All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (31 page)

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On the one side, I had the feds trying to ram murder charges down Junior's throat and on the other side, I had Brenda Newling, who was just as eager to see him in jail. I'm not a squeamish man. I'd been sheriff for twenty-two years, and dealt with more than a few rapes, but I didn't relish having a woman sit in my office and say the word “rape” twenty times in ten minutes.

I made the mistake of suggesting that the girl was willing.

“She is barely fourteen years old and he raped her,” Mrs. Newling said.

“The problem is we don't have much in the way of evidence for a rape charge. Indecent exposure might stick, since we've got you as a witness.”

“The prosecutor says that the evidence from the office and Wavy's clothes is enough.”

Make that the feds, Mrs. Newling, and the county prosecutor breathing down my neck, plus a mess of evidence from the two scenes.

At the farmhouse: Liam Quinn's blood in the hallway and bathroom. Four bullets, two through his chest while he stood in the hallway, and two through his back while he crawled away. Valerie Quinn's blood in the kitchen. One bullet above her right ear. Entry wound with contact powder burns around it. Exit wound the whole left side of her head. What looked like a suicide note on the kitchen table.

 

Liam, I'm done letting you make me miserable. I hope you're happy with your whores, but you're never going to fuck me again. Val.

 

At the garage: blood on the floor and the workbench belonged to Roger Betsworth, from his accident. The smudge of blood on the windowsill of the office belonged to Valerie Quinn. Her son transferred it from his hand, left his fingerprints behind. Left them all over the gun, too, which was covered in Valerie Quinn's blood.

Inside the office: Wavy Quinn's blood on the desk blotter and some under Junior's fingernails on his left hand. Also on the desk blotter: semen. Junior's. More of the same in Wavy Quinn's underpants, retrieved from a hamper at Junior's house.

On Junior's right hand: gunshot residue.

Valerie Quinn had GSR on her elbow and shoulder, but none on her hands. Her fingerprints were on the gun, but so were Liam Quinn's. His were also on the five shell casings ejected from the gun and nine of the bullets left in the magazine.

On the other round in the magazine: Junior's thumbprint.

Valerie Quinn didn't shoot herself in the head holding the gun with her elbow, so some unknown party staged it to look like a murder/suicide.

Who was the unknown party? Junior? His print on that one bullet and GSR on his hand. He had an answer for both. He and Quinn went target shooting together and they both had nine millimeters. Assuming the gun at the garage was Quinn's, Junior's was in his kitchen drawer. Recently fired, he claimed, at a possum. Two of the bullets in that gun had Liam Quinn's fingerprints on them. The gun also had Wavy and Donal Quinn's fingerprints on it.

Toward the end of summer, when we hadn't had rain in weeks, a farmer over in Belton County found Liam Quinn's Harley Davidson submerged in an irrigation pond. It'd likely been there since the day of the murders, but it wasn't until the water level dropped that the bike was visible. If that was the motorcycle the neighbor heard, who was riding it?

Not Junior, who was fooling around with the Quinn girl in his office when the motorcycle was ditched. I put it to him that he could have killed the Quinns and had time to get back to the garage.

“That don't even make sense,” Junior said. “It's not like Wavy's aunt is gonna let us get married.”

“All I have is your word that Valerie Quinn was okay with you marrying the girl. And I got these two gals, Ricki and Dee, say Mrs. Quinn didn't like you at all. The feds figure their testimony establishes motive for you killing her. And those gals are real eager to cut a deal.”

“First of all, Lyle Broadus says I only needed Liam's signature. I didn't need Val to sign nothin'. And second, Val didn't like me, but she didn't give a shit about Wavy, neither. She woulda let me do anything I wanted.”

“So, you were having sex with her while the Quinns were murdered?”

“No, sir. I wasn't lying. We didn't have sex.” That was what Junior said, but he covered his face with his hands when he did.

