“I know about your father’s slippers and the sleeping medication he was taking,” I said. “Detective Cheeks told me that he destroyed them. I’m going to make sure a judge knows about it, too. That’s a promise, son.”
Jed reeled back in his chair, and I saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“You mean that?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Your daddy was insane when he murdered those women. You’ve known it for years, but Detective Cheeks made sure that no one would listen to you. Then, when your son was abducted, Cheeks pointed the finger at you so he could get you out of the way.”
Jed was shaking. “That’s right.”
“You didn’t kidnap your son, or murder your father’s lawyer, or kill any of those women the police found at the landfill. You didn’t do any of those things, did you?”
“No, sir.”
“If I asked you to swear on a stack of Bibles, and take a polygraph test, you’d do that to show the police they’re wrong, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
I had broken through. Kneeling, I placed my hand on his arm. “Tell me about your conversation with Heather this morning. Where did she go?”
Jed shrank in his chair, his voice a whisper. “I don’t know.”
“She offered to get something for you to eat. What was it?”
He hesitated, thinking back. “I told Heather that all I’d been eating was potato chips and sodas, and she offered to get me something.”
“Was she going to a restaurant?”
“She said she was going to surprise me.”
“What are your favorite restaurants?”
“You know, the usual places.”
“Tell me.”
“McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King. I also like Steak and Shake.”
“Are all of those restaurants within walking distance to your mother’s house?”
“Yeah,” Jed said.
I patted his arm and rose from the floor. Our killer worked in a restaurant somewhere in LeAnn Grimes’s neighborhood. He was right under our noses.
“You going to find Heather and Sampson?” Jed asked.
Before I could reply, the door to the interrogation room banged open, and I saw the chief standing in the hall.
“Get the hell out here!” the chief roared.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
T he chief pulled me into the hall and slammed the door. His eyes were on fire, his body tensed like a clenched fist. He jabbed me in the chest so hard it made me wince.
“You crummy bastard,” the chief said.
“What did I do?” I asked.
“Don’t play games with me. You know the interrogation room is wired, and your conversation was being recorded.”
“So?”
“The district attorney will listen to those tapes when he prepares his case, and hear you say that Cheeks destroyed evidence. He’ll want to start an inquiry. You just opened Pandora’s box, and there is not a goddamn way I can close it.”
I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to hide the truth. The chief jabbed me again.
“Say something for yourself, Carpenter,” he said.
“I was trying to get Jed to open up.”
“It didn’t work.”
“Yes, it did. Jed told us that Heather went to buy food in his mother’s neighborhood. That should help us find her, and her son.”
“You believed him?”
“Yes. Strap Jed into a polygraph if you think he’s lying.”
“The kid’s a sociopath. Polygraphs don’t work on sociopaths.”
I started to argue, but the chief cut me off. “I gave you a get-out-of-jail-free card earlier, and now I’m taking it back,” he said. “I’m giving you two days to prove that Ron Cheeks purposely destroyed evidence in Abb Grimes’s case. If you can’t, I’m going to charge you with assaulting a police officer, and throw your ass in the county lockup.”
My mouth had gotten me into more trouble than anything I’d ever done. Without thinking I said, “Two whole days? That’s awfully generous of you.”
He gave me another jab in the chest.
“Make that one day,” the chief said.
He stormed into the stairwell. For the first time, I noticed Burrell standing at the end of the hall. She was slouched against the wall, and staring dejectedly at the floor.
“What did he do to you?” I asked.
“He’s putting me on paid leave,” she said.
“Why?”
“He thinks we’re in this together.”
I didn’t know what to say, and we walked up the stairs in silence. The first floor was a whirlwind of activity, and Burrell pulled me to one side, and lowered her voice. There was an intensity to her eyes that I didn’t remember seeing before.
“We need to prove our case,” she said.
“I’m with you,” I said.
“I’m having the detectives in Missing Persons call every restaurant in LeAnn’s neighborhood, and collect the names of each employee, along with their Social Security numbers,” she said. “I’m going to run background checks on them, and see who has a criminal record. I’ll e-mail you the ones I think might be our killer.”
I’d always been good at making creeps, and I said, “You want me to see if I can pick him out?”
“Yes.”
Burrell was directly violating the chief’s orders, an act that could lead to her being fired. She could have been content to let things play themselves out, only that wasn’t who she was. I said, “Call me once you have something.”
She nodded stiffly and went to the elevators.
I was blinded by the afternoon sunshine as I walked through the front doors of the station house. There was a reason I was no longer a cop, and I got reminded of it every time I came here. I started across the lot toward the pickup truck, which the cops who’d arrested me had driven to the station and, at my suggestion, left the keys beneath the floor mat.
“Hey, Jack! Hold on a minute.”
Chuck Cobb, the smart-mouthed detective everyone thought was my brother, was smoking a cigarette by the front door. He came over and whacked my arm good-naturedly.
“Just the man I was looking for,” Cobb said. “I need you to review the Piper Stone murder report.”
It was common practice during homicide investigations to have witnesses reread their own accounts of murder scenes. This allowed the detectives working the case to iron out inconsistencies, while letting witnesses get their facts straight.
“Sure,” I said.
