The Buzzard Table

CHAPTER

31


These unique birds have a variety of interesting habits.

—The Turkey Vulture Society




Colleton County Sheriff’s Department—

Tuesday night

When they unlocked the handcuffs in the interview room, Ginger Todd rubbed her wrists fretfully and said, “Do I need a lawyer?”

“That’s certainly your right,” Dwight told her.

Heretofore, they had seen her only in those brown canvas work clothes that made her look like a tagalong tomboy. Tonight, she wore a black leather jacket over a green jersey and skinny jeans. Tendrils of bright copper-colored hair framed her pretty face. The rest was pulled back and tied low at the nape with a thin silk scarf patterned in tones of gold and green. She looked like the competent woman they now knew she was, and once the handcuffs were off, there was no fear in her large brown eyes.

Raeford McLamb sat beside Dwight with a closed laptop on the table before them while Mayleen Richards activated the video camera.

Dwight stated the date and time and the names of all who were in the room. Even though the arresting officers had Mirandized her when she was brought in, he went through it again and asked if she understood her rights.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, more concerned with the camera. “I didn’t give you permission to film me.”

“We don’t need your permission now,” Dwight said. “For the record, you have been arrested for the murder of Rebecca Jowett and for assault with intent to kill Jeremy Harper. Assault with intent because he didn’t die. In fact, he opened his eyes this evening and spoke his mother’s name for the first time. We expect that he’ll be able to identify his assailant any day now. Would you like to comment, ma’am?”

When she didn’t speak, he said, “Deputy McLamb, please show Mrs. Todd those pictures.”

McLamb turned the screen around. The three pertinent pictures had been isolated and enlarged yet again. They ran on a continuous loop that repeated every five seconds. Mrs. Todd turned white and went rigid.

In a suddenly shaky voice, she said again, “Don’t I get a phone call?”

Dwight slid a phone across to her. “Be my guest.”

Ginger Todd stared at the phone as if it were a copperhead. “Wait a minute! Aren’t you going to offer me a deal?”

“A deal?”

“On television, when the police say they can prove something like this, they’ll offer the person a deal if she’ll confess to a lesser charge before she gets a lawyer. If I confess to unpremeditated manslaughter—?”

As if genuinely puzzled, Dwight said, “Why on earth would I offer you a deal like that?”

“So there won’t have to be a trial. Save the state some money.”

“Mrs. Todd,” he said patiently, “you killed a woman and you came very close to killing a teenage boy.”

“But if it wasn’t premeditated? Like if someone tries to blackmail you, who thinks that because you’re a woman you’ll just roll over and shell out five thousand dollars—”

Dwight held up his hand. “Please! Call your attorney.”

“I don’t want one. I want to cut a deal.”

Dwight took a deep breath and said, “If you’ve watched a lot of crime programs, you know you have a right to an attorney. I’m asking you one more time. Are you giving up that right?”

She nodded and signed the form Mayleen Richards gave her, then looked at Dwight expectantly.

“Involuntary manslaughter?” she asked.

“Let’s just talk hypothetically first,” he said. “See if that’s a possibility.”

“If there was no intent to kill, no premeditated intent, I mean? Isn’t that the definition of manslaughter? And doesn’t ‘involuntary’ mean you didn’t know what you were doing could actually kill somebody? Like it was almost an accident?”

Sigrid was right, Dwight thought wearily. Those police procedurals had a lot to answer for.

“So when you saw Rebecca Jowett running through what was supposed to be your new neighborhood, you had nothing more in mind than maybe warning her to stay away from your husband?”

“If I saw her. We’re still talking if, right?” she said brightly. Regaining confidence now, she reached back and pulled the scarf from her ponytail to let her luxuriant fiery red hair fall onto her shoulders and cascade down her back. “If I saw her, yeah, I might’ve been thinking how she came on to Wes and how he probably gave her that hickey and, yeah, I might’ve got her to come inside the house with me. But if I did, it would’ve been to tell her why we weren’t going to buy the house, not to kill her. But then she started—I mean, if she started throwing off on Wes, if she called him a crude redneck and said that we couldn’t walk away from the house without losing our earnest money and I could just suck it up? If she said all that, it could’ve made me lose my temper enough to just smack her with—”

She paused and twisted her scarf into a thin cord.

“Smack her with what?” Dwight asked quietly.

“I don’t know. Whatever I might’ve had in my hand. It’s not like I would have brought one of my hammers in with me. That would be premeditated.”

“But once she fell back onto the couch and was bleeding, what would you have done? Your husband was due home. Why wouldn’t you just leave her there?”

“I might’ve been worried about DNA. I might’ve forgotten that it wouldn’t matter if y’all found my fingerprints or my hair or something because I’d been in the house before. I might’ve thought I needed to just make her disappear for so long y’all would never figure out what happened.”

She threaded the thin silk scarf through her callused fingers, then pulled it free.

“So you wrapped her up in your plastic sheeting and stashed her in your truck, then let your husband sleep in next morning while you disposed of both the rats and the body,” Dwight said.

“Yeah, that’s what I might have done. If I’d killed the little bitch.” Her scarf was now wound tightly around one thumb and she gave it a sharp yank.

Dwight gestured toward the laptop that McLamb had paused on the picture of her pushing the body over the edge of the ravine. “So if Jeremy Harper showed up with those pictures, you might’ve decided he needed to go, too?”

She leaned forward and peered at the screen. “Who took those pictures anyhow? Somebody in an airplane?”

When Dwight didn’t answer, she sat back in her chair and began playing with that band of colorful silk again.

“So do we have a deal?”

“If those programs you watch are accurate, Mrs. Todd, then you must know it’s the district attorney who decides what you’ll be tried for, not the sheriff’s department.”

“But you can put in a recommendation, can’t you?”

Tired of bandying words, Dwight nodded to McLamb. “Take her over to the jail and book her.”

Ginger Todd gaped at them. “But it wasn’t premeditated. It wasn’t!”

“I’ll be sure and tell the DA you said that,” he promised.