Tuesday Morning
Joey Adkins was the IT manager for a major company in downtown San Antonio. His record was clean: not even a parking ticket. They knew he had a permanent handicap placard for his vehicle; when they met him they knew why. He was in a wheelchair. It was highly unlikely—unless he had been faking his handicap for years—that he had killed anyone in the manner that Standish, James, and Garcia had been killed.
“It’s not every day I get both local and federal cops in my office,” he said. His office was ergonomically set up to accommodate his small electric chair, which he maneuvered with ease. He had several high-end computers at his work space, and a secondary desk with multiple disk drives laid out.
“Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,” Jerry said.
“You said it was about Billy. I know he was killed a few weeks ago—two months? I didn’t go to the funeral. My brother told me about it.”
“You and Billy were friends.”
“A long time ago.”
“And you were in an accident together.”
“Together?” He shook his head.
“We read the incident report after Mrs. Standish told us about it. You and Billy and another boy were driving four-wheel-drive trucks in the mud and your truck flipped on a rock when Billy cut you off.”
He snorted. “Yeah.”
“That’s not accurate?”
“It’s accurate—but he cut me off on purpose because of that lying girlfriend—wife—of his.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Because I can’t prove anything. Little miss perfect Susie Boswell. Cheerleader, all petite and sweet. Billy told me later when he thought I was dying that he was sorry he believed her. But I was done. I told him if he stayed with her, we were no longer friends. He chose her. I’m over it.”
He didn’t sound over it. He sounded angry and bitter. Lucy said, “What did Billy believe?”
“Susie and I went out first. But I saw right through her after about three dates. She was downright mean. You’d never know it. She was all sugar and spice and everything nice, but she would say mean things. Like, well, Ginger was this really nice kid who had a serious weight problem. Susie would go up to her at lunch and say maybe she should cut back on the carbs. In her sweet little southern belle voice. Or Bernie who had a stutter. She would mimic him in class and make it worse. My mama didn’t like her from day one, and I should have listened to her.”
“What happened before the accident?” Jerry asked.
“Susie told Billy that I had cornered her in the girls’ locker room after practice and kissed her. Tried to convince her to leave Billy and come back to me. Which was bullshit.” He glanced at Lucy. “Excuse me.”
“Did something happen?” Jerry asked.
“Yeah. I had started seeing a girl, Rose. Really liked her. She was on the cheer squad with Susie. Susie made her life miserable. She didn’t like that I had called her out on her shit, pardon my French. I tried to tell Billy that Susie was trouble, but he fell for her, hook, line, and sinker. She was the prettiest girl in school, and Billy was a good guy—a great teammate, a great friend until he got with her. But Billy wasn’t the sharpest tack. First, he’s very trusting. And second, Susie was the first girl he slept with. First and only. You might think I’m lying through my teeth, but I ain’t. Like I said, we were friends. Anyway, the Thursday practice before that weekend, I had enough. Rose came to me crying. Wouldn’t tell me why, but I got her to confess that Susie had spread a vicious lie about her, in her attempt to break us up. To this day, I don’t know what it was. But I did confront Susie in the locker room, told her that I had enough with her, and if she so much as looked at Rose the wrong way, I would tell Billy that he wasn’t her first—she’d flat-out lied to him that she’d been a virgin when they slept together. I know—because I slept with her, and I knew she wasn’t a virgin then. I’m not proud of it—believe me, I wish I’d just hunkered down and ignored her in high school, stayed off her radar. Because anyone who got on her bad side, stayed there.”
“Are you saying that Billy intentionally flipped your truck?” Jerry asked.
“No. I’m saying that he was angry with me and he intentionally tried to damage my truck. It was my brother’s, and I wasn’t supposed to be driving it in the mud, and I didn’t want any damage. I overcompensated and didn’t see the rock. Flipped right over. It was a freak accident, all because of how I landed.”
“Is that how you were paralyzed?” Jerry asked.
“Indirectly. And I’m not fully paralyzed. My back broke, and I went through physical therapy but the pain was intense. I went through two surgeries over the last ten years, which helped the pain, but made my mobility worse. I can walk short distances with a cane, go to physical therapy every week, but it’s not going to get much better. I’m working on building my endurance so I can walk my daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.”
“Daughter? You’re a little young to have daughter getting married.”
“She’s five. Rose and I got married two years after we graduated. We have a daughter, Mary Anne, and a two-year-old son, Grant.”