“I'm looking at the report, son. I got blood. I got semen. On the desk. In the girl's underpants. Prosecutor says that's enough to prove vaginal penetration and ejaculation. Sounds like you had sex to me. And the girl won't talk to us.”

“Will you let me write her a letter? Let her know it's okay to tell you what happened?”

I figured that couldn't hurt, so I got him pen and paper.

Dear Wavy,

I'm really sorry about your mama. I know you must be pretty sad, but I was glad to hear they found Donal alright. I hope you're taking care of each other. I'm sorry your birthday didn't turn out better.

You know I love you, right? I love you all the way, so I don't want you to be scared, whatever you hear. Probably I'll be in jail for a while, but you don't need to worry. I can take care of myself.

It's okay for you to tell the cops what happened on your birthday. I know it won't be easy for you to talk to them, but maybe you could write it down. You can trust Sheriff Grant, he's a good guy. Go ahead and tell him what happened, answer his questions.

I love you and I miss you a lot.

 

Kellen

It was a nice letter. You could tell he was concerned about her, and he wasn't coaching her on what to say.

When Mrs. Newling came in the next day, I let her read it.

“I'm not going to pass her love letters from that pedophile,” she said.

“I don't see how it's a love letter, just because the man tells her he loves her.”

“He raped her. I'm not giving her a letter from him that says, ‘I love you all the way.'”

“You may not like it, but this situation is different than if he was a stranger. I need the girl to tell me what happened and, if this letter will help me get that, I want her to read it.”

“No. I will not let the man who murdered my sister send her daughter letters.”

“You can't have it both ways, ma'am. He can't be up at the house with a gun at the same time he's fooling around with your niece at the garage.” I took the note back from her, before she could tear it up.

“The FBI says he had more than enough time to get back to the garage, with time to spare to assault my niece.”

“That's why I need her to tell me how long they were at the garage fooling around.”

“Stop saying that! They were not
fooling around
. He
raped
her.”

Mrs. Newling was like a terrier. In my office every day until I asked her who in Hell was taking care of her kids. It was like putting a match to gasoline. She pounded her fist on my desk and screamed at me.

“How dare you accuse me of neglecting my children? I am trying to make sure that my niece gets justice—that my sister gets justice!”

“Then make that girl talk. And then get her out of this dog and pony show. The longer you keep her here, the more likely it is some reporter'll put her all over the front page. Is that what you want?”

Finally, I'd found something to make her listen to me. By the end of the week, she brought the girl into the station to give a deposition. In all my years as sheriff, I had a few occasions when I skirted around official police procedure. One of those occasions was the minute I spent in my office with the Quinn girl before she gave her deposition. For all I knew, she'd get in there and not say a word, and I didn't want that, so I got her away from her aunt and laid it out for her.

“Miss Quinn, is that your engagement ring? Junior Barfoot gave that to you?”

She nodded, all serious and distrustful. My wife said how cute she was, but I thought she was downright spooky. She had old eyes. Knowing eyes. Wasn't hard to see how Junior had got himself in that situation. She looked fragile as a doll, but she wasn't.

“Now, the county prosecutor, the red-haired guy in the suit? He'd like to send Junior to prison for a long time. I don't think you want that. The thing is, you're his alibi. Do you know what that means?”

She nodded, but she wasn't any closer to trusting me.

“You're the only one who knows whether Junior left the garage that afternoon. If he was with you all afternoon, you need to tell the prosecutor that.”

I'd run out of time; her aunt was coming toward my office. Years on, I don't know how to feel about what I told her. I don't believe Junior had a thing to do with the murders, but I'm not sure what effect my advice had on the girl's statement.

 

8

COURT REPORTER

I've recorded a few rape depositions, but Wavonna Lee Quinn's was the strangest one I've ever done.

She was an alibi witness for a guy who was suspected of murder, but he was also charged with raping her. At the same time. Basically, his story was that at the time of the murder, he was having sex with her, so he couldn't have committed the murder.

