“John,” she said. She quickly cut her eyes over toward Stone and then back to me. “Come in.”
We did.
Sean and his mother lived in a large, two-story brick home with enormous white columns in the front and a swimming pool in the back. Inside, the immaculate house were tile floors, art-covered walls, and exquisite furniture—too nice for a single mom who made her daily bread as an underpaid Florida school teacher. It had come from life insurance money Judy had collected when her husband Tony drowned after capsizing his boat in the Chipola River. Sean had a trust coming his way, too, but not until he turned twenty-five.
If the abuse Sean took for still living at home with his mom bothered him, he didn’t show it. His indulged life was too good, and he loved spending all the money he made on motorcycles, trucks, video games, boats, and beer. Though his mother was refined and sophisticated, Sean had succumbed to his surroundings and become a redneck.
“I’m surprised to find you home,” I said.
“Just didn’t feel like going in today,” she said. “Tell you the truth, the older I get, the more I feel that way and the more I go with the feeling and just take a personal day.”
“Good for you,” I said, though I was thinking how suspicious it was given the circumstances.
“Mrs. Williams, this is our warden, Edward Stone,” I said.
I couldn’t call her by her first name, and it wasn’t just that I was raised in the South, but the fact that she had been my teacher in elementary school.
They shook hands.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said. “I’ve heard good things about you from Sean.”
She led us into the kitchen.
“Would either of you like some coffee?”
Neither of us would and we told her so.
“Have a seat,” she said, motioning to the stools next to the counter.
“I’d be worried when the warden and chaplain show up at my door if I didn’t know Sean was safe and sound up in his room.”
Judy Williams was trim for a middle-aged woman, except for her bottom, with white skin that appeared to be thin. Her shoulder length hair had a red tint to it, and even in casual clothes you could tell she had money.
“We need to talk to him,” Stone said. “I’m going to have to ask you to wake him up.”
“He just went to sleep,” she said. “He hasn’t been home from work more than a few hours. Can’t this wait?”
“I’m afraid it can’t,” he said.
She sighed, hesitating. “Okay.”
“Before you get him up,” I said, “perhaps we could talk to you for a few minutes.”
“Do I need my lawyer?”
“Why would you ask that?” I said.
“I was just kidding,” she said. “Do I? You’re starting to make me worry.”
“We want to talk to you about Melanie Wynn,” I said.
“Oh,” she said.
“We understand you two had a falling out recently.”
She laughed. “Something like that,” she said. “But I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“We really need you to,” I said.
“Why?”
“Melanie’s been murdered.”
She smiled.
“That pleases you?”
“I just wondered as recently as yesterday if what she’s been doing would catch up with her.”
“What’s she been doing?” I asked.
“Poppin’ pills and sleepin’ with any and everything that moves,” she said. “You can only do that for so long until someone gets so hurt or jealous or betrayed that they strike back.”
“Any idea who might have gotten to that point?”
She shrugged. “Could be anybody in town,” she said. “I’m serious. She was with somebody new every night. She went from this neurotic little overweight schoolteacher to trashy, indiscriminating nymphomaniac overnight. The transformation was stunning. I don’t know that she had ever been in a bar before her surgery, but after, it was every night—sleeping with guys in their cars in the parking lot, going back in, drinking some more, picking up another guy, going to his car—over and over again.”
“Is that what she did with Sean?” I asked.
She didn’t smile this time. After hesitating, taking in a breath and letting it out, she nodded. “He thought they had a future, but after one time in the backseat of his car in the parking lot of the Sports Oasis, she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. Wouldn’t even talk to him, be with other guys in front of him. She gave him more than one STD. And Roy’s gonna get up in his pulpit and defend her. I walked out and won’t go back. I don’t hate him. He means well, but I loath her. I’m sorry she’s dead. I didn’t kill her, and neither did Sean, but it shouldn’t be surprising that somebody had enough of her shit and just snapped.”
“I can understand that,” I said, “somebody snapping like that. It’d be—”
“Don’t try to work me, John,” she said. “I didn’t kill her and I don’t know who did. I’m just being honest with you. Sean didn’t do it and I didn’t do it. It’s why I’m willing to talk with you, but if I need to call my lawyer I can.”
“No need for that,” I said. “We’re just trying to get some information. More background than anything else. If we can talk to Sean for a few minutes, we’ll leave you alone.”
“I’ll go get him,” she said.
When she was gone, Stone said, “What the hell are you doing? It’s obvious they did it—her or her son—and you’re treating them like innocent friends.”
“We’re asking questions because that’s all we can do,” I said. “We can’t make an arrest. We have no authority. Unless someone confesses, a case has to be built, and it’ll be a combination of interviews and witness statements, and most important of all, physical evidence.”
He thought about it.
“Just for fun, though,” I said, “tell me how she did it. Did she dress up in a CO uniform, too, sneak into the institution with her good buddy Melanie, somehow get into the rec yard, choke the life out of her, then somehow get out of the institution?”
“Well, maybe not her, but her son,” he said. “Melanie sneaks in to have sex with him and he kills her—or she’s there to meet someone else or a group, maybe even of inmates, he sees her, snaps, and kills her.”
“She was killed inside the institution?” Sean asked.
We turned to see him standing behind us in the opposite door of the kitchen than the one his mom had exited by. He had most likely not been asleep, but listening to everything we said.
I nodded. “Any idea what she was doing there?”