Lucy remembered what Susan Standish had said about pain pills. “Were you ever addicted to pain medication?”
He snorted. “Susie told you that, right? I’ll bet she did. A bitch from beginning to end.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Jerry said.
“No, I wasn’t. My doctor wanted me to stay on the meds because I was in pain, but they made me fuzzy and I knew there was no way I could go through college like that. After three months I quit. I got my AA at SACC in computer science. Worked myself into this position here. Dealt with the pain. Still do, but like I said, the last surgery really helped.”
“I graduated from SACC,” Jerry said. “Criminal justice.”
“You always want to be a cop?” Joey asked.
“Yes. My dad and my grandfather were Texas Rangers.”
“Well, I always wanted to play football in college and go through ROTC like my brother and join the air force. That was all taken away from me. And Billy still married her. I don’t know what she said, but I don’t care anymore. I haven’t cared for a long time.”
He looked from Jerry to Lucy.
“So why are you two here? To see if I waited eleven years to kill him?”
“More or less,” Jerry said, much to Lucy’s surprise. “And to ask you if there is anyone else who might have wanted Billy dead.”
“Other than Susie?”
“Why would she?”
“Hell if I know. Why does she do anything that she does? Look—Billy was a good guy. Got a little mouthy when he was drinking and would walk into fights because like I said, not the sharpest tack. But he was kind. Some of the guys from school went down to Houston after the hurricane and helped people get out of their flooded homes. Billy was one of them. If someone was having difficulty making their mortgage, he’d give them whatever he had. Never expect it back. I miss having him as a friend—there was a group of us in high school who hung out, and now they hang out with me, or they hang out with Billy, but I told Billy that if he stayed with Susie, we were through. He stayed, and the only time I’ve seen him since is when we were at the same function—a couple times at weddings, and last year at our ten-year high school reunion. And other than a hi, hello, we didn’t talk.” He paused. “I’m sorry he’s dead.”
“So there’s no one else you can think of.”
“Like I said, I wasn’t really much into his life. Maybe he pissed off someone, though it probably wasn’t on purpose and he may not have even realized it. But let me tell you this—at the reunion last year, one of my friends made a comment to a small group of us that Susie was prowling.”
“Which means?”
“Just what you think. That she was interested in men not her husband. And while Billy might not be sharp, and he might be forgiving, and he might believe all her sweetness and tears—if he caught her cheating on him, he would walk out.”
“Do you know this for a fact, or is this just a rumor?”
“Rumor that I believe.”
“And no one told Billy?”
“No one would. No one would want to hurt him like that. Even me, even after what happened our senior year, I wouldn’t hurt him like that. It would be out of spite. Let him find out on his own.”
Jerry didn’t say anything for the short drive back to BCSO. In the parking garage, he sat in the car, the air-conditioning blowing on them both.
“You believe him,” Lucy finally said. “Though there is no evidence of anything he said, you believe him.”
“He was bitter, but not overly so. He was seventeen and his life as he knew it was essentially over.”
“And he built something new,” Lucy said. “He has a wife, two kids, good job. No criminal record.”
“I don’t think he had anything to do with murder. We’ll run his brother, the one in the military, just to make sure nothing pops, but why now? Why eleven years after an accident?”
“And you believe Susan Standish is having an affair.”
“I think it’s something we need to find out about, don’t you?”
She sighed. “Yes.” She really didn’t like people all that much right now.
“Problem?”
“No. We need to know if it’s true, and if maybe her lover wanted that insurance money more than she did. She might not be involved, but that’s not to say she picks lovers who share her nonhomicidal values.” But she could be involved. Why kill three men? To cover up a crime of greed?
“If we believe Joey Adkins, those values are off-kilter,” Jerry said. “Damn, both times I interviewed her I saw exactly what I expected to see. A grieving wife, a pretty young teacher with big blue eyes and tears.”
“And that may be exactly who she is,” Lucy said. “I’ll tell you this: I’ve always been a good judge of character, and interrogation is one of my strengths. I didn’t see anything that would suggest that Mrs. Standish was involved in her husband’s murder. She may be having an affair, but that doesn’t mean that she wanted her husband dead.”
“Let’s find out.”
“How? Ask her?”
“Yep, straightaway I want to ask her. See what she says. But Ash says he’ll have his computer model ready to show us right after lunch. So let’s get a bite in the cafeteria and head over to the crime lab.”