A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

get around to it, sooner or later, and looks like he was right.  So now you’re here, and seein’ as you’re on Jason’s side, I’ll be happy to help you any which way I can.”

“You like him, do you?” Joe asked.

“Jason?  Known him since he was sixteen,” Billy replied.  “It’s not just that he’s a good kid, there are lots of good kids in the world, it’s that there ain’t a mean bone in that whole body.”

“You know him that well?”

“Know him well enough to know that whatever he may have done that night, if he actually done it, he done it for a good reason.”

“All right, talk to me,” Joe invited.

“The cop was a bully,” Billy said flatly.

“How do you mean?”

“He used to patrol around here, back before he got promoted,” the barkeeper replied.  “And he’d hang around late, you know, on purpose, just lookin’ to cause trouble, and then dishin’ out more than was necessary.  Like he wasn’t gettin’ enough of somethin’ at home, you know what I mean?  So what if a guy has a little too much to drink?  Don’t mean he belongs in jail -- just means he belongs in bed.”

“Was he hanging around that night?” Joe asked.

Billy shook his head.  “No, that’s the thing, you see,” he said.  “Not since he got promoted to detective.  After then, it wasn’t his job no more -- hasslin’ us kind of folk like he used to.  Only time we seen him since then was when he come in as a customer, maybe once a month.  It was kinda weird, too -- he’d show up just before closin’, order a beer he never paid for, then leave half of it.  And I don’t mind tellin’ you, we didn’t take too kindly to it.  A lot of folks who come in here are people who maybe had reason to know him -- he’d show up, and sure enough, ten minutes later, the place would be pretty much cleared out.”

“Did you see him that night -- the night he was killed?”

The barkeeper shook his head.  “Nope.  Don’t mean he wasn’t at some other place around town, but he wasn’t here.”

The private investigator sighed.  “Was Jason drunk that night?”

“Jason is drunk pretty much every night,” Billy replied.  “I wish it wasn’t so, but I ain’t his keeper, and that’s the way he chooses to live his life.”

“How drunk is drunk?” Joe probed.

“He takes his rum neat,” the barkeeper said.  “Six, seven shots a night wouldn’t be unusual for him.  He eats, he works, and he drinks his rum.  Then he goes out back, to his box, and goes to bed.”

“Did he have six or seven shots of rum that night?”

“Matter of fact, he had seven,” Billy confirmed.  “Poured ’em out for him myself, like I did every night.  Said he was gonna be workin’ on a new boat the next mornin’ and he needed to get a good night’s sleep.”

“And after drinking seven shots of rum, how would you describe his demeanor?”

Billy thought about that for a moment.  “That night wasn’t no different from any other night,” he said finally.  “He wasn’t no different.  And he went out under his own steam.”

“What time would you say he left?”

“Sunday nights, we close up at eleven.   So it was maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes after that.”

Joe looked around.  “Do people use the back door much to come and go?” he asked, hoping, although no one had yet come forward, that there might have been a witness to what had happened in the alley that night.

Billy frowned at the question.  “Nope,” he replied.  “Other than me, sometimes, Jason’s the only one who’s got cause to go out back.”

“Okay then,” Joe pressed, “when he left here that night, did he look like he maybe had a chip on his shoulder about something, or was looking to start something with someone?”

“If you’re askin’ whether he said anythin’ about havin’ it in for anyone, or if he was havin’ trouble with anyone, the answer is, Jason don’t share much about himself.  But if you’re askin’ how he was that night, I can tell you this -- when he left here, he wasn’t lookin’ to get into anythin’ but his own bed.  Whatever happened after that, if you want my opinion,” the barkeeper said, “that cop probably got exactly what he deserved.”

“Thanks for your time,” Joe said, dropping a bill on the bar for the beer, but Billy shook his head and pushed it right back.

“Just help Jason,” he said.

With the barkeeper’s permission, Joe let himself out the back door and stood in the middle of the alley, halfway between the bar and the stone wall where Jason’s box had been wedged, looking first up toward the business district, and then down at the docks that were practically within hailing distance.  He wondered what had happened that night when Jason Lightfoot had come out of the bar and met up with Dale Scott.  What had started the fight?  Why had it escalated into a shooting?  All the questions he had once asked himself as a police officer working a crime he was asking again, but now from the other side of the fence.

The private investigator scratched thoughtfully at his busted left ear because one more question had just occurred to him that had little, if anything, to do with Jason Lightfoot.  If Dale Scott no longer laid in wait for Billy Fugate’s customers, as the barkeeper claimed, and Joe had good reason to believe since he knew that patrolling for drunks wasn’t part of a detective’s job description, and if he hadn’t been a customer at The Last Call -- then what had he been doing in the back alley on that Sunday night in February?

It was a little after six o’clock, and there were at least half a dozen other bars at this end of Broad Street.  Joe pulled out his cell phone and called Beth.

. . .

“Over here,” Arnie Stiversen shouted over the crowd