Evidence - C. M. Albrecht (the best books of all time TXT) 📗

a sheep, you don’t be runnin’ with no wolves.”
“I don’t know man. I thought I heard something.” After a moment, Leon added: “You make that up—about the running with the wolves?”
Artis ignored this and they continued up the stairs. “Ninety-nine percent of the time these rich people they hide the good shit up in their bedroom,” Artis whispered. He snickered. “They think people don’t know that.”
They headed past other rooms toward the front of the house where a faint light glowed around the slightly open door.
Artis nudged Leon, “I think that’s just the night light we saw,” he whispered. “But we’ll make sure.”
With Leon right behind him, Artis stepped very softly across the thick carpeting to the doors. The door was open inward barely half an inch, just enough for Artis to put one eye to it. Seeing nothing, he pressed his hand against the door. At that very instant a violent grunt and a heavy thunk froze his hand on the door. A meteoric trail of blood shot past his line of vision spattering against the ceiling, this followed by a heavy sickening thud. Another grunt, and more blood shot past his line of vision. After what seemed to him an eternity, he licked his lips and swallowed hard. He managed a shaky step backward bumping hard into Leon. Suddenly alive again, he spun about and jabbed hard at Leon, pushing violently. “Go man! Go!”
With Leon at his heels, Artis ran in total panic back down the hall. They hit the main floor and as they ran through the pantry, the bag slipped from beneath Leon’s jacket. The bag fell between his feet throwing him roughly to his knees on the tile floor. He got back to his feet, moaning slightly as he furiously snatched up the bag and continued after Artis who had already exited the home.
Moments later the boys were back in the pickup, breathing hard and throwing quick glances behind them. Artis gunned the engine and the pickup shot back down the driveway and into the street. As they hit the street, the upstairs window opened and a shadow nearly blocked the window completely.
Inside the pickup, Leon leaned forward rubbing his tender knees. He threw another quick nervous glance back at the house and then turned to Artis. “Man, what happened? What did you see there, man? Man, what did you see?”
“Man, you don’t even want to know,” Artis told him. “Man—I never see nothing like that in my life before.” He steered recklessly toward Folsom Boulevard now. He kept pulling his upper lip in and biting it. “That’s a fucking madhouse up in there, you know what I’m saying, man? I don’t know what’s goin’ on up in that bedroom. I mean I never saw so much blood in my life, I—”
Leon’s eyes widened. “Blood?”
“That’s what I said. Blood. Oh man, it been flying all over that place. Man…” He fell silent, his mind confused by what he had seen.
“Oh man,” Leon said. “Oh man,” he repeated. “Oh my God, Artis, we can’t be mixed up in any murders.” They rode in silence for a moment as they barreled west down Folsom while Leon allowed this information to soak in. Suddenly he had another chilling thought. “You don’t think anybody saw us, do you?”
Artis drove without responding.
“Artis?”
“No. I don’t think so.” Artis continued driving. He wet his lips, frowning. Suddenly he spoke again, more loudly: “Fuck no, man. Nobody saw us. And you didn’t see nothing either, man. Just remember that—and you keep your fat mouth shut. We were never there, Leon. Remember that. We don’t know nothing, and we sure don’t want to get messed up in no white people’s troubles. I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t want to know. Next thing they be setting us up to go to San Quentin or something—unless you’re a personal friend of Johnnie Cochran.”
“Johnnie Cochran? Get out! You know I don’t know him.”
“Well, I rest my case. You keep your fat mouth shut, hear?”
The pickup turned south into Franklin and disappeared into the night.


