Killer
"Okay, Sally. It's time you told us the truth."
"What do you mean?" She frowned and jutted her chin forward. "I've told you the truth."
Glen shook his head. "I don't believe you, Sally." He raised an eyebrow as he pinned her with his stare. "You know we've found a body on your property."
"I don't know anything about that. Ask Cory Shevlin. He's an evil bastard. It's gotta have something to do with him."
"Ah, Sally," Glen smirked. "You're good. One of the best actors I've seen but you're not bluffing me." He pushed a folder of forensic paperwork across the table toward her. "You see this file."
She nodded.
"This paperwork tells me all about DNA. And guess what? Some DNA is connected to two brothers on our missing person's list. One happens to be your old mate, Cory Shevlin. The other is his brother Baum." Glen gave her a knowing grin. "These files also tell me some of the DNA belongs to you."
"I want my solicitor."
Glen chuckled. "I thought you might." He signalled at the one-way glass panel and Sean ushered a suited man into the room.
"Bernard Chan," the lawyer said as he shook Glen's hand. "Sally Trappes' legal representative."
Glen returned the handshake and gave him a nod.
"Take a seat, Mr Chan," Sean said as he sat. "We'd like to get on with this."
After hitting record and giving the date and names of the people in the room, Glen looked at the woman who sat opposite him. "Just so we're clear, Sally, and you understand where I'm heading with this, I've received word this morning that Baum Shevlin has been found safe and well working in one of the remote iron ore mines in Western Australia." Glen leaned forward, clasped his hands and rested his elbows on the table. "That leaves me with Cory Shevlin." He smiled at her. "Can you guess where I'm going with this, Sally?"
"No." She pouted and shook her head.
"Okay. Can you explain how your hair came to be on the dead man's clothes?"
"No."
"All right, can you tell me why a bullet from your twenty-two was found lodged in the ground under the dead man's skull?"
"No, I can't!"
Glen sighed, looked from Sean to Bernard Chan and then back at Sally. "You're not going to help us, are you, Sally?"
"No. I know my rights. I'm not saying anything."
"Okay." Glen leaned back in his chair and held out his palms. "I'm gonna tell you what I think happened. You can jump in any time you like." He studied her hard features and wondered how he had ever seen her as a sweet old lady. "Cory Shevlin is our dead man, Sally." Glen pointed at her. "You were wearing his clothes when you shot him."
"No, I wasn't!"
Glen chuckled. "I haven't finished yet." He paused for effect. "I think Ricky introduced you to Cory Shevlin and you came up with the idea of growing all that marijuana together. Ricky and Cory planted the crops and you made sure it had plenty of water."
"No! That's not true!"
Bernard Chan touched Sally's shoulder. "You don't have to say anything."
Sally folded her arms and glared across the table at Glen.
He continued, "Then something went wrong. Maybe an argument over money. Maybe Shevlin pushed Ricky around one time too many. Who knows? Whatever it was it pissed you off a lot didn't it, Sally?"
She kept her mouth shut.
"Then you had an epiphany. If Cory Shevlin was off the scene, you and Ricky could get the whole lot. So, one day when you were inspecting the crop you hit Shevlin with your quad bike." Glen tapped the file. "It's all in here. Shevlin's DNA is on the bull bar. You broke his hip. He couldn't move. Then you knocked him out. Hit him on the head with the butt of your rifle. You stripped him of his clothes and put them on so you wouldn't get any blood splatter. Then, with the cold heart you have, you dug a shallow grave and shot Cory Shevlin in the middle of his forehead."
"No! It didn't happen like that!"
Chan grabbed Sally's arm as she lunged forward.
Sally shrugged him off, tears on her face.
"Was he awake, Sally?" Glen stared at her. "Was he awake when you put that cold hard steel against his head? Was he looking straight at you?"
"No! No! It wasn't like that!"
Glen cocked his head. "How about you tell us how it was, Sally?"
She sobbed and nodded, grabbed a tissue from the box on the table and said, "It wasn't like that."
"Mrs Trappes." Bernard Chan shook his head. "You don't have to say anything."
"I know." Sally wiped her face again. "But I'm going to. I can't have people thinking I'm a drug dealer and cold-blooded murderer." She took a breath and looked Glen in the eye. "The marijuana. It happened as I told you. Ricky owed him money and Shevlin forced us to grow the stuff. He didn't have men to help but forced Ricky and I to help him get the crop growing."
She dragged in a lungful of air. "He was the worst kind of man you could imagine. He raped me." Sally sobbed and pleaded, "For the love of God, I'm a sixty-four-year-old woman and he raped me. Made Ricky watch." She took another huge breath and hung her head. "He'd walk into my place like he owned it and hit us just because he felt like it."
Sally stared at Glen. "I hadn't planned to kill him. I wanted to. I thought about it a lot but didn't have a plan then one day we were in the paddock. He'd taken my gun and strapped it to the four-wheeler. I had to walk. When I got there, he was standing in front of the bike, its engine running, looking at the plantation. Something clicked in my head.
The gun was still on the bike. He had no idea I'd caught up to him. I got on the four-wheeler and rammed him." She laughed. "You should have seen the look on his face."
Sally stared at Glen. "You pretty much got the rest right. I knocked him on the head then went back and got a shovel. I didn't have to dig a hole though, there was one already dug, another threat of his. Our burial ground, he said. If one of us thought of going to the police, the other would end up in the hole. I stripped him while he was unconscious and put his clothes over mine." She shrugged. "I saw that in a movie once. The killer covered his clothes with the victims." Sally sucked in a breath. "Then I dragged him into the hole and shot him. I thought of letting him wake up just so he could see who ended up in the hole but I couldn't, he was still unconscious." She sniffed back tears. "I'm not a cold-hearted killer, detective. Just caught in a trap and needed a way out."
"Where was Ricky in all this, Sally?"
"Ricky doesn't know any of this. When Shevlin hadn't shown for about a week Ricky asked and I said I didn't know. Ricky said maybe Shevlin had been caught because he was going behind some big wigs back growing the marijuana. Ricky thought that maybe the big wig had done something to him. So, I left it at that and after a few weeks we harvested the crop and sold it."
Sally wiped her face again. "Then, like an idiot, I let Ricky talk me into growing more. A lot more. We doubled the size of the crop." She hung her head and gasped in air. "I've been so, so stupid."
Well. Do we believe Sally?
Image copyright - Hexen
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