Ridley Pearson - Killer Weekend

Walt thought him either a very good actor, or someone who knew nothing of the possibility of Ailia Holms’s contact lens being found in his car.

“The keys?” Walt asked.

“Kept on a rack in the kitchen. All but the Cayenne. I keep those with me. I’m passionate about the Cayenne.” He smiled.

It was all wrong. Walt had expected him to be nervous and agitated. Aanestad sat smugly observing Walt’s reactions-Walt’s, not his client’s. Had some coaching gone on in the corner? Walt wondered. Was Cutter seasoned enough from his business dealings to bluff his way through this? It seemed impossible to Walt that Cutter, if guilty, could maintain such a calm facade.

“You were sleeping with Ailia Holms?”

Cutter tried to hold back any reaction, but he slowly crumbled. Feigned astonishment moved into feigned insult. Walt never took his eyes off the man, as the accusation worked through him like an acid. His weapon was patience. He waited, and the waiting was the man’s undoing.

“Nonsense!” Aanestad complained, trying to give Cutter a breath of air. “Where’d you get that? It’s garbage, Walt, and you know it. You should be ashamed, trying such a stunt.”

Walt had gotten it from a single look Dick O’Brien had given him out on the bridge when mentioning the competition between the brothers, but he wasn’t about to reveal his source. “Let your client deny it, counselor.”

Patrick’s eyes shone wetly as he glowered at Walt. At least a minute had passed. Maybe two. The air-conditioning wheezed from the ceiling. Again, a food service worker tried to enter the room from the far end. Again, Walt sent him packing.

Patrick said softly, “I’m upset over her loss, Sheriff. We were…close.”

“Of course you were,” Aanestad said. “You and Stu-”

“Shut up, Doug,” Cutter said.

“How long?” Walt asked.

“This conversation is over!” Aanestad announced.

“Doug!” Cutter chided. “If you can’t keep quiet, I’m going to ask you to leave the room.”

Aanestad’s face went scarlet, his eyes flashed darkly, and he sat back in his chair.

Patrick continued. “I had Dick share the security footage because if Danny did something…if he hurt her in any way…then God damn it, for once he’s going to pay.”

“I’ll need you to account for your whereabouts last night, from nine P.M. to past midnight.”

Without pause, Cutter replied, “I was hosting a dinner at the lodge dining room followed immediately by a dessert function out at Trail Creek Cabin. The commissioner of the FCC. Believe me, Walt, every second of my time can be accounted for, by me, my people, and probably several dozen, if not a hundred or more, witnesses. Do the legwork.”

“The same for Danny?”

Patrick answered only with a saddened face.

“We’re done here,” Aanestad repeated. This time, he won Patrick’s support.

Walt had what he wanted: Patrick had admitted involvement with Ailia Holms, just as O’Brien had inferred. The man could have easily hired her murder.

All three men stood.

Walt asked for Cutter’s passport, winning another shocked expression. “Have one of your people run it down to my office before five.”

“That’s less than an hour.”

“That’s your problem.”

“You are way off, if you think I had anything do to with Ailia’s death.”

“Physical evidence was found in the back of your Land Cruiser possibly connected to the victim. Doug was prohibited from saying anything about that-the only condition of his attendance here.”

“What evidence? That’s ridiculous. Allie and I used that car all the time. We’ve even-” Cutter stopped himself.

Walt said nothing. He felt sordid and tired.

“We cared for each other,” Cutter repeated, as if issuing his defense.

“That’s enough, Patrick,” Aanestad said, taking Cutter by the arm and leading him from the room.

A few minutes before 5 P.M., Walt parked in his designated space in front of the Sheriff’s Office. The officer on duty told him Myra was waiting in his office. He found her reading the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association magazine.

“What’s up?” he asked, hurrying over to give her a kiss. “Is Kev all right?”

“Better,” she said. “They may release him tomorrow.”

He sat down behind his desk and checked his e-mail. Too many to deal with. A stack of phone messages. And yet it felt uncommonly good to be back in the office.

“You look like hell.”

“I’m okay,” he told her.

“Are you eating?” With Myra it was always food.

“I’m good.” He looked up, and she looked down, avoiding eye contact. “ Myra?”

“Kev lied to you.”

“I know.”

She seemed both relieved and surprised. Her face brightened.

“He’s in with a bad kid,” he said. “This isn’t like him… We both know that.”

“How much trouble is he in?”

“Enough,” he answered honestly.

“I gave him the what-for. Told him we can’t keep using his father’s death as an excuse for our screwups. I’ve done it as much as him, Walt.”

“We’re all guilty of that,” Walt said. “Why is it we’re so willing to lean back, instead of press forward?”

“Fear. Of the unknown. Of the known. Of tomorrow. Of failure.” She worked herself up toward a cry, broken by Walt’s tossing her a box of tissues, which brought a laugh.

“So that’s a good thing,” he said. “To get through that, I mean. I hope it’s contagious.”

“We had a good cry, the two of us. That hasn’t really happened since Bobby.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“He wants to talk to you.” The way she said it, her eyes unflinching, he knew this was the real reason she’d come. She closed the magazine and set it aside.

“Okay.”

“No, I mean now, Walt. You need to hear this.”

“It can wait. If he’s getting out tomorrow-”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Exasperated, he held himself back from saying something stupid, something he’d regret. But his face belied him.

“I probably should have called you,” she said. “Caught you on the way down valley. I know how busy you must be. But I wanted to look you in the eye. I want you to understand how important this is. Not for Kevin-I don’t mean that. For you. Your job. He wouldn’t tell me what it is, but a mother knows. Right? Something happened in that laundry-that’s all I got out of him. Something he won’t talk to me about.”

“I’ll be heading up valley later on. The conference is in full swing.”

“You’ve got to go now, Walt.”

“ Myra…” he pleaded.

“He won’t tell me, only you. Please. Please do this. He’s your nephew.”

He had some choice words on the tip of his tongue. He looked at her and nodded. He said, “But we’re stopping by your place on the way and you’re making me a banana and mayonnaise sandwich.”

“Deal,” she said brightly. And with that, tears rolled from her tired eyes.

K evin didn’t look as if he’d be going home the next day. If anything he looked worse than earlier in the day: the bruising around his shattered eye socket had spread beyond the bandages and was a horrid orange. His one supposedly “good” eye was pooled with blood beneath the cornea, the iris barely discernible.

“You look like shit,” Walt said, taking the seat by the side of the bed.

Kevin winced as he stretched the stitches at the edge of his lips into a grin. “Yeah,” he said.

“Your mom said-”

“Yeah,” he interrupted. “I’m sorry for what happened.”

“Me, too. I hear you want to change your story.”