Last Look (15 page)

“That’s one bet I won’t make.”

They walked up the dirt driveway and followed a path made of cut slices of tree trunk. They knocked on the front door, but no one answered. Back behind the house, a dog began to bark.

“Maybe around back.” Andrew motioned to the right. They followed the path to its end near an open porch, where a man slept on a hammock.

Andrew cleared his throat, and the old dog on the porch rose reluctantly and made a show of barking some more.

The man jerked in his sleep and opened his eyes.

“Jeremy Brinkley?” Andrew asked.

“Yeah.” The one-time police officer ran a hand over his face as if to wipe the sleep away. “Sorry. Must have dozed. Blood pressure medication. Makes me drowsy. You Shields, the guy who called?”

“Yes.”

“You got some ID?” Brinkley was fully awake and standing.

Andrew met him halfway to the hammock and handed over his badge, which Brinkley scrutinized. He handed it back, then looked at Dorsey and said, “Yours?”

She took it from her bag and handed it over. Brinkley gave it a quick glance, then returned it.

“Too hot out here. Come on inside.” He motioned to the two agents to follow him. “Not you, Barney. You stay,” he told the dog, who then lay down in a grassy patch near the back steps.

“Water?” he offered before turning on the spigot in the narrow, dark kitchen.

“No thanks,” Dorsey and Andrew both responded at once.

Brinkley filled a large glass for himself, then gestured toward a closed door. “We’ll talk in there.”

He led them into a small room that smelled of damp wood and cats and was cooled by an ancient air conditioner. There was one armchair and a loveseat in desperate need of a slipcover. He pointed to the loveseat, and the agents sat. Brinkley took the armchair and turned it to face them.

“You said on the phone this had something to do with the Shannon Randall case.” He directed the question to Andrew. “What’s up with that after all these years?”

“Officer Brinkley—” Andrew began.

“Not Officer Brinkley anymore,” he corrected. “I’ve been retired for several years now.”

“Once law, always law,” Andrew replied.

“Hey, you’re right on about that.” Brinkley nodded. “In my heart, I’m still wearing the badge. I watch those TV shows—shit, CSI?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Never seen a case worked the way they work theirs. Not in this little town, anyway. Christ, the biggest case we ever had was the Randall case, and we didn’t even have a body. No DNA testing back then, though we could test for blood type. We had to solve every case with good old-fashioned detective work.”

“That’s still the best way,” Andrew said.

“Oh, yeah.” Brinkley nodded his enthusiasm, a broad grin on his face. “Now, Agent Shields, tell me why you’re interested in Shannon Randall after all these years.”

“Officer Brinkley—”

“Hey, it’s Jeremy.” Brinkley leaned forward in his chair, his forearms resting on his thighs.

“Jeremy, the story hasn’t broken yet, so I’m going to have to ask for your confidence. We’re trying to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can, before the media grabs on to it.”

Brinkley looked from one agent to the other. “What’s the big mystery? The case was solved twenty-four years ago.”

“Not exactly,” Andrew told him.

“What are you talking about? I was part of it, I was there when we picked up Eric Beale for questioning, I was there when—”

“Whose idea was it to question Beale?” Andrew interrupted.

“Chief Taylor’s,” Brinkley replied without hesitation.

“What put him on to Eric, do you remember?”

“Yeah. He was the last person seen with Shannon that night. He left town with her at least an hour after he said he’d dropped her off. Kimmie White saw them. The chief called her and the other two girls Shannon hung around with as soon as school was over to see what they knew. The other two didn’t have much to say, but Kimmie gave a statement to the chief that afternoon.”

“Did anyone else claim to have seen them leaving town?” Dorsey asked.

“No. Just Kimmie. But that was enough. It placed him with her after he said he’d let Shannon out on Montgomery Street. Showed he lied. Shot his story to shit.”

“Kimmie was credible?” Dorsey asked.

“Hell, yes. She was one of Shannon’s best friends. They’d grown up together. Her dad’s the doctor in town, one of the deacons at the reverend’s church.” He was looking more and more perplexed. “She wouldn’t have said she’d seen them if she hadn’t.”

Brinkley warily watched them both.

“You want to tell me what this is all about? Why’s the FBI sending two agents down here to talk over an old case?”

