“Let’s see how smart you are after twenty years at Brushy Mountain,” Kennard said.
“Here’s what we know, Alfred,” Meredith Black said, placing a hand on Kennard’s hairy forearm. “A car collides with an SUV in front of Samson Towers and blows up. A minute later, a John Doe is shot at point-blank range in the penthouse suite of the building. Ten minutes after that, a high-speed chase that results in the deaths of five Knoxville police officers and an unidentified suspect who appears to have committed suicide by means of an improvised explosive device.”
“How is Sam?” I asked. “The John Doe. They wouldn’t tell me at the hospital.”
She ignored me. “And now we have you. And you seem to be the common denominator in all of this, Alfred.”
She pulled a small tape recorder from her purse and set it on the table between us.
“We’d like to hear what you have to say.”
“I’m supposed to wait for Mr. Needlemier.”
“Who’s Needlemier?” Kennard asked.
“My attorney. Well, actually he’s my dad’s attorney. Or he used to be.”
“Your dad fired him?”
“My dad died.”
“Bernard Samson,” Meredith Black said. It wasn’t a question.
“That’s right. That’s why I was in that office when the car blew up. I guess that was all a setup so the phony delivery dude could get upstairs without running his package through security.”
“What package?” Meredith Black asked.
“The package containing the shotgun. I guess you found the shotgun. He said he had a package and Samuel said ‘I’ll take it,’ and he said something like, ‘Okay,’ and then he shot him.”
“Who is Samuel?” Meredith asked.
“The John Doe. He’s alive, isn’t he?”
“So Samuel shot the delivery dude?” Kennard asked.
“No, the delivery dude shot Samuel.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Then he tried to shoot me.”
“Samuel?”
“The delivery dude! Samuel’s my guardian; why would he want to shoot me?”
“Why did the delivery dude want to shoot you?” Kennard asked.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say, but I didn’t ask either. He ran. I ran after him. He did this to my arm and this to my nose and then he parachuted down the stairwell.”
Kennard gave a belly laugh. Meredith shot him a look and said, “We found the chute.” She turned back to me. “So you followed him outside, hijacked a police car, and forced the officer to give chase.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to know the same thing you guys do: why?”
“You don’t know why someone would want to kill you?”