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No, I was going to have to go about this in another way. Who would benefit by making an anonymous call to the police—or the newspaper—and telling them there was a love triangle? Coach Carrier maybe, but—
Oh. Wait a minute. Sammy Blanchard called the parents of her husband’s final victim and told them what was going on. Would she have made the call? I skipped forward in the file until I got to the notes I’d made about our conversation. I needed to check the dates. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any dates in my notes. I remembered that she’d taken control of the interview, that she wanted to tell the story her way. I kind of remembered that she met Coach Carrier when she was fifteen and married him two years later. After the interview notes, there was a page of information Karen had gotten me on the coach. He married Sammy in March 1978. The murder took place in September 1976. That meant Sammy met the coach in the spring of 1976. They overlapped. Oh my God, they overlapped! I closed the folder, turned off the few lights I’d turn on, and rushed out of The Freedom Agenda.
When I walked into Sammy Blanchard’s condo, I smelled that she’d been smoking inside. So, she lied to me when she said she only smoked on the deck. I had a strong suspicion it wasn’t the only lie she’d told.
She hadn’t wanted to let me in. Claimed she was expecting a friend. I lied and said my questions would only take a minute. She wasn’t the only one who could lie.
Once I was inside, I noted that she was wearing a T-shirt with a food stain on it and really needed to wash her hair. I didn’t think she was expecting a friend. Right away, she pulled the “I only smoke on the balcony routine” and we went outside. The sounds of Saturday night traffic were loud, and that told me why she was so insistent on talking to me outside.
“You know we could stay inside,” I said. “I’m not wearing a wire.”
“You watch too much TV,” she said.
“I’d say the same about you.”
“Why don’t you ask your questions. I’d like to get this over with.”
“You said someone let Ricky Tamayo’s parents know what Coach Carrier was up to with their son. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t you say they had a right to know?”
“Actually, I’d say you were angry at your husband and wanted to punish him.”
“I didn’t know what would happen. I’m not clairvoyant.”
“It’s not the first time you made an anonymous call, is it?”
“You got me. When I was a teenager, we used to call people and ask if their refrigerator was running. When they said yes, we’d tell them to go catch it. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“There’s a newspaper report that refers to a source saying Pete Michaels was murdered because he was engaged. You’re that source, aren’t you?”
“You think because years later I called the Tamayos and told them Bernie was fucking their son that it was me? That’s kind of a stretch don’t you think?”
It was a stretch, but that’s why you ask questions, to see how people react. My next question was going to tell me a lot.
“Actually, the reason I think you made that call is that you’re the one who killed Pete Michaels.”
She tried to laugh but ended up sounding like a deflating tire.
“When you told me your story, you made it sound like you got involved with Coach Carrier after the murder, but that’s not true, is it? You and Pete were involved with him at the same time, and you didn’t like that. So you convinced the Showalter kid to get you a gun. Then you went over and shot your rival. You called Larry Wilkes and gave him the signal to come over. The same signal Coach Carrier used with you. Then you left.”
“You make me sound like the worst kind of girl.”
I waited. Crossing my fingers that she’d tell me what I’d gotten right and what I gotten wrong. She just stared at me. Cold as ice.
“Are you waiting for me to confess?”
“Don’t you want to get it off your chest?”
“No. I don’t. You have nothing. You can’t connect me to the crime scene. Or murder weapon. Or even the victim.”
“I have motive.”
“What motive?”
“You were jealous, so you killed Pete.”
“You can’t prove that. You can’t even prove Bernie was having a thing with Pete. And if you can, you can’t prove that I knew about it. You can’t prove I was jealous, so you don’t have a motive, do you?”
