Tunnel Vision (6 page)

TWELVE

Not everyone is easy to find, but I locate Jack Derricks after just a few minutes on the Internet. Jack isn’t a lock for the death of Mandy Reasoner—no one really seems to be except for the version of Duke Barnes that was convicted a dozen or so years ago—but there are a few interesting things that stick out about the man.

For starters, he was familiar with the victim. Next on the list is something Claire barely mentioned, that she has an ex-husband. But it was the way she spoke about the case that made me wonder why. Claire might not have been able to see that June’s dad would look pretty good as a perp, but I sure can, and if Claire wants June safe, this angle needs to be looked into.

I find Jack Derricks pretty quickly through social media, but I did have to think outside of my usual go-tos. Jack is on several dating sites, and after a few minutes of looking, I’ve got an address and some recent pictures. I’m feeling less confident about my detective skills in regard to his possible guilt—Jack looks like more of a Hair Club for Men candidate than a killer—but I’ve been wrong before, and there’s something about Jack Derricks that just gets my hackles up.

I make Jack’s neighborhood in about fifteen minutes, then stow the bike and get to walking. I didn’t bring anything too fun on this trip, just a little digital camera, a lockpick kit, and a pair of discreet binoculars. One of the advantages about not going to school or being on the clock at the same time as everyone else is that when most folks are working, I can see what they think they’re hiding. Criminals make time to play when everyone else is busy. Jack should just count himself lucky that I have no intent on taking anything—assuming he’s actually gone—unless it could be used as evidence. I still have my doubts, of course, but the man had proximity to the victim, and history proves there are plenty of killers that don’t need anything else.

The house looks normal from a distance. No surprise there, they almost always do, but looks can be very deceiving. I glass the house from down the block, making sure no one is around to wonder what I’m up to, and then I stow the spyglasses and wrap my bike chain around my wheels and a stop sign. I don’t use a lock—never have—but my reasoning is pretty sound. It’s a big-ass chain and
looks
like it’s locked, and if I need to get away, really need to leave in a hurry, I won’t have to spend time messing around with undoing the lock. Bikes can be replaced. Still, it pains me a bit to walk away from it. For the first time in years, I don’t have the money to replace it if it does get ganked.

The lots are big here, the houses small—a sure sign of a real estate development that didn’t pan out quite as intended. Stopping in front of his house, I give a quick look to his windows and his neighbors’, don’t see anyone, and then snap a couple quick pictures.

As far as his house is concerned, Jack Derricks lives a pretty normal life. It’s time to find out if the inside tells the same story.

I walk to the door like I have every right to and ring the bell. I can hear it in the house, but what I don’t hear is a dog or footsteps, a very good sign. I stand there waiting and ring the bell again, though I know no one’s going to answer it. It’s dead in there. It’s hard not to turn around to make sure that my six is clear. Easy fix for that: I take a burner out, cut to the crappy camera, and shoot a few pictures over my shoulder. To anyone else it looks like I’m texting, but even my throwaway phone can give me a pretty clean view of what’s at my back.

The pictures let me know that everything is good behind me, and out from the backpack comes the lockpick kit. I’ve been messing with this thing for a few years now, and the truth of it is, most locks are easy to pick. It makes sense when you think about it. Most people just buy one from a hardware store or use the bolt that came with the house or apartment. What that means for a guy like me is that if I can pick one, I can pretty much pick them all. Some have more tumblers and take a little longer, but if I have time, I will get in. Jack’s house proved to be no different. A few clicks and wiggles, and I was inside.

There was a house I was in a few years back that was hiding a little girl in its belly. I came in through the back and it was like I was walking into hell, but there was the strangest thing out front: no mess at all. The criminals in that place knew they were hiding in plain sight and needed to keep up appearances.

It only took a few seconds in Jack Derricks’s home to realize he wasn’t too worried about keeping the inside ready for a guest.

The house wasn’t trashed, but it did look as though it had been paused midparty. There were beer cans and bottles piled on the coffee table, an ashtray overflowing with both cigarette butts and roaches, and a baggie holding a pretty familiar shade of green. I gave the room a quick once-over and decided even the most brazen psycho killer wouldn’t hide an old souvenir in a room that obviously saw so much entertaining. Despite what the television might make you think, criminals aren’t all stupid. In fact, some of them are incredibly intelligent.

