Chapter Twenty-Seven
It took to the end of the day, but I did get a text message back from Marv. “Do you have a laptop handy?”
“Yes,” I wrote back from a Home Depot parking lot, trying to stay out of sight. “My iPad.”
“Check your e-mail.”
I found a document there, from the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. I opened the attachment and ran my eyes over it like a starving man looking at a steak. There were names, addresses. All with plates beginning with ADJ-4.
Twelve of them.
Many were from towns I’d never heard of. Edgefield. Moncks Corner. I’d been in South Carolina only twice in my life. Once to Charleston, one of my favorite places, and once to Kiawah Island to play some golf with a bunch of doctor buddies.
“How did you get these?” I called Marv back.
“Does it matter? I know someone. There’s a hundred ways to obtain things like this today. How much do you think a state employee actually makes for a living? But I’m hoping you’re simply planning on handing these over to the police after you turn yourself in. I want to repeat, Henry, what you’re doing is crazy. I know it seems like you’re alone. I know you think this is your only option. But it’s not. I did what I said I’d do; now it’s up to you. All you’re going to do is get yourself killed.”
I thought for a second about walking into a police station with my hands in the air and handing them this list. My gut reaction was that the cops would never even stoop to pick it up off the floor.
“I want to thank you for all this, Marv. I mean it. I’ll be back with you when I know something.”
“My little speech didn’t exactly move the needle, did it?”
“I wish I could tell you why I can’t, Marv. But the needle’s already moved. It’s way too late to dial it back.”
We hung up and I opened the document again, running my eyes down the columns. Names from all over the state. Four of them were women. Grace Kittridge, in Manning. Sally Ann Jennings in Edgarfield. A Betty Smith. Moncks Corner. Just to narrow it, I chose to cross them off for the moment.
Two of the plates on the list had expired. One in the past year and the other in ’06. Maybe they were just never turned in. Which didn’t really matter. They could have been stolen. Just like mine. Hell, for all I knew, the blue car I was searching might be stolen too.
Still, the remote chance that one of these names led to that car was the best chance I had.
I went into the Home Depot and bought a few things with cash. The first two were more throwaway cell phones, and the other was scissors.
I went into the men’s room toilet stall and started chopping my hair. Each lock of my long brown hair falling into the toilet was like a part of my life that might never come back. I had something I needed to do right now. I had someone who needed me more than I needed my old life. I was no longer someone who had been falsely accused of two murders. I was a dad, a dad who was trying to save the person he loved most in the world. I took one more glance at my old life floating there in the basin-and then I flushed.
I found a cash machine in the store and punched in my account number and password. I requested three hundred dollars. I knew it would likely trigger a response, probably just as it was happening.
I didn’t care.
I wouldn’t be around long… and where I was heading, it wouldn’t matter.
I left, found another ATM at a bank nearby, and took out another three hundred. I stuffed the cash in my pocket, pulled down my cap, and jumped back into the car.
I-95 was only a short drive away. I turned on Sirius radio and found the Bridge. A bunch of oldies I knew.
I called Liz from one of the phones I had bought. I didn’t care about the risk. “I want you to know, I have a list. Of twelve cars, whose license plates begin with the number I saw. One of them has our daughter.”
“How, Henry?” she asked, surprised, but uplifted.
“Doesn’t matter.”
The next stop was getting my daughter back.
Part III
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next morning Carrie knocked on Bill Akers’s door.
“Carrie, come on in,” her boss said, moving some papers around. “There’s been some news.”
“I’ve got something as well,” she said, pushing back the flutter in her stomach and taking a seat across from him. She placed the folder, which contained photos she had put together of the blue Mazda at both crimes scenes, on her lap.
Akers’s walls were lined with framed criminology degrees, citations for merit, as well as photos of himself with prominent officials, including the mayor, and a former head of Homeland Security. Which only made what Carrie was about to share with him even harder to do.
She knew she had no greater supporter in the department than Bill. Truth was the community outreach effort had been one of his own personal initiatives. She also knew she’d need every bit of that support when it came to the budgetary cutbacks she’d heard were coming. She’d worn her most flattering suit, black pants and jacket, and a light blue tee. She wanted to look as proper and businesslike as she could for when the shit would hit the fan later.
“How about I go first?” Carrie said. She took in a breath. “I have an admission to make, Bill. I want to show you something…” She put the folder on his desk.
She had struggled all night over showing this to him. She knew what she had done would get her into a lot of hot water: withholding key evidence from the investigation, a murder investigation; and going around on her own obtaining confidential security tapes using a JSO ID.
Not to mention, how she was probably the only person here who harbored any doubts about Steadman’s guilt, which she knew, politically, wasn’t exactly a home run. She’d pretty much tossed and turned the whole night.
But in the morning, she’d awoken, sure in her heart that she was doing the right thing.
Carrie swallowed. “Look,
Akers nodded obligingly. Carrie judged his gaze as disappointed.
“Not to mention where any possible weapon would have come from. I mean, he’d just come off a plane, right? And how there’s nothing in the guy’s past to suggest he had these kinds of tendencies…”
