I produce a photo of Jason Young. “Can you tell me whether this guy was in here recently?”
“This guy?” He flicks the photo with his finger. “I had a feeling when you called that’s what it was about. We came this close to calling y’all in the first place. I kept the video, too, just in case.”
“You have video?” I ask.
“Give me a second and I’ll pull it up.”
He goes to the computer linked into the video system and mouse-clicks his way through the software. I leave my chair to peer over his shoulder.
“He’d already had plenty to drink when he came in here, but at first he didn’t make any trouble. Just sat at the bar and watched the girls from there. Next thing I know, he’s going at it with these other customers-here, look.”
For the second time this morning, I find myself staring at Jason Young’s image on-screen. The interview footage with Bascombe, crystal clear in vivid color, is a sharp contrast to this pixelized black-and-white view, and Young’s demeanor is entirely at odds, too. Where he’d been shocked and tearful in Interview Room 2, giving a convincing performance of a man who’s just learned of his wife’s death, at the Silk Cut bar he holds himself with the tense, aggressive posture of a compressed spring. Facing the distant stage with his elbow propped behind him on the bar, he keeps turning his head sharply at the circle of customers to his right, a mix of men and women straining to order drinks.
The time stamp on the video reads half past eleven, well after Simone’s body was discovered. The action at the Silk Cut was unfolding simultaneously with my investigation of the scene, which means it doesn’t give him an alibi.
“He was making rude comments to the ladies.”
“Are those girls strippers or something?” Aguilar asks.
The kid shakes his head. “They came in together, that whole group. I think they’re all servers at one of the restaurants down the street. One of the men with them finally got in his face-see that? — and then wham, it all breaks loose.”
The man accosting Young gets a word or two out before the fist shuts him up. When he stumbles, Young charges forward into the group, swinging at the others, and then I lose sight of him in the press of bodies until a couple of black-shirted security men start pulling everyone apart.
“Our guys didn’t know what exactly went down, but if you have ten against one, guess who gets tossed to the curb? That’s me.” He points to his own silhouette on-screen, following security as they frog-march Young out of frame. “Here’s the front door camera. We chuck him outside, and as soon as my back is turned, two of the guys he went after stream out after him. See, right there. He turns and bam, they clock him with something-maybe a belt buckle? — and he doesn’t go down. He just takes it and goes right after them. Our guys had to break it up again.” He taps the monitor. “There we are.”
One of the security men gets Young in a bear hug and hustles him out into the parking lot off-screen. The other men stand and argue with the manager, then leave in the opposite direction.
“That’s it.”
I keep a USB hard drive on my keychain for moments like this. “Can you copy this stuff over for me?”
Once the transfer is made, we find our way back through the building quietly, saving the debrief for the privacy of the car. Light rain dimples the windshield.
“So what do you think?” I ask.
“I’d say it cuts in his favor. If we’re looking for a calculating, methodical planner, this behavior doesn’t really fit. Why would he go through all the trouble of orchestrating that scene if his next play was to tie one on and pick fights in a strip club?”
“Well, he could have been blowing off steam. After so much controlled activity, he needed some kind of break.”
“But the killing is the release, right? After that, how’s a stupid punch-up gonna give him a high? It don’t make sense to me.”
“No,” I say. “Me, either. But he was lying to us.”
“Everybody lies to the police, but that doesn’t make them murderers. If a guy like Young, who makes himself out to be so upstanding, saving money and going to church and even working for that reverend, is at the same time getting drunk and blowing money on strippers, maybe he’s not gonna come clean about it without some pushing.”
“All right, then. I guess we’d better push.”
Before he’ll talk to us, Reverend Curtis Blunt insists on a guided tour through his facility, an uninsulated steel-framed warehouse with corrugated walls and a warren of nicely appointed offices in back. His silver mane sits high on his head, shellacked in place and rendered stiff by a large volume of hair spray, and he dresses all in black-black Justin boots, black jeans, a black shirt open at the throat, a black leather sport coat-except for the shiny Western buckle at his waist.
Of the four businesses he’s successfully founded in his life, he tells us he sold two and passed the other two on to his sons, freeing himself up for full-time ministry. Then he shows us where this ministry occurs: an elaborate movie set made to appear like a book-lined study with a clear plastic lectern standing in the middle.
“We’re doing a two-camera shoot these days,” he says, indicating the tripods set up at opposite edges of the stage, “and we’re doing the cuts in real time back there behind that glass.” A window at the rear of the room reveals a darkened control center, much more elaborate than the bank of monitors at the Silk Cut.
Next, he takes us to the duplicating room, where stacks of DVD cases are lined up along a row of folding tables. On the wall hang a series of artful portraits showing Blunt in action against the blurred backdrop of the set we’ve just witnessed. Blunt with a raised finger in the air, an open Bible clutched in his other hand. Blunt with eyes closed, hands folded in prayer. Blunt waving the Bible above him, almost as if he’s a quarterback cocking his arm for a pass. He sees me looking at the photos and smiles.
“Take a couple of these,” he says, pulling some videos off the stack. “Just so you get a feel for what it is we do here.”
In his office, place of pride is reserved for a pair of massive Frederic Remington bronzes: a cowboy straddling a bucking bronco and a stampede of bison. Again, Blunt smiles as I take note of them, though he stops short of offering me one.
“As a man of God, I have an obligation to cooperate with your investigation, but I’ll tell you this right now: you’ve got the wrong end of this thing. A man of my experience doesn’t get where he is in life without being a good judge of character, so I can say this with absolute certainty. Jason Young did not harm his wife.”
“You can’t actually vouch for his whereabouts after you left here Saturday morning, is that correct? That would have been before noon.”
“Before noon, that’s right. I’m not saying I was with him, Officer, just that I know him. Believe me, I have looked into that young man’s heart on many an occasion, and what I’ve found there is a great deal of confusion and a great deal of misery but a complete absence of guile.”
Aguilar gives one of his impassive nods, which Blunt takes as encouragement.
“There were problems in that marriage, I can tell you. When a couple is unequally yoked like that, strife is inevitable, and naturally I’ve been called upon to counsel many young people in that predicament. In Jason’s case, though, the difficulties were particularly acute on account of the girl’s background and temperament.”
“How well did you know Simone Walker?” I ask.
“I only met Simone Young,” he says, emphasizing the last name, “a handful of times, and spiritually speaking she was very closed off, very hostile. Although Jason had his heart set on reconciliation, if I can be perfectly frank with you, there didn’t seem much hope of that, short of a miracle. I counseled him to reconsider divorce, since in my view there were biblical grounds.” Seeing another of Aguilar’s nods, his voice raises an octave. “I’m not one of those old-fashioned Bible thumpers who believes there are no biblical grounds, Officer. Maybe that surprises you.”