Privileged to Kill Read Online Free PDF

so.
    I sat down directly across the table from him. Sheriff Holman remained standing near the door, beside the hulking, red-haired Deputy Bishop. “Mr. Crocker, I think you know everyone in the room except Detective Reyes-Guzman.” Estelle sat to my right, at the end of the table. She regarded Crocker without expression.
    “Yes, sir.” He turned his head and nodded at Estelle. “Good evening, ma’am.” He might as well have been talking to stone.
    “Mr. Crocker, do you know why you’re here?”
    “Yes, sir, I do.”
    “Are you willing to talk to us without counsel?” He nodded. “I need an audible answer for the tape recorder, Mr. Crocker.”
    He looked up quickly, as if he were alarmed at committing such an indiscretion. “Of course I’ll talk with you, sir. Whatever you need to know.”
    “Would you state your full name?”
    “Wesley Albert Crocker, Junior.”
    I fingered the worn Social Security card and the faded military identification card that Pasquale had taken from Crocker’s wallet when he’d arrested him.
    “How old are you, Mr. Crocker?”
    “I’m fifty-one.”
    “Do you have a permanent address?”
    “No, sir, I don’t. I kind of use a sister’s address when there’s a need, but otherwise, no.”
    “Where’s your sister live now?”
    “Anaheim, California.”
    “Yesterday afternoon, I picked you up on State 17 just west of town and then dropped you off in the vicinity of the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant.” Crocker nodded. “What did you do then?”
    “I went and had me something to eat, is what I did.”
    “You just ate and that’s all?”
    He hesitated. “Well, no. It was early yet, and the young lady…”
    “The hostess?”
    “Yes. She said I was free to take up a booth just as long as I wanted. So seeing as it was early yet, I just sat right there and watched the weather go by.”
    “You remained in the restaurant for some two or three hours?” Holman asked. “Just staring out the window?”
    “Well, sir,” Wesley Crocker said, “I got to admit that I imposed a little on this good man’s generosity. I had me another plateful, not too long before you two gentlemen arrived at the restaurant.”
    “So you left the restaurant shortly after six?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Where did you go?”
    Crocker frowned at the table. I watched his hands, watched as his right index finger traced and retraced an imperfection in the oak grain. “I walked up the main street, there. I forget the name. The waitress had said that I might try the park as a place to camp out, that probably nobody would bother me there. That’s the park you mentioned, good sir,” he said, glancing up at me. “So I did just that. I walked until I saw the old tank, just like you said, and the two cannons.”
    “And you were going to camp there?”
    “Well, I thought I might give it a look. I found me a spot to sit for a bit, so I could look at that old tank and wonder about how old Black Jack Pershing ever thought he was going to catch Pancho Villa using something that slow and noisy.” He grinned. “I wished the village had put one of those airplanes he used. I would have liked to have seen that. But I guess they wouldn’t weather so well, the canvas covering and all.”
    “How long did you stay there?”
    He turned his head slightly, apologetic. “It was pretty much after dark, but I don’t tend to keep track of such things, you know.” He shrugged. “I got my health still, and the good Lord has seen fit to let me go my own way, so I don’t bother much with keeping up with the time. It just passes as it passes.”
    Estelle hadn’t moved a muscle during the conversation. She still regarded Crocker expressionlessly, her deep, black eyes studying his whiskered, ruddy face. I would have liked to have known what she was thinking, but I would find out in due time.
    “You decided not to spend the night in the park?”
    He nodded. “It just seemed kind of open, you know. Like bedding down on