Downfall

  Kent thought of Bo and Carter. The police could easily find out if either drove a dark four-door sedan and if they had alibis at the time of the attack. Both men had priors, so their fingerprints could be compared to the ones on the gas can — assuming there were any.

  But Kent couldn’t wait for that information. He had to act now . . . tonight . . . before this person struck again. He would get to the bottom of this himself.

  Tonight he would find out once and for all who was to blame.

  Chapter 44

  When the fire was out and the fire department had left a small crew there to watch the smoldering debris, Kent took Barbara and the kids to a hotel and checked them in. With a maniac on the loose, they couldn’t go back home. He rented a room for himself next door to them and tried to sleep, but rage pounded through his veins, throbbing in his head. He had to know whether Bo drove a dark four-door sedan. He got on the phone and got the dispatcher to check on the make and model of both Bo’s and Carter’s cars.

  Bo’s was a 2000 Maxima, dark gray. It could have been the same car. Carter drove a pickup truck, but his dead wife had a burgundy Altima.

  He wondered if Bo had been at work tonight. If he smelled like booze, gasoline, and smoke.

  Kent’s clothes still smelled of smoke, but he didn’t care. He loaded his weapon, holstered it, and pulled his jacket over it. Then he slipped out of his room, careful not to let Barbara hear in the room next door.

  “Where you going?”

  Lance’s voice startled him. Kent spun around and saw the boy sitting on the floor in the hall. “Lance — why are you out here?”

  “I was talking to April on the phone. I didn’t want to wake up Mom and Emily.”

  “Go back in. Your mother might wake up and get scared.”

  “I know,” he said. “But that stupid doper Tyson showed up at her house again. She said she’d call me right back. I’m waiting.”

  Kent could see the pain on Lance’s face. “Well, don’t wait much longer, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lance said. “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t sleep. I thought I’d go take care of a few things.”

  “About Emily’s case?”

  He didn’t want to lie to Lance. “Sort of.”

  “Want me to go with you?”

  The innocent question moved him. “Not tonight.”

  Lance’s phone chimed as Kent got on the elevator.

  The drive to Bo Lawrence’s house, where Kent had worked the scene of Devon’s murder, took twenty minutes across town. In this lower-income neighborhood, men loitered on corners. He slowed as he passed them, wondering if one of them could be his culprit.

  There were flower bouquets around a cross on the front lawn of the Lawrence house. There was no light in the windows.

  His headlights lit up a car in the driveway. It was an older model sedan, all right. Dark, four doors. It seemed bigger than the one Kent had seen at his house tonight, but then, he’d been stressed at the time, probably not as observant as he habitually was. And it didn’t have a dented fender. Maybe he’d imagined that or the streetlights had cast shadows.

  He slowed in front of the house, wondering if Bo smelled like gasoline and whether his tennis shoes matched the pattern they’d found in the yard. He couldn’t barge into Bo’s house and insist on smelling the guy.

  Still . . . he had to know. He pulled his car into the driveway and went to the door. No answer, and no sounds inside. Either he was hiding, sleeping, or he’d gotten a ride somewhere.

  He went back to his car. If by some chance Bo was at work, he could easily walk into his store and confront him. He had to find out. He pulled out of the driveway, suddenly sure what he had to do. He drove around for a few minutes, making a plan.

  His heart hammered. His head pounded.

  He turned around and headed to Bo’s convenience store. It wasn’t far from where Bo lived. He thought of the morning that he’d gone in and told the guy his wife was dead. He’d truly seemed surprised and grief-stricken. But the man could be a good actor.

  Kent pulled into a parking space in front of the store, peered in through the barred windows.

  There sat Bo behind the counter, talking to a co-worker. Kent quelled the urge to run inside, grab him by the collar, and shake the truth out of him. You trying to kill people I love? Trying to destroy my home?

  That would be stupid. He had to be professional.

  He set his chin, pulled his lips tight, and got out of the car. Quietly, he closed his door. He didn’t delude himself into thinking Bo would confess, but maybe he could trip him up.

