MY PHONE RANG on the Uber ride to the county jail the next day.
“Rick, it’s Ellis.” Concern in his voice. “I got a look at the autopsy report. It was brutal. She fought for her life. She had a fractured eye socket … It was awful.”
“What about her stomach contents?” I wished Shay Sommers had died in her sleep, but, right now, I had to figure out how to free the man she loved from jail.
“You were right about the cake and champagne. There were remnants of both in Shay’s stomach when she died. But only a tiny amount of champagne.”
I was right. Shay had celebrated something the night she was murdered. But I still didn’t know what she was celebrating.
“And she was pregnant,” Elk added.
“Whoa.” That was the concern I’d heard in his voice.
“Yes. Another motive, as if the prosecution doesn’t already have enough.”
“Maybe not. Turk told me he wanted to have kids with Shay. This was before she was murdered. So, he’d be happy about her pregnancy. Maybe that was what Shay was celebrating.”
“Except that she’d been pregnant for eleven weeks. She had to have known well before the night she bought the cake and champagne.”
“I’m guessing no DNA on the child, yet?”
“None that the state would show me if they already had it, but the test probably isn’t back from the lab yet. If it comes back with any DNA other than Turk’s, we’ve got a real problem.”
“We don’t even know if Turk knew she was pregnant.” If he did know, why didn’t he tell me when he told me he wanted to have a child with Shay? What else hadn’t Turk told me?
“I’ll find out when I see him today at 3:00 p.m.”
I had a two hour jump on Fenton. He’d be able to talk to Turk in a private, non-monitored room. I didn’t have that option. I wasn’t an official member of the defense team. Fenton had a job to do. I needed to find the truth.
“Roger.” I kept my visit to myself.
“There is one bit of decent news in the autopsy. The medical examiner described the bruising on Shay’s arms as mild. Detective Denton made them sound like Shay had been squeezed in a steel vice when she questioned Turk the day after the murder.”
Decent, at best. But at this point, anything that wasn’t negative was positive.
“That’s something. Is Coyote going to look into Keenan Powell?” I knew in my gut that Powell was an important puzzle piece in solving Shay Sommers’ murder. I just didn’t know where he fit in the puzzle yet, but I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines while someone else figured it out.
“Yes, of course.”
“When?”
“We already discussed this, Rick.” A frustrated tone edging toward anger that I’d never heard Fenton use outside of a courtroom. And never directed at me. “This will be my eleventh murder trial. I’ve gotten four acquittals and two hung juries that didn’t result in retrials in the previous ten. I’ll put that record up against anyone. I know what I’m doing. I have a process. I’d appreciate if you’d start trusting it.”
“What time do I have to be at the courthouse Tuesday?”
“I’ll pick you up at 8:00 a.m.”
“I’ll be waiting.” But not behind Fenton in line at the jail to talk to Turk. I may have been a cardboard cutout of support on Turk’s defense team, but I was a flesh and blood friend. One who needed to know the truth to see where that friendship stood.
Now.