“So we can check with your supervisor to find out if you were at work?”
“Sure,” he said. “You can also check my time card. We have to punch a time clock every time we come on shift and every time we go off.”
“And you have coworkers who will be able to say you were there?”
“Absolutely,” he said confidently. “But you still haven’t told what this is all about? Is something wrong?”
“Did you go to Janie’s House on Sunday?”
“Sure. Sunday afternoon. I was there just long enough to shower and clean up before I had to go to work.”
“What time?”
“What time did I go there?”
I nodded.
“Sometime around four, I guess,” he answered. “I was due to go on shift at six. Got off at midnight.”
“Did you happen to see Amber there?”
“No.”
“What about last night?” I asked. “Were you at work then, too?”
The previously open look on his face abruptly slammed shut. “I don’t have to tell you where I was,” he said. “Not until I know why you’re asking all these questions. And if I’m a suspect, don’t you have to read me my rights?”
That’s what I love about kids these days. That’s the only thing most of them seem to know about the law- that police officers are supposed to read them their rights.
“Show him the file, Mel,” I said. “That’ll give him a better idea of why we’re here.”
“What file?” Greg wanted to know.
“Sunday night, someone using your user name uploaded a file from one of the Janie’s House computers to a Janie’s House cell phone,” Mel explained. “That file was eventually sent to Josh Deeson’s cell phone.”
“I already told you I don’t know Josh Deeson.”
Mel located the file in her cell phone, cued it up, and then handed the phone to Greg. He glanced at it. “That’s Amber,” he announced when the clip started playing. “I already told you I know Amber.”
“Keep watching,” Mel said.
He did. Gradually, Greg’s eyes widened. I didn’t have to see the screen to realize that, as Amber’s apparently lifeless body stopped struggling and fell face forward onto a table, all color abruptly faded from Greg’s cheeks.
“Oh my God!” he exclaimed, stepping away from the phone and leaning hard against the gate. “Did they really kill her right then? Really?”
In terms of Greg Alexander’s future, those were the right questions for him to be asking. And his questions turned out to be the correct answer to any number of potential questions Mel and I might have asked. Unlike Greg, Mel and I both knew that the snuff film was faked. If Greg believed that he had just seen Amber Wilson murdered on the little screen before it was sent to Josh, then he hadn’t been involved in either the filming or in dumping Rachel’s lifeless body into the retention pond once she really was dead.
It was several moments before Greg was able to speak. “Why did they do that?” he asked finally, wiping his eyes. “She seemed like a nice girl to me. She wanted to become a cheerleader.”
“How could they gang up on her like that? It had to be at least three to one. What’s fair about that?”
I had to remind myself that Greg was young. He still thought life was supposed to be fair.
“Do you know of anyone who had some kind of beef with Amber?”
“No. Not at all, and she was only there a couple of times. I think she was from somewhere out of town.”
On the far side of the gate, the door opened on the same moss-covered motor home into which Greg’s father had disappeared. An immense woman stepped out. She was wearing flip-flops and a tie-dyed muumuu that would have been totally at home at a Grateful Dead concert. She tottered down the steps and came walking purposefully toward us.
“Greg,” she yelled as she walked. “You get back inside here right now! Dad says these people are cops. We don’t want you talking to no cops.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Greg said reassuringly. “It’s no big deal.”
I changed the subject by gesturing toward the Toyota. “Is that your ride?”
He nodded. “It’s a piece of crap. I keep it running with junked parts. Once I graduate, I want to join the Air Force and learn how to be an airplane mechanic so I can afford a better car.”
“You still haven’t told us where you were last night,” Mel said.
Asking the same question over and over works on occasion, and this was one of those times. With Greg’s mother bearing down on us, Mel must have looked like the lesser of two evils.
“I’ve got a girlfriend,” he admitted. “She’s older-a lot older than me-and divorced. I met her at work. I was with her last night, at her house.”
“What time?” I asked.
“We both got off at seven. I went to her place after that and didn’t leave until sometime after midnight.”
“Can we check with her?”
“Sure, as long as you don’t tell my folks.”
“Why not?” Mel asked. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her. She’s Indian-like from India. My parents are. . well. . let’s just say they’re a little prejudiced.”
“Greg!” Barbara Jane Alexander demanded. “Did you hear me?”
By then Greg’s mother was not only within earshot, she was also within smelling distance. I was pretty sure that she, like her husband, had been smoking dope in the privacy of their moss-covered abode. She looked like one tough broad, and I wouldn’t have been the least surprised if she had reached over the fence, grabbed her son by the scruff of the neck, and dragged him bodily back inside.
“How about if you let us buy you a late lunch or an early dinner?” Mel suggested.
I understood exactly why Mel was inviting him to dinner. Readily verifiable alibis made him less attractive as a suspect, but as a source of information he could prove invaluable. He was a regular Janie’s House client, and his take on the people there would be far different from what we’d learn from someone in an official capacity like Meribeth Duncan, for example, or one of the houseparents.
“Am I under arrest?” Greg asked.
“No, not at all,” Mel assured him. “We’ll buy you lunch, ask you a few questions, verify your alibis, and bring you right back here.”
Making up his mind, Greg turned and waved at his mother. “See you, Mom,” he said. Then he hustled into the backseat of our car before she had a chance to tell him otherwise.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
“I’d love a Grand Slam, and there’s a Denny’s not far from here.”
“You’ve got it,” I said.
Chapter 20
My grandmother, Beverly Piedmont Jenssen, always used to quote that old saying about the quickest way to a man’s heart being through his stomach. The same holds true for starving teenagers when you’re looking for answers to thorny questions.
Greg’s Grand Slam came on a man-size platter. While he devoured the food, Mel and I drank coffee, asked questions, and took notes.
It turned out that Greg went to Janie’s House almost every day, usually in the afternoons. That meant he knew most of the people who went there, Amber Wilson included, in a manner not open to someone like Meribeth Duncan. She knew the kids by name and by what they wrote on their needs assessment. Greg knew them up close and personal.
