“How do we figure out who else may have been in the house?” Steve asked.
CHAPTER 24
“Short of a surveillance video, we have to do some hard work. I think we start with who we know for sure was there: Scottie and Ashley. We have to go back to prison and talk to Scottie,” Booger said. “I told you I think there is something he isn’t telling us, and it is high time we find out all of his secrets.”
“Okay. Back to your list,” Steve said. “Why don’t you have Deputy Blackburn on it? He was the last person to see her alive and Ackerman said he is crooked. He could have done it.”
“Yes. I would put him in the X-factor column. I’m not quite ready to call him a clear suspect. Him being a dirty cop doesn’t make him a murderer of young white women. Of course, if he killed that young man a few months ago in cold blood, maybe he could do it in this case too. Only problem is there is no reason. I can see a racist cop taking the opportunity to kill a black man just because he thinks he can get away with it. But I don’t see him killing a white woman in her home and then blaming the husband without some additional motive.”
As Booger finished, a phone rang. Steve patted his pockets and pulled out a phone, then pulled out a second phone, checked it, and paused. Seeing Booger’s expression, Steve explained briefly, “It’s my personal phone but an unknown number.” Then he answered the call. “Hello, Steve Hanson. How can I help you?”
“Hello, Steve Hanson.” The woman on the other end gave a slight laugh. “Wow, that sounded very official and lawyerly. This is Dr. Emily Babbage. Jennifer told me your guy pled to the embezzlement charge and gave me your number. Case closed, right? Which means I’m available for dinner, assuming you are still interested.”
“Of course!” Steve said a little too excitedly. He tried to calm his voice down and asked, “Is tomorrow night good for you?”
“Tomorrow is great. Pick me up at my office around six thirty. See you then.” Emily hung up without giving Steve a chance to respond.
Booger looked at Steve and raised an eyebrow meaningfully.
“You look happier than a fox loose in the hen house. Good news?”
“Yeah, a girl I have a little thing for. She agreed to a date tomorrow night,” Steve said with a wide smile on his face and a flicker of mischief in his eyes.
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
For Steve, the next day dragged on like a poorly acted monologue. As soon as he arrived at his office, he wrote and filed the motion asking to see the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office’s complete investigation file. In the pleading, Steve laid out his theory about Scottie’s innocence, weaving in other legal jargon he hoped would sway the court to grant his request. Upon receipt of the motion, the court gave the state three weeks to respond and set the matter for a hearing three weeks after that date. Steve had hoped the issue hearing would be set sooner but knew from experience that the wheels of justice turned slowly.
Steve also set up a meeting with Scottie. Luckily, Gilcrease was able to get him in quickly because another attorney had called earlier in the day and canceled his appointment for next week.
He spent the rest of the day working on other cases and planned to spend his weekend catching up on more of them. He had nearly a hundred files that had been mostly ignored because of Scottie Pinkerton’s case. They definitely needed attention, but tonight, Steve finally had a date with Emily. As the evening drew close, his growing excitement made it hard to concentrate.
Steve arrived at Emily’s office around 6:15 p.m. In college, his soccer coach at Oklahoma City University, Brian Harvey, had drilled the need to be on time into all the players’ heads. It only took a few times of running extra sprints for tardiness for Steve to learn that it was much better to be fifteen minutes early than one minute late. Since then, he always arrived fifteen minutes early to every appointment, date, meeting, or whatever he had on his schedule.
He played Chess with Friends on his smart phone while sitting in his car. Although he liked to be timely, in this instance he didn’t want to seem overanxious to Emily. At six thirty on the dot, Steve walked up to the entrance. Since the office closed at 5:00 p.m., the glass door was locked. He peered through it and couldn’t see anyone in the reception area. He knocked. Shortly after, Emily came out and said hello. She locked the door behind her and walked toward his car. Steve hurried ahead and was holding her door open when she arrived.