  He pushed open the glass door and stepped into the store. Bo’s back was to him, but his co-worker looked up at Kent.

  “How ya doin’?”

  Kent didn’t answer, just strode toward the counter.

  Bo turned around and looked startled to see him. “Hey, Detective.”

  Kent’s lips were so tight he could hardly speak. “Criss-cross,” he said.

  Bo stared at him. “What?”

  Kent didn’t repeat it. “How long have you been here tonight, Bo?”

  Bo took a step back. “What’s going on?”

  Was that smoke he smelled? Something in his chest snapped. “I asked you a question. How long have you been here tonight?”

  “Okay, I’ve been here since seven o’clock. This guy’s been with me the whole time.”

  The co-worker, who looked about seventeen, nodded. “Yeah, man. No lie. He’s been here all night.”

  Bo’s intense gaze was almost convincing. “What’s going on? Did something else happen? Other police were here earlier tonight, asking me questions, but they wouldn’t say why.”

  So Andy and Strand had already been here. Kent stood there, his chest heaving. Had they confirmed Bo’s alibi?

  Kent closed his hands into fists. “I saw your car at my house. The one sitting in your driveway.”

  “My car ain’t been out of the driveway in two days. I have a flat and haven’t had time to change it. Go back and look!”

  Kent set his chin. “Your shoe. Take it off. I want to see it.”

  Bo twisted his face as if he thought Kent was crazy, but he slid his tennis shoe off and handed it to him across the counter.

  Kent turned it over. The pattern wasn’t like the one he’d seen in the yard. That had had more of a bull’s-eye pattern. This one had a grid pattern with horizontal lines.

  Maybe it wasn’t him.

  Bo took his shoe back. “The person who killed Devon . . . he’s still doing stuff, ain’t he?”

  Kent just stared at him.

  Bo leaned on the cash register. “Maybe Carter did all this — killed Devon . . . came to your house.” His voice cracked, and he looked like he struggled to hold back tears. “Look, man, I know I trashed her while I was in treatment. I said things. But when I got home, things were better. I was sober, and the kids really liked it, and Devon and I were going to free counseling at this church she found. We were trying to get help. But then, somebody came into my house and murdered her . . .”

  “How did you know about Cassandra?”

  “Are you kidding?” Bo said. “The police have interviewed me over and over. They wanted my alibi.” Bo broke down then, his mouth twitching. “So if Carter did this . . . if he killed Devon and Cassandra . . . he must have relapsed and gone off the deep end. But he never called me. I ain’t talked to him since rehab.”

  If that was true, Carter’s actions didn’t make sense. Why would he kill Bo’s wife? There was nothing in it for him, even if he was high.

  “Let’s go see him,” Bo said. “Right now. I can’t go in my car until I can fix my tire. But we could go in yours.”

  The co-worker nodded. “Head out, man. I would if I was you. I’ll hold down the fort.”

  Was this a trick? Kent knew his anger dulled his professional reasoning skills. He had to get a grip.

  “You’re a cop,” Bo said. “You’re armed. I’m the one
who should be afraid to go with you. But no lie, I want to confront Carter.”

  Kent’s chest was so tight he thought it might burst. “I just want to see his car.”

  “Fine. But go back and look at mine,” Bo said. “It ain’t been nowhere, man. It’s also got a hole in the radiator, so even before the tire went flat, I couldn’t drive it far.”

  Kent didn’t want to believe him, but he couldn’t walk away. He just stared at Bo.

  “Man, if there’s a chance that Carter killed Devon, I want to know,” Bo said. “Whoever did it changed my life. My kids are suffering. Now I have to raise ’em by myself without their mama. Her parents are tryin’ to get custody, because they don’t trust me to stay sober. Can’t blame ’em. I don’t trust myself. And there’s no way Emily Covington did any of this.”

  Kent felt suddenly fragmented, not sure what to do next. His house was uninhabitable. The people he loved were displaced, and their lives were still in jeopardy. The person doing all this was getting sloppy, taking risks. Why, then, was it so hard to prove who it was?

