Casey Daniels - Dead Man Talking

By now, telling fibs didn’t phase me, so I didn’t miss a beat. “I have read the old newspaper articles. They gave me all the basic background I need, but there’s nothing like firsthand information from a person who was really there.”

His jaw went rigid. “I was there at the prison,” he said. “Not there at the murder.”

“Of course not. That wasn’t what I meant at all.” I sidled a bit closer to the treadmill, and maybe a whiff of the Marc Jacobs Pear Splash I’d sprinkled on before I left my apartment was a welcome change from the combined aromas of sweat and hospital disinfectant. Some of the starch went out of Fitzpatrick’s shoulders.

“There never was a chance that Jeff didn’t commit that murder,” he said.

Since I hadn’t mentioned the bogus note in the cemetery file that talked about Lamar being framed, this struck me as interesting.

“That seems like a funny thing to say about a friend,” I pointed out.

“Who said we were friends?” There was an open water bottle on a holder at the front of the treadmill, and keeping one hand firmly on the railing at the side of the machine, Fitzpatrick reached for the bottle and took a swig. He didn’t look at me again until he’d put the water bottle back. “We worked together, me and Jeff. It’s not like we were joined at the hip or anything.”

“And you think it’s possible for someone to commit a murder when he’s a firm believer in the justice system?”

“You’ve learned that much about him, huh?” A smile twisted Fitzpatrick’s expression. “That was Jeff, all right. Always preaching about what we could do to help our inmates. Bah!” I had the feeling if Fitzpatrick could have gotten away with spitting on the floor, he would have. “He never would listen. Not when I told him that no matter what he did, criminals were criminals and they were never going to change. He saw the same figures on recidivism that I did. He knew that as soon as the prisoners were released and walked out our front gates, they were going to pick up right where they left off and end up back behind bars. But Jeff…” Fitzpatrick shook his head in disgust. “Maybe that should have told me something, huh? Maybe I should have seen that he had criminal tendencies.”

“Did he? Have criminal tendencies?”

“He killed that girl, didn’t he?”

“What was she like?”

“Vera Blaine?” He probably hadn’t given Vera so much as a thought in more than twenty years. That would explain why he had to concentrate for a while before he said, “She was young. And she didn’t strike me as being very smart. I wouldn’t have hired her. But then…”

“I’ve heard the stories about Lamar and Vera having an affair,” I told him when it seemed like he was reluctant to continue. “You don’t have to worry that you’re helping to keep Lamar’s secret.”

His laughter sounded like sandpaper on stone. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Keeping secrets in honor of Jeff’s memory? I’m not in the secrets business, honey. Don’t have the time, and even if I did, I couldn’t care less. What Jeff did with that girl, that was his business. It became my business when he killed her.”

“So you thought he was guilty? You testified against him?”

He slanted me a look. “That’s a leap of logic if I ever heard one. And no, I didn’t testify against Jeff. I testified. I told the truth. That’s all. Sat there in court and told the truth.”

“And the truth was…”

He took another drink of water and used the time it took to do it to arrange his thoughts. “Jeff Lamar was a tough man,” he said. “Not as tough as he should have been with the prisoners. He believed in educating them. Like that ever did one of those scumbags one bit of good! Jeff was tough with us, with the people he worked with.”

“Then do you think one of them might have-” I’d said too much too soon, but once the words were past my lips, I couldn’t take them back. With no other option, I fell back on the truth. “I talked to Helen Lamar. She believes her husband was innocent, that he was framed by someone who had a grudge against him.”

“Helen always was naive. That’s the only thing that would explain her still believing that crock. With the evidence they had against him, nobody else could have possibly believed Jeff didn’t do it. Well…” He paused for a moment, his head cocked. “Maybe Darcy Coleman. But honestly-”

“Darcy Coleman?” I made a mental note of the name. “She was-”

“Jeff’s secretary. Before Vera Blaine. Darcy’s husband was in one of the armed services, can’t remember which one. He was stationed overseas. That’s when Darcy worked at the prison. When he came back and got transferred to some base in California, she quit and went with him. Jeff needed a secretary. He hired Vera.”

“And this Darcy, do you know what happened to her?”

He looked at me as if I’d just asked him to recite the alphabet backward, but fortunately, there was still twenty minutes to go on the countdown timer on the treadmill, and Fitzpatrick was bored. Talking to me apparently beat sweating all by his lonesome. “I get a Christmas card from Darcy every year. Her husband died a few years ago. Some sort of accident. She moved back to Ohio to be with family. She got her degree out in California. Last I heard from her, she was teaching down at Kent State University.”

I told myself not to forget this. Darcy Coleman sounded like someone I needed to talk to, but before I asked her the all-important question, I wanted to run it by Fitzpatrick and get his take. “Darcy believed Lamar was innocent. Why?”

“Why? Because she was devoted to him. It’s that simple. Not that I thought there was ever anything between them-”

“But you did think there was something between Vera Blaine and Lamar?”

Again, he had to think about it before he shook his head. “Jeff had better taste than that, and I don’t mean that in some sort of sexist way. But Helen, she was a pretty woman. She was soft-spoken and educated. She worked as a teacher. Vera was one of those flashy girls. You know, all hair and attitude.” He realized what he’d said and flinched, but I didn’t give him time to apologize. For one thing, I was way more than just hair and attitude, and if he knew me better, he’d know that. For another, I didn’t have the patience to put up with that kind of crap.

“So you don’t think they were having an affair?”

“I didn’t say that. I said Jeff and Helen seemed to be happy. And I was going to say that I don’t think Jeff was the type.”

“Which type is that?”

“You know, loose morals. Jeff was a big believer in doing the right things. He believed in the law.”

“And the law let him down.”

This time, Fitzpatrick’s smile was touched with pity. “You just don’t get it, do you?” he asked. “The law didn’t let Jeff down, he let it down. He betrayed everything he said he stood for. He killed that girl, as sure as I’m standing here. How else can you explain why his gun was used?”

“Someone stole it?”

“That’s what Jeff said. But it’s like all the other evidence against him. Too glaring to ignore. He was in Cleveland that night, you know.”

This was an important piece of information neither of the Lamars had bothered to mention. “Doing what?”

“Obviously killing Vera.”

I made a face. “Not what I meant. What did Lamar say he was doing in Cleveland that night?”

“The story Jeff told was that his father called in a panic, and he raced to Cleveland to check things out. The old man had Alzheimer’s, you see. Whatever it was that had the old man all upset, there was nothing wrong when Jeff got there. According to him, he stopped by his parents’ house for a bit, then headed back home.”