Moving out of the front living area, I pass through a small kitchenette and down a short hall. There are a pair of bedrooms at the rear of the house, one neat enough and probably rarely used—at least judging by the dust on the light fixtures—and one that looks like a bar and a Laundromat had a filth contest and everybody won the grand prize. The smell hits me as I walk into Jack’s room: an ugly reek of ass and black mold, with a few dried-up condoms on the nightstand to add to the ambience. I shudder, put my game face on, and get to work.

Despite the mess on the floor, bed, and nightstand, the dresser is full of neatly folded clothing. Mr. Tidy. I rifle through each drawer, being sure to check the underside of each of them as I do, all while keeping an eye on the Timex on my wrist. So far I’ve been in the house less than five minutes, discovering nothing, and I’m starting to hope there’s not a crawl space or attic.

I give up on the dresser after hitting the bottom drawer, and come away with the revelation that Jack and I have a bit in common. As it turns out, we both essentially wear uniforms. For me, that means punk shirts and hoodies, Converse All Stars, and jeans. Jack’s is a little different: flannel shirts and Carhartt outerwear, some camo for hunting, and then a bunch of white shirts, briefs, and socks. It’s all boring, nothing tucked under any of the drawers—no bloody knife, smoking revolver, or baggied trophy of victim-hair anywhere—and I’m starting to think this is more snipe hunt than investigation.

There’s no blood-stained coat to be found as I shuffle carefully through the closet, no punk records or heroin needles in the nightstand, and no diary packed with confessions. A little dejected at not solving the decade-plus-old murder, I walk out of the bedroom and give a look out the back door to the rear yard.

Jackpot.

THIRTEEN

The last two hours of class dragged on long enough that Betty was sure there was something wrong with the clocks. Finally it was 2:20 and the last bell of the day sounded, and Betty walked to her Beetle while she texted June.

She’d already decided she had to convince the moms somehow to let her break the grounding so that she and June could work on the project together, and she knew her only chance of doing that was if they agreed to do the work at her house. Betty knew what they were going to lay down as a precondition, though the thought of having to look Jake in the face and break it off made her throw up in her mouth a little. It would probably be for the best just to get it over with.

Betty made it to the car at the same time she was hitting “Send” on her phone. The message she sent to June told her about the plan and gave her a couple of different websites to check out for more information on Duke, Mandy, and the bizarre set of events surrounding the murder and the trial. “K” came through a few moments later, and Betty dropped the phone into a cup holder before throwing the car into reverse.

Betty was home ten minutes later, and she parked the car behind Ophelia’s and then walked in the house. Ignoring the loud techno coming from the basement, Betty grabbed a water and headed upstairs and got to work on the part of the website labeled “The Trial.”

The Duke Barnes trial started going sideways before it began. For starters, the court had a very hard time appointing an attorney for Duke. Not only was he furious and recanting his testimony to the police, but he’d beaten up two men in the county lockup he thought were jailhouse snitches. Worse still, he was suffering from extreme withdrawals from heroin. By the time he finally did have a lawyer, the man could do little but attempt to slow the trial, but to no avail. Six months after Mandy Reasoner was found dead, Duke’s trial began.

Betty didn’t even feel like she needed to research the matter to know that three days is an impossibly short span of time for a murder trial to take place, but in The People v. Duke Barnes, that was all that was necessary. Duke not only sounded guilty, he looked guilty. He was covered in tattoos, with the pinched and worn face of a junkie to boot. He was unpleasant, had to be threatened with being gagged, and was generally disagreeable with everyone he came into contact with. Duke’s lawyer did the best he could under the circumstances, explaining that Duke had so many opiate metabolites in his system at the time he confessed that there was no way the confession should be legally binding, but the judge allowed it to stand. Duke was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in the Michigan penal system.

At the time of his conviction, it didn’t sound as if Duke had a friend in the world, and for the next few years, nothing about that appeared to change. Interestingly, five years after his conviction and now stone-cold sober, Duke made his way back into the culture that he’d loved so much through a series of letters with the magazine
Maximum Rocknroll
, letters that eventually turned into a column that was still running. According to the website, the majority of the articles penned by Duke, a.k.a. Prison Punk, were about prisoner rights and how easy it can be for normal people to be railroaded by the legal system if they aren’t careful. The columns were what set things in motion. Even though Duke tried to remain anonymous, someone finally figured out who he was and the snowball began to grow.