  “Come on, man,” Bo said. “Let’s go see Carter. If he did it, I’ll be able to tell. I know the guy. His emotions show on his face, and I know what he looks like when he lies. He can’t hide it from me if he did it. If he’s the one, I’ll testify against him.”

  If Kent had been assigned to the case, he would never consider something so unprofessional. But now he was just a victim, fighting for the lives of the people he loved. He considered Bo, standing there with lines of grief and fatigue on his face, waiting for the word.

  Bo couldn’t be the arsonist if he’d truly been here all night. And when Cassandra was killed, it was highly unlikely that Bo could have pulled it off, when Kent had spent so much time with him that day.

  It had to be Carter. There might be evidence in his car. His phone might have tracked where he’d been tonight. Kent had to know, and if he was right, then he could get Andy and Strand to make an arrest. He doubted seriously that they’d gone to Birmingham tonight in search of his arsonist. He couldn’t make an arrest without a warrant, but he could question the man, look through the windows of his car.

  He let out a long sigh. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Bo gave a few instructions to his friend, then followed Kent out to his car.

  As Kent pulled out of the parking lot with Bo next to him, he prayed he wasn’t making a mistake.

  Chapter 45

  Before they left town, Bo insisted they drive by his house so he could prove his tire was flat. He’d gotten a ride to work, he said, and hadn’t driven since yesterday. Just as he’d said, the tire was flat, and the engine was cold.

  Kent should have noticed that, he thought, but his emotions had been leading. Just one more reason Kent had been right to remove himself from the case.

  As they drove to Birmingham, Bo talked about what he’d been through since getting out of rehab.

  “I wasn’t serious then,” he admitted. “I didn’t go to rehab because I wanted to. I was forced to. And the whole time I was in there I was determined not to give my mother and my wife and the government what they wanted. They could force sobriety on me while I was there, but I was just biding my time until I could get out and go right back to it.”

  “Not a good recipe for long-term sobriety.”

  “Yeah, well. After Carter got out, when I had nobody my age to shoot the breeze with, I started seeing what a fool all them dopers were. They were getting pretty wild, most of them. No intentions of getting better. Just trying to work the system. I’d been using since I was fifteen. And there I was at forty. I didn’t want to act like those stupid kids who saw themselves as party animals. They were really ruining their lives.”

  Kent was quiet. He thought of Emily and what a tremendous journey she’d made from addiction to sobriety. Staying there had been an even greater achievement.

  “There was this dude there named Jack. Constantly smuggling in dope. Judge sent him to rehab, but it didn’t do no good. Finally got thrown out. I couldn’t stand that guy. He had serious mental problems, always accusing us of dissin’ him, stirring up trouble where there wasn’t any. Paranoid. Had fried his brain, and was almost as bad sober as he was when he was high. But he stayed high most of the time, even there. I didn’t want to be like that. By the time I got out, I had an AA sponsor lined up. I’ve worked the program since I got home.”

  “Did you tell Devon you wanted to stay clean?”

  Sorrow changed his face. “Yeah, I told her, but she didn’t believe me. I figured when she saw changes in me, she’d get excited. I started to see that she was tryin’ to save our family and our kids from a loser father. She wasn’t the bad guy. I was.”

  Kent glanced at Bo as he drove. Headlights briefly illuminated his face, and there were tears glistening in the man’s eyes. He couldn’t know for sure, but Bo looked sincere.

  “So you’ve been sober ever since rehab?”

  “Yeah, I have. Not that it’s been easy. After what happened . . .” His voice broke off. “I started to think it wasn’t worth it . . . that I couldn’t be expected to stay sober with all this going on. But my little girl said, ‘Daddy, who’s gonna take care of us?’ I told her I would, and she said, ‘Daddy!’ Like that was ridiculous. Like I was so irresponsible that nobody could expect me to step in and take over.”

  “So you didn’t relapse?”

  “No. My AA sponsor talked sense into me.”

