“I just wanted them to leave, which it looks like they were finally doing before you stopped them.”
Steve rolled down his window. “We were just leaving, officer, if that’s okay with you?”
“You sure you don’t want me to arrest them for trespassing or anything?” Deputy Blackburn asked Whitmore.
“No, let ’em go,” Whitmore said gruffly.
“All right. I don’t know who the hell you two are or what you are up to, but the property owner seems good with you leaving.
So just get the hell out of here,” Blackburn commanded.
Steve put the car in drive and sped off.
Booger glanced back at the receding figure of Deputy Blackburn. “Wonder why the deputy was going by Whitmore’s place on his day off?”
“I assumed the wife called 911, and he was here on official business. Why do you say it was his day off?”
“Because he wasn’t wearing a uniform.”
“I didn’t even notice that,” Steve said. “I was too worried about getting shotgun pellets in my car or spending my weekend in the Rogers County Jail.” The two men shared a “thank god that didn’t happen” laugh and drove on.
The next stop on their investigative journey was the Walters’ house.
“Here we go,” Booger said. “Remember. Let’s put on our nice faces and see what we can get before we play the ace in the hole.”
CHAPTER 19
Walters and her family lived in the Fieldstone housing addition just east of Claremore Lake. Fieldstone was a nice upper-middleclass neighborhood with large houses on acre lots, and the addition was a fairly recent expansion to the Claremore realty market. Every house had a wooden swing set or a trampoline in the backyard; some had both. Now, just a few years after the neighborhood was originally developed, only a couple of empty lots remained, and sold signs were erected on both of those.
The Walters lived in a two-story beauty near the back of the addition. There was a six-foot-tall wooden privacy fence around the back half of the acre lot and several tall trees dispersed around the property. From the size of the trees, Steve determined that this was one of the older houses in the neighborhood.
As they walked to the front door, Steve noticed heat upon his arms from the sun now beaming down through a few clouds on this beautiful Oklahoma spring morning. Walters’ husband answered in sweats and a T-shirt that looked slept in, his hair still a mess. He scratched his round belly and asked, “How may I help you gentlemen?”
“I’m Steve Hanson, and this is my colleague, Harold Thomas.
We represent Scottie Pinkerton in his federal appeal.”
“Oh. I thought he was all done with appeals and off to death row.”
“Well,” Steve said, “after the appeals in state court, he gets an appeal at federal court. But yeah, it doesn’t look good for the fellow when it gets to this point. We’re just doing a standard investigation as part of our due diligence at this phase.”
“You can come in then, have a seat on the couch. Can I get you some coffee?” Mr. Walters turned toward the hallway. “Hey, honey, there are some men here about Scottie Pinkerton.”
Walters came around the corner dressed in a pair of yoga pants and a tight-fitting, peach-colored workout T-shirt. Her blonde hair was styled as if she had been to the salon, and her face was perfectly made up with eyeliner and lipstick. The outfit fully accentuated the curves of her athletic body; now in her thirties, she was still an attractive and fit woman.
Steve looked at his watch; it was 10:25 a.m. He wondered if this was common attire for her on a Saturday morning in March or if she was truly on her way to or from the gym.
Walters raised her arms in the air with a smile on her face and said, “Welcome to Walters Inc. I am president and CEO of this fine establishment! How can I help you today?”
Steve and Booger stood up, and Steve extended his hand. “Good morning, Mrs. Walters. Sorry to bother you on a weekend. I’m Steve Hanson, and this is my colleague, Harold Thomas. We represent Scottie Pinkerton in his federal appeal.”
Steve looked around the room and noticed everything was “in its place,” not a mess anywhere to be seen—not even on the kitchen counters in the adjoining room. He then said, “We are interviewing everyone that testified at his trial, as well as anyone
else we believe might have useful information.”
“Well, I don’t know what I can tell you that would be helpful, and to be honest, I still haven’t gotten over the fact he killed my best friend. I know he had a temper, but until that day, I never thought he was a murderer.” She said the last sentence with a look of disappointment and heartache.
“That’s interesting. As I recall from your testimony, you kind of thought he might be the killer,” Steve said.
“Well, that was seven years ago, and I just testified the way the prosecutor asked me to. It seemed clear from the evidence Scottie had done it. So, I did what I was told to help them get their conviction. I do remember Mr. Battel telling me that I had done an excellent job on my testimony.” She smiled proudly.
“Can you tell us what your exact relationship with Scottie and Ashley was?” Steve asked.
“Ashley was my best friend. We had known each other since we were little kids. We went to elementary school at Justus-Tiawah together. I’ll never forget the day we met. One day during recess, in the fall of fifth grade, some boys were making fun of my clothes. I lived in the trailer park just west of the Racino, although it was still just a horse racing track at that time. The people of Oklahoma hadn’t yet voted to allow slot machines in the racetracks. Anyway, those boys were making fun of my cheap clothes, and then up walks Ashley. She told them to shut up and even pushed one of them down. That girl had no fear. The boys ran off, and we were best friends from that day forward. I always looked up to her and appreciated her standing up for me that day. She was my hero.” Walters began tearing up as she told this story. Her husband brought her a tissue, sat down, and put one of his arms around her.
“What about Scottie?” asked Steve.
Walters’s attitude quickly changed to one of disdain. “He was her high school love and was never much more than that to me. I mean, I was around him a lot, but never without Ashley. So, I can’t really tell you a lot about him.” Steve noticed she subtly glanced toward her husband with apprehension as she said this. “The two of them started dating our sophomore year,” Walters continued. “Other than a brief time when they split up in our junior year, they were together ever since. She got pregnant when we were all eighteen. It was right after we graduated from Claremore High School in 2004. He proposed as soon as they found out about the baby, and they got married shortly thereafter. Sadly, she ended up miscarrying that child. As far as I knew, they were going to wait awhile before trying to have a baby again after that happened, but she ended up pregnant three years later. That is when Gabriel was born.”
“When was the last time you saw Ashley alive?” asked Steve.
“It was the morning of her murder.”
Steve and Booger glanced briefly at one another.
“I started my morning at the gym like I do every Saturday.”
Steve thought Every Saturday, she said, the same as Scottie’s weekly round of golf. That part of his story lined up, then.
