“Why?”
He looked right at Jana, again as rehearsed. “Because his wife, Jana Waters, hired me to kill him.”
“Did she pay you money to kill her husband, Mr. Pike?”
“Yes, she did.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars.”
“Mr. Pike, do you see Ms. Waters in this courtroom?”
“Yes, I do.” He pointed right at Jana. “She’s sitting at that table there next to the guy that’s always smiling on all the billboards.”
Snickers erupted from the gallery, and Judge Conrad banged his gavel. “Quiet!”
“Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant,” Shay said. Then she looked at the jury. “Mr. Pike, where did you meet Ms. Waters?”
Pike kept his eyes on Jana. “At the bar at Fire by the Lake.”
“And tell the jury about that first encounter.”
He turned in his chair and focused on the jurors. “She was drinking vodka and soda. I ordered a beer. When I finished mine, she asked if I wanted another, and I said yes. We had several rounds together, and she told me that she was drowning her sorrows. That her husband was going to leave her. That he was having an affair.”
“Then what happened.”
“Well, one thing led to another, and we left the bar together. I asked her if she wanted to go back to my hotel room. I was only in town for a few days to do some siding work on a construction job. She said no but asked if I wanted to sit in her car and have another drink. By that time of night, the place was closing up. The streetlights were off, and there were hardly any cars in the parking lot.”
“Then what happened?”
“She pushed the seats back and . . . well . . .”
“Well what?”
“We had sex.”
“In the car in the parking lot of Fire by the Lake?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, looking at Jana. If she was embarrassed by the testimony, she didn’t look it.
“Then what happened?”
“She said she wanted to see me again, so we met at her house the next day. She hired me to do some patch work on the roof of their boathouse.”
“And did the . . . personal . . . side of your relationship continue?”
“Oh yeah,” Waylon said. “Pretty much every time I came out to Buck Island, we got together.”
“And by that you mean you had sexual relations with the defendant?”
“That’s right.”
“Who was married to Dr. Braxton Waters.”
“Correct.”
“When did you meet Dr. Waters?”
“That first time I came out there, he showed me the spots on the boathouse that needed repairing.”
“Was he friendly to you?”
“Yes, he was. He was always friendly to me.”
Shay let that sink in for a few seconds. Then she changed gears. “Did Ms. Waters ever say she wanted you to kill her husband?”
“Yes.”
“When was the first time she mentioned that?”
“She was always bringing that up, but the first time she said anything was at Fire by the Lake.”
“How did she bring it up?”
“It was after we had . . . you know . . . when we were in the car after the act. She said she wished she could get rid of her husband so she could have more time for the kind of fun we’d just had.”
“Did you think she was serious?”
Waylon cocked his head. “With Jana, it was hard to tell sometimes whether she was joking or being straight up. At that point, to be honest, I wasn’t sure.”
“Was there ever a time when you did become sure?”
“Yes. A week before the Fourth, she dropped by Mr. Burns’s house, where I was working.”
“And you’re referring to Mr. Jackson Burns, the Waterses’ next-door neighbor on Buck Island.”
“That’s right. It was the middle of the day, and I was doing some work on Burns’s boat. Jana brought over a six-pack of beer and some sandwiches she’d made. We ate and then we had sex.”
“Where?”
“In the boat.”
“Then what happened?”
“When we were done, she asked me if I’d do something for her.”
“‘Anything,’ I told her. She said that Dr. Waters was about to file for divorce. She said she couldn’t have that, and it was time to follow through with what we’d been talking about.”
“And what was that?”