Stevens said, “I can lie and tell you anything you want. Then you cut me a sweetheart deal. How about that?”
“Lies don’t cut it. We need the truth, corroborated.”
“It happened a long time ago. How do you expect me to remember anything?” As soon as Stevens said this, his features tightened.
Decker said, “What happened a long time ago?” When Stevens didn’t answer, he added, “I thought you didn’t remember anything about Frankie Richards or Meryl Hawkins.”
“Just making conversation,” said Stevens uncomfortably, his swagger now gone.
Lancaster interjected, “You want to deal or not? We can leave right now, but we’ll be sure to note in the record how uncooperative you were. That way you go to the max twenty.”
Stevens lunged forward and might have leapt across the table but for his restraints. The look on his face was that of a snarling wild animal. “You screw me like that, bitch, and you’re gonna regret it. I didn’t ask for you to come here.”
“Is that right, Karl?” said Lancaster. “You got friends on the outside?”
“I got friends all over.”
“So where were your friends when your ass ended up in here?” She paused. “Some friends. Why do you think you owe them?”
“Who said anything about owing anybody?” he barked.
The guards made a move to step forward, but Decker waved them off. He said, “Because guys like you are a dime a dozen, and Mary and I have seen it all a hundred times. You got stupid and you got caught and your ‘friends’ ran away from you as fast as they could. The result: You’re in here and they’re not.”
“You got no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Then tell us,” replied Decker. “I always like to know who’s on the opposing team.”
Stevens waved this off with a rattle of his shackles. “I’m just spouting, man. Just bullshit.”
“Getting back to Richards and Hawkins: You dealt for them both, I’m betting. Maybe you heard something from one of them that might tie into what happened?”
Lancaster added, “And maybe you saw Meryl Hawkins here and you two talked. About stuff? And then he got released.”
“That was bullshit. I’m sick too. I got a liver thing.”
“So, you knew he was released because of his cancer being terminal?” said Decker.
When the inmate once more looked chagrined at his own words, Decker said, “That’s the second time you’ve screwed up talking with us, Karl. I think you need to tell us what you know, and we’ll work a deal for you. You’ll be out of here sooner than you otherwise would.”
“You think it’s that easy?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you try us?”
“I gotta think about it.”
Lancaster said, “What’s to think about? You help us, we help you.”
Stevens shook his head.
“Tell us this, did you talk to Hawkins?” asked Decker.
“I might have seen him around.”
“And might you have discussed the murders with him?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
Lancaster said, “We would, but somebody killed him.”
Stevens turned pale and looked like he might be sick. “I gotta go.” He looked at the guards. “Hey, I’m done here.”
Decker said, “It doesn’t have to be this way, Karl.”
“Yeah, it does. Now leave me the hell alone.”
As he was being led away, Lancaster said to Decker, “I screwed up. I shouldn’t have told him what happened to Hawkins.”
“I don’t think it would have mattered, Mary, but we did get one lead.”
“What?”
“The tats on Stevens’s arms were very close to the tats I saw on the shooter who killed Sally Brimmer.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
When they got back to Burlington, Natty met them in the detectives’ room. “What the hell happened up there?”
“What do you mean?” asked Lancaster.
“They just found Karl Stevens with a shiv in his neck. He’s dead.”
Chapter 46
Decker, Lancaster, and Mars were holding a powwow in the empty dining area of the Residence Inn as the rain beat down outside in the darkness.
“Well, that tells us your theory was right, Amos,” said Lancaster. “Stevens was involved in this somehow.”
“And by talking to us, he got the death penalty,” added Mars bitterly. “I know the guy was scum, but nobody deserves that crap.”
Decker sat there, his hands in his lap, his gaze centered on a spot on the ceiling. “The shooter who killed Sally Brimmer had the same tats. There’s apparently a connection between him and Stevens.”
“Are you really sure they’re the same?” asked Lancaster.
“I got a clear look at them in the alley, and at Stevens’s back at the prison. I think Stevens knew that, because when he caught me looking, he put his arms under the table so I couldn’t see the tats anymore.”
“Membership in the same gang,” said Lancaster. “That’s certainly possible.”
“They moved quickly,” said Decker. “He was dead within two hours of our meeting him.”
“How could they possibly have acted that quickly?” asked Lancaster. “Unless it was unrelated to our visit. Inmates do kill other inmates, all the time.”
“That would have to be the biggest coincidence in the world.”
“And you don’t believe in even small coincidences,” said Mars.
“And you saw how Stevens clammed up when he found out Meryl Hawkins had been murdered. He was afraid for his safety. He tried to shut it down, but it was too late.”
“With him gone, how do we get to the truth?” asked Lancaster. “Our leads keep dying. And, hell, we don’t even know how whoever killed the Richards family and David Katz got there or left.”
“No, I think we do know that,” said Decker.
He explained to her his theory on Katz being kidnapped and driven to the Richardses’ home in his car. And also about the light switch plate change-out and the DNA possibly coming from Mitzi. “I told Natty about it all too.”