Eight years after his trial, the Free Duke Barnes campaign was in full swing, and while it lacked A-list celebrities, it had a fervent grassroots following. The efforts of the group seemed to be focused mostly on getting Duke a retrial, but as she read the words on the screen, Betty found herself even more interested in the other side of the coin. If Duke really didn’t do it, then who did? If the person who had killed Mandy was still free, was he still in Grand Rapids? Had he killed again?

Betty took a long drink of water and leaned back in her chair, then gave a look to the clock. Impossibly, the five minutes or so that she’d been home had actually stretched to a little more than an hour. Standing to relieve the growing ache in her back, Betty decided to hop downstairs to see if Ophelia had made her way out of the basement yet.

The electronic music had been shut off, so Betty was unsurprised to see Ophelia standing in the kitchen with her nose in a cookbook. “This should not be so hard,” said Ophelia without looking up. “It makes me think there’s something wrong with me.”

“Well don’t look at me,” Betty said. “I’m worse than either one of you. I think when I look for a husband, his ability to cook a decent meal is going to be pretty high on my list of necessary attributes.”

“Can Jake cook?” Now Ophelia was looking at her.

“I have no idea, but probably not. Doesn’t really matter, though. I think Jake and I are about done.”

“I can’t say that I’m very upset over that,” said Ophelia. “I won’t go off on an Andrea-style rant on the subject, but I will tell you that you can do better than a boy who sees only your body. You have a good head on your shoulders, Betty, and it would be a shame if you got pregnant or did something else to mess up your life. Do what I didn’t: enjoy your childhood, and don’t rush it.”

“I know all that, Mom,” said Betty. “Jake’s a good guy, and I know it’s hard for you to believe, but he really was joking. He knows I’m not the kind of person to sext him or send him pictures like that, and that’s why my response was to send him a picture that he himself had taken. I mean, I get that it was a little risqué because I was in a two-piece, but it really was just a joke between us.”

Ophelia gave a tiny, unconvinced shrug and sank back down into her cookbook.

“Look,” Betty said, “I’m sorry. I know we’ve been over this and I’m not trying to start a fight.”

“It’s fine,” said Ophelia. “So what were you headed down here for?”

“I wanted to ask you and Mom a question.” Ophelia looked up again and nodded. “I have a paper due next week, the suffrage one that I told you about, but June and I decided to work on another bigger project instead. Mr. Evans said that he was fine with it. He even agreed to give us more time so that we could properly research everything, but I wasn’t really thinking about my grounding when I said I could do it. Is there any way we could lift my grounding so that she can come over and we could work on the project together?”

“Well, I liked the idea of the paper on suffrage,” said Ophelia. “I think it’s a more relevant subject than people your age, hell, people my age, give it credit for. The fact that a hundred years ago half of this country wasn’t allowed to vote is a fascinating thing.” She sighed. “That said, I have a feeling I know what the subject of this new project is going to be, though I’m not sure I want to confirm it.”

Betty nodded. “This is pretty much the most exciting thing that we’ve ever been close to, and we want to know everything about it, but especially the part about why people think the guy convicted of killing June’s aunt is innocent.” Betty knew she was choosing to leave out the other part, about trying to figure out who really had done it, but figured there was no percentage in doing so. Either her moms would rear up at the prospect of them putting themselves in danger, or roll their eyes at how childish it sounded. Instead, she closed with, “I think if we work hard on it we could end up with something really special, something that could even look good on a college application.”

“Don’t push too hard,” said Ophelia. “I’m already pretty well convinced, and I don’t want to feel like I’m dealing with a used car salesman. Let me talk to Andrea, but I think between the two of us we can come up with something.” Ophelia’s eyes narrowed. “You were serious about this Jake business, though, right?”

“I’ll dump him right now if you want me to,” said Betty. “I think it’s a little cold to do it over the phone, but if it’s going to happen either way, then the sooner the better.”

Ophelia laughed, shook her head, and said, “No, you can do better than that. Don’t be so rotten! Let him down easy. He would have done that for you, I bet.”

“So you think I can tell June she can come over tomorrow?”

“I don’t think that will be a problem,” said Ophelia, “but let me deal with the discussion. You just be a quiet little lamb in your room until I give you the all clear, all right?”

“Baaa,” said Betty.