“Well, a girl can always hope,” she said. “Do I make arrangements to pay you with your secretary?”
I nodded and reached for the stack of business cards that was sitting on my desk. I wrote my cell phone number on the back and handed it to her. “Nice to meet you.”
“Do you give your cell number to all your clients?”
“No.”
She reached out to shake my hand and I took it. As she pulled her hand away, she grazed my palm with her fingernails, and I felt a shudder of electricity run through me.
“Nice to meet you, too,” she said. “I look forward to seeing you again.”
She turned and walked slowly—very slowly—out of the room. I was practically drooling by the time she was out of sight.
CHAPTER 34
Will Grimes was living up to the reputation District Attorney James Hellerman had spoken of. He was still grinding, still thinking, still investigating. He didn’t think Darren Street would have been able to simply drive to West Virginia, shoot Frazier and Beane, and drive back to Tennessee. He would have done some surveillance. He would have followed Frazier and Beane, stalked them, and picked his time to strike, which meant he would have had to stay in or around Cowen for at least a day or two. Grimes also wondered whether Street had had some help, someone in West Virginia who was feeding him information.
On a breezy Friday morning, Grimes walked into a small brick home on the west end of Cowen. Lester Routh, a longtime burglar, drug dealer, drug addict, and informant for the West Virginia State Police, lived in the home along with five cats and a woman named Lucille. Lucille worked at a convenience store about a mile down the road and wasn’t home. Lester had wanted to meet when she wouldn’t be there, and he’d asked Grimes to wear civilian clothes and park at least a half mile away.
“I know what you want,” Routh said as he poured Grimes a cup of coffee. “Cream or sugar?”
Grimes shook his head. He was surprised at how clean and orderly the place was. Lester Routh might be a thief, but at least he was a clean thief.
“How could you possibly know what I want?” Grimes said. “Have you become a mind reader?”
Lester sat down heavily in a chair across the kitchen table from Grimes. He had a scruffy three-day beard that was salt and pepper. Grimes knew Routh kept his head shaved, but there was stubble across the dome this morning. His face was pockmarked from acne, and his cheeks were sunken. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, his teeth were gapped and yellow.
“You want to know if I know anything about that shooting at Sammy’s a while back,” Routh said. “You ain’t arrested nobody, which means you either ain’t got nothing or you ain’t got enough. You want my help.”
“Well, you’re a damned psychic, Lester,” Grimes said. “So? Have you heard anything?”
“Maybe.”
“Then let’s hear it.”
“How much?”
“Depends on what you tell me and how much it helps me.”
“I want five hundred.”
“For five hundred, you better hand me the killer’s ass on a platter,” Grimes said.
“That’d cost you five thousand.”
“What do you have?” Grimes said.
Routh laid his hand down on the table, palm up, and started wiggling his fingers. “Five hundred,” he said.
“Not a chance until I hear what you have to say.”
“Let me see the money,” Routh said. “Put it on the table.”
Grimes had known what he was getting into before he came. He’d had to argue for an hour to get approval from his supervisor for $1,000 in cash for the informant. He didn’t know whether Routh would have any information, but he’d used Routh in the past, and he’d always been reliable. He seemed to know everyone and everything that was going on in the criminal underworld in and around Cowen. Grimes reached into his wallet and laid five hundred-dollar bills on the table. He put his hand over them and held them in place. “Talk.”
“There was a guy asking around a few weeks before your boys got popped,” Routh said.
“What guy?”
“He was a messenger boy, a representative of another guy who was representing a third guy.”
“You’re off to a terrible start,” Grimes said as he peeled two of the hundreds off and stuck them in his pocket.
“He was asking about Frazier on behalf of this other guy. He wanted to know if Frazier had made any noise about killing this dude in Knoxville, Tennessee, because the dude had something to do with Frazier’s brother getting his throat cut in prison.”
“Names, Lester. I need names.”
“The guy that was doing all the asking was a biker named Jimmy Baker. Known him his whole life. Young and cocky, a punk, did a two-year bit on a burglary charge and thinks he’s a badass. He was asking on behalf of this dude named Rex Fairchild out of Charleston. Baker said Fairchild moved some blow back in the day, and Fairchild and Baker’s stepdaddy knew each other. That’s how Baker and Fairchild hooked up, through Baker’s stepdaddy. Fairchild wanted the information for a friend of his that he was in the coke business with, some heavyweight they call Big Pappy Donovan. Fairchild and Big Pappy both got busted, but neither of them would roll on anybody so they both went to prison. Fairchild wound up doing about seven years, I believe. But Big Pappy got a lot more time. The word I got was that Big Pappy was a shot caller at the same prison where this Darren Street was serving his time. You know what a shot caller is, right?”
“Yeah, I know what a shot caller is.”
“So Big Pappy was one of the most respected shot callers in the federal system. Hurt some guards pretty bad, did a bunch of time in the hole, even wound up at Marion for a while from what people say. So when Baker comes asking and mentioning Big Pappy’s name, people start talking. And what he was asking about was whether Donnie Frazier may have blown up a house in Tennessee and whether he had any help. And the answer he got was yeah, Frazier and Tommy Beane stole some dynamite from Archland Coal Company and went down to Knoxville, Tennessee, and blew up a house. He was trying to kill Darren Street, but Street wasn’t there. When I first heard about it, all I did was shake my head. Donnie and Tommy were two of the meanest, dumbest crackers I ever knew. So once Baker finds out they were the ones that killed Street’s mother, he starts wanting addresses and what kind of vehicle they drive and where they hang out and all that.”
“How did you find all of this out?” Grimes said.
“Baker comes by here once in a while. We sit out back and burn wood and drink liquor. He flaps his gums when he’s drinking.”
“Who killed Frazier and Beane?” Grimes said.
“I don’t know,” Routh said. “I swear I don’t know. Nobody’s said a word. Information flowed out of here, but apparently none has flowed back. Maybe Big Pappy came in and did it, or maybe he had somebody else do it, or maybe he just passed the information on to Street and Street did it himself or hired somebody. No way to know for sure.”