“Are you saying you think Latrell is the killer?”
“No. I’m just a jury consultant. I can tell you which version of the evidence the jury is more likely to believe or which juror is more likely to find for the plaintiff or the defendant. I can tell you the odds that a witness is a liar. But I can’t tell you if Latrell is a murderer, although there is one thing I can tell you for sure about him.”
“What’s that?”
She spread her palms?at on the table. “Don’t piss him off.”
I nodded. “Good to know since he wants to talk to me.”
“You? How do you know that and why does he want to talk to you?”
I summarized my trips to Quindaro since the murders, my conversation with Latrell, and his phone call to Ammara asking for my number. Kate peppered me with questions about how Latrell looked, talked, and acted when I was with him, smiling when I told her that I had gone back to the neighborhood not just to find witnesses but that I was also following her instructions to get a dog.
Kate’s smile lit up her face, the room, and my heart. I would have freeze-framed it if only I knew what to do with it. She chuckled, watching me watch her.
“You’re so busy trying to figure everyone else out, you don’t hide much of yourself.”
“Actually, I’m a pretty good poker player but I’m not trying to bluff you.”
“At the risk of choking on trite metaphors,” she said, “you’ve got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Now what do you say we get back on task? Are you going to talk to Latrell?”
“I’ve got to.”
Kate studied me some more, nodding. “I see that. You can’t sit back and wait for something to happen even if Latrell had nothing to do with the murders and nothing to do with Wendy. You’ve got to find out for yourself.”
“I can’t hide that from you or anybody else.”
“So,” she said, clicking off her conclusions one finger at a time, “you’ll go tomorrow, when it’s light out and you’ve had some rest. And you’ll take someone with you. Maybe Ammara Iverson or that detective from Kansas City, Kansas.”
I stood and turned off the television.
“I’ll go tonight because I can’t sit around waiting for something to happen and I’ll go alone because if I show up with the FBI or the cops, he won’t talk to me.”
Kate stood, grabbing my wrist. “Then I’m going with you.”
“I don’t think so. You’re going home.”
“You said it yourself. You’re lousy at reading faces and you didn’t pick up on the micro expressions we just watched. You want to know if Latrell is telling the truth, you have to take me with you.”
“How do I explain to Latrell why I brought you along?”
She smiled again. “Tell him that I like dogs.”
“And if that doesn’t do it?”
“Then tell him that I’m your girlfriend.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulled my lips to hers, and kissed me so hard I shook.
Chapter Forty-nine
Latrell knew that Jack Davis would come. He would knock on the door. Latrell would open it and let him in. Davis would walk past him into the living room. Maybe he would turn around and maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. Latrell didn’t care whether he shot Davis in the back or the front as long as he was dead when he hit the?oor.
He held a.45 caliber Marine pistol in his right hand, the mate to the gun he’d used to kill Marcellus. Johnny McDonald had stolen the pair seventeen years ago, bragging to Latrell how he had taken them and the night-vision goggles off a gun dealer with his mother’s help, cackling as he described how she had distracted the dealer by showing him her titties, his Adam’s apple, big as a grapefruit, bobbing up and down his long neck as he told the story.
Latrell had looked at his mother. She was sprawled on the sofa, the same one that he was sitting on now while he waited for Jack Davis, her eyes closed, smiling that dreamy smile she got when she was high, her lips twitching, the only part of her knowing the high wouldn’t last.
Latrell had followed Johnny into the basement, Johnny asking him did he want to hold one of the guns. Yeah, Latrell told him, asking was it loaded, Johnny saying damn straight it was loaded. How do you shoot it, Latrell asked, Johnny telling him it’s simple kid, just pull the trigger. Like this? Latrell asked, and shot Johnny in his Adam’s apple, the target so big he couldn’t miss even if it was the first time he had shot anybody. Latrell buried Johnny in the basement, adding his mother’s body the next day after she came on to him, asking would he get her fixed up.
Latrell kept that gun in the cave and the mate in the bottom drawer of his dresser, never firing it, not even once to see that it worked. He wasn’t religious, but he saw the spare gun as his salvation, the way to make things right one last time. So he saved it, keeping it pure and clean, for the moment he would need it. He checked the magazine for the fifth time, making certain it only held two bullets. That was all he would need.
He’d woken up that morning lying on the?oor of the cave, hugging his knees to his chest so tightly that when he stretched out he had no feeling in his legs. Soon Latrell’s skin started to tingle, his muscles warmed, and he staggered to his feet, bracing himself with one hand against the cave wall, breathing in the moist cool air coming off the underground lake.
The last thing he remembered from the night before was how he had screamed when he discovered that Davis had been in his cave, had stolen his gun and his special things. Latrell didn’t remember his screams giving way to sobs or his sobs giving way to sleep, but he knew that’s what had happened because it had been that way so many times before.
The candles he had lit had all burned out and the batteries in his?ashlight had died. The impenetrable darkness of the cave was broken only by shimmering?ecks of green light that dotted the?oor and walls, a mysterious glowing mineral that reminded him of the sparks he saw when he squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could.
Latrell was at ease in the blackness that made everything, including him, invisible. He knew the contours of the cave as well as he knew his own house and could easily navigate by touch and memory. Still groggy, he knelt at the edge of the lake, splashing the icy water on his face, then rocked back on his haunches, thinking about what he had to do and how he would do it.
He was convinced that Davis had followed him to the cave and waited until Latrell was gone so he could sneak inside, learn his secrets, and steal his gun and the picture of him and his mother that Johnny McDonald had taken in front of their house. He didn’t know what had made Davis suspect him, but he should have known something was up when Davis tried to play him with that bullshit story about losing his son.
Davis, he was certain, had given his gun to the FBI, who would figure out that it had been used to kill Marcellus, the Winston brothers, Jalise, and Keyshon. Davis would tell them how he’d followed Latrell to the cave and found the gun there and then they would come for him. He didn’t know how long these things took but guessed it would be today or tomorrow.
He thought about running but didn’t know where he would go or how he would live. He needed a place in the world, like his house and his job, and he needed a safe place away from the world, like the cave. Otherwise he would never survive.
From the instant Latrell had killed Johnny McDonald, he knew that it would eventually end like this no matter how many times he tried to make things right. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t asked for the life he’d had. He’d only wanted to be taken care of, and, when he wasn’t, he took care of himself the only way he knew how.
It had worked with Johnny and his mother, but it hadn’t worked with Marcellus. Latrell blamed Oleta Phillips. She had ruined his plan. That wasn’t his fault. It was more of the bad luck that clung to him.