“What did the man say when he came in?”
“Best of my recollection, he said something about it being awful slow for a Friday night, and I told him it was because of Donnie and Tommy. Told him they’d run all my weekend business off, which was true. They were mean as snakes and loud to boot. If anybody said anything to them, they’d beat hell out of them. They wanted a place where they could come and drink and listen to the jukebox all by themselves, and that’s what they’d turned my bar into. They’d turned it into their own private little club. So I told this man he probably shouldn’t stay long, that they’d give him trouble if he stayed, and he said thanks for the warning and ordered a longneck Budweiser.”
“Which you told me he didn’t touch.”
“That’s right,” Sammy said. “He didn’t.”
“What else did he say?”
“He asked me if I loved my mother.”
Grimes’s head came up, and he raised his eyebrows. “Is that right?” he said. “Now why would he ask you a thing like that?”
“I thought the same thing, and I asked him the same thing. He said I’d understand in a minute, to please just answer the question. So I told him I loved my mother very much, that she was a wonderful person. And he said something about loving his mother, too, and that Donnie and Tommy had raped her. He called them insects. Then he said he was here to kill them, and I could either go to the bathroom or die right along with them.”
“So he threatened to kill you?” Grimes said.
“Yes, sir, he did. And from the look in his eye, I had no doubt he’d do it.”
“And you went to the bathroom?”
“I did, and I locked the door. I know he could’ve kicked the damned door down and killed me if he wanted to, but I didn’t get the message from him that he really wanted to kill me, you know? He wanted Donnie and Tommy, and by God, he got ’em.”
“And the man who came into your bar, asked you about your mother, talked about killing Donnie and Tommy, and was still sitting on that stool when you walked into the bathroom is the same man in the photographs I showed you, but you say he was wearing a disguise.”
“He was wearing a beard and glasses and a hat.”
“But you’re certain the man in the photos is the same man who was in the bar that night?”
“I’m positive.”
“A hundred percent positive?”
“You just don’t stop, do you?” Raft said.
“A hundred percent positive?” Grimes said.
“A hundred percent.”
Grimes finished writing up the statement and after a few minutes, he slid it across the table.
“Read it, then sign right here and initial at the bottom of each page,” Grimes said.
Raft did it. Grimes gathered the statement, placed it in a folder, put the folder in a larger folder, and stood up.
“That’s it?” Raft said.
“For now,” Grimes said. “I’m headed to Webster Springs to talk to the district attorney. It’s time to start rattling this Street fella’s chain.”
CHAPTER 31
Grimes called District Attorney James Hellerman from his cell phone, then drove to Hellerman’s private law office in Webster Springs. Grimes knew that it was in this office that Hellerman did the bulk of his work—estate cases, personal injury, and divorce. He was a part-time district attorney because the legislature in West Virginia had deemed that there wasn’t a large enough population—and therefore enough crime—in his part of the state to warrant a full-time DA.
Grimes walked into the office—a remodeled colonial-style house just off Main Street in downtown Webster Springs—and said hello to Hellerman’s wife, Bonnie, who served as his receptionist, secretary, and paralegal. Bonnie showed Grimes into Hellerman’s office.
“Nice to see you again, Will,” Hellerman said as he stood and offered his hand.
Grimes returned the greeting and sat down. Hellerman was in his midforties, a bit geeky-looking in a red bow tie and white shirt. He was medium height and pasty, with pale skin and a shock of blond hair that he wore long and had to push back from his eyes on a regular basis.
“So what can I do for you, Will?”
“I have a suspect in the double murder in Cowen. I’m here to ask whether you think I have enough to arrest him.”
Grimes recounted the murder of Darren Street’s mother in Tennessee, the subsequent investigation that led to Donnie Frazier and Tommy Beane, the tie-in between Donnie Frazier’s brother, Bobby Lee, and Darren Street, and then the murders of Frazier and Beane in Sammy’s bar.
“They were trying to kill Street and killed his mother instead?” Hellerman asked.
“Right. Street was at a hotel proposing to his girlfriend, from what the Knoxville police told me.”
“But even if Street had been there, they would have killed his mother, too.”
Grimes nodded. “They were cold-blooded about it.”
He told Hellerman about Frazier’s girlfriend, Emma Newland, and that she had told him Frazier and Beane had killed Street’s mother. His most important witness, he said, would be the bar owner, Sammy Raft, who had positively identified Darren Street as being in the bar on the night of the shootings and threatening Sammy’s life if Sammy didn’t go into the bathroom while he killed Frazier and Beane.
“How did he identify this Darren Street?” Hellerman asked.
“I had an old booking photograph and a new driver’s license photo sent from Tennessee,” Grimes said.
“Booking photo? So he has a record?”
“He was charged with first-degree murder, convicted, and then the conviction was reversed by the trial court. He was apparently framed by a federal prosecutor named Ben Clancy, but Clancy was tried and acquitted a few weeks ago. I was notified by the Knoxville police this morning that Clancy has gone missing. His car was found five days ago, but nobody has seen him since. This Darren Street is a suspect in his disappearance. It looks like Street may have gone full-blown vigilante.”
“Did you show him a photo lineup, include other people, or just Darren Street?”
“I just showed him the photos of Street.”
“That’s a problem. Outside of that, how solid is your witness?” Hellerman said.
“Sammy Raft? To be honest, I don’t know. He isn’t the brightest crayon in the box.”
“Did you influence his identification at all, Will? Be honest, because it’ll come out later if you did.”
Grimes shrugged. “I may have leaned on him a little. He flip-flopped on the ID. First he said he didn’t recognize the guy in the photo, and then, after I threatened to arrest him, he called me this morning and told me he’d changed his mind. The guy in the photo is the same guy that was in his bar, but he had a beard and was wearing glasses and a hat.”
“And you think he’s right?” Hellerman said.
“I can’t be positive, but it makes sense. The owner said this guy came in and asked him whether he loved his mother. Then the guy told him Frazier and Beane raped his mother and he was there to kill them. He told the owner he could either go into the bathroom or die with them. The owner went into the bathroom and the shooting started.”