“There’s been a bit a development,” Andrew told him.

“What kind of development?” Brinkley frowned.

“This is going to come as a bit of a shock, Jeremy, but Shannon Randall’s body was found a few weeks ago on a small island off Georgia,” Andrew told him.

“No shit? After all these years?” Brinkley’s smile returned. “But hey, that’s good, right? Now the family can have some closure, right?”

“When she was found, she’d been dead less than eight hours.”

Brinkley’s smile faded slowly as Andrew’s words began to sink in.

Finally, he said, “That just ain’t possible.”

“It’s not only possible, it’s true. Blood type, fingerprints, dental records, all matched. She’s been positively identified by one of her sisters,” Andrew assured him.

“But how the hell…” Brinkley got up and began to pace the length of the small room. “I don’t understand this. How could she have just died now?”

“The obvious answer is that she wasn’t dead then,” Dorsey stated.

“But how?” He jammed his hands into the pockets of his cutoff khakis. “I just don’t understand….”

“Twenty-four years ago, Shannon left home, apparently voluntarily, though we’re still looking into that,” Andrew explained.

“But Eric, he had that shirt with all her blood on it. He had her stuff under the seat of his car….” Brinkley was still trying to come to terms with the fact that things were not as they had seemed.

“That’s right, he did.” Andrew nodded. “Do you recall how he explained that?”

“He said she was beaten up when he picked her up and he gave her the shirt to clean herself up with.”

“Looks like he was telling the truth.”

“I can’t believe this, man.” Brinkley ran a shaking hand through thinning hair. “Eric Beale…he was charged with her murder. He was fucking
executed!
”

“We’re trying to understand how that happened, Jeremy. Obviously, your recollections will be crucial to helping us figure it out,” Dorsey told him.

“Shit. Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever I can tell you.” Brinkley sat back down, still dazed, still visibly shaking.

“After Kimmie White said she’d seen Eric and Shannon driving out of town, Chief Taylor brought Eric in for questioning.” Andrew started the ball rolling.

“Yeah. Right after the chief talked to Kimmie, we went straight on down to the gas station where Eric worked, picked him up, brought him in. Chief questioned him himself.”

“You weren’t in the room with them?”

“No. After we brought him in, the chief took him into a small room off the lunchroom in the old station. Closed the door, they were in there most of the afternoon. When the chief came out, he said Eric had all but confessed.”

“Then why call in the FBI?” Dorsey asked. “If you already had a confession, or close to one, why call in the Bureau?”

Brinkley shrugged. “I asked Chief Taylor that very thing. He said since it was a murder case, and Shannon being so young and all, and us being such a small department and none of us having much experience with homicide, we’d best let the Feds take over, ’specially since there was no body. I never did understand it myself, no offense to either of you, but it just seemed unnecessary to bring the FBI in. But Chief Taylor, he was pretty firm on wanting the Feds in.”

“When did he tell you that, do you remember?” Andrew asked.

“Must have been pretty soon after he talked to Kimmie and brought Eric in, since it seems like the FBI agents were there the next day. Couple of ’em.”

“That soon, Taylor had decided it was a homicide and Eric Beale was the killer?”

“Best I recall, yeah.”

“Did that seem odd to you at the time?” Dorsey couldn’t help but ask.

“At the time, no, not really. I mean, since Kimmie saw them together and him having that bloody shirt in his car and all, it didn’t seem odd.” Brinkley crossed his legs, one foot pumping nervously.

“And now?” Andrew prodded him.

“Now…I don’t know, man.” He uncrossed his legs, then recrossed them.

“We were told that sometime before Shannon disappeared, there’d been some sort of bad blood between Eric and the chief’s nephew,” Andrew said.

“Oh, Jeff Feeney.” Brinkley nodded. “Yeah, they did get into it a few times. Last time might have been sometime before Shannon was kill…disappeared.”

He exhaled loudly.

“Where’s she been all this time?”

“She’s been around. Here and there,” Andrew told him. “She had a hard time of it.”

“She been on the streets all that time?” Brinkley searched Andrew’s face.

“It’s all going to come out soon enough.” Andrew nodded. “Yeah, she’s been on the streets since she left Hatton.”

“Son of a bitch.” Brinkley shook his head. “Son of a bitch.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “How’d she die?”

