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“I’m fine.”
She gave me a dubious look, then said, “Tell me what’s going on with your pet project.”
“I think I’m starting to find people who had motives to kill Pete Michaels.”
She frowned. It wasn’t evidence and I knew that.
“It seems that Pete Michaels was having a relationship with his tennis coach.”
“How old was Pete?”
“Seventeen the first year, eighteen the second.”
“What year was it?”
“Seventy-four, seventy-five.”
“Sodomy laws got taken off the books in seventy-six.”
“Pete was killed in seventy-six.”
“I’m thinking about legal exposure for the coach, as motive.”
“I don’t know exactly when they became involved. Or what the age of consent was then. It’s possible it was all legal. Or at least legalish.”
“There would still be an ethical problem,” Lydia pointed out. “Teachers aren’t supposed to sleep with their students regardless of the age of consent.”
Which reminded me of something. Coach Carrier wasn’t just a coach. He taught something, as well. I never asked what that was. I tucked that away for later, then said, “So if Pete threatened the coach with exposure, he’d have lost his job. That’s a motive.”
“Did Larry Wilkes know about this relationship?”
“I don’t think so. He didn’t tell me about it.”
“That’s a problem. If Larry knew about it and told his lawyer and then his lawyer decided not to bring it out in the trial… that would be ineffective counsel.”
“I could ask Larry, maybe he did know.”
“I think you’re right that he would have told you. Is that all you have?”
“Well… I think there’s more to it. According to one of the teammates, the whole team knew about Pete’s relationship with the coach, which means his brother knew about it. When I spoke to him, he didn’t say anything about it.”
“You think the brother had a problem with him being gay?”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s still not enough. At the very least, we need a witness to recant. And even that won’t fly with a lot of judges.”
“I’ll go back and talk to the brother again.”
“We need something physical. There’s nothing we can test for DNA? Could this kid have struggled with his attacker? If there were fingernail scrapings we could test those.”
“I don’t know if they were taken. We’d have to take the case to find that out.”
Lydia frowned. “I don’t want to get this guy’s hopes up if there’s nothing to work with. Do you know what his sentence is?”
“Twenty-five to life.”
“And he’s been in for twenty years?”
