Helen R. - No Sanctuary

“Facts.” The attorney focused on the unopened file before him. “It appears new evidence finally surfaced that was unknown at the time of the initial investigation. The deceased was recently discovered to have had a gambling problem. Apparently—”

“The deceased had a name. Glenn English.”

“—Mr. English’s debts,” Lyle Gessler continued frowning at the closed folder, “had gotten so out of control that a collector was sent after him.”

“Bull.” Bay would never have stood for that kind of behavior, and Glenn had known it because her father had been a compulsive gambler. Glenn had witnessed the worst of what that meant; in fact, he’d almost been as hurt by the effects of her father’s addiction as Bay was. They’d come a cold sweat away from losing the business and Bay the pitiful roof over her head. No way would Glenn have allowed himself to become consumed by the same weakness. He’d cared, cared too much.

“Look, I don’t specialize in appellate law, but Mrs. Ridgeway found someone who does. He, in turn, found the right investigators and we ended up with the testimony from a small-time crook by the name of George ‘Catfish’ Tarpley, who knew the hit man sent to settle things with Mr. English.”

“Hit man?”

Gessler stiffened and leaning back glanced around to see how much attention she’d attracted from the other booths. Satisfied that it wasn’t much, he whispered, “Do you mind? One Raymond Basque. Razor to those who use nicknames instead of Yellow Pages advertising.”

Ignoring the snide retort, Bay shot back, “Someone with the kind of debt you’re inferring would be warned several times, even at his place of business. I never saw or heard any—”

“Do you want to know why you’re getting out or not?”

There was no arguing with that. Bay nodded.

“Like Basque, Tarpley’s from Louisiana,” Gessler continued. “But he has a record here that should have been long enough to make him a permanent resident. Several weeks ago he was stopped in Houston for a traffic violation. Police found an unregistered handgun in the car, and he was also in illegal possession of prescription drugs. Needless to say, once he understood that this time he was facing Texas’s strikeout situation, he was anxious to plea bargain.”

If it happened, no doubt; but to Bay it sounded too pat. “The D.A. and a judge wouldn’t listen to me, why should they listen to a career criminal?”

“Because he helped close the book on Basque. Basque is dead…has been for over six years. He was found at DFW Airport with a single gunshot wound to the head the morning after fulfilling the contract on your friend. As luck would have it, at the time there was no reason to connect him to your friend’s murder because the Tyler police believed they had their killer.”

The whole story was insane, and yet Bay saw the way Fate had played nemesis in her life. “How much did Glenn owe?”

“I have no idea.”

“It cost him his life, what do you mean you don’t know? Ten thousand? Fifty?”

“I’m pleased to be able to say such things aren’t in my general area of expertise.”

Unfortunately, they were in hers. “Then let me enlighten you. To be worth the trouble of killing, Glenn would have to have been so deeply in debt he would be sweating blood by day and pissing it by night.” Bay had seen her father in that condition enough to know the signs. “He would have had a few scares, maybe a slashed tire or bashed headlight on a vehicle, and then if that didn’t get the message across, he would have had the crap beaten out of him. No way Glenn could have hidden all of that from me.”

Although he turned a sickly yellow against his flashy suit, Gessler managed his own share of sarcasm. “I’m sharing confidences and insights I doubt anyone else on the case would. Your protests and censure beg the question of why I’m wasting my time talking to you. Perhaps Mrs. Ridgeway needs to be informed of that.”

Bay wanted to kick through the partition and grab the little snot by his platinum silk tie. In her dreams of justice, she’d found vindication and freedom, but not like this. Never at the cost of a dear memory, someone she’d respected and trusted. Glenn hadn’t just shared everything he knew about working with metal, he stuck around through the bad times when others quit due to one too many late paychecks. That was why she’d made him a partner, and why she’d called him a friend. What could she do to disprove these filthy lies? Nothing here. She had to temper her outrage and find the real answers outside.

“This Catfish guy,” she said, her throat aching, “he’s in custody on a commuted sentence? I can talk to him?”

“I told you, he was afraid that what he knew about Basque could be his death warrant if he went back to Huntsville, so he gave authorities various other tidbits that helped on several arrests and earned him a walk.”

She couldn’t deny the validity of that. In prison, what you knew could get you in as much trouble as speculating about what wasn’t any of your business and plenty of inmates lived in dread of returning to pay for their secrets.

“I don’t know, it still sounds as though he got the best of you guys. How do you know he didn’t?”

“We have the confirmation of a detective in Vice, one Nick Martel, who acknowledged he saw Tarpley and Basque in the exact booth at the all-night restaurant Tarpley mentioned when he described making Basque’s payoff.”

The news sucked the air out of the room until Bay felt her lungs burning. A cop…it was one thing to reject the word of a career crook and liar looking for any angle to gain a deal on his sentence, quite another to refute a cop. Sure, guys who carried badges and took oaths lied—naive she wasn’t. It would be a first for one to help someone in her kind of trouble, though.

“Would Martel talk to me?” she asked.

“To what end? He didn’t know English. He just saw what he saw.”

“Then what about Tarpley? Did they ask him who hired him to make the payoff?”

Gessler shook his head. “All of his leads dead-end because no names were used and payment was made at arranged drop-off sites for exactly those reasons.”

Bay could see she would get little from the man and had to allow that maybe that’s why he was sent. It could be that, like Tarpley, he was simply part of the conduit. For the moment it would be wise to let him believe he’d performed his role expertly. But Bay had known Glenn English. He may have cut a corner or two on projects in his time; however, his conscience always reminded him where and when, especially after becoming engaged to Holly Kirkland. And she was active in her church. The couple had been planning a modest wedding to save money for a house. It was inconceivable that he would have jeopardized her trust.

What to do…? So-called justice had already cost her six years of her life. If it took another big blunder to set things right, why not accept that as a gift? Sure as hell, she couldn’t do Glenn’s memory any good here. She also needed to get out for her sanity’s sake.

“So what’s next?” she asked, aware of a slight trembling in her legs. With her free hand she gripped her left thigh to control it.

“Sit tight for the formal paperwork to come through. You should be out by the end of the month, your record expunged.”

Incredulous, she was slow to find her voice. “That fast?”

“I told you, Mrs. Ridgeway has been working on this for some time.”

Free…and not just paroled, the sentence overturned. It was too much to take in. The only thing that saved her was the weight of her guilt. Glenn still wasn’t coming back. Her friend died because she hadn’t locked a door, wasn’t more conscious of what had been going on with him…something.