Emory pulled his car into Rick Roberts’ driveway, windows steaming from the heated conversation within. Wayne argued that the only place they should be headed was the sheriff’s station to work on finding their escaped suspect, but Emory insisted on sticking with their planned first stop. Jeff didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other, but he sided with Emory.
“I should’ve driven myself,” Wayne said.
“We’ll be here five minutes max,” Emory told him.
Wayne shook his head. “Our prime suspect has escaped. We need to get to the sheriff’s station.”
“Why?” Jeff asked. “That’s the one place we know he’s not at.”
The three men filed out of the car and walked in silence to the front door, which was crisscrossed with crime tape. Emory snapped his fingers when he realized, “Dad has the keys.”
“Wonderful,” Wayne said, starting back toward the driveway. “Let’s get to the sheriff’s station.”
“I’m not leaving without that picture,” Emory insisted.
“I have an idea,” said Jeff. “We can go through the doggy door.”
“Good idea.” Emory stood by the front door, waiting for Jeff to act.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll wait here for you to open the door.”
Jeff laughed and tapped his own shoulders. “There’s no way I can get these shoulders through that opening.”
“Again, my shoulders are just as broad as yours.”
“Put your back against mine.” Jeff turned his back to Emory who did the same, and they both tried to gauge whose shoulders extended further.
“What in the hell are you two doing?” Wayne asked, walking back toward them.
“See,” Jeff said.
Emory pulled away. “I think your coat has a half-inch more padding than mine. I’ll just do it.” He took off his jacket, exposing his grey dress shirt, and handed it to Jeff to hold. He ran past Wayne to the five-foot fence that surrounded the backyard and hurled himself over it.
“What’s he doing?” Wayne asked.
“Remember the doggy door?”
Two uncomfortable minutes later, the front door opened, and Emory stood behind an X of crime tape with a ripped sleeve and a three-inch scratch on his right upper arm. Jeff smiled at him. “I told you you’d fit.”
Emory wasn’t amused. Once they were inside, Emory led them to Rick’s bedroom and to the dresser. “There’s the picture.”
“Why is this one white?” Wayne asked, referring to the fact that all the other frames were dark.
“How can anyone live in such filth?” asked Jeff.
Wayne looked around the room. “What? This place isn’t filthy.”
Jeff pointed at the dresser. “Look at the dust.”
Emory examined the thick coating of dust on the dresser top, as well as the frames and glass. “The white frame is clean.”
Jeff told him, “White hides dust better.”
Emory put on his gloves and ran a finger over the top of the white frame. “Or it repels it all together.” He showed the others that the glove was still clean. He picked up the picture and held it so Jeff could see. “Look at the last line of that sign.”
Emory hadn’t been able to make out everything in the frame from the picture on his phone, but now he could see in the original picture that the subject of Ian’s project ended with the text, “Using Calcium Carbide.”
Jeff asked, “Do we have enough now to arrest him?”
Emory told them, “Let’s go get Damien.”
As soon as Emory parked at the sheriff’s station, Wayne hurried to the front door.
Jeff was about to exit the car when Emory told him, “Before we go in, I need to talk to you about something.” The special agent moved to the back seat with Jeff.
“What, you want to make out now?”
“Just talk. Scot Trousdale was the manager of If Tomorrow Comes for three years.”
Jeff’s face dropped. “He was? Do you know which three years?”
“He left there about a year ago, when he came here to work at the Algarotti factory.”
“I was going to that club then. I’m surprised I didn’t see him there.”
Emory waited for more, but nothing came. “That’s all you have to say?”
“I’m not sure what you want. I didn’t know him from the club, and as far as I know, the first time I met him was precisely when you met him for the first time.”
“Someone who looks like Scot, you didn’t notice at the club?”
Jeff scoffed, “Scot’s not that hot. Why? Do you think he is?”
“No…I mean he’s certainly not unattractive. That’s not the point. Don’t you find it odd that, not only was Victor Algarotti’s current wife a client of yours, but his assistant worked at a nightclub you frequent?”
“Odd maybe, but a coincidence definitely.”
“Fine.” Emory grabbed the door handle.
Inside the sheriff’s station, Wayne was already discussing Scot Trousdale’s escape with Sheriff Rome and two deputies when Emory and Jeff entered. The sheriff nodded to his son and told Wayne, “We’ve been trying to figure out what happened.”
Deputy Harris’ flushed face gave his blond hair a strawberry tint as he explained, “I clocked out at six last night. I checked on him before I left, and he was in bed. I was planning to drive him to Knoxville myself when I clocked back in this morning.”
Deputy Loggins looked up to the other men, making eye contact with each. “I’ve been here since six last night, pulling a double. I got suspicious around five when I checked on him through the window because he hadn’t moved all night. I decided to go in the room for a physical check, and that’s when I found out it was just the blankets and pillows. It had to have happened before my shift.”
“There’s no way,” Deputy Harris insisted. “He didn’t go missing on my shift!”
Emory asked his father, “Could we see the room?”
“Of course.” The sheriff led them past the water cooler and down the hall to the holding room.
As the others continued down the hallway, Jeff stayed at the cooler. “Hey guys,” he said but didn’t capture their attention. “Guys! One of the empty water bottles is missing.” The men turned around, but only Emory backtracked to Jeff.
Deputy Harris gave him his how-stupid-are-you? glower. He told him in the most condescending tone he could muster, “The delivery guy took it yesterday.”
Jeff pointed to the remaining empty bottle. “Why would he take only one of the empty bottles? And why didn’t he leave a full bottle for you?”
Emory faced Deputy Harris. “When did the delivery guy come?”
“Yesterday,” the deputy repