“Court documents are open to the public,” Shannon said.
She nodded to herself as she thought that over, then licking her lips, peered at Shannon with a glint in her eyes. “People magazine willing to pay for my side of the story?”
“What’s your side?”
She sucked on her cigarette and held the smoke in before letting it out the corner of her mouth. “About how hard it is losing your eldest son,” she said, her small dark eyes challenging Shannon to argue with her. She looked away, sniffed, and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. “Especially what was done to my boy. The funeral home couldn’t do anything for Taylor. We had to have a closed casket.”
“I’m sorry,” Shannon said. He reached a hand toward her shoulder and she pulled back as if he were going to strike her, then sat rigid, accepting the gesture. Randall snickered from behind. “Hey Mr. Private Eye,” he said, “you’re missing some fingers. Buttercup do that?” Eunice Carver noticed the missing fingers and smiled. Shannon pulled his hand back showing only a subtle change in his expression.
Eunice, with the smile dropping from her face, asked, “What do you think? Will People magazine pay me for my story?”
“I’ll ask them,” Shannon said. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”
She thought about it, shrugged. “Don’t matter to me.”
Shannon took a miniature tape recorder from his pocket, placed it on the table between them and hit record. “July 19th, 2005.” Shannon checked his watch. “Three thirty-five, afternoon. I’m talking to Eunice Carver and her son, Randall.” Then to the mother, “Did Taylor have any problems that you knew about?”
Eunice’s eyes went dull as she stared at the tape recorder. She looked away and blew more cigarette smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Taylor didn’t talk to me about things like that.”
“Things going well at school?”
“He never said otherwise.”
“Any recent disagreements or fights?”
She flicked cigarette ash onto the plate, then looked out a window into the backyard. Her gaze seemed transfixed on an old refrigerator and other junk that had been stacked out there. “If he had any, he didn’t tell me about them,” she said.
Shannon turned to Randall, who simply shrugged.
“How’d you get along with your brother?” Shannon asked.
“We got along good.”
“He talk to you about stuff?”
Randall’s mouth screwed up into a tight circle as he shook his head. “Not too much,” he said.
“Why was that?”
“I dunno, he just didn’t.”
“When did you see him last?”
“At his funeral, but as Ma said it was a closed casket, so I guess I really didn’t see him then.”
“I meant when he was alive.”
Randall’s face went blank as he thought about that. “Maybe last Christmas,” he said.
“How about the last time you talked on the phone?”
“I dunno. We didn’t do that much. Maybe before Christmas.”
“Any idea why your brother was killed?”
“Because his landlord was too cheap to keep that door lock working right,” Eunice volunteered, her face rigid with anger. Randall nodded in agreement, all the while staring down at the floor and kicking at it with his toe.
“Anything more you can tell me that could help?”
Randall shrugged, his expression distant and sullen. “I don’t think so.”
Shannon turned back to the mother. “Do you have any ideas?”
Eunice nodded. “Yeah, I know what happened. Some drugged-out maniac broke into my son’s apartment and beat him to death with a baseball bat. All because that landlord couldn’t be bothered to fix a lock.”
“How do you know a baseball bat was used?”
“Police asked me about it. They wanted to know if Taylor owned one. I told them Taylor was never much into sports.”
“They say anything else about it?”
She shook her head.
Shannon considered her for a long moment, trying to get a feel for whether she carelessly leaked the information about the bat or had some ulterior motive. He knew damned well she would’ve been warned repeatedly by Daniels and any other cop questioning her not to mention that bat to anyone. After a while he decided it was a coin flip either way.
“What can you tell me about Taylor’s dad?”
She took a long puff on her cigarette. “Last I heard he was screwing some whore in Alabama. That was fifteen years ago.”
“He never kept in touch with his sons?”
“Not as far as I know.”
Shannon turned to Randall, who just shook his head. He then looked back at Eunice and asked her what she could tell him about Linda Gibson.
“You mean that whore that was shacking up with my son?”
Shannon was taken aback by that. “I take it you didn’t think too much of her.”
“Her family’s trash.” Eunice’s mouth screwed up as if she were going to spit on the table. “They couldn’t even be bothered to go to Taylor’s funeral. So I didn’t bother going to that whore’s.”
“Why was she a whore?”
Eunice looked dumbfounded as she stared at Shannon. “She was living in sin, wasn’t she? What else do you call someone like that?”
“Outside of her living in sin, what can you tell me about her?”
As she stared at him, her look changed from dumbfounded to incredulous. “Why would you think I’d be able to tell you anything else about her?”
“Didn’t you ever meet or talk with her?”
“Why would I’ve done something like that?”
He sighed, shook his head. He felt a twinge where his missing finger should’ve been and resisted the urge to rub his damaged hand. “Anything else either of you can tell me to help me find out who did this to Taylor?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” Eunice muttered. “Besides, what’s the point?”
“Maybe to bring some closure to you and Randall and anyone else affected by Taylor’s death. And bring your son some justice.”
“It’s too late for that.” She inhaled deeply on her cigarette. Her expression remained phlegmatic as she looked in Shannon’s direction, her eyes still unable to focus on him.
“Why’s it too late?”
“Because Taylor’s beyond justice.” Her cigarette had burnt down to mostly ash. She tossed what was left onto the plate. “Only justice left is making that landlord pay for what happened. When me and Randall collect our five million dollars, that will be justice.”
Shannon felt a dull throbbing in the back of his head, partly from his conversation with Eunice and Randall Carver and partly from the stench filling the house. Even though he was breathing in through his mouth, it seemed as if he could taste the sweetly rancid smell in the back of his throat. More perfunctory than anything else since he would’ve bet his last dollar against ever getting a call from either of them, he left Eunice his business card and asked that she call him if she thought of anything that might help. He turned off the tape recorder and was pushing himself out of his chair when he again noticed the new stove and microwave.
“You’ve made some recent purchases,” he said.
Eunice didn’t bother to respond.
“New stove, microwave.” Shannon waved his damaged hand in the direction of the combination living room/dining room. “Plasma TV, sofa, stereo system,” he continued to list.
“So?”
“Did you come into some money recently?”
“Taylor bought me all that. Before he got killed.”
Shannon’s gaze narrowed as he met Eunice’s small dark eyes. “How’d a college student get the money to buy stuff like that?”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t my place to ask him.”
“Was he working?”
She stared at him blankly before shrugging again.
Shannon looked over at Randall and realized he wasn’t going to get a better answer from him. He simply thanked the two of them for their time and left the room. Neither mother nor son bothered to move as he let himself out of the house. Buttercup was waiting for him, though, head thrust forward, eyes intently following him. When he got into his car, he smelled his shirt, then both his arms. Cigarette smoke and the cheese-perspiration smell had saturated his shirt and skin. After opening both front windows of his late model Chevy Corsica for ventilation, he drove fast to get the hell out of there.