The clinical, objective way Vincent was describing everything was starting to disturb me.
I had some ideas about where to take this conversation, but I needed to cover the proverbial bases first.
“Did you notice anything missing?”
“No.”
“What was your wife’s state of mind? Had you argued earlier? Anything like that?”
“No, she was fine. Like I said.”
“How is your marriage, Mr. Hayes?”
“Our marriage?”
“Were you having any problems? Any other romantic relationships either of you were engaged in outside of-”
“No!”
“Mr. Hayes, is there anyone who might wish to harm either you or Colleen?”
“No. No one.”
A knock at the door. I answered it and Holdren handed me the coffee for Hayes, then disappeared into the hallway again. I slid the burnt-bean-flavored water to him. His wrists were cuffed, so he lifted the foam cup with both hands as he drank.
“What did you do when you found the blood? Did you call 911?”
He shook his head. “Like I told you before, there was a note there by the phone. I called the number and a man answered. He told me to go to a bar, get the black guy.”
“And did he specify which bar?”
“New Territories. I was supposed to try there first. Find a guy, someone in his twenties, drug him, then drop him off naked and handcuffed in the alley at 924 North Twenty-fifth Street.”
“Did you recognize the voice of the man on the phone?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“And 911, why didn’t you call it then?”
“He said no cops.” Hayes’s tone made it clear he was getting more impatient. He set down his cup. “I explained all this before.”
It didn’t bother me that he was getting upset. The more you rattle someone, the more the truth comes out. When people get angry, they stop waffling and hiding things from you and start saying what’s really on their minds.
Okay, enough with the stock questions.
“Where did you get the pills?”
“What?”
“The pills you gave Lionel Shannon. Where did you get them?”
“He left them for me. The guy on the phone did.”
“Where?”
“Two pills. In a kitchen drawer, wrapped in tinfoil.”
I jotted this down, more for show than anything. My memory is pretty good, besides, I always verify everything later from the written transcript of the interviews. “Earlier you told the officers who were driving you here that you gave Lionel a drug called Propotol. How did you know the type of drug if the offender provided the pills for you?”
“He told me.”
“On the phone?”
“Yes.”
I watched him closely to gauge his reaction to my next question. “Mr. Hayes, do you own a pair of handcuffs?”
A pause. “Yeah. My wife and I, well…we’re into…Anyway, yeah, I used those. He told me to go to the bar and-”
I set down my pen. “Vincent, you live less than fifteen minutes from New Territories-probably closer to a ten-minute drive at that time of night-but we know from talking with the bartender that you didn’t arrive there until after eleven o’clock.”
“I guess so.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“You just told me you got to your house a little after ten. If your wife’s life was in danger, why did you wait nearly forty-five minutes before driving to the bar?”
A switch seemed to go off inside him. Finally, there was passion in his voice again. “You have to believe me! I went as soon as I could!”
“Then what did you do in the meantime?”
“I took the backseats out of my minivan and then drove to the bar. I sat there for a while, trying to get up enough nerve to go in. To actually do it.”
It was possible, but it seemed like a stretch. My suspicions were teeter-tottering back and forth.
I couldn’t think of a good reason.
Vincent must have sensed my reluctance to buy at face value everything he was telling me. “Listen, he’s going to kill her, I know he is!” He tugged violently at his shackles, snapping the chains tight. “You have to get out there. You’re wasting time talking to me!”
“We have good people looking for Colleen as we speak, I guarantee you. But the more you can tell me right now about what happened, the better our chances are of finding her quickly.” I said “quickly” rather than “alive” because part of me feared it might already be too late for that.
Once again, I asked him to recount the telephone conversation as closely as he could, and he did, but there was nothing new, nothing contradictory, nothing he hadn’t already told me. “Mr. Hayes, think carefully. Is there anything else-anything at all-that might help us find Colleen?”
He massaged his forehead roughly with two fingers and a thumb as if he were trying to squeeze out information. “No. Just believe me. You have to find her.”
“We will.” I hit the STOP button on the recorder and put it in my pocket. I wasn’t sure what to think, not anymore. There were enough red flags in his story to keep me guessing, but there was also enough consistency to make it believable. “Until we know more, we have to keep you in custody. I think you know that.”
He nodded silently.
“I’ll send an officer to take you to your cell.”
You never leave anything in the hands of an unsupervised person in custody, so I took the empty coffee cup from Hayes, left the interrogation room, and went to meet with Lieutenant Thorne to fill him in on what we knew.
5
After briefing the lieutenant, I told him, “Here’s what we need to do: look for a small piece of tinfoil on the floor of the van. Vincent didn’t have it on him when we caught him, and I can’t imagine that after he drugged Lionel he took the time to find a trash can and throw out the foil. Have the guys sweep Hayes’s house and the bar.”
Thorne was a broad, densely muscled man with simian arms. He didn’t speak at first, but his eyes did. Inquisitive. Calm. Confident. “You’re thinking there might be prints on the foil? Or no foil at all?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll check the trash cans too.”
“Good. Also, dust the handcuffs that were on Lionel. Hayes told me they were his, but we need to find out if there are any prints on them besides his and his wife’s.”
“Vincent might be lying about the whole thing.”
“It’s possible. Think about it-if you were the abductor and left the pills behind, wouldn’t you have also left the cuffs? If your primary demand required a pair? So either the killer knew Vincent had his own set-”