“Wow, an old-fashioned gentleman,” she said with a look of pleasure and surprise. “Thank you.”
From there, he took her to Mi Cocina, an upscale Mexican restaurant on Cherry Street. The restaurant had a modern interior, giving it a very different vibe from the other Tex-Mex restaurants around town, all of which had sombreros and Mexican blankets on the walls. Mi Cocina was the type of place that sold specialty cocktails made from top shelf tequila or mezcal rather than pitchers of premixed drinks that tasted more like a green Gatorade than a true margarita.
After they were seated, Emily placed her cell phone upside down to her right, and Steve placed his two cell phones upside down to his left.
“Why do you have two phones?” Emily asked.
“One is my work phone, and one is my personal cell. In this day and age, clients expect you to give them your cell phone number when they hire you. So, I use this phone for them. It actually does make it easier to communicate with them. I can call one from the courthouse if he or she isn’t there on time and find out why they are late. Also, on days when I am just one of many lawyers on a judge’s docket, I can step into the hallway and make calls for other cases while waiting my turn in court. I’m sure you know how it is at the courthouse. All the hurry-up and wait.”
“Right? You have a hearing set at 9:00 a.m. You rush to be there on time, and then it turns out there are fifty other cases set on the same docket. And you don’t actually have your hearing until lunchtime. Or sometimes after.”
“Exactly,” Steve said. “In those situations, I can go in the hallway and make calls. That way, it is not such a waste of time waiting my turn. I have the personal one so that on weekends or vacations—assuming I get to take one of those someday—I can turn the office phone off and still get calls from my friends and family.”
“I guess a first date with an amazing woman isn’t cause for leaving your work cell at home?” Emily asked teasingly.
Steve, somewhat oblivious to Emily’s flirtation, flatly stated, “The truth is I can never bring myself to turn it off or leave it behind. I should probably just have one phone and tell my clients the number. But for whatever reason, it makes me feel good knowing
I could turn it off.”
Steve was afraid he had been too short in his response or possibly offended Emily by bringing both phones so he was happy to be saved when the waiter came up to their table. Steve ordered a top-shelf margarita with a Cointreau floater, and Emily requested a Mezcal on the rocks and a slice of orange.
After some first date small talk, Emily said, “Tell me something about yourself unrelated to your profession.”
“Hmm. Like what?”
“I don’t know. Tell me the craziest thing you have ever done in your life.”
“Okay. Let me think.” Steve stared into space for a few seconds, thinking to himself. He perused the card catalogue of his memories and thought, Crazy story suitable for a first date. Not that one. No, not that one either.
“You okay?” Emily said.
“Oh, got one,” Steve said. “I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane once. Is that crazy enough for you?” he asked with a grin.
Emily’s eyes widened. “Wow? That is a pretty good one. Tell me about it!”
“It was a few years ago, back when I was still an undergraduate at Oklahoma City University. Every year, the school organized an auction to help cover the cost of running the athletic department. As a member of the soccer team, I always had to attend the event because the school would introduce each team on stage to show the donors the faces of the kids they were helping. You know, make it more human. Anyway, during my junior year, one of the silent auction items was a certificate to skydive at a local facility. It was a $150-value, and I got it for the minimum bid of thirty dollars. I got it so cheap because I was the only one in the room who was crazy enough to bid on the thing.”
“Or dumb enough,” Emily said, laughing.
“True,” Steve said, laughing in agreement. “I scheduled my session for a few weeks later. Because I had a certificate for one jump, the parachute facility said that I could either go tandem or do what’s called a static line jump. If I tandem jumped, then I would get to free fall because the person I was strapped to would pull the ripcord for us whether or not I panicked. On the static line jump, I would be all by myself, but the rip cord would be automatically pulled as I fell away from the plane, so I would not get any of the free fall sensation. Since I chose to do the solo jump, I had to show up early in the morning and train for six hours before they would take me up in the sky.
