Chapter Six

“Where were you on Sunday evening?” Darrell asked Sandra Thoreau when we visited her later that morning. That was his very first question. We hadn’t told her about Gordon Brink, but I assumed that phones had been ringing all over town with news of the murder. She didn’t look surprised to see us.

Sandra’s eyes went from Darrell to me and back to Darrell. We were seated in the living room of her small rambler. When I’d seen her shortly after midnight, she’d been smoking and drinking a can of Old Style, and she still was. In between, she’d tied her hair back and put on jeans and a loose gray sweatshirt. I saw a few toys near the Christmas tree where her son, Henry, had unwrapped them. Henry himself was in the front yard, building a snowman. Sandra had told the boy to go outside when we arrived.

“Well, shit, Darrell,” she replied, blowing smoke at us. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Believe me, Sandra, I’d much rather be home with my family than here asking you questions. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we’re out of here. Now tell me about Sunday evening.”

She shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell. I was watching the movie at the 126, like most everybody else. Probably fifty people saw me there.”

“Did you leave the bar at all during the film?”

“Yeah, I went out to grab a smoke and enjoy a little peace and quiet for a few minutes. I’ve seen the movie before. Did I hop in my car and go slice and dice Gordon Brink? No, I didn’t. I mean, that’s what this is all about, right? That’s what you want to know?”

“What time did you get home?” Darrell continued, focused on Sandra’s alibi. This time, he was asking the questions. I wondered if he thought I’d go too easy on Sandra because we were both women in what the rest of the town considered men’s jobs.

“I don’t remember. One o’clock. Two. By that point, I was pretty wasted.”

“Did anyone see you leave?”

“Ricky,” Sandra replied, with a sharp glance at me. “He was still there. He’s always there.”

“Did you have a babysitter for Henry?”

“Yeah. That cute Davis girl. Kelli. She was asleep on the sofa when I got home. Henry was in bed. I didn’t wake either of them up. In the morning, I made breakfast for the three of us, and Kelli went home.”

“So Kelli can’t confirm what time you actually got back home?” Darrell asked.

Sandra sighed. “No, I guess she can’t. You got me, Darrell. Do you want to put the cuffs on me now?”

Darrell softened a little. We were all tired, and nobody wanted to be doing this on Christmas Day. “I’m sorry, Sandra, but we’re talking about a murder, and you’ve got a hell of a reason to dislike the man who was killed.”

Sandra stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray. “Dislike him? Yeah. That’s for damn sure. Kill him? No. That would be stupid. I’m about the last person in town who would want to see Gordon Brink dead. Me and the other girls at the mine have been waiting years to get our day in court, and we finally, finally had it in sight. And now this. I know what happens next. The mine asks to have the trial pushed back because their lead attorney croaked, and they need more time to get someone else up to speed. Meanwhile, there goes another year of my life. So do I give a shit about a bastard lawyer like Brink getting killed? No. Good riddance to the scumbag. But believe me, I’d have given him a kidney if it meant keeping my trial date.”

She got up from the sofa and went to the window, where she watched Henry rolling in the snow. Her face had a sunken cast to it, which reflected years of hard living. She was in her midthirties but looked a decade older. I knew Sandra drank a lot, smoked a lot, and probably dabbled in harder stuff, too. She could go toe-to-toe with any of the men at the mine when it came to swearing and telling dirty jokes. But something changed in her eyes when she saw her son. When it came to Henry, she was a mama bear with a cub.

“Do I need to get Norm over here?” she asked us, turning away from the window. “If you seriously think I could have done this, maybe I need a lawyer.”

“We’re just trying to figure out what happened,” Darrell replied. “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Did you hear any talk about Brink over at the mine? Any threats?”

“I stopped listening to talk long ago. The only thing I do at the mine is try to get through my shift without someone sticking their hand down my pants. If I do that, it’s a good day.”

“I know it’s not easy for the women over there.”

“Not easy? It’s been seven years, Darrell. Nothing ever changes. That first year, I was one of four women in the whole place. All I wanted was to do my job. Instead, they grabbed me, harassed me, threatened me, did everything they could to get me to quit. They tried to buy me off to get me to go away. But you know what? You go through that shit, and you decide pretty fast that you’re never going to let them win. I would have chewed glass before I gave up my job.”

Darrell let her light another cigarette before he continued. “When did you last see Brink?”

“About ten days ago. Norm and I spent four hours in a deposition at Brink’s house. The two of us on one side and Brink and his circus parade of lawyers, paralegals, and secretaries on the other.”

