Agent Devereaux gestured to Ryan for Jennings’s file. Ryan slid it down the length of the table to Devereaux, who thumbed through it while Ryan continued his questioning.
“The law doesn’t require that you know, only that the victim be under the age of seventeen when you had sex with her.”
“The victim? She was putting out for a bunch of guys at a frat party the next weekend-I saw her!”
Ryan shrugged. “You’re required to register with the police department when you move into town. You didn’t do that, Gary.”
“Yeah, and have my photo plastered across the newspaper again with ‘sex offender’ in big print. I’m branded a sex offender for life and she’s married to a doctor.”
“Why didn’t you register?”
“Because I didn’t want my wife to find out. I wanted a clean start.” Tears welled up in Jennings’s eyes. “I just got drunk at a frat party. I was five days too old for her.”
An exception to the Texas statutory rape statute states that if the defendant is less than three years older than the victim, there is no crime. Jennings was nineteen years, ten months, and twenty-seven days old at the time of the sexual act; the girl was sixteen years, ten months, and twenty-two days old. Five days difference made him a sex offender for life.
“You’re not a child molester?”
“No!”
Ryan reached over to the file and removed the plastic-wrapped picture of the naked adolescent female found in Jennings’s truck. He pushed it in front of Jennings.
“Well, son, why do you look at pictures like this?”
Jennings glanced at the picture and recoiled.
“I’ve never seen that picture before!”
“It was in your truck, under the floor mat.”
“In my truck?”
“Yes, son, in your truck. Possession of child pornography is a federal crime, Gary-that picture alone can put you in prison for most of your adult life.”
“I don’t know how it got in my truck.”
“Well, what about her jersey? How’d that get in your truck?”
“What jersey?”
“Gracie’s soccer jersey. It was in the back of your truck, under the bed cover.”
“Her jersey was in my truck?”
“Yes.”
“This has gotta be a joke, a big mistake!”
“What about the nine phone calls you made to Gracie last week, are those a big mistake?”
“I never called her!”
“We traced the calls to your cell phone.”
“ My cell phone? I don’t know… I leave the phone in my truck. I never lock it.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no crime out here, just like the mayor says! Do you lock your car? Maybe someone used my cell phone while I was at work.”
“Oh, okay, someone’s framing you?”
“Yes!”
Ryan leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and studied Gary Jennings. Twenty-eight years old with a boyish face and frame, he didn’t look like your typical sexual predator; in fact, he looked like Ryan’s son-in-law, a proctologist in Dallas. And most predators weren’t nearly so convincing in their claims of innocence-the boy was good. But he had made a prior trip through the system, so he knew to deny, deny, deny; juries liked that when they listened to the interrogation tape. Ryan decided to ratchet up the pressure, give the boy something to think about.
“Okay, Gary, let’s summarize your defense for the jury: a sexual predator premeditates his abduction of Gracie weeks in advance. He searches the state’s sex offender database and finds you, a convicted sex offender who just happens to fit his description to a T, who just happens to live three miles from the park, and who just happens to work for Gracie’s father. Then, during the week prior to the abduction, he goes to your place of employment, finds your truck unlocked, plants child pornography in it and uses your cell phone to place nine calls to Gracie. Then, after he abducts Gracie and rapes her and kills her in the woods behind the park, he dumps her body and drives over to your apartment and tosses her jersey in your truck to frame you.” Ryan turned his hands up. “Gary, you’re a smart fella. Do you really expect a jury of adults to believe that?”
Jennings was shaking his head slowly, as if in disbelief. “No… I mean, yes! I guess he could’ve done that, I don’t know. But I didn’t do it!”
“Gary, who’s the jury gonna believe when Gracie’s coach takes the stand and points his finger at you”-which Ryan was now doing-“and says, ‘He’s the man that took Gracie’?”
“I didn’t take her!”
“Okay, Gary. One last question: what else are we gonna find in your truck? FBI’s best people are examining every square inch of that vehicle-are they gonna find Gracie’s fingerprints, her hair, her blood?”
“No! She’s never been in my truck!”
Ryan stood and walked to the door, then turned back to deliver the clincher that would surely have this boy making a tearful confession later today.
“I hope you’re right, son, ’cause if they find her DNA in your truck, that puts her in your vehicle and you on death row.”
Ben had arrived while Agent Devereaux and Chief Ryan were interrogating the suspect. The boy’s face seemed familiar. After a moment, Ben placed him: he was the young man with the pregnant wife who had come up to John at the candlelight vigil Sunday night and offered his sympathy. Ben was standing at the window to the interrogation room when Devereaux and Ryan emerged.
“Drunken sex?” Agent Devereaux said to the chief. “That’s his only prior offense? He and a girl get drunk at a frat party, have sex, she regrets it the next morning and files charges? Jennings pleads out because he’s nineteen and she’s one month from legal and gets probation? That makes him a sexual predator?”
Chief Ryan shrugged. “No defense to stat rape. Besides, he pleaded guilty.”
“To indecency with a child, Paul, so he didn’t spend the next twenty years in prison! This boy hasn’t had a speeding ticket in eight years, all of a sudden he decides to abduct and kill a child?”
Ben stepped forward. “He doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not a loner deviant. He’s married, his wife’s pregnant, he’s about to make a lot of money. No bad news in this boy’s life to trigger the abduction, like your profiler said.” Ben held up the flier with the composite sketch of the suspect that had been distributed to the media immediately after the abduction. “He doesn’t look anything like this guy. And the coach put the abductor at six foot, two hundred pounds. What’s this boy, five-ten, one-fifty?”
“He probably looked taller in the black cap,” Chief Ryan said. “Look, Colonel, we got the bad guy, okay? The coach identified him, he had child porn and Gracie’s jersey in his truck, and he called Gracie nine times last week.” He threw his hands up. “What more do you want?”
“The truth.”
“Sorry. The law only gives you a conviction.”
“We’ve got to follow the book or a federal judge will overturn a death penalty.”
Not an hour after the Jennings interrogation, the local mayor and police chief had stood on the front steps of the town hall and proclaimed Gary Jennings guilty of the abduction and murder of Gracie Ann Brice. The locals were always desperate to close a child abduction case-bad for property values; but FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux
