June 16, 10 NE (Suspicion)
The wooden door to the jailhouse is shut. The two cells sit empty. A light summer breeze wafts through the open windows on either side. Carol, Sarah, and Dianne sit at the chairs at the small wooden table, while Sheriff Earl is leaned back against the dark green metal file cabinet, his arms crossed over his chest. "I guess you're wondering why I called this meeting."
"We're wondering why you called it here," replies Santiago, who stands in front of the closed jailhouse door, a hand resting on his silver belt buckle and his old faded brown Border Patrol hat tipped up on his forehead. "It's hot closed up in here with five people. Can't we meet outside?"
The old jail house wasn't designed with the best circulation in mind, which is why they usually leave the front door wide open when there's anyone locked in the cells during the hot summer months.
"I don't want anything we discuss here today to be overheard and end up in next month's gossip column." Earl scratches his cheek. The handlebar mustache is long gone, but he has a dark goatee now, Vladimir Lenin style.
"Well, we're all here," Dianne tells him. "Except Andrew. Do you want me to go fetch him?"
"No. Andrew's incompetence has already affected the matter I want to discuss. And he's married to the gossip columnist."
"So what's this about?" Carol asks.
"I got a chance to read the paper this morning."
"You called us all here to discuss the Jamestown Gazette?" Santiago asks incredulously.
"Did y'all notice that classified advertisement?"
"Which one?" Dianne asks. "Seaman Rooker looking to have a cheap affair, or Mrs. Lawson looking for a new husband less than three days after hers was in the grave?"
Earl puts a finger on his nose. "The second one."
After her husband died, Susan Lawson's living quarters were reassigned from the officer's cabin in the Godspeed to Mrs. Conway's old cabin in the Old Fort. Three huts, a cabin, and a dorm room were vacated after the swine flu killed off those seven people. Mrs. Merriweather had lived with her daughter-in-law, so that just gave Kelly and Thomas more room. Mrs. Williams owned her hut and willed it to Olivia, who, along with her young husband Jeremy and their baby Hope, moved out of their half of Earl and Rosita's cabin in favor of the new living space. With Benji being weaned down to one breastfeeding a day, a live-in wet nurse wasn't as necessary, and Earl and Rosita were glad to have the whole cabin to themselves, to take down the dividing wall, and to create a separate room for Benji. But the properties that had not been willed (Mrs. Conway's cabin, Bob and Mary's hut, and Joe and Jacob's dorm rooms) reverted to the ownership of Jamestown. The Council gave Susan Lawson Mrs. Conway's cabin, both to prevent her from living alone on the Godspeed in the room where her husband had died and so that they could use the ship for the weigh station.
"You think it's suspicious?" Carol asks.
"Lawson's cause of death was indeterminable," Earl replies, "and he was only sixty-four. And he wasn't exactly a charmer. He was a difficult man to get along with."
"Yeah, well, so is his wife," Santiago mutters. "She's a gossip, and not the fun kind, like Trisha. The mean kind." He looks at Carol. "Mrs. Lawson's the reason people thought Daryl and Garland were wife-swapping swingers for a while."
"Nobody believed that," Sarah insists.
"What's your presumption here?" Carol looks directly at Earl. "Do you think Susan Lawson killed him? What would her motive be?"
"A new husband?" Santiago speculates.
"Then couldn't she just divorce him?" Sarah asks.
"Sometimes it's not that easy for a woman to leave a man," Carol says. "But there's no evidence Lawson was abusive. I didn't care for him. He was judgmental and xenophobic, but I don't think he mistreated his wife. And he was never in trouble with the law. Susan Lawson didn't work at all. He supported her. Maybe he was a paycheck to her. Maybe that's why she's not particularly grieving him and is so quickly looking for a new spouse."
"He wasn't much of a paycheck," Santiago observes. "He was retired from the Navy for health reasons. His naval pension was only fifteen hours a week rations. He did some light duty for another ten hours, but two people squeaking by on twenty-five hours – that's not too comfortable."
"But twenty-five hours is better than zero hours," Dianne reasons. "Now she's going to have to work or find someone to work for her. I'm with Carol. If this was about having a husband who makes more money, she could have just left him."
"And he was in poor health," Sarah adds. "He probably died of a heart attack."
