Shady was sitting on the sidewalk, nursing his arm.
“Piss off, Starke,” he said, looking up at me. “I don’t want no more to do with you.”
“I want to talk to you about Stitch,” I said, crouching down beside him.
“I don’t wanna talk about dat.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “He was your son, Shady.”
“I had nothing to do with it. Stitch, he liked her, the girl, talked to her, sometimes, told her not to worry. He was warned not to talk to nobody. JoJo was watching him at the laundry. Then you, of all people, turns up and Stitch gets in your car. He was warned. He got nobody to blame but hisself.”
“But you, Shady. What about you? You must feel something.”
“It be tough out here... Kids, they die all’a time. Don’t mean a whole lot o’ nothin’,” he said, but I could tell that it did.
Even Lester Shady Tree had a heart in there somewhere.
Joseph JoJo James survived his wound and was charged with the murder of Benny Brown. CSI found trace evidence on Benny’s body, and DNA, all belonging to JoJo. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Amos Watts was arrested by Border Patrol agents in El Paso and was extradited back to Chattanooga, where he got lucky. He cut a deal with the DA, and friend of mine, Larry Spruce. He spilled his guts about Ducky Eider’s crimes and got off with just five to ten years in state prison.
No one was charged with the murders of Penelope Ross and Stitch Tree. JoJo James had alibis for both murders and, for some reason, my word wasn’t good enough to put him away for killing Stitch, but what difference would it have made? JoJo would never walk free again.
Shady… my man Shady. He also got five to ten for his part in Eider’s crimes. If he was a good boy, he’d be out in 2013… My oh my.
Ducky Eider? It’s kind of ironic, laughable even: he was convicted of conspiracy to kidnap Phoebe Marsh and sentenced to twelve years, federal. He’s in the same prison, in Atlanta, two cells down from his old buddy, Frank Marsh.
Phoebe Marsh didn’t take the news that Penny was dead very well. Apparently, the two were childhood friends, had attended the same schools together. Kate and I accompanied Phoebe to Penny’s funeral. She didn’t have much to say, didn’t know what she was going to do. Then, a couple of months later, Kate told me that Phoebe had applied to the police academy and that she, Kate, had sponsored her. Nine months later, Kate and I attended her graduation and induction into the department.
Me? Kate and I spent a lot of time together the next two months: she working on my office, and… Well, she managed to rid herself of her new partner, Dick Tracy, and she successfully closed out her first case as lead detective. I did think, for a while that we might… That maybe…
So, I spent the next couple of months working my ass off putting my new company together, trying to get things working smoothly.
Tim settled in; cost me more money than I earned in a year at the PD. Oh, and I did buy him a car: I found him a neat little red MGB GT. I figured it suited his personality. Since then he’s been insufferable, treating me like I’m his dad or something. I’m going to have to fix that somehow, but gently.
Jacque continues to brighten my every day, and Ronnie… well, Ronnie is Ronnie.
One thing of note did happen during those two formative months: I hired Bob Ryan… but that’s a whole nother story.
So, there you have it. That’s the story of how I made my transfer from cop to private investigator. Over the next several months, I struggled a bit, trying to get a handle on running my own business and all the responsibility that comes with it. I handled a couple more cases, made some stupid mistakes, and… well, those are stories for another day.