Chapter 23
There is something really creepy about visiting the campus of a correctional facility . . . the staid brick buildings, the tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, the general sense of confinement—it all just gives me goose bumps . . . goose bumps that linger on my skin as a uniformed guard asks for my name, the reason for my visit, and my driver’s license. After taking down my license plate and using what looks like a very strong flashlight (even though it’s daylight) to look through the windows of my van (searching for God knows what), he returns to his little booth and presses a button to lift the gate arm, allowing me to drive onto the property of the Prince George’s County Correctional Center.
As I follow the signs to the building where I’m supposed to meet Nathan, I can still hear the desperation in his voice when he called me yesterday. He was adamant that he did not kill Monique, and that the police were overly anxious to close her murder case. He said they had little interest in pursuing any further investigation and were going to put him away for life without considering other suspects—namely Odessa, whom Nathan is convinced returned to his and Monique’s house after the white party and shot Monique from the edge of the front lawn. The red sequin he saw me hand Detective Hutchins has only reinforced his certainty that Odessa is the killer.
Apparently, he and Monique ran in the same social circles as a now-deceased acquaintance of mine, Raynell Rollins, a former high school classmate who was killed earlier this year. She was a top-selling real estate agent in the area and the wife of a prominent former Washington Redskins player. Although she and her husband didn’t have the same national celebrity as Monique, they were definitely part of Prince George’s County’s upper crust, so it makes sense that Monique and Raynell kept company with the same people. After meeting me, Monique must have put two and two together and realized that I was the one whose name was being batted around at cocktail parties as the person who solved Raynell’s murder. At some point before she died, Monique apparently shared this information with Nathan, and he’s now decided that my history as an amateur sleuth is his only hope for avoiding a lifetime in prison.
I was told I could have virtually nothing on my person when I meet with Nathan, so I shove my purse under the front seat and drop my cell phone in the glove compartment. When I lock the van and walk toward the entrance of the facility, the only things I have on me are my driver’s license and my car keys.
* * *
“Yes?” says a disinterested woman behind the counter after I enter the building.
“Hi. My name is Mahalia Watkins. I’m here to see Nathan Tucker.”
“Inmate number?”
I feel like responding, “I’m good, thanks for asking,” but I guess if there’s any place to not get smart, it’s the county jail. Instead, I say, “I’m not sure. I don’t think I was given that information.”
She sighs as if I’ve asked her to go pick up my dry cleaning or mow my lawn. “I’ll need to look him up. What’s his name again?”
“Tucker. Nathan Tucker.”
She clicks some buttons on her keyboard, finds him in the system, and scribbles a few notes on a form. She then barks more words at me, makes a copy of my driver’s license, and hands me a pass.
“Security is to your left,” she says. “No cellular telephones, laptop computers, tablet computers, smart watches, purses, bags, pagers . . . no food or drink, including chewing gum,” she adds, almost robotically. “There are lockers before the screening area if you need to store anything.”
I take the pass and say, “Thank you,” to the young lady despite her groans, snappy questions, and not being bothered to make eye contact with me at any point during our interaction. From there I find my way to the screening area, deposit my keys in a little bin, and send them through an X-ray scanner. I then walk through a metal detector only to be told, once I’ve cleared it, to lift my arms and separate my feet. As a plump middle-aged woman with about as much warmth as the surly lady at the reception counter waves some wand thing over my entire being, I decide that if I hear the term “strip search,” I’m out of here, and Nathan is on his own.
Once I’m finally cleared and pick up my keys, a guard asks me for the inmate number of the person I’m there to see. He seems just as annoyed as the lady at the counter when I don’t remember it.
“It should be on your pass.”
“Sorry. It’s my first time here.” I flip my pass upward so he can see it. He checks something off on his clipboard and leads me down a hallway that smells like both mold and bleach, to an unmarked door, which he unlocks and holds open for me. I poke my head in and see a sizable space with tables and chairs that remind me of a retro McDonald’s, albeit a very stark and drab McDonald’s . . . back when the tables were attached to the floor and the plastic chairs were attached to the tables.
I see a few other inmates with visitors before my eyes spot Nathan. I don’t know why I’m surprised to see him in an orange jumpsuit—I guess that’s what one wears in jail. But given that this is only a county detention center and he has not yet been convicted of anything, maybe I thought he would still be in street clothes or at least something less . . . I don’t know . . . less incriminating.
I check in with yet another guard seated at the front of the room before finally getting to meet with Nathan.
“Hello,” he says, extending his hand without getting up. I’m not sure if it’s the circumstances of my visit or the somber environment, or his jumpsuit, but the bulk of that intimidating quality that was emanating from Nathan when I first met him is gone. At the moment he looks much more “victim” than “bully.” “Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome, Mr. Tucker.”