Chapter 2

Clouds had drifted in over Sacramento by late Monday morning, and the darkening sky threatened rain as an older brown Dodge sedan turned into the driveway of the Colonial home and pulled to the rear.
Smiling placidly, Rosario Archuleta laboriously worked her way out of the car and then opened the rear door of her vehicle and began rummaging around in the back seat. After a few moments she straightened, puffing slightly, with her handbag, a full shopping bag, and her keys. With one well-padded hip, Rosario nudged the car door closed and then she turned and slowly mounted the five steps to the back door, softly singing, “¿Quién no sabe en esta vida, la traición tan conocida…”
Rosario Archuleta was a solidly built woman of fifty. “Ay,” she thought, “I wish I could ever learn the English. But anyway, the Dainsburys like my work and they know they can trust me.” She smiled more broadly. “Especially in the kitchen.”
As she mounted the steps, Rosario fumbled awkwardly for the right key. She continued to sing, “…que nos deja un mal...a -a…” Her singing dribbled to a stop and the little smile faded from her lips as she saw the forced rear mud room door. She hesitated, looked about her nervously, and then went ahead and nudged the door open. Almost without looking, she laid her belongings on the table beside the sink in the mud room, and pushed on into the kitchen.
“Mrs. Dainsbury? You still home?” Rosario almost unconsciously grasped a rolling pin from a decorative bin by the end of the granite island and moved slowly toward the front of the house. For a brief moment she thought of calling the police, but in her experience, calling the police could be tantamount to announcing her presence to la migra. No, calling the police would be only a very last resort. At every third step, she murmured softly, “Mrs. Dainsbury? Allo? Somebody eess here? Mrs. Dainsbury…?”
Arriving at the foot of the staircase, Rosario hesitated, but seeing nothing really out of place, she slowly ascended the stairs, holding the rolling pin ready, as she would later tell her friends, por si acaso—just in case.
As she neared the top of the stairs, Rosario murmured softly to herself. She paused at the top and looked uncertain. The double doors to the master bedroom at the front of the house were closed.
The Dainsburys never slept this late. They were always up and gone by the time Rosario arrived for work. Still, with Dr. Dainsbury out of town, perhaps Mrs. Dainsbury had decided to…
Holding her rolling pin ready, Rosario moved hesitantly, almost on tiptoe, toward the double doors and tapped gently. “Mrs. Dainsbury? You in there? Somebody? Allo…” She tapped again. Harder.
After an agonizing pause, Rosario took a deep breath. She slowly opened the door a crack and peeped inside. She gasped and almost in a state of hypnosis, threw the door completely open and then stood frozen as her mind tried to assimilate the scene of horror that lay before her.
She stared at a bloodbath. A huge black pool of dried blood spread obscenely out across the pale carpet beside the bed. Dark stains mottled the pearl satin coverlet of the bed and, as she stood in horror, too dumbstruck to move, Rosario’s dark eyes absorbed still more details. Dark splashes of blood stained the walls, dark foreboding spatters marred the ceiling, ay…sangre... The housekeeper saw only blood. Blood every place she looked. The luxurious bedroom suite, normally a serene retreat decorated in colors of soft pastel, had been turned into a virtual slaughterhouse. A murder scene.
Suddenly, as if rudely awakened from a nightmare, Rosario came to life and threw the pin into the air screaming, “¡Ay, Dios mío!” She turned on her heel and ran awkwardly to the stairs.
The first officers to arrive found Rosario dazed and confused, seated at the foot of the stairs; incoherent in her limited English. They cordoned off the premises while they waited for crime scene investigators to arrive, and tried to make sense of what Rosario was telling them.


In Curtis Park, only a few miles southwest of the Dainsbury home, clouds continued to threaten rain. Police vehicles surrounded a two-story Tudor brick home. Medics wheeled out a gurney bearing a body bag that contained the remains of the late Wilson Sharp, owner of Sharp Cadillacs in Downtown Sacramento. “You want to look sharp, come see Sharp”.
In the paneled living room of the Sharp home, homicide detective Steve Music and his partner Kanietha Gertz, sat on a flowered couch opposite a large walnut fireplace across from Wilson Sharp’s wife, Allison.
Allison Sharp, although just past fifty, was still an attractive blonde woman who obviously took care of her body as well as her appearance. Her nose was perhaps a bit too wide and long and her jaw a tad too square, but Music imagined that twenty-five years ago Allison Sharp could turn a lot of heads, especially considering the figure she still had today. She sat in a wing chair by the couch and dabbed at scarcely noticeable tears. She looked at the two detectives and, in a very soft voice, expressed the need to go to the restroom.
The detectives’ eyes followed the grieving widow until she disappeared into the hall where criminalists came and went as they attempted to document the murder scene.
The detectives looked around the room with its textured walls, oil paintings and other expensive-looking furnishings. They looked at each other.
Gertz, a slender—she called it skinny—black woman of thirty, said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think I am,” Music replied. Then lowering his voice, “You and I have both been through enough grief to know the real thing when we see it.” He flexed his wide shoulders and looked again at his notebook.
“Yes, and that’s what I’m thinking,” Gertz said. “But it looks like she has a pretty solid alibi. Left the house at eight-thirty this morning with her sister. Went to a salon.”
“Of course, just because she may not be devastated by the loss of her husband, that doesn’t mean she killed the man,” Music said. His jaws moved gently. “We’ll see.” He jotted again in his notebook.
Gertz cleared her throat to warn Music as Allison Sharp swayed back into the room. Sharp’s widow sat down in her chair by the detectives, dabbing again at her eyes.
“I’m sorry to keep bothering you with questions, Mrs. Sharp,” Music said, “especially so soon after—but our job requires that we dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s. You understand that.”
A uniformed officer appeared in the hall opening. He beckoned and Gertz jumped to her feet and went over to him.
While they spoke, Music continued glancing from his notes to Mrs. Sharp, as if something were troubling him. Before the first officer finished speaking, another, at the entrance to the dining room, caught Music’s eye and beckoned the detective toward him. Music sighed and rose