“Probably what the warden said—meeting somebody or a bunch of somebodies,” he said. “Fuckin’ new people in a new and dangerous place. Sounds just like the twisted shit she would go for.”
Sean had blond hair and green eyes. He was muscular and he held himself like he knew it—holding his abs in and his chest out, and his arms out a little from his sides.
“She ever done it before?” I asked.
He walked into the room and stood across the counter from us.
“She was always doin’ shit like that,” he said. “She fucked the president of the bank in his office when the bank was full of people. She fucked a couple of the high school students in the locker room after school. Hell, she used to blow men in the bathroom at church with their wives and children just a few rooms away in Sunday School. You’ve never seen a more sick, twisted bitch.”
“And you didn’t kill her?” I said. “Didn’t have anything to do with it?”
Like too many of the young men around here, Sean’s seeming toughness was actually a mother-enabled self-centeredness that led to emotional stuntedness. Unfortunately, what was actually weakness was presented as strength, a don’t-give-a-damn-about-anything attitude that made too many of the gullible young women believe they were men-of-few-words, cowboy types.
“I didn’t care enough to kill her,” he said. “I took a turn fuckin’ her like everybody else in town, but I didn’t love her. Hell, once was enough for me. She couldn’t fuck for shit no way. And if I was gonna kill her, I wouldn’t do it where I work. I’d do it as far away from where I live and work as I could.”
“Unless you didn’t mean to kill her,” Stone said. “If this was just an accident … .”
“It could’ve been,” he said. “I don’t know. I didn’t do it. And I don’t know who did.”
Judy, who had stayed out of the kitchen until now, no doubt to avoid the embarrassment of having us witness her hearing the way her son talked, came back in now.
“Chaplain, Warden, we’ve tried to be helpful, but we just don’t know anything,” she said. “Given that, for you to continue to interrogate us would border on harassment.”
“And we wouldn’t want to do that,” I said, standing.
“Seems to me you need to be talking to Joe anyway,” she said. “I always wondered how much he could endure before he finally wrung her faithless little neck.”
As we were leaving the Williams’ house, Dad called.
“Don’t tell me Joe’s on the move already,” I said.
“No,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Near Potter Landing,” I said. “We’re just leaving Sean Williams’. We talked —”
“Now isn’t that interesting?” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“We just found Melanie Wynn’s car,” he said. “Less than a mile from Sean’s house.”
I told Stone.
“Where is it?” he asked.
Dad must have heard him because he told me before I could ask.
“We’ll be right there,” I said.
In under a minute, we were pulling down a small dirt road off the county highway, and parking behind a highway patrol car— the last of a handful of emergency vehicles, all of which had their lights flashing.
Walking past the vehicles and the small group of uniformed men, we proceeded another ten feet or so down the landing to the slough. Dad and one of his detectives, wearing latex gloves, were carefully going over the car.
Both doors were open. Dad was squatting down near the passenger side, leaning and looking through the glove box. The detective, Wayne Mitchell, in plain clothes like Dad, was squatting next to the driver’s side watching.
The car, a late model Toyota sedan, didn’t appear to be damaged, and a large pink handbag sat on the front seat beside a small pile of clothes. The keys were still in the ignition. The car was immaculate inside and out.
Dad looked up. “FDLE crime scene techs are on their way,” he said, “but nothing appears out of place.” He looked at me as he spoke, not even acknowledging Stone. “It’s her purse on the front seat. Wallet, jewelry, cell phone, cash, and credit cards still inside. I guess it’s her clothes, too.”
I looked down at the car, the doors, the seats, the steering wheel, her things.
“Were the doors open?”
He shook his head.
“Anybody moved the seats?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “Why?”
“They’re all the way back,” I said.
Stone and Mitchell listened without saying anything.
“How tall would you say she was?” he asked.
“Five-three?” I said. “Maybe.”
Above us, the midday sun shone down through the Spanish moss hanging from long oak branches, and dappled the loose sand of the road beneath us. The forest around us was thick for spring because of a mild winter, blocking out all artificial sights and sounds, giving the illusion that we were miles away from civilization. The water of the slough, like the rivers and lakes that fed it, was a dark greenish-black and filled with cypress trees, its surface wind-rippled and shimmery.
“You check the trunk yet?” I asked.
“Just got here,” he said.
Without being prompted, Mitchell reached in with his gloved hand and pressed the trunk release on the keyless entry remote. The trunk popped open, and all four of us stepped around to the back of the car. As we did, the small group standing a few feet away, an EMT, a deputy, and a highway patrol officer joined us.
The trunk was as spotless as the rest of the car.
“Clean car,” Mitchell said. “Think it got that way before or after she was murdered?”
No one answered at first, then Dad shrugged, and said, “No way to tell. Hopefully FDLE can help with that.”
The animosity between Dad and Stone was palpable, and the others seemed to sense it, their hesitant, awkward manner and furtive glances uncharacteristic and otherwise inexplicable.
“Think this is where she and the Williams boy would meet?” Mitchell asked.
I shrugged.
“Here’s how I see it happening,” he said. “They meet here, she changes into one of his uniforms, then he takes her to work, sneaks her in, and she gets killed—maybe he does it, maybe someone else.”
“Why not come back this morning and move the car?” Dad asked.
“We found it too soon,” Stone said. “He thought he’d have more time. We were there talking to him while you were finding it.”