Carolyn McSparren - His Only Defense

So far. That was about to change.

She’d hoped for a picture of Slaughter, but since he’d never been arrested, he hadn’t been photographed. He’d volunteered his prints and DNA at the time, but the only description she had was that he was a big man.

The previous afternoon Randy Railsback had brought her a cup of coffee, plunked his skinny butt down on the chair beside her desk and asked her to dinner. To discuss the case. Right. If Randy Randy continued to hit on her during office hours she was going to hit him upside his expensively coiffed head.

Since Randy had been riding a squad car seven years earlier, he knew no more than she did about the case. Jack Samuels, however, had wandered over when he’d heard them talking. “Slaughter looked like a jock,” he said. “Probably played college football. More than able to carry a hundred-twenty-pound corpse far back into those woods and dig a grave deep enough to keep the coyotes away. By now he’s probably got a beer gut, no hair and an ulcer. Murder’ll do that to you…if you have any conscience at all.”

So Liz expected to find a big man gone to seed. The only person in the trailer had his back to her. Broad back, broad shoulders. He was wearing chinos, muddy work boots and a down jacket, although the room was comfortably warm. She couldn’t tell about the gut.

He heard her come in, turned around and stood. “Hey, can I help you?” he asked.

No paunch! And not the least bit bald! No wonder Sylvia Slaughter had fallen for him. Most women would. He was not just big, he was immense, and good-looking in a craggy way. His nose had obviously been broken more than once. Jack said he’d played football, and Liz would bet he’d been a linebacker or a tackle. Running into him would be like hitting a marble column.

Yeah, he could carry a corpse a long way into the woods and dig a grave without breaking a sweat.

At five feet eleven inches, Liz didn’t look up to many men, but she had to tilt her head way back to stare into his guileless gray eyes. He had more than an adequate amount of sandy hair falling across his forehead. She knew from the file that he’d be thirty-nine. He’d been thirty-two when Sylvia died—disappeared.

Drat the man, he probably looked better now, with his sun-brown face and crinkly eyes, than he had then. Liz made a mental note to check for mistresses and girlfriends. No way this guy would be celibate for seven years.

“Mr. Slaughter, I’m Liz Gibson.” She showed him her shield, then shoved it back into the pocket of her blazer. “I’d like to talk to you about your wife.”

The start of a smile froze on Slaughter’s face. He sucked in a deep breath. “I wasn’t expecting to have somebody like you show up on my doorstep for a couple of weeks.”

“I beg your pardon? Why would you expect the police after seven years?”

He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “Come on, Miz…Gibson, was it?”

She kept her face carefully blank. “Your wife’s case has never been closed, Mr. Slaughter. We revisit all open, uh, cases from time to time.” She’d nearly said “homicides.” Bad move. She’d have to watch her tongue around this guy.

“So there’s nothing suspicious about the timing? Give me a break.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not with you.”

“Look, Miz Gibson, I’m late for a meeting at the job site. Ride over with me, and we’ll talk.”

No way would she get into a car with this behemoth, be driven God knew where and left there while he met with one of his subcontractors. “This won’t take but a few minutes.”

He closed his eyes, whether in exasperation or acquiescence she couldn’t tell. When he opened them, he reached into his pocket, dialed his cell phone, turned his back on her and spoke quietly to whoever was on the other end, asking to put off the meeting.

He had a pleasant baritone voice. On the surface, he seemed like a nice man. But then most of the people she’d talked down from hostage situations had sounded nice and rational, until they lost it over whatever crime they felt had been perpetrated against them. Then they turned rabid in a nanosecond. This man was as much a wife killer as Bobby Joe Watson. Like Bobby Joe, he had a daughter who needed protection.

This guy wouldn’t get away with it.

He flipped the phone closed, stuck it into his pocket, pointed to an old wooden kitchen chair beside his desk and shucked his jacket.

Oh, definitely no paunch. The front of the guy’s plaid shirt slid straight under the waistband of his chinos, which slid straight down his flat belly until they hit a bulge at the crotch that looked proportional to the size of the man himself. She dragged her eyes back to his face and swallowed hard, then took the chair he offered her. He went around the desk and sat down.

“You can’t tell me this visit isn’t because of my petition to have Sylvia declared dead. I didn’t think the police worked for insurance companies.”

Damn! She’d been blindsided. But maybe Gavigan didn’t know, either. She’d have to find out who had pushed the higher-ups to reopen the case. “After saying for seven years that your wife disappeared, you suddenly want to have her declared dead. What changed your mind? And why now?” No way would she let him know this was the first she’d heard of it.

“Should I call my lawyer?”

Liz smiled her most ingratiating smile. Of course he should call his lawyer before he said another word, but that was the last thing she wanted him to do. “That’s your right, Mr. Slaughter. Do you need one at the moment? We’re just chatting here.”

He narrowed those gray eyes at her. They no longer seemed quite so guileless. In fact, they’d turned cold as glare ice. “Ask your questions. I’ll answer them or not.”

“Absolutely.” She had to remind herself he’d been through hours, days, weeks of interrogation. He knew the way things worked. But he’d been interrogated by a pair of old-line homicide bulls, never by a woman. “So, what did change your mind?”

“The law says that seven years is the legal waiting period to have someone declared dead. I’m sure you hear this a lot, but my family needs closure.”

“That’s the only reason? You have no new information?”

He sighed and rubbed his large tanned hand down his face. “As you know, Sylvia and I both had half-million-dollar whole life policies on one another. In Tennessee, murder kicks in the accidental death double indemnity clause. Meaning, instead of half a million, it pays out a million.”

“You’ve been looking at a million dollars in insurance for seven years?”

“Money I could not in good conscience request, so long as I felt certain Sylvia was alive somewhere. Now that it is legally appropriate to claim it for my family, however, we should be the ones to benefit by investing it. Believe me, the insurance company has been making plenty on it for the last seven years and is no doubt loath to give it up.”

“So you now believe your wife was murdered?”

“Let’s say I’m not certain any longer that she’s alive. None of the homicide investigators ever came up with evidence either way, although they continued to act as though they knew she was dead and I killed her. Sorry to say this, but once you people get an idea in your collective heads, it’s not easy to get it out.”

“Not without evidence to the contrary, it isn’t,” Liz said dryly. “When something bad happens to one spouse, the odds are extremely heavy that the surviving spouse is involved. The statistics would blow your mind.”

“I’m not a statistic and I’m not a murderer. When I started trying to make up my mind whether to petition to have her declared dead, I finally hired my own private detective.”