“Shot through the heart at close range,” Andrew replied.

“Someone wanted to make damn sure she was dead.”

“It appears that way, yes.”

“Wow.” Brinkley got up and paced, his hands in his pockets. “Wow. All this time, she’s been…wherever she was. And Eric…Jesus, man, that poor son of a bitch.”

“You can understand why we want to get a handle on what went on back then.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Brinkley continued pacing.

“So if you can think of any reason why Chief Taylor might not have considered anyone else for Shannon’s murder….”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Maybe that thing with Jeff…I don’t know.”

“You know what that was all about?” Dorsey asked.

“I don’t. All I know is that there was no love lost between the two of them, but what was at the bottom of that?” He shrugged.

“Could the chief have been influenced against Eric because of bad blood between Eric and the nephew?” Dorsey pressed.

“I want to say no”—Brinkley dropped back onto his chair—“but truthfully, I don’t know. I don’t know what it was about, but whatever it was, it had been going on for a while.”

“Is Jeff Feeney still around?” Dorsey asked.

“Yeah. I saw him a few weeks ago at the Little League field, coaching one of his boys.”

“You got an address for him?”

“No, but he’s usually down at the hardware store, Feeney’s, right on Main Street. He took over from his father. And the chief’s widow is still around. Jeff is her nephew, her brother Jed’s oldest boy. She’s still pretty active around town, still living in that big house she and the chief bought and fixed up after her old man died and left her all that money.”

Brinkley stared at the floor for a while as if lost in thought, trying to comprehend it all. Finally, he looked up and said, “That agent they sent down here back then to head up the investigation….”

“Agent Ranieri.” Andrew tensed.

“Yeah. I see him on TV sometimes. Seems like he made a big career for himself after this case was over.” Brinkley scratched the side of his face. “Anyone tell him about Shannon?”

“He’s been told.”

“What’s he got to say?”

“He was as surprised as you are,” Andrew said simply.

“I’ll just bet he was. Ranieri. Yeah, I remember him.” Brinkley nodded. “Seemed like a decent guy. Course, I didn’t have much contact with him, but he seemed like a nice guy. Guess we won’t be seeing him much anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Dorsey frowned.

“On the TV. After this, who’s going to want to have him come on and talk about how the cops should investigate a case?”

“Jeremy, do you know what happened to the police file?” Andrew changed the subject swiftly.

“Is it missing?”

“Chief Bowden can’t locate it.”

“Miz Taylor might know. I think for a time they kept some stuff in the garage, back when the department was being moved.” He shrugged and averted his eyes.

“To the best of your knowledge, was there ever another suspect?” Dorsey asked. “Anyone else who maybe should have been a suspect, anyone who might have had something to do with Shannon disappearing that night?”

“Not as far as I know, uh-uh.” Jeremy paused, as if reflecting. “You know, everyone thought Eric did it, just accepted it. Looking back, I’m thinking maybe because his family was such trouble, people expected him to be trouble too. Funny thing, though, Eric always seemed to be different from the rest of the Beales, you know what I mean? Smarter. But maybe people didn’t know that. Maybe that’s why no one really questioned that it was him. It was just, Eric did this. Eric killed her.”

“And the case was built from there,” Dorsey said.

“Pretty much, yeah. Everyone was talking about how Eric used to follow Shannon around, but she was just a freshman, you know? All her friends said how he had a thing for her but she was only interested in him as a friend. So it wasn’t a secret, you know, that he had the hots for her.” Jeremy got up and took a sip from the glass of water. “Then, when Kimmie swore she saw them heading out of town and no one ever saw her again, well, that pretty much sealed it.”

“There was a break-in at the church the night Shannon disappeared.” Andrew changed the subject.

“Right. The money from the carnival was stolen.” His head bobbed up and down. “When I got in to work on Thursday morning, the chief said he’d gotten a call from old Mrs. Randall—Mrs. Randall, senior, I mean—after he got home the night before. Said there’d been some money stolen, but we could wait until the morning to come out to make the report.”

“Is that usual?” Dorsey asked.

“Not
un
usual. Mrs. Randall said her husband had already locked up the church after choir practice and she didn’t want to disturb him to go back over and open the church back up again. It wasn’t a big deal.”