“How did that go?”

“Oh, great. Lots of fun. Brink asked me everything from how many abortions I’ve had to how often I diddle myself. He wanted a list of all my sexual partners in the last ten years. I asked if he had a calculator.”

“They can do that?” I asked.

“They can do whatever they want unless a judge says no. Norm says they’re trying to intimidate us. They figure we don’t want our dirty laundry aired in court. Me, I don’t care if they ask me to show off my Adam & Eve toys for the jury. They can’t shame me.”

“Did the other women get the same treatment from Brink?” Darrell asked.

“Oh yeah, he went after everybody else, too. Birth control, affairs, porn, you name it. All except Ruby, of course. She’s their star witness, so they treat her like Snow White. Ruby thinks all of us girls are blowing everything out of proportion, you know. Boys will be boys.”

Sandra shook her head in disgust.

I knew that the bitterness between Sandra and Ruby Jackson ran deep. Ruby had been a vocal opponent of the lawsuit from the beginning, and having her on the other side undercut the entire case. Unlike Sandra and the others, Ruby had the advantage of being married to Ajax. All the men at the mine knew Ajax and didn’t want to get on his bad side. That protected Ruby from the worst of their behavior.

“There’s what, two dozen other women who are part of the litigation now?” Darrell continued. “That’s a lot of husbands, brothers, and fathers who must have been mad as hell about Brink asking questions like that.”

“Yeah. People were pissed. So?”

“Did anyone seem more upset than the others? Did anyone have plans to get even?”

“People blow off steam all the time. They get liquored up and say stupid shit. You know it doesn’t mean anything. Sure, we all hated Brink, and there may have been some pranks that went over the line, but that’s it. The fact is, we wanted our day in court. Nobody from our side was going to mess that up.”

“What about the people on Brink’s team? Did you see any friction between them? Arguments, disagreements?”

Sandra shook her head. “No, Brink was the big bad partner. Nobody challenged him. The others barely even opened their mouths. There was one secretary who looked upset by the questions he was asking, though. She gave me this look a few times, like she felt sorry for me.”

“What was her name?”

“Hell if I know.”

“What did she look like?”

“Kind of an Amy Irving type. Cute.”

Darrell rubbed the scar on his face as he tried to decide what to ask next. I knew he didn’t really believe that Sandra had killed Gordon Brink. Pig’s blood all over Gordon’s wife? Sure. Cutting him into ribbons? No. It takes some serious, blind, soul-deep rage to do that. Like a dormant volcano that wakes up with an explosion. That wasn’t Sandra. With her, what you saw was what you got.

“You’re tuned in to the gossip around town, right?” Darrell said.

“When it’s not about me,” Sandra replied with a wink. “Which isn’t very often.”

“Was there any gossip about Brink? Any stories going around town?”

She pursed her lips and thought about it. “Not a lot. Nobody ever saw him. He hardly ever left that house. Folks around town know his kid, Jay, better than Gordon. Jay goes to the high school. From what I hear, he’s had a rough time from the other teens. I felt bad about that. It’s not his fault who his father was.”

Outside the house, we heard Henry calling for his mother. His snowman was done, and he needed his mom to come out and admire it.

“Is that all?” Sandra asked us. “Are we finished?”

“For now.”

“Well, you know where to find me.”

The three of us headed to the front yard, where Sandra oohed and aahed about Henry’s snowman. Before we left, Darrell signaled to Sandra again and spoke to her under his breath.

“There’s one other thing I need to ask you. At any time during the lawsuit, did you get questions about Kip Wells or Racer Moritz? Or did Brink or anyone else mention them?”

Sandra’s face furrowed with concern. “Kip and Racer? No, why? They were killed before the lawsuit ever began.”

“Do you know if they ever worked at the mine?”

“Not while I’ve been there.”

Darrell nodded. “Okay. Thanks for your time, Sandra. Merry Christmas.”

He headed down the driveway. I went to follow him, but Sandra grabbed my elbow before I could walk away. “What’s going on, honey? What does any of this have to do with Kip and Racer?”

“I can’t say.”

“Come on, everyone’s going to know sooner or later. Tell me.”

I still kept quiet, but Sandra was smart enough to make the connection for herself. Her face bloomed with shock as she put the pieces together, and she exhaled a cloud of steam into the cold air. “Son of a bitch. After all these years. He’s back, isn’t he? The Ursulina is back.”