"Unfortunately, we don't really have the tools to determine that," Earl replies. "Dr. Ahmad said it was a possibility, but we don't exactly have an autopsy lab here, and Lawson was already transformed once Dr. Ahmad examined his body. That makes any kind of determination difficult. Lawson had gout. He was in physical pain, yes, and gout can cause other health issues, but we don't know that it did. Mrs. Lawson claims her husband died in his sleep and transformed. She woke up at his hiss, in the nick of time before he bit her, and pushed him back. She then scrambled out of the bed to grab the handgun from the desk. She shot him twice, first in the chest, and then in the head. But maybe he didn't die in his sleep before he transformed. Maybe that chest shot was the cause of death. Andrew responded to the sound of the second shot. He never heard the first. Maybe he didn't hear the first because it was earlier and muffled and he was too far away. Maybe she shot him in the chest, waited for him to transform, and then shot him in the head."
"What did the scene indicate?" Carol asks. "Did Andrew see something to make him think that way?"
Earl sighs heavily. "He didn't treat the incident as suspicious. He just took her word for it, so he didn't poke around the scene. He was just concerned about getting Lawson's body out of there and calming Mrs. Lawson down. Andrew said she was hysterical. He barely questioned her. He had Lieutenant-Commander Alvarado and a couple of sailors take the body out and clean up the cabin while he calmed her down. He should have been more thorough, as a matter of routine, though, to be honest, I wasn't suspicious myself until that classified ad came out. Andrew said he saw blood and cannibal residue on the sheets, but he didn't closely examine them to see if there was any indication of human blood, and they were disposed of in the clean-up."
"Shit," Santiago mutters. "He didn't bag them and have you examine them?"
Earl shakes his head. "By the time he woke me up to report the incident, that cabin on the Godspeed was cleaned up, and the sailors had burned the sheets as hazardous materials."
"What position was Lawson in the bed?" Carol asks.
"Andrew thinks he recalls that Lawson was on his back."
"Not exactly a crawling position," Santiago notes. "Though I suppose he could have been sitting up to crawl out of bed and then fallen on his back when she shot him in the chest."
"I still don't see what motive she could possibly have," Carol says.
"Well…" Earl sighs again. "There's the inheritance."
"What inheritance?" the four deputies ask in unison.
"After seeing that classified," Earl explains, "I went to go take a look at Lawson's will on file with the court. It all goes to her."
"All of what?" Santiago asks. "They had a tiny cabin on that ship, and he was making twenty-five hours worth of rations a week. He couldn't possibly have saved anything from it. It was barely enough to live on."
"Lawson was one of the original Navy men," Earl says. "He was just a seaman then, but he was on a scavenging team. In the early days, the scavenger's kept a much larger finder's fee, and he went on a lot of looting expeditions. He had a literal treasure chest of ammunition. Three thousand rounds. And now it's hers."
Mouths drop open. "Three thousand rounds?" Santiago repeats. "Three thousand rounds? I've never even seen him at the Tavern!"
"That's why he still had three thousand rounds," Earl says. "He was holding onto it, like an old miser. But maybe his wife didn't agree with the holding on part. Maybe she would have liked to have traded it for a little more food, maybe some extra herbs and sugar, maybe a meal or drink at the tavern now and again."
"We should talk to Dr. Ahmad," Carol says. "See what he remembers from his examination of the body, if there's any more insight he can give us."
"Absolutely," Earl says. "Would you do that interview for me?"
Carol nods.
"Santiago, you come with me to take another look at the cabin on the Godspeed," Earl orders, "before it sets sail for the weigh station later this afternoon. Sarah, interview the widow Lawson. Try to get a read on her. Dianne, talk to Lieutenant-Commander Alvarado. He lives on the Discovery, which was docked next to the Godspeed. He might have heard both the shots that night or have noticed something when he was helping with the clean-up. Then let's all meet back this evening. My cabin this time. It'll be cooler. Let's say eight o'clock. Benji will be down for the night by then and Rosita is on front gate duty from seven until eleven. We'll have the place to ourselves. And we'll see where we are on all this. Until we know more, my suspicions stay between us. I don't want tongues wagging, and I don't want to be accused of liable if there's nothing to this."
The deputies scatter, each to their own part of the investigation.