Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three
I slept restlessly that night with all of the new information I now had at my disposal. There was a lot more research to do and I now had the incentive to do it. I just needed to be motivated. I wanted to know more about the man who killed my husband. It was important for me to know more about the man who was responsible for me being a single parent.

I didn’t get a lot of sleep with all of the thoughts and feelings I had about John McKinley bouncing inside my head. I had to get up and get ready for work. Angela told me not to worry about Lincoln, she would take care of him. She said he needed his rest.

Angela had made breakfast for me and she said she would feed Lincoln when he got up. She said she missed out on being a grandmother and enjoyed helping with Lincoln. I quickly gulped breakfast and got ready for the work day ahead. 

I went through the motions the rest of the day. I checked people out when they came to the register but my mind was clearly somewhere else. The thought that I had been so close to the man who took my husband’s life was still invading my thoughts. 

There were several boxes of documents dealing with the case and a lot of suspects that weren’t revealed at trial, I assume to prevent them from knowing they were being investigated until they were ready to make a move against them. I knew I needed to study the case and the documents in the boxes.

The day was a long one and it didn’t seem like it would ever end. Just when I didn’t think I had another, “Have a nice day,” left in me, it was finally time to go. My face felt stretched out from all the exaggerated smiles I had expressed. After standing for so many hours on my feet it wouldn’t take me very long to take my shoes off once I got back home. 

When I arrived back at Angela’s house, Lincoln ran out to greet me. It felt good to feel those little hands wrapped around me welcoming me back. When I came inside I could see Angela was making dinner and told me to wash up. It was almost ready. We gathered around the table and could see Angela had worked a long time making dinner. We said grace, led by Angela, who evidently said it a lot. I didn’t mind and I wanted to share some religious teachings with Lincoln. I wasn’t sure he was ready yet. 

We had small talk at the table. Angela asked how my day went and she told me some things Lincoln did throughout the day. I told her I had made some discoveries while reading the case documents I had been given. I said I would tell her more after Lincoln went to bed. 

After dinner I started getting Lincoln ready for bed. I got him a bath and changed him into some pajamas for the night. I told him I would read him a book before bed and to go pick out one that he wanted. 

When he ran off to our room to look for a book he wanted, I turned to Angela and said, “John McKinley was responsible for Charles’s death. It is all in the case files among the list of priors that were deemed inadmissible. That was why I never heard about them in court, the judge ruled they weren’t relevant.”

I went in to read to Lincoln before bed. He had a book picked out about a fireman; it was no surprise, he is crazy about firemen and wants to be one. He usually never makes it to the end, always falling asleep before we finish. 

When Lincoln was fast asleep I came back into the living room; Angela was sitting in a chair with a puzzled look on her face. I could tell she wanted me to tell her more about what I had discovered.

I said, “The reports on the case show several charges for other non-related crimes. None of those charges were ever brought up in court and were ruled inadmissible due to being irrelevant. 

I said, “He was actually charged for the crime of vehicular homicide in Charles murder. He was charged but it was dropped as part of a plea deal. He was the one responsible but they were after him on the other charges. They never said anything to me, I guess they figured I would be pissed and rightly so.”

Angela replied, “They went after kidnapping and sex trafficking instead of DWI and vehicular homicide.” 

I replied, “Yes they thought the kidnapping and sex trafficking would be easiest to prove. They even saved the murder case of the mother in the event they couldn’t get a guilty verdict on the other charges. There are a lot of unexplained things in the files and he was killed before he could explain them.”

Angela asked, “Why would the father of the kidnapped girl and husband of the murdered wife want to kill the convicted killer before he could reveal the information?”

I replied, “My first instinct was that he was distraught about what happened to his family but I don’t know. I need to do some more digging. I have a workday tomorrow and need to get some sleep but I may do a little case file reading before turning in.”

I said goodnight to Angela and went back into my room and read through some of the files. Timothy Williams had been questioned at length in the early stages of the kidnapping. It was unknown at that time that his wife was a victim of murder. The police moved on to other suspects when I presented them with the evidence I had collected. 

It looks like when they found John McKinley and arrested him, Timothy was never interviewed again. It was neat and tidy that there was a sex trafficking gang that were partners with John. But, why would a sex trafficking gang pick Timothy’s family at random, break into their house and kidnap the wife and daughter and then kill the wife. 

I needed to find a math expert because things just weren’t adding up. I needed to know more about Timothy Williams and there wasn’t much in the files to provide answers. Why didn’t they investigate him more? They just concentrated on John and didn’t ask the questions. I wouldn’t be reading any more tonight, I had a job to go to and needed some rest. Timothy’s case would be heavy on my mind for a while. I had a lot of questions that I needed answers to. 

I woke the next morning to the smell of breakfast being cooked in the kitchen. I don’t know what time Angela gets up but she always cooked breakfast before I got up. Memories of the things I had been thinking about the night before came flooding back into my head. I didn’t have time to think about what I had read or thought. I had to eat and get to work. 

The breakfast was good as usual; Angela was gifted in all things domestic. I would love to share with her the things I had learned and thought but time was short and work awaited. I quickly showered and dressed. Makeup was just a quick application for now, with only a short time left for driving. At least this job wasn’t very far away.

The workday was like most that I have had in my life. I stayed busy and the time passed quickly. The thoughts of Timothy Williams had no time to form. I drove to Timothy’s neighborhood on my way. I knew he had posted a bond and was out waiting on his trial but was not at home. I had a lot to learn about him because I knew nothing about him. 

The daughter who had been kidnapped was staying with her mother’s parents while Timothy was preparing for trial. I went to a few neighbors to ask questions. I told them I was a private investigator looking into Timothy’s activities.

The neighbors all confirmed that Timothy and his wife fought a lot. One woman said she was a friend of the wife. The wife’s name was Sharon, Sharon Williams. She hadn’t been identified early on to protect the daughter that was another reason they didn’t pursue the murder charge so they could keep the identity of the child a secret. The neighbor said Sharon told her that her husband was having an affair and when she confronted him, he became abusive. 

I recorded my conversations with the neighbors on my phone and saved the files to a cloud storage for safe keeping. I would listen to them again later and transcribe them to make them easy to read through. 

I knew I couldn’t talk to Timothy directly because he knew me from the trial and wouldn’t tell me the truth anyway. I learned that Timothy worked at a warehouse as a shipping manager and had complete access to the warehouse. He was responsible for shipping company merchandise all over the country.  

I made a trip to the warehouse where Timothy worked and told them I was a private detective hired by Timothy’s defense team to find information to help him. They agreed to answer questions and to let me talk to anyone I needed. I was told the police had already been there and interviewed workers so I asked for a list of those who were interviewed and were granted access to each one that had spoken to detectives. 

The people interviewed told me that Timothy was a good man who was good at his job and dependable. They all told me about a rumor of him being romantically involved with a woman who worked at the warehouse. She was actually a shipping and receiving clerk and they often traveled together to seminars for training. The training was always out of town and they shared the same room.

The woman was named Linda and she was the last on my list to be interviewed. I knew it would take great effort to ask her questions and not reveal my hand. I wanted the truth from her but I knew she would probably not be candid about the relationship.

Since I didn’t have any more interviews to do, I prepared to talk for a while. I called home to check on Lincoln and tell Angela I would be home late, I was working on something important. I laid my phone on the desk with the recorder running while I stood and greeted Linda and asked her to sit and talk for a while. I knew it would be intense and I had prepared for that. 

Sharon sat across the table from me with a smile on her face. I don’t think she was aware of the questions that I would be asking. If she had known the questions she would probably not have agreed to the interview.