Reed came down the hallway two hours later, ashen-faced and shuffling with fatigue.
Mac went toward him. ‘What the hell, Reed?’
‘They tell me I need a lawyer.’
‘What’s going on?’
Bales had followed close behind. ‘You,’ he said, pointing to Mac. ‘Follow me.’ They went down the hall and into an interview room that smelled of sweat, coffee and cigar smoke.
‘What’s going on?’ Mac asked, sitting on one of the scuffed green plastic chairs.
‘You want a lawyer?’
‘I want an answer.’
Bales switched on an old cassette recorder and slumped into another chair. His forehead was perspiring and his white shirt was sweat-stained around the neck.
‘Record of interview,’ he said to the recorder, ‘I am Sheriff Jimmy Bales, conducting an informal interview with Mac Bassett, of Grand Point, Illinois. First off, Mr Bassett agrees he’s here voluntarily, and understands that he is free to go at any time.’
‘I’ve said no such things. What’s this about?’
‘If you want, you just get up and walk out. Is that clear, Mac?’
Mac nodded. He’d learn nothing if he left.
‘Say that you understand, for the tape.’
‘I understand what little you’ve told me.’
‘Tell me about Thursday night,’ Bales said.
‘Thursday night?’ Mac asked, confused.
‘What did you do Thursday night?’
This wasn’t push-back for grabbing Betty Jo’s vertebrae and the skull. ‘I was celebrating at the Bird’s Nest.’
‘You had an agenda.’
‘It was a joyous time. The trumped-up case against me had been seen for the political sham it was. It was dismissed, after costing me a ruinous amount in legal fees that I’ll have trouble paying off. Still, I’ll pay any amount to stop bullying by officers of the law.’ He tried his best to not blink, staring Bales in the eye.
‘Goddamnit, Mac.’
‘What the hell is this about?’
‘You and Reed Dean were shooting off your mouths about finding a new crime scene photo of Betty Jo Dean. Such a photo could only have been taken by Horace Wiggins.’
‘Ask Wiggins how many pictures he really took.’
‘How, and when, did you and Mr Dean come into what should be official sheriff’s department evidence?’
Reed hadn’t given in by telling Bales there was no photograph.
‘This is incredible, Jimmy. You posted cruisers on every highway into town, in the middle of the night, to drag us in about that?’
‘Where did you get the damn picture?’ Fresh sweat was growing on Bales’s forehead.
‘Horace Wiggins knows more about Betty Jo Dean’s murder than he’s ever said.’
‘Thursday night, Reed Dean was pretty angry at Horace about that photograph?’
‘Everyone should get angry about concealed evidence.’
Bales shut off the tape recorder. ‘I’ll get you, too.’
Nothing was making sense. ‘For what?’
‘The murder of Horace Wiggins.’
Reed told the story as Mac drove him home.
‘Horace Wiggins’s garage went up in flames early Friday, just after two in the morning. By the time the firemen arrived, the garage, a seventy-year-old wood tinderbox crammed full with old newspapers and photographs, had been totally destroyed. When efforts to rouse Horace from inside his house failed, the fire chief remembered talk of Horace being especially close to his assistant. He drove to her house. She was alone. It was then that the fire chief realized the destroyed garage might be a death scene. He called the sheriff’s department. Jimmy Bales arrived with two of his deputies. By then it was dawn.
‘Scorched human remains were discovered in the smoldering rubble. Because the fire had so totally ravaged the garage it was not yet known whether they belonged to Horace Wiggins. The body was sent to the hospital in Rochelle for examination.’
‘I suppose a neighbor noticed one particular Mustang parked in front of Wiggins’s house?’ Mac asked when Reed finished.
‘The only thing I forgot was to honk my horn and turn on my emergency flashers.’
‘This, after telling one and all you’d come into possession of a photo Horace had suppressed. What a beautiful idea I had. I set you up as a murder suspect.’
‘You couldn’t know what would happen. Whoever was in the shadows at Horace’s garage saw me.’
‘And saw an opportunity to be rid of Wiggins and get you blamed for it.’
‘He waited until I left, killed Horace and torched the garage. Maybe he was hoping I’d been seen by a neighbor, idling out front, but it wasn’t necessary. I’d been talking up my anger, all over your restaurant, about a picture Horace had kept hidden. That alone was enough to show I had motive.’
‘Your sister’s case keeps killing people.’
‘Without us getting any closer to the killer’s identity.’
SIXTY-SIX
Mac was on his way to the Bird’s Nest the next morning when the realization of what he’d overlooked slapped him like an open palm. He slammed on his brakes at the courthouse and ran up the stairs.
‘I’d like to look at a couple of death certificates,’ he told the mouse-woman in the county clerk’s office.
‘Heard you’re having a press conference this afternoon. Big news?’
‘I don’t want to leak anything beforehand.’
She frowned. ‘Which certificates?’
‘Paulus Pribilski and Betty Jo Dean.’
The frown deepened. ‘Heard the report from Springfield said you dug her up for nothing.’
‘It’s an unsolved crime.’
‘Only vultures pick at the dead.’
‘May I see those certificates?’
She walked away, huffing.
Five minutes later she was back with the same big ringbinder that contained Sheriff Milner’s death certificate. That made too much horrible sense; the deaths had occurred within days of one another.
She flipped to Betty Jo Dean’s death certificate first. ‘Both certificates were filed on July 8, 1982.’
Betty Jo’s death certificate looked ordinary, a neat listing of the dates of the girl’s birth and death. The cause of death was listed as homicidaclass="underline" ‘Death resulted from a bullet wound from a.38 caliber revolver fired from behind into the base of the skull. Shot was fired by person or persons unknown.’
‘… fired from behind into the base of the skull.’
Such a simple phrase, so obviously overlooked, and so damning. Proof enough, on its own, that the skull exhumed had not belonged to Betty Jo Dean.
He turned the page to Pribilski’s certificate. At first glance, it looked just as succinct – dates of birth and death, age at death, and so on. Oddly this time, the county clerk had editorialized: ‘Death resulted from multiple bullet wounds inflicted by person or persons unknown. A.38 caliber handgun was used – bullet penetrated directly through the heart causing instant death. He was shot while with Betty Jo Dean on a lonely road parked in his car.’
Mac read it again: ‘… while with Betty Jo Dean on a lonely road parked in his car.’ Somehow, the phrase seemed to infer that Pribilski had it coming because he was out with a slut, enjoying what sluts did so well.
Different words, but in their own way, just as damning as those on Betty Jo Dean’s death certificate.
He glanced at the clerk’s name typed in the last box on the form and got another jolt. He didn’t recognize the first name, but the surname was a surprise.
He flipped forward a week, and another, to see the certificates prepared after the Pribilski and Dean murders. On none of them had she offered the sort of commentary she’d given Pribilski’s death. In mid-August, the name of the clerk changed.
He called out that he wanted copies of the two death certificates. The woman took the book, made the copies and returned.
‘That county clerk, back when the murders occurred?’ Mac asked.
The woman didn’t have to look at the form to know what he was asking. ‘Clamp’s first wife,’ she said. ‘She left town right after she filed for divorce. Bad summer all around, that year.’