Page 78 of Deathmarch
“He was in Florida, fishing. Then he wasn’t answering his phone. Couple of times I swung by his place, he didn’t answer his door either.”
“Avoiding the police.”
“Sure looks like it. Maybe he has a reason. I’ve got a lot to talk about with that one.”
“Keep me in the loop. Good luck. I have to go,” the captain said before he hung up.
Harper picked up Brody Cash’s file, but he barely had a chance to open it before Robin’s voice came through the phone intercom.
“Harper?”
“Yeah?”
“Hey. I thought you might be there. I just got in. Passed Brody Cash in the parking lot.”
“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll be out in a minute.” He scanned his notes from his previous interview with Cash, then looked over his pinned timeline of the night of the murder.
Cash was waiting for him at the reception desk. No lawyer. Either he had nothing to hide, or he was trying hard to act like he had nothing to hide.
“This way.” Harper escorted him to the interview room, paying attention to his boots.Round toes.
He also did his best to gauge the man’s physical condition. He’d missed that before and made a mistake with Grambus.
Harper’s father still chopped wood, hauled supplies up and down the basement stairs for the pub, and went wild hog hunting once a year. Harper just didn’t see guys his father’s age as all that old. Except the members of Lamm’s crew were over a decade or two older, weren’t they?
Once the interview room door was closed, Harper began with “How is your back these days?”
His thick hair neatly combed, the retired teacher wore the same Mr. Rogers cardigan he’d worn at their previous meeting, but this time, he didn’t have his back brace. Maybe he only needed it periodically. Or maybe he’d only put it on before to fool Harper.
“Better today. I make sure to exercise when I can. I swim at the YMCA three times a week.” Cash took his seat behind the table before he asked, “Any developments in the investigation?”
“Still eliminating people from the list.”
“You do that. I want the killer caught. Ask away, young man.”
Harper turned on the recorder he had set up on the table already, then he called out date, time, and people present, continuing with “Let’s talk through your timeline again for the day in question. Last Monday. Start with lunch.”
“Microwave macaroni and cheese. Took a nap after that instead of going swimming, on account of the weather and because my back was hurting. Then I read a book. George Washington’s new autobiography. Now there was a survivor.” Cash’s eyes lit up. “Lived through tuberculosis, diphtheria, smallpox, dysentery, quinsy, carbuncle, pneumonia,andmalaria. Nearly drownedtwice. Lived through the burning of Fort Necessity and the massacre there. Twice he had his horse shot out from under him in the same battle. Oh, and in that same battle,fourbullets hit him!”
“Is that how he died?” Harper said, partially because he was interested, and partially because keeping a suspect talking was always the right strategy. “I’m embarrassed to admit I can’t remember.”
“The bullets only ripped his clothes. He died years later. As far as I’m concerned, his doctors killed him.” Cash scowled. “He had a sore throat, and they let out half his blood. Burned him too, to raise a blister. Then made him vomit. When that didn’t work, they gave him an enema.”
Harper’s cheeks clenched. “How does any of that help a sore throat?”
Cash brought up his hands, palms up, in the universally known gesture ofbeats me. “At least my doctors didn’t kill me. You read history, it puts things in perspective.”
Harper nodded before redirecting the conversation to the day of the murder. “What time did you have dinner?”
“After six. Since I last talked to you, I’ve been trying to think back. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I usually go to bingo at church on Mondays and eat pizza there, but I had my car in for an oil change. They hadn’t called me until after six to pick it up. Anyway, I walked down, came home with the car, ate my sandwich, then read some more about Washington.” He held up his index finger like people did when they were about to make an important point. “He didn’t have wooden dentures, by the way. That’s a bunch of baloney. He had a few fake teeth made from ivory and the rest from the teeth of his slaves. And another thing—”
“How did Lamm and Dicky Poole get along?”
Cash shrugged. “They butted heads a time or two, but nothing to kill over, for sure.”
“What did they disagree on?”
“Dicky didn’t think Chuck’s place should be our only foxhole. Anything happened to it, then what? Dicky wanted to split our stores and keep half at his place. Chuck disagreed. He said if the worst happened, he didn’t want to have to defend two locations.”