When I found out she was just fourteen, I figured it was going to be brutal. The kind of deal that would haunt me. I wasn't too far wrong, because I still can't get it out of my head. She walked into the room and sat down, not nervous at all. A thin little blond girl with big eyes, wearing a white skirt, a green T-shirt, and heavy motorcycle boots. If it hadn't been for her breasts, I would have guessed she was even younger than fourteen, but she wore a tight shirt to show them off.

For depositions, most people start out pretty businesslike but clam up when they get to the difficult parts. She had to be prompted at first, to give her name and to tell things like dates and times and places. There was a lot of that, because she was providing an alibi.

Rape victims usually just say
he
, instead of the suspect's name.
He
did this. Then
he
did this. She called him by a nickname, even though the prosecutor kept trying to get her to say his legal name. Finally she looked at me and said, “Can you put in that Kellen is Jesse Joe Barfoot, Jr.?”

She spoke in this small, soft voice, and she had a strange way of talking. Sometimes she used big words she didn't know how to pronounce, and she inhaled and exhaled in odd places, not in between sentences, but in the middle of words.

She didn't sound upset, but even in statutory cases, the girls want to avoid details. She was happy to give them. Leaning back in her chair, she crossed her legs, swung her foot, and told the court everything.

“First we kissed. Kellen tastes like wintergreen. He kissed my mouth for a long time and then he kissed my neck. It tingled all down me. He lifted up my shirt. Slow. He slipped his hand under it and touched my tits. Held them in his hands. Rubbed his thumbs over my nipples. Kellen has beautiful hands. Big and strong. Rough from working in the garage.”

It was unsettling to listen to a little girl saying things like that and she enjoyed describing it.

It didn't get really bad until she started in with the graphic details. In police reports, often victims will be asked to describe their attacker's genitals and things like that, but in depositions, there's less of that, unless the defense or prosecution hinges on some identifying feature. Miss Quinn didn't even wait for the attorneys to ask her for details.

“He still has his foreskin. He was born at home and his mother didn't have him circumcised.” She stumbled on the word, inhaling in the middle of it, and looked at me. “Is that right? Circumcised?”

When I didn't answer, she went on. “My hand won't go all the way around his cock. Unless I squeeze hard. Kellen likes that.” She brought her hand up to demonstrate, fingers held in a semicircle. The girl's guardian put her head in her hands and cried. Quietly at first and then louder. Almost in response, the girl let the hand she'd held up drift to her breast. Just for a moment, maybe not even aware she'd done it.

“My pussy was very wet. I was sitting on his desk, my legs open. He pushed against me, not hard. Rubbing against me. Then he slid his cock into me. It hurt a little, but he went back and forth in me. Every stroke, his cock was rubbing against my clitoris.” She struggled with the word, said it three times to get it right. Or she said it three times to shock people. “That made it not hurt. It felt good.”

Her guardian sobbed so loudly that the prosecutor said, “Miss Quinn, would you like to take a break?”

“No.” That time there was no mistaking that she was trying to provoke a reaction. She moved her hand off the arm of the chair and pressed it between her thighs. “I wrapped my legs around him. Held on tight to him. He moved faster, going in and out of me. His cock was so hard, swollen up in me. I felt how close he was getting. I remember saying his name. Kellen. Like this: ‘Harder, Kellen. Fuck me harder, Kellen.'” That came out in little breathy pants. “He did. Right as my pussy clenched up on him, he exploded.”

I looked up at her, but I was the only one who did. The lawyers all had their heads bent over their legal pads, but none of them were taking notes. Why bother, when they could get a transcript of it from
Penthouse Letters
?

The girl sat back in her chair, smiling like an angel.

“Miss Quinn, would you please—” The prosecutor cleared his throat.

“He never raped me. I love him. I want to marry him.”

I hesitated with my fingers over the keys.

“Type it. That's part of my statement,” she said.

“Miss Quinn. Do you understand that this will be entered into the evidentiary record and legally, your signature indicates that you swear this account to be true?” the prosecutor said.