Here I Am. Send Me.--Chapter Forty-Seven

All of the answers come out.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

         Detective Sergeant Simon stuck his head into the observation room. Evelyn hadn’t noticed the dark circles under his eyes. She had originally guessed his age at around forty. Now he looked closer to fifty.

         His voice came out a little raspy. “Any recommendations before I talk to Rachel?”

         Evelyn thought for a moment. “I’ve spoken with her several times and still don’t have a feel for her. She’s dangerous.”

         He smiled. “I figured that one out on my own.”

         The door closed behind him and Evelyn and Chris turned back to the screen which now showed Rachel alone. Simon entered with a female officer. “Ms. Marshall, I’m Detective Sergeant Simon…”

         Rachel interrupted. “You’ve had me in here all night! I need to go to the john.”

         “Certainly. Officer Johnson will take you and bring you back.”

         There was an anti-climactic delay as the young officer unlocked the older woman and removed her from the room. Simon remained standing until Rachel was returned and seated.

         The detective sat across from her and started over. “As I was saying, I’m Detective Sergeant Simon. Do you have anything which you wish to say before I begin my questions?”

         “Yes! Why were you people scaring an old woman like that? I don’t think as well as I used to and with all the noise and the threats, I got scared and confused. I didn’t know what I was saying.”

         “Does that apply to when you threatened to harm your granddaughter?”

         “I didn’t do that! I couldn’t have. Leyla’s my life. You’re lying to confuse me again.”

         “Do you know the names Sebastian Ting, Brooks ‘Bubba’ Lawson, and Hernando Valenzuela?”

         “I don’t know… Maybe. They’re handymen. I used to hire them to do odd jobs around the house. I caught them stealing and threatened to call the cops. They said that they would get even with me. What about them?”

         “Randy Dalton?”

         She reacted to that name but recovered quickly. “No, I don’t know that one.”

         “And Meghan Moore?”

         A wariness crept into her eyes as she stared at the detective. “Who’s she?”

         “She’s the fast-food worker that your son killed eight years ago when he was robbing a restaurant in Donelson on your orders. But I think you know that.”

         “My son never killed nobody.”

         “We have two witnesses that say he did. And we’ll have more when we put him in a line-up with the other workers from that night. He will be convicted of murder. And Randy Dalton is the man who, on your orders, went armed to Calvary Christian Academy in order to kidnap or harm your granddaughter, Leyla.”

         “I told you…”

         It was Simon’s turn to interrupt. “And it was Bubba Lawson who accompanied Randy Dalton and shot and killed Police Officer John Toland. All of this was on your orders.”

         “Those boys are liars!”

         “Maybe. But not about this. We’re rounding up the employees from the Overland Hauling trucking company which you owned through a dummy corporation and used to launder cash and transport illegal goods like drugs. Each employee that we get adds more to the story and is willing to testify for reduced sentences. The number of eyewitnesses that we’re going to have against you is going to be in double digits. I really don’t need to be talking to you.”

         There was no doubt that he was right. “Then why are you?”

         “I must admit. I’m kind of impressed. You’ve run a successful gang for over a decade in Nashville without leaving a trace.”

         “Until I decided to get my son involved. That boy is dumb as a rock. Just like his deadbeat dad.”

         It was either going to happen, or it wasn’t. Simon stayed quiet and let it play out on Rachel’s timetable. She kept talking.

         “My ex-husband ran with Sting, Nando, and Bubba. None of ‘em had the sense they were born with. They had all been arrested and served time. With him giving the orders, they were disorganized and, whenever something went right, they spent the money as fast as it hit their pockets, just drawing attention to themselves.

         “The rest of the guys had already started to realize that they could get a lot farther with me than they could with him, so, when he filed me with the divorce papers, I got them as well as Cal. The court awarded me alimony, but I told my ex he could keep the money if he just kept out of our hair. He moved out west somewhere.

         “A baby would slow me down right then, so I left Cal with my parents while I got things going. I taught them that the best way to stay off the radar was to look poor and sock the money away. And we started doing well. It took years because we never went for the big score. We hit little things. The kind of things that you people don’t pay any attention to. People would pay us to help them with small insurance scams. We would still hit the occasional late-night gas station or fast-food place.

         “We all stayed on food stamps. Filed our taxes. And kept other jobs. But we still had to rely too much on other people. When we got anything other than cash, we had to use fences who knew our faces and names. I kept the money buried in a metal box until I had enough to buy a truck. I figured out how to file the business papers working on the computers at the library. The librarians helped me with a lot of the trickier parts. But then we had a business with all the proper papers and licenses.

         “That was when I thought I could settle down. I went home and pretended to get all churchy again and took my Cal back. I thought maybe he could take over the business one day and I could get a passport, move away somewhere, and live off some of the money I’d made.

         “The first thing I taught the boy was how to play stupid. It took me years to figure out that he wasn’t playing. When he killed that girl at the fish place, I knew that he wasn’t ever going to be running the business.

         “But then old Cal knocked up Courtney and she ended up blackmailing me. And then he up and married the crazy girl. When my granddaughter was born, I thought maybe being a dummy skipped a generation and she could be someone who could take over the business. But then she died and Claire came up with that stupid plan and we ended up with a new Leyla.”

         She paused for a moment and gave Simon a chance to interject. He did. “You had a lot on you.”

         “Ya’ think? But then New Leyla started growing up and she was smart. I mean, smart as a tack. She understood stuff fast and she wasn’t all warm and fuzzy emotional like her dad. Maybe she was a touch off, but it was the kind of ‘off’ that would work for her and for me. But what was I supposed to do with Cal’s crazy wife?

         “As if things weren’t weird enough, Courtney comes to me with her nutso plan to get rid of Josey. Claire and Courtney make quite a pair with their super-complicated plots. But I help her gaslight Josey and she’s supposed to quietly be declared crazy and unfit and go off to the loony bin. But no. Crazy girl has to go all melodramatic and bring the police and that pushy social worker into everything.”

         Another pause began to drag out until the policeman prompted. “And that’s when you came up with the school shooting.”

         She nodded. “Yeah, that’s when I proved that Cal didn’t get all his stupid from his father. I don’t know what I was thinking. The boys weren’t supposed to shoot anybody or get shot. They were supposed to make some noise, kidnap Leyla and a couple of the kids, and take them away. Then they would let the other two go while we got Leyla down to the coast to a boat which would take her to Costa Rica where I bought a really nice house and had people hired to take care of her.

         “I thought we could convince Courtney that Leyla had been kidnapped and was gone for good at least until the girl was grown up and could come back and take over for me. Then I would move to the house in Costa Rica.”

         Simon whistled. “Have any of you people ever heard of Occam’s Razor?”

         “It wasn’t ever going to work, was it?”

         “Not a chance. There’s more hole than plan there.”

         “Sometimes you just get a tiger by the tail.”

         “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder and probably murder and a bunch of other stuff that’s going to take the DA a while to figure out. You have the right to remain silent…”

         In the observation room, Evelyn’s mouth dropped open. She looked over to see Chris’s jaw also agape.

         He looked back. “Is that for real?”

         “As crazy as it sounds, it’s the only thing that makes all the pieces fit. If this were a television show, I’d be laughing at it right now.”