“Any idea what that is?” I asked.
Kumar typed a command on his keyboard, and blew up the image. Then he fitted on his reading glasses and stared. “It looks like a cartoon.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Why are you so skeptical?”
“This guy was arrested for murdering eighteen women,” I explained.
“So he must have been crazy,” Kumar said.
“I need a copy of this,” I said.
Kumar used the mouse to hit the print icon. Moments later, a four-color photo of Abb’s right slipper spit out of the laser copier. I held the photograph beneath the light on the desk, and studied it. Kumar was right; the image on Abb’s slipper resembled a cartoon.
“I need to blow this up,” I said.
“Not a problem,” Kumar said.
Kumar placed the photo into the copy machine behind his desk, then programmed the machine to blow up the image. The copy machine began to print, and I grabbed the sheet before it hit the tray.
Kumar came up behind me, and we both stared. The slipper now filled the page, and the cartoon was plainly visible. It was the smiling face of Fred Flintstone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I drove to LeAnn Grimes’s neighborhood with my mind reeling. Abb Grimes had been wearing a pair of kid’s cartoon slippers the night he’d murdered his last victim, which was a clear indicator that something was wrong with him. Yet no evidence about his mental state had ever been presented at trial. I had to find out why.
The storm had passed, and the sun was shining. I parked in front of LeAnn’s house. Now that Jed had been captured, the FBI had pulled up stakes, and I spotted a lone police cruiser with two officers parked a few houses away. My windows were rolled down, and I could hear the officers discussing the police’s ongoing search for Heather and Sampson. The tenor of their voices told me that they didn’t expect to find either of them alive.
I knocked on the front door. It swung open, and I found myself standing face-to-face with LeAnn. She wore a somber black dress, and was dragging a suitcase.
“May I come in?” I asked.
LeAnn stepped onto the front stoop. Her eyes were ringed from lack of sleep, and her movements were slow and painful.
“Please get out of my way,” she said.
“I need to speak with you. It will only take a minute.”
“I have to go see Abb,” she said.
Then I understood the suitcase. She was driving to Starke to see Abb get strapped on a gurney and have a needle filled with a powerful cocktail of narcotics and life-ending drugs pumped into his veins. She was going to say good-bye to her husband.
“I need to speak with you about the evidence that was destroyed in your husband’s case,” I said. “It will only take a few minutes.”
A flicker of life came into her otherwise lifeless eyes. She dropped her suitcase in the doorway, then turned around and went into the house. I picked up the suitcase and put it in the foyer, then followed her inside.
She dropped onto the couch in the living room. The bun in her hair had come undone, and as her hair fell onto her shoulders, I glimpsed the woman she’d once been.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
I pulled up a chair. In my pocket was the photo of Abb’s slipper with the cartoon of Fred Flintstone I’d printed off Kumar’s computer. It was folded into a square, and I smoothed out the creases before showing it to her.
“Your husband was wearing these slippers the night he was filmed in the grocery store parking lot,” I said. “Do you recognize them?”
LeAnn’s eyes briefly studied the page. Then they locked onto me.
“Let me tell you something about those slippers,” she said. “They were a birthday present from Jed to his daddy. Abb adored them, and wore them whenever he was home. After my husband was arrested, those slippers were taken and destroyed by Detective Cheeks, the man who arrested my husband.”
“Why would Cheeks do that?”
“Because he knew something was wrong with Abb. We all did.”
“We?”
“Me, the neighbors, even Jed-and he was just a little boy back then.”
“How old was Jed?”
“Seven.”
“But he understood what was going on.”
“Yes. You see, Abb suffered from insomnia. It got so bad that I took him to a clinic, where the doctor prescribed a new experimental drug. The drug let Abb sleep, but bad things started to happen. I’d wake up at night, and hear Abb banging around the house. One night I went into the kitchen, and all the chairs were turned upside down. I tried to get him back to bed, and he nearly took my head off. The next morning, I talked to him about it over breakfast, and Abb acted like it hadn’t happened.”
“You said the neighbors knew something was wrong with Abb,” I said. “How did they know?”
“Abb left the house at night and strolled around the neighborhood. One of my neighbors caught him peeking in their windows; another found him sitting in their car. He was scaring the daylights out of them.”
Her voice had grown weak, the memories draining her. I didn’t want to make her suffering any worse, but I had to get to the truth.
“What was the drug?” I asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you contact Abb’s doctor to find out?”
“The clinic went out of business. I tried to track the doctor down, but never found him. It was another dead end.”
“Did you tell Abb’s defense attorney this?”
“His attorney knew everything. He was appointed by the court because we didn’t have any money to hire a lawyer. He seemed resigned to my husband losing in court.”
I thought back to the evidence log from the trial. It had contained everything that the police had taken from the Grimes’s house.
“Did the police take the drug as evidence?” I asked.
“Yes. It disappeared with the slippers.”
“Do you think Detective Cheeks destroyed it?”
LeAnn laughed under her breath, giving me my answer.
“Did Jed know about the drug?” I asked.
“Oh, Jed knew. It was so painful for him. He used to walk up to police officers when he was a little boy and say, ‘My daddy isn’t a bad man! He isn’t bad!’ When he grew older, the reality of what Detective Cheeks had done hit him, and Jed tried to confront Detective Cheeks. That’s when Detective Cheeks started to haul him in, and accuse him of crimes he hadn’t committed.”
I leaned back in my chair. Everything Father Kelly had told me was true. Jed had been painted as a monster by Cheeks, and all because he knew the truth about his father.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go,” LeAnn said.
She went into the hallway to retrieve her suitcase. I tried to carry it outside for her, and she wrestled it from my grasp.
“No, thank you,” she said.
I watched her throw the suitcase into an old Chevy parked in the driveway beside the house. It was an eight-hour drive to the prison, and I found myself wishing she didn’t have to go it alone.