  Calling a sponsor was a decision in itself. Most addicts didn’t want to make that call when they were craving. They’d made their minds up to use before there was even a struggle.

  On the other hand, maybe nothing Bo said was true.

  They were quiet for the next several minutes, then Bo said, “Detective, tell me you believe me, man. Tell me you don’t think I killed my wife. That you know I didn’t try to burn your house down.”

  Kent clenched his molars, felt the tightening in his temples. He hesitated. “It doesn’t matter what I believe,” he said finally.

  Bo accepted that. “What could Carter be thinking? He knew I was joking about swapping murders. The next day we laughed about it. He said, ‘If we stay in this place much longer we’ll scheme to kill our wives, our parents, our cousins . . .’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we’ll even be plotting to kill the president. As if slackers like us could ever pull that off.’ And we cracked up because it was totally ridiculous.”

  “Maybe that started Carter thinking.”

  “I never woulda thought so.” Bo sighed. “So what do we do when we get there?”

  Kent didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure yet.

  He’d love to kick down the door and drag him out of his house, smash his face in, tie him up and make an arrest.

  When they reached Birmingham, Kent programmed the address into his GPS. As he waited for it to give him the directions, he wondered if he was doing the right thing. Here he was, in the middle of the night, doing police work on a case that wasn’t his, with one of the persons of interest in the car with him.

  He must be losing it.

  But someone had tried to kill Emily for the second time, and Barbara and Lance along with her. They had torched his own house. He couldn’t just sit around waiting for the guy to succeed.

  “I want to talk to him,” Bo said. “I want to go to the door and look into his eyes.”

  Kent thought about that. If he knocked on the door, showed Carter his badge, and asked to interview him, would that fly? No. He wasn’t on the case. He could get suspended for pulling a stunt like that. And when an arrest was made, his attorney would use that breach in policy to get him off. “No, we can’t do that.”

  The calm, female GPS voice directed him to “follow the highlighted route.” When they reached Carter’s neighborhood, Kent’s heart rate sped up.

  There were no lights on at Carter’s house, but two vehicles sat in the driveway. A pickup truck and Cassandra’s car. Yes, the car could have been the one he’d seen
tonight, but he couldn’t see the back right fender.

  He turned off his lights and pulled to the curb. Killing his engine, he sat for a moment, staring toward the house.

  Carter had had plenty of time to get home after his attack. He could be sleeping it off by now.

  Kent reached under the seat for his flashlight. “Stay here,” he said. “I want to look at that car.”

  Bo did as he was told. Kent closed the door gently. It clicked, but not loudly enough to wake anyone. He headed up the driveway toward the sedan closest to the side door of the house.

  A motion light flashed on in the carport as Kent reached the car.

  And then he saw something.

  Feet . . . blood . . .

  He drew his weapon and stepped closer.

  A man lay slumped in a pile, a bullet’s gaping exit wound in his back.

  Bending over, Kent took the man’s pulse. Dead.

  The man looked like Carter Price.

  His heart sprinted as he looked around for anyone waiting in the shadows. No one was there. Kent backed away and headed to his car, pulling out his phone.

  Bo’s door came open. “Was the car warm?”

  Kent didn’t answer. His hand was shaking as the Birmingham 911 Dispatcher answered. “I need police at 9340 Sharon Drive,” he said. “There’s a dead man in the carport.”

  Chapter 46

  You’re sure it’s Carter?” Bo asked, stunned as they waited for the police at Kent’s car.

  “Pretty sure. I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Can’t I go look?”

  “No. You need to stay back.”

  Bo rubbed his face. “Who did this? If Carter wasn’t the killer, who is?”

  Kent couldn’t make sense of it either. Bo was shivering, his breath coming hard. “Come on,” Kent said. “Let’s sit in the car.” He could hear sirens some distance away.

  Bo opened the door, dropped into the seat. “What’s going on? First Devon, then Cassandra, now Carter?”

  Blue lights flashed up the street as the sirens grew louder. From both directions, police cars and ambulances arrived, parking on the street. Kent went to meet them.