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ALEX SLAPPED MY THIGH with the back of her hand and stood as Mike walked toward us. He wore a green John Deere hat low on his head with dark sunglasses over his eyes.
I was still hesitant to meet with him, even though I knew Alex was right. We needed his help.
In a hushed voice, I said to Alex, “What is he...undercover?”
Mike stopped in front of us and took a drag from his cigarette. He looked at me over the top of his sunglasses. “I don’t know if I like this,” he said. “Just so we’re clear.”
I looked at Alex. “So much for getting his cooperation.”
“Cooperation?” Mike lifted his glasses onto his head and narrowed his eyes. “Is that what you want to call this?” He looked at Alex, as if she’d translate our conversation.
“All Henry meant was—”
He took another step toward me. “Let me tell you what the deal is. I’m an officer of the law. Not some part-time security guard who took an online course to play private investigator.” He pointed his finger at his chest. “I’m the one who’ll look for your cooperation.” He took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke right at me. “Are we in agreement of how this’ll work?”
I wanted to rip the cigarette right from Mike’s mouth and flick it off his face. But I kept my cool. I needed his help. I said, “Whatever you need, Mike.”
Mike and Alex looked at each other, Alex with her mouth open about to speak...maybe about to defend whatever she’d expected to come out of my mouth.
But she realized she didn’t have to.
“Good,” is all Mike said.
We went into detail and told Mike everything Alex and I had learned. I don’t believe he was expecting to hear about such a tangled web, and how it all tied together.
Before Alex or I mentioned Paul Krueger, Mike brought him up. “Paul was a pretty decent guy...a good cop. I thought so, anyway. But something went wrong. We weren’t in the same division—in fact I was in a financial crimes arm when I’d first started—so I didn’t know much about what happened. From what I know, he wasn’t as clean as he needed to be.”
“Clean?”
Mike shrugged as he pulled another cigarette from his pack and stuck it in his mouth. “Drank a lot, might’ve gotten into some trouble. But I never heard much about what happened. All I know is he retired at a fairly young age. I didn’t know he was still in the area.”
I pulled out the photographs from a folder and handed them to Mike.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Photos from the scene when Theresa Thompson had allegedly fallen down the stairs. I turned to stand shoulder-to-shoulder next to Mike.
He looked down at the photos. “How’d you get your hands on these? From Paul?”
I shook my head.
Alex said, “It’s probably best we don’t say where we got them.”
He stared back at Alex. “Didn’t you hear what I said about cooperation?”
She shook her head. “Mike, it doesn’t make a difference right now.”
I held a photo in front of him and pointed to Theresa’s body at the bottom of the stairs. She was face-down, the way she’d allegedly been found. “See the glass?” I said.
He said, “Looks like it must’ve smashed under her when she fell.”
“Does that make sense to you?” I said. “She tumbles down the stairs and keeps the glass in her hand? And it’s under her as she falls?”
He stared at the photo but didn’t answer my question.
I flipped through the other photos. “Now see how the wine is all over the stairs? It’s on the walls here and here. But if she kept it in front of her, there wouldn’t be much of anything on the wall. Not if she really held onto the glass.”
Alex said, “It would’ve had to have been a pretty special glass to hold onto it, all the way down the stairs.”
Mike looked up from the photos. “Please tell me this isn’t all you have?”
I flipped to the next photo. “See how her glass is in her right hand? It’s underneath her, but it’s clearly her right hand. I believe someone staged it to look like she took a drunken tumble down the stairs.”
Alex said, “Show him the next one.”
I flipped to the close-up photos Alex had created. It was a zoomed-in image of the wine that’d splashed on the wall and the drops on the stairs. “The wine is splashed on the left side. Her left side, coming down the stairs. Even the wine that’d pooled on the steps is to her left.”
Mike looked at me. “Are you trying to say she had the wine in her left hand? But then why wasn’t it on the left of her? The problem is, Walsh, that you can’t tell me how she fell down those stairs. Not from these photos. She could’ve gone down backwards before she turned...tried to catch her fall.”
I flipped to another close-up and pointed. “See the shape of these drops? She’s going down, the wine comes out of the glass and splashes behind her. But you look at the shape of the wine drops. They were splashed from above.”
Mike grabbed the photo from my hand and held it close to him as he squinted his eyes. “There’s no consistency to those markings.”
I nodded. “I believe someone threw wine at the wall. It wouldn’t look anything like this if the wine splashed from a glass as she fell down the stairs.”
“I understand where you’re going. But it’s not enough to get a closed case of an accident re-opened.”
“Can you at least agree it looks like it was very likely staged?”
Mike gave a half-hearted nod. “I’d have to study these photos a little closer, but...”
Before he could finish, I said, “When Theresa Thompson died, John Thompson got a two-and-a-half-million-dollar settlement.”
“Oh, I see where this is going. So now you think her husband killed her for the life insurance money?” He shrugged. “Don’t you think the detective in charge looked into that?”
Alex shook her head. “There was barely an investigation.”
Mike shrugged. “Even if he did kill her...he’s dead. They can fight it out upstairs.”
I waited a moment then shook my head. “The thing is, I don’t think he did it. The one thing he did have was an alibi. People saw him coming home just before he called the Sheriff’s Office. Roy and a couple of men he was playing cards with all vouched for his whereabouts.”
Mike pulled his hat off and scratched his head. “Why do I get the feeling you’re playing games with me, Walsh?”
“Well, I’m not. But just because I don’t think he killed her doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved. There’s a good chance this was all a coverup.”
Alex said, “He comes into two-and-a-half million dollars. And his stepson got nothing.”
Mike glanced at Alex. “You mean Nate Ryan?”
Alex and I both nodded at the same time.
“What a minute. Then where was Nate during all this?”
I could tell Mike was open to what we were saying, but a little worried Alex and I were a few steps ahead of him. He didn’t like that.
I said, “Nate was at his aunt’s house, out of town. She lives down in Gainesville.” I got up from the edge of the fountain. “But I don’t think John kept any of the money, either.”
“No?”
“John owed Roy Mason two-point-five-million. And I have a feeling Roy got his money once Theresa was dead.”
Mike looked off, shaking his head. “Sounds to me you’re making some pretty ballsy assumptions. Roy Mason knows a lot of people. Especially in my own department. “How the hell are you going to prove he was somehow involved?”
Alex looked right at Mike. “We’re going to need your help.”