“Nathan. Please.”
“Nathan,” I say. “I didn’t know her well, but I liked Monique, and she was such a great role model for young women. If I’m being honest, I’m only here because I feel like I owe it to her to hear what you have to say. Even then, I’m really not sure if I can help you.”
“I appreciate that.” He fiddles with his fingers nervously. “What I have to say is . . . is that I did not kill my wife.”
“I’m not privy to all the relevant information, Nathan, but from what I know, the evidence is stacked against you. Word is that your fingerprints are on the gun, and your hands tested positive for gunpowder residue, which would indicate that you recently fired the weapon in question.”
“Of course my fingerprints are on my gun. I had gunpowder on my hands because I went to the range the day of the party and did a few practice rounds. You can check the register at the small arms range by my house. I wanted to get in some final practice with the gun . . . make sure I knew how to use the thing before we went on the road.”
“The road?”
“The tour. Monique and I . . . and Maurice and Alex were starting the tour the next day. We were going to be traveling all over the country in a very conspicuous bus. People would know Monique was on board, and she is known for being rich and wearing flashy expensive jewelry. We could have easily been targeted by thieves . . . even kidnappers. I bought the gun so we’d have some protection while we crisscrossed the country, not to kill my wife.”
“Why do the police even think you would want Monique dead?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but if you believe the talking heads on TV, I supposedly was looking to split from her, and when I did, I wanted our entire fortune, not the half of it I would have gotten if we divorced,” Nathan says. “And . . . well . . . I have some gambling debts . . . some debts I owe to a not-so-nice person.”
“Rodney Morrissey?”
“Yes. So you’ve heard about that?” he asks, but doesn’t wait for me to answer. “He’s been rumored to have killed clients who haven’t paid him back in a timely fashion, but the feds have never been able to get enough solid evidence on him to make an arrest. He knew I was working on getting the money I owed him, though. Monique and I simply didn’t have that much liquid cash—it’s all tied up in the company. It was going to take some time, but Mr. Morrissey was well aware that it was coming. I didn’t need to kill my wife to get the money.”
“And I’m guessing you don’t have an alibi or the police would not be holding you here.”
“I do have an alibi . . . mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Plenty of people can vouch for me being at the convention center until eleven thirty Saturday night, and I was on my way back from there when Monique was shot. But the police say I had time to get home, fire the gun, and wait several minutes before calling them. They say, given traffic conditions, it should have only taken me about a half hour to get home, but it was late, and I wasn’t paying attention. I missed the exit onto Suitland Parkway and had to go farther up 295 to turn around . . . and I was tired and driving slowly, so the whole trip took almost an hour. I got home about twelve thirty and called the police as soon as I found Monique.”
“That’s a lot to . . . um . . . a lot to believe.”
“Maybe so, but it’s the truth. The last time I saw my gun, it was on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. Monique could have told any number of people where I kept it. There were seventy-some odd people in our house the night of the white party. Any one of them could have snuck up to the bedroom and taken it.”
“But you think it was Odessa?”
“I don’t know why else she’d circle back to our house after the party. But I guess I don’t know exactly why she’d kill Monique, either. They sparred with each other all the time, but I think they both got a kick out of it. They’d been . . . what’s the word? Not rivals exactly . . .” He thinks for a moment. “Frenemies. They’d been frenemies for well over twenty years.” He adjusts himself in the chair. “I don’t know who else would have killed her. And you found that sparkly bauble thing from her dress. I heard you tell Detective Hutchins that you found it on the lawn.”
“The sequin. Yes, it was at the far end of the lawn.”
“How else would it get there if it didn’t come off Odessa’s dress?”
“I have no idea. Maybe I could do a little checking around and see what I can find out, but before I do, I need to ask you something.”
Nathan looks back at me but doesn’t respond.
“I’m assuming you have access to a TV in here. You must have seen the footage of Maurice on the news, making claims about you being abusive toward Monique. I actually saw a bruise underneath her eye the night of the party when I was up in the bedroom with her.” I hear Nathan take in a deep breath. I can tell he’s anticipating my question. “I have to ask: Is what Maurice said true?”
Nathan’s response is a long silence. He seems to be trying to think of something to say . . . some way to spin his behavior, but I know enough to know that if the allegations were not true, he would have immediately denied them. He opens his mouth, about to offer whatever version of the truth he’s concocted in his head, but I don’t give him the opportunity.
“I’m not sure I can help you, Mr. Tucker,” I say as I get up from the table, when what I really want to say is “I’m not sure I want to help you.”