Cal stopped in front of Pete Kelsey and smiled down at him, holding out his hand.
“Cal’s the name,” he said pleasantly. His off-hand demeanor made it seem as though interrogation-room introductions are entirely ordinary. In his kind of work, maybe they are.
“One of my partners is an old friend of your father-in-law’s. He and Belle wanted me to come see how you’re doing.”
“Fine,” Pete said, “but…”
“Are they treating you all right?”
“Yes, but…”
“Good. Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it.”
While he had been speaking to Pete Kelsey, he had been smiling warmly, but now, as Drachman turned back to us, the smile disappeared.
“I’ve only just now been called in on this case. Naturally, there’ll be no more questions until I’ve been allowed to consult with my client. What are the charges?”
Drachman knew as well as we did what the charges were, but he wanted to hear it from our own lips. He wasn’t going to stand for our skipping any of the required steps or empty gestures.
“Desertion from the United States Army,” I said.
“And when did this alleged desertion take place?”
“March of 1969.”
“My goodness, that’s some time ago,” Drachman said, shaking his head. “Over twenty years. Surely the Army isn’t still interested in pursuing this after all these years.”
“We’ve alerted the CID down at Fort Lewis,” I told him. “Someone from there will be in touch to let us know what to do next.”
Caleb Drachman smiled. “So that’s all then? I mean those are the only charges against my client at the moment?”
“So far.”
“Very good. What’s your name?” Drachman asked, looking at me through stylishly thin-framed horn-rimmed glasses.
“Beaumont,” I responded. “Detective J.P. Beaumont.”
“Very well, Detective Beaumont.” He frowned and scratched his head. “You’re in Homicide, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But my client isn’t charged with any homicide, isn’t that also correct?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Bearing that in mind, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that since there’s nothing more serious against my client than this twenty-year-old desertion beef with the Army, then it’s perfectly feasible for Mr. Kelsey here to attend his wife’s funeral tomorrow afternoon. I’ve been given to understand that those are his wishes.”
“I don’t agree with anything of the kind,” I began, but Cal Drachman cut me off before I could go any further.
“Excuse me, Detective Beaumont. He has not been charged with anything more serious than this. It’s water under the bridge. I believe there’s a good chance that the Army will decide to drop the charges altogether. If that happens, it wouldn’t look very good if you had decided to keep him from attending his own wife’s funeral, now would it? Now, I think that would seem downright criminal.”
Cal Drachman shook his head sadly and waved me aside. “You go on, now. I want to consult with my client. I’ll let you know when he’s ready to talk to you again. He won’t be meeting with you without me, is that understood?”
In the old days, when I was a kid and played cops and robbers with the kids on my block, there weren’t any lawyers in the game. Nobody would have stood still for being a lawyer; you were either a good guy or a bad guy. Some days the good guys won and some days the bad guys did.
I wonder if things are different now, if nowadays when kids play that game, there aren’t some who actually want to be lawyers. If not, they’re missing a good bet, because these days, it’s the lawyers who call all the shots.
Chapter 22
We had sent Pete Kelsey back to the jail and were almost ready to go home when Richard Chambers and his mother showed up around seven. Richard was a lean, handsome kid with a short, military-style haircut and ramrod-straight posture. When we had last seen Charlotte Chambers, she had been weeping uncontrollably in the reception area of the medical examiner’s office. If I expected a next-of-kin interview with a still-weeping widow, however, I was in for a big surprise. Charlotte Chambers wasn’t crying anymore. She was mad as hell.
“It’s all those women’s fault,” she raged. “I know it is. It’s their wickedness that caused Alvin’s death. He should have done something to stop them. When he didn’t, God punished him, plain and simple.”
“Now, Mother,” Richard crooned, patting her shoulder soothingly and trying to steer her away from the subject, but Charlotte Chambers wasn’t about to be placated or diverted.
“You know it’s true. If you ignore evil, it sneaks into you and starts eating at your own soul. That’s what it does, you see. Alvin was infected by the evil around him, by the godlessness around him. That’s why he’s dead.”
“When did he tell you about this?” I asked, trying to move away from her aimless tirades and extract some useful information. “About the two women, I mean.”
“I don’t know exactly. How would I remember a thing like that? I didn’t write it on the calendar. He probably knew about it long before he mentioned it to me. He wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t heard him praying about it. Alvin always prayed aloud, you see. It’s a habit he sort of got into being a pastor and all, and I sort of got in the habit of listening. Me and God. Whenever Alvin set about praying, me and God were always both listening away, Him up there and me in the other room.”
“Did he tell you how he found out about them?” Kramer asked.
Charlotte shook her head. “Nope. He never did.”
I considered this whole line of questions and answers distasteful. I didn’t like delving into someone’s private prayer life, asking questions of a third party over what Alvin Chambers had wrongly believed was a confidential conversation between him and his God.
It soon became apparent that no matter what questions we asked, Charlotte, like cagey politicians being interviewed on talk shows, always came back to the answers she wanted to give, to her private agenda. No doubt she had handled the newspaper reporters the same way, but they somehow hadn’t connected with the idea that Charlotte was several tacos short of a combination plate. They had reported her every word in grim detail. As a result, Erin Kelsey and her grandparents were reaping the whirlwind of Marcia’s indiscretions.
Given a choice, I much prefer interviewing killers to interviewing bigots, and I soon found myself agreeing with Alva Patterson’s noncomplimentary opinion regarding her former pastor’s widow-no matter what sins poor Alvin Chambers might have committed during his lifetime, he had deserved better than Charlotte.
Finally, giving the interview up as a lost cause, we escorted Charlotte and Richard Chambers downstairs to the crime lab, where we asked them to examine the shoes and trousers that had been removed from Pete Kelsey’s garage early that morning.
Richard declined and hung back, but Charlotte knew just what to look for. She reached into the front pockets of the trousers and pulled them inside out.
“It’s Alvin’s,” she announced confidently and at once.
“How do you know?” I asked, and she showed me the pockets. The seams at the bottom of both pockets had come undone, and both had been mended-with a series of staples stuck through the cloth.
“Alvin always fixed his pants himself,” Charlotte told us. “And he always did it this way. I don’t sew, you see. My mother never taught me.”
Apparently Alvin’s mother never taught him either, but he had figured out a way to get the job done.
The shoes were tougher. Charlotte studied them for some time without being able to make a decision. They were the right size, but other than that, there were no identifying marks on which to form an opinion. I told her that was all right. Besides, I had every confidence the crime lab would be able to figure it out from trace evidence without the need of a separate identification from a family member.
I turned to Kramer. “Any more questions?” He shook his head. “Why don’t you take your mother home then, Richard,” I suggested. “She probably needs the rest.”