“I doubt it,” Kingman said. “You were in the federal system. He was in the West Virginia state system, a place called The Northern Correctional Facility in Moundsville.”
“Moundsville, huh? Sounds like a place I’m glad I didn’t get to visit. Listen, I’ve thought about it a lot, and the more I think about it, the longer the list of suspects gets. It might have been some clown from West Virginia, but it might also have been Ben Clancy, or some friend of Rupert Lattimore, or any one of a dozen other outstanding citizens I’ve defended over my career.”
Frazier’s brother made sense. Perfect sense, but I didn’t want the police to arrest him. If he had really killed my mom, I wanted to confirm it myself and deal with it in my own way.
“Have you talked to this Frazier guy?”
“We haven’t found him yet,” Detective Rule replied. “He chose to serve all of his sentence, didn’t want to be on parole, so he isn’t under any kind of supervision.”
“Think he did it alone?”
“Not unless he knows a lot about explosives. The dynamite was placed to do maximum damage, and they made sure they used more than enough to destroy the house and kill anyone inside. Plus, you have to know what you’re doing with dynamite. You have to use blasting caps and crimp the safety fuse into the caps. You can blow yourself up in a hurry if you screw up.”
“So you have two suspects plus every crazy who was unhappy with my efforts on their behalf in the courtroom,” I said. “Is that all?”
“We have one suspect and believe he probably had an accomplice,” Rule said, correcting me. “That’s it for now. We just wanted to fill you in. Thought you’d want to know.”
“I appreciate it.” I was suddenly anxious to get out of there and get busy on my own. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
CHAPTER 9
The police didn’t know it, but I had a far more reliable source of information than them. His name was Mike “Big Pappy” Donovan, and he was the shot caller of the Independent White Boy car at the federal max prison in Rosewood, California, when I was there. Inmates divide themselves into groups, primarily based on race. They’re called cars. Some guys choose to ride in gang cars—Bloods, Crips, Aryans, MS-13—but others choose not to gangbang. Those guys wind up in independent cars, and since I was white, I wound up in the Independent White Boy car. Pappy was the leader, or “shot caller.” He negotiated with leaders of other cars for rights to prison hustles like gambling and drug dealing and cigarette selling; he negotiated solutions to disputes between people in his own car and between people in his car who might have a beef with people in another car. He negotiated with the guards and the prison administrators. He was roughly the same size as Bob Ridge—six feet seven inches tall—and he was muscular. If you got out of line, he could, and would, ruin your day.
I had handled an appeal for him and was actually able to get him out of prison. We proved that the cop who had arrested him on a bogus crack cocaine charge was a liar, and Pappy was released after serving twelve years of a thirty-five-year sentence for distributing crack cocaine. Before he was released, though, he helped me escape, and I was subsequently able to prove my own innocence with the help of Grace.
Big Pappy and I had been in touch a few times since we’d been freed. He owned a trucking company that was based in Georgia, and he traveled through Knoxville occasionally, so we’d been able to have a few meals and a few beers and talk about our time at the prison.
The first time we got together was at a bar in the Old City. After he got a few beers in him, he said, “Darren, old buddy, I have a confession to make.”
“You shot the governor,” I said.
He laughed and said, “Nah, I stay out of politics. But when I told you I hadn’t ever messed with cocaine while you were working on my appeal, I wasn’t exactly being truthful. The cop that eventually busted me was crooked as hell, and we did the right thing in my appeal. But I moved a bunch of powder coke back in the day. Did some other bad things, too. I sort of deserved all that time they gave me in prison, not that I want to go back.”
I shook my head and smiled. I knew Pappy was no angel. You didn’t do the things he did in prison without having an extra-hard shell and a healthy dose of crazy predator in you. But I played along. “You’re kidding me, right?” I said.
“Afraid not. I played you. I wanted you to believe in my innocence, thought it would make you try harder. I was right, too, wasn’t I?”
“Probably,” I said.
“Still friends?” he said.
“Friends? You helped me break out of prison and get myself cleared. I’ll always be your friend. How’s Linda, anyway?”
Linda Lacy was a woman who Pappy claimed as his girlfriend while he was in prison. She continued the trucking company he’d started and ran it for twelve years. She also hid and invested the millions he made in prison from his various hustles. Linda had given me a ride across the country in an eighteen-wheeler when I broke out of prison.
“Linda’s not around anymore,” Pappy said. “I caught her in bed with a guy who worked for me. Thought he was my friend. I didn’t take it well.”
“So you sent her packing?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “I sent her a long, long ways away. I’m afraid she won’t ever be coming back, if you know what I mean.”
“I think that’s all I want to hear,” I said.
“Probably for the best. You can take a little comfort in knowing that she didn’t go on her journey alone. Her lover went with her.”
Pappy had just told me he’d killed two people. He trusted me, and after what he’d done for me in prison, I trusted him. I knew he had far more contacts within the prison walls than I did, because he’d been in so much longer, been to so many more prisons, and he’d been a shot caller. He’d also told me he missed prison in a strange sort of way, and that he stayed in touch with a lot of guys on the inside. He didn’t miss it enough to want to go back, but being a shot caller is the ultimate sign of respect in a prison, and he told me he missed that kind of respect.
I called him within five minutes of leaving the police station. He’d heard what happened to my mother and had even showed up for her memorial service even though he’d never met her. I didn’t remember him being there, but Grace had told me he’d come.
“My man, Darren,” he said when he answered his cell. “You all right?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said, “but not over the phone. Where are you?”
“In Cincinnati, but I’m headed your way. Be rolling through Knoxville in about four hours.”
“You know the Flying J truck stop on Watt Road?”
“Been there many times.”
“Meet you there around one thirty this afternoon?”
“You got it, brother.”
“I’ll be waiting in the lot out back. When I see your truck pull in, I’ll just come get in the cab.”