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“Why don’t we walk and talk on the beach,” she suggested. “You might want to take off your shoes and socks first. You’re a city boy, right?”
Chapter 50
SAMPSON DID AS he was told. No reason the murder investigation, this interview anyway, couldn’t have a few nice perks. The sand felt warm and good against his bare feet as he followed her down the length of the big house, then up and over a tall, broad dune covered with white sand and waving beach grass.
“Your house sure is something else,” he said. “Beautiful doesn’t begin to do it justice.”
“I think so,” she said, and turned to look back at him with a smile. “Of course, this isn’t my house. My place is a couple of blocks inland. One of the small beach bungalows you passed driving in. I house-sit for the O’Briens while Robert and Kathy are in Fort Lauderdale for the winter.”
“That’s not such bad duty,” he said. Actually, it sounded like a great deal to him.
“No, it’s not bad at all.” She quickly changed the subject. “You wanted to talk to me about my late husband, Detective. Do you want to tell me why you’re here? I’ve been on pins and needles since you called. Why did you want to see me? What do you know about my husband’s case?”
“Pins and needles?” Sampson asked. “Who says ‘pins and needles’ anymore?”
She laughed. “I guess I do. It just came out. Dates and locates me, right? I grew up on a sharecropper’s farm in Alabama, outside Montgomery. Not giving you the date. So why are you here, Detective?”
> They had started down a sandy hill sloping toward the ocean, which was all rich blues and greens and creamy foam. It was unbelievable — hardly a soul up or down the shoreline. All of these gorgeous houses, practically mansions, and nobody around but the seagulls.
As they walked north he told Mrs. Houston about his friend Ellis Cooper and what had happened at Fort Bragg. He decided not to tell her about the other murders of military men.
“He must have been a very good friend,” she said when Sampson had finished talking. “You’re obviously not giving up easily.”
“I can’t give up. He was one of the best friends I ever had. We spent three years in Vietnam together. He was the first older male in my life who wasn’t just out for himself. You know, the father I never had.”
She nodded, but didn’t pry. Sampson liked that. He still couldn’t get over how petite she was. He had the thought that he could have carried her around under his arm.
“The other thing is, Mrs. Houston, I am totally convinced that Ellis Cooper was innocent of those murders. Call it a sixth sense, or whatever, but I’m sure of it. He told me so just before they executed him. I can’t get past that. I just can’t.”
She sighed, and he could see the pain on her face. He could tell she hadn’t gotten over her husband’s death and how it had happened, but she still hadn’t intruded on his story. That was interesting. She was obviously very considerate.
He stopped walking, and so did she.
“What’s the matter?” she finally asked.
“You don’t talk about yourself easily, do you?” he asked.
She laughed. “Oh, I do. When I get going, I do. Too much sometimes, believe me. But I was interested in what you had to say, how you would say it. Do you want me to tell you about my husband now? What happened to him? Why I’m sure he was innocent too?”
“I want to hear everything about your husband,” Sampson said. “Please.”
“I believe Laurence was murdered,” she began. “He was killed by the State of New Jersey. But somebody else wanted him dead. I want to know who murdered my husband, as much as you want to know who killed your friend Ellis Cooper.”
Chapter 51
SAMPSON AND MRS. Billie Houston stopped and sat in the sand in front of a sprawling ocean house that must have had at least a dozen bedrooms. It was empty now, boarded up and shuttered, which seemed a monumental waste to Sampson. He knew people in D.C. who lived in abandoned tenements with no windows and no heat and no running water.
He couldn’t peel his eyes away. The house was three stories high with wraparound decks on the upper two. A large sign posted on the dune near the house read THESE DUNES ARE PROTECTED. STAY ON WALKWAY. $300 FINE. These people were serious about their property or its beauty, or both, he thought to himself.
Billie Houston stared out at the ocean as she began to speak.
“Let me tell you about the night the murder happened,” she said. “I was a nurse at the Community Medical Center in Toms River. I got off my shift at eleven and arrived home at about half past. Laurence almost always waited up for me. Usually we’d catch up on each other’s day. Sit on the couch. Maybe watch a little TV together, mostly comedies. He was a big man like you, and always said he could carry me around in his pocket.”
Sampson didn’t interrupt, just listened to her story take shape.
“What I remember the most about that night was that it was so ordinary, Detective. Laurence was watching The Steve Harvey Show and I leaned in and gave him a kiss. He sat me on his lap and we talked for a while. Then I went in to change out of my work clothes.
“When I came out from the bedroom, I poured myself a glass of Shiraz and asked him if he wanted me to make popcorn. He didn’t. He’d been watching his weight, which sometimes ballooned in the winter. He was in a playful mood, jokey, very relaxed. He wasn’t tense, wasn’t stressed in any way. I’ll never forget that.
