“I know you told me to go to the site and get back here as soon as possible, but—” Lena looked up at him. “I drove to the Home Depot in Memminger.”
Jeffrey sat with the information. She had disobeyed his orders—again—but her instincts were good. Every contractor in the tri-county area relied on the undocumented workers who loitered around the Home Depot. Generally, the contractors picked them up in the early morning hours, worked them to the bone for slave wages, dropped them back off at the Home Depot that night, then went to church on Sunday and complained about how immigrants were ruining the country.
He asked, “And?”
“I don’t speak Spanish, but I figured they would talk to me.” Lena waited for him to motion for her to continue. “At first, they were scared because of my uniform, but then I made it clear I wasn’t going to hassle them, that I was looking for information?”
Her voice had gone up on the last word. She was worried she was in trouble again.
Jeffrey asked, “Did they talk to you?”
“Some of them did.” Lena had turned tentative again.
“Read the room, Lena. I’m not yelling at you.”
“It’s just that half of them said they’d worked on the storage construction site. They get rotated out depending on what’s needed, but they said it was weird because there was a gringo taking money under the table, too.” She paused, waiting for a nod. “They didn’t know his name, but everybody called him BB. And so I pressed, and this one guy said he thought it stood for Big Bit.”
“Big Bit,” Jeffrey repeated. Something about the name was setting off an alarm. “Like a drill bit?”
“I’m not sure,” Lena said. “But it made me think about Felix Abbott, because—”
“Fuck,” Jeffrey sat up so fast his nose ignited. “Felix admitted that he goes by the name Little Bit. There’s gotta be a Big Bit. And maybe Big Bit is Daryl, and maybe Daryl has access to a van. Where’s Felix now? Is he still in holding?”
Lena stood up because he’d stood up. “I checked on my way in. They’re getting him ready to bus to the courthouse. His arraignment is this morning.”
“Go get him. Rip him out of the back of the bus if you have to. Get his arrest jacket from the guard and put him in interrogation. Go.”
Lena banged open the door so hard that the glass shook.
“Frank?” Jeffrey didn’t see him in the squad room. He ran over to the kitchen. “Frank?”
Frank looked up. He was standing over the sink eating a bacon biscuit.
Jeffrey said, “Felix Abbott. Twenty-three. Skateboarder. Pot dealer.”
“Why’s his name coming up again?” Crumbs fell out of Frank’s mouth. “You looking at him for the attacks?”
“Should I be?”
“The family tree is nothin’ but an oily turd-filled toilet, but nah. The younger generation squandered the family criminal enterprises. Typical succession issue. By the time you hit the third generation, they don’t have the work ethic.” Frank coughed out some more crumbs. “I’d look at the kid’s father. One of his—”
Jeffrey stepped away from the scattershot as he coughed again.
“His uncles, I was saying.” Frank spat into the sink. He turned on the faucet to wash it down. “You got five or six families in Memminger you look at when anything hinky goes down. The Abbotts are at the top of the pile. Though good luck keepin’ ’em straight. They all cross-breed like bitches in heat.”
“Tell me about the Abbotts.”
“Shit, lemme see can I remember.” Frank coughed again. “If I’ve got the right shitstains, the grandfather’s in Statesville for a double homicide. Granny tried to cover his tracks and wound up with a nickel in Wentworth. They had six sons, all of ’em bar brawlers and wife beaters with so many kids and step-kids and out-of-wedlock kids nobody can keep count.”
“Any of them named Daryl?”
“Fuck if I know. They’re a Memminger problem. I hear their names and I just laugh.”
“You seem to know a lot about the family.”
“I do a monthly choir practice with a deputy over in Memminger. Guy knows how to sing.”
When cops talked about choir practice, they meant the kind that took place in a bar, not a church. “Any of the Abbots ever work at the college?”
“No way they’d pass the background check.”
“What about the nickname Big Bit? That ever come up?”
“Nah, but there’s a fair amount of imbibing during choir,” Frank admitted. “I can call over to Memminger and do some digging around.”
“Do it. If I can prove Daryl is the gringo going by the name of Big Bit on the Mercer construction site, that puts him in proximity to the fire road that leads to the Truong crime scene.”
“Shit.”
“Shit is right. Get on the phone.” Jeffrey was on his toes, halfway between a fast walk and a run, as he headed toward the interrogation room.
Lena was leading Felix Abbott down the hallway. His hands were cuffed behind his back. His feet were shuffling, though his ankles weren’t chained. Jeffrey could smell the con on him. This wasn’t the first time Felix had been arrested. He had his chest puffed out like a punk daring a cop to take a swing.
Jeffrey felt tempted, but he opened the door to interrogation and waited for the kid to go in. Felix snarled his upper lip as he walked by. Shoulders back. Chest out.
For all his posturing, he looked like a normal twenty-something-year-old. Not too tall, not too skinny. Floppy brown hair, just the way Chuck had described him. Felix was dressed like a skateboarder in board shorts, a zip-up hoodie and faded Ramones T-shirt. The bruise on the side of Felix’s head told Jeffrey that Lena had not been playing around when she’d tackled him off his skateboard.
Felix took in Jeffrey’s damaged nose, asking, “This bitch knock you around, too?”
Jeffrey dug the wadded-up pieces of toilet paper out of his nostrils and tossed them into the trash. The room was small, but typical to most cop shops.
