People accused of crimes were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, only Whitley was calling Jed a killer, and giving himself and his agents the credit for apprehending him.
I walked out of the clinic without replying.
CHAPTER FIFTY
I found Burrell standing in the clinic parking lot. She asked after my heroic dog.
“He’s going to be okay.”
“I’m glad. We need to talk,” she said.
Burrell offered to drive me home in my pickup, with a police cruiser following us. I agreed, and climbed into the passenger seat with Buster in my arms. He was coming around, and seemed to be enjoying all the attention I was giving him.
It was still raining like it was the end of the world. Burrell crawled through a tricky roundabout in the center of town, then turned her head to look at me. “You told me something the first day I came to work for you,” she said. “You said, ‘Listen to your brain, but follow your heart.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”
“Is your heart telling you something now?” I asked.
“Yes. I think we arrested the wrong person.”
“Did you talk to Whitley?”
“I called him, and told him about finding the Bible and photo of the priest in Jed’s hideout. Whitley said it was meaningless. He blew me off.”
Burrell didn’t try to hide the anger in her voice.
“What’s the deal between you two?” I asked.
“I thought we were in love,” she said.
“Thought?”
“Whitley and I have been seeing each other for about a year. He told me he was leaving his wife. The story changed a few hours ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
We crossed the Hollywood Bridge, and took A1A north to the Sunset. The streets were deserted, the bars and restaurants empty. I had Burrell pull into the Sunset’s parking lot, and park by the entrance. The cruiser did the same.
“Earlier you told me that you thought someone who worked in a restaurant was our killer,” Burrell said. “Do you have a profile?”
Buster was whining to get out of the car. Opening my door, I laid him onto the pavement, and watched him teeter down to the shoreline and relieve himself.
“Our killer works in a restaurant,” I said, closing my door. “He might be the night manager, or maybe even the owner. He’s a loner, and has lived in LeAnn’s neighborhood for many years. He also has a connection to Abb Grimes, although I haven’t figured out what it is. He’s smart, but impulsive.”
“A classic serial killer,” Burrell said.
“That’s right.”
“If I run a background check on every restaurant employee in the area, would you take a look at them, and see if you could pick him out?”
I stared at the waves crashing on the beach. My nose was throbbing, and I was exhausted to the point that I could hardly keep my eyes open.
“Sure,” I said.
Burrell leaned across the seat, and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, Jack.”
Buster froze at the bottom of the stairwell leading to my room. I carried him upstairs, and laid him on the bed. Then I examined myself in the bathroom. My nose was turning purple, and had a nasty bump over the bridge. No more GQ covers for me.
I went downstairs to the bar. Two teenage girls were dancing in front of the jukebox while the Dwarfs ogled them from their bar stools. The girls were both slurping Diet Cokes, and I spoke to Sonny.
“They legal?” I asked.
“Naw. Tried to pass off some fake IDs, but I made them,” Sonny said.
“Why didn’t you throw them out?”
“Because I’m horny.”
I went upstairs and found my detective’s badge. The department had let me keep my badge after I’d quit. You could say it was one of the few decent things they’d done. I went downstairs and pulled the girls off the floor. Going outside, I made them stand in the pouring rain while I read them the riot act. By the time I was done, the makeup had washed off their faces, and they’d promised to stay out of bars until they were legal.
“Spoilsport,” Sonny said when I returned.
“You have any pain pills?” I asked.
Sonny fed me some Advil. I drank coffee, and waited for them to kick in. It took awhile, but I finally started to feel normal.
The local news came on. The lead story was about Jed’s capture, and showed him doing a perp walk outside the police station. The images faded into a blaring headline. WHAT WENT WRONG?
On the screen a familiar face appeared. It was Ron Cheeks, wearing his best suit and a smug look on his face. The pills churned in my stomach, and I grabbed the remote off the bar. Cheeks’s voice came booming out of the TV.
“Jed Grimes was our number one suspect from the start,” Cheeks said. “All the evidence pointed to him. He abducted his son, and we knew it.”
“Why didn’t the police arrest him before now?” a female reporter asked.
Cheeks did a slow burn. “I was going to. Unfortunately, a medical condition forced me off the case, and another detective took over.”
“Who was that?”
“Detective Candice Burrell.”
“Is she to blame?”
“Detective Burrell is a fine police officer, and in no way is responsible for what has happened with this investigation,” Cheeks replied.
“Then who is?”
“A consultant the police hired to work the case.”
“A consultant?” the reporter asked.
Cheeks raised his hands in mock surrender. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Can you tell us who this consultant was?”
“It was a former detective named Jack Carpenter,” Cheeks said. “Carpenter was hired by the family to find the boy, then hired by the police department as well.”
“So there was a conflict of interest,” the reporter said.
“I would say so,” Cheeks said.
“Do you blame Jack Carpenter for what went wrong?”
“He let the case drag on, and now Sampson Grimes and his mother are missing. Yes, I blame him.”
I looked for something to throw at the screen.
“Temper, temper,” Sonny said.
The interview ended. Sonny took the remote out of my hand and killed the picture.
“How’s your nose?” he asked.
“It’s starting to hurt again,” I said.
Sonny fed me two more pills. I swallowed them while looking into the future. Cheeks was campaigning to get his old job back. Considering how badly the case had gone, it just might happen. I could not imagine a more cruel injustice, and punched the bar.
