Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [10]
“That would be nice,” Brixton said. “Thank you.”
While Mrs. Watkins fussed in the kitchen, Brixton walked around the small living room, stopping to peruse books on a tall bookcase interspersed with a variety of small, framed photographs. There were photos on the piano, too, and a cluster of them hung on a wall near the TV, each one perfectly straight. Brixton could never get his photos to hang straight and wondered whether the lady of the house spent a good part of her day keeping them in line. One picture on a bookcase shelf caught his eye. It was a color photo of a group of six teenage girls, three black, three white. They seemed happy in the shot, mugging for the camera the way teenagers do. He’d just picked it up to take a closer look when she returned with the tea and he put the photo back on the shelf.
“Is that your daughter in that picture?” he asked.
“Oh, my, yes, it is.”
“Looks like a happy occasion.”
“It was. Louise was sixteen when it was taken, a year before she left home. She was taking drugs by then only I didn’t know it. I suppose I preferred not to know, turned a blind eye on what she was doing, wanted to believe only good things about her. What a glorious smile she had, light up a room. You can see it in that photograph.” She left, returning seconds later with two other pictures of her daughter. Louise Watkins had, indeed, been a pretty girl, and the smile her mother had cited was evident in both shots. Brixton thought that showing him the pictures might cause her to tear up but she didn’t. She placed them on a coffee table next to the pitcher of tea, and a plate of brownies, and urged him to sit and enjoy her offerings, which he did.
She asked why he’d stopped by.
“I just wanted to touch base with you again,” he answered. “I spent time with two colleagues from the police department. One is still there, the other has retired. He was the one who took down Louise’s confession.”
“Detective Cleland,” she said. “A nice man. He testified at her sentencing hearing.”
“Right. He told me that he never quite believed her confession. It sounded rehearsed to him.”
A flash of spark lit up her eyes. “Exactly,” she said. “Louise was paid to say what she did.”
Brixton nodded.
“I asked Detective Cleland, and other policemen, to question her further, to press her to tell the truth,” she said, “but they didn’t. It was like they didn’t care enough to do it.”
Brixton debated trying to explain why no one probed deeper at the department—that they were happy not to have another murder or manslaughter case to pursue. Confessions make everything so much easier for a cop, even when they might not reflect reality. A bird in hand, in this case a bird named Louise Watkins.
The phone rang. She allowed it to sound four times before the answering machine, which was next to the TV, picked up. After her outgoing message, the caller grunted and hung up.
“Another one,” she said flatly.
“Another what?”
“Another call. I received two last night.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. A man. Both times he said something like, ‘Don’t be stupid.’”
“That’s all he said?”
“Yes. And there have been two others like that one just now. He hangs up.”
“Has this happened before?” Brixton asked.
“No. Never.”
Brixton stood, arching against a pain. “Excuse me,” he said, “bad back.”
“Would you like an aspirin?” she asked.
“What? Oh, no, no thanks.”
He walked to the bookcase and brought the photo of the six girls back to her. “Schoolmates?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Brixton. That was taken at a retreat at CVA.”
“The Christian Vision Academy on Ogeechee Road?”
“Yes. The school held a retreat, inviting young girls of color to their campus for a weekend, sort of an outreach to bring the races closer together. It was a nice gesture. Louise didn’t want to go but I insisted. From the looks of things in the picture she had herself a good time. She told me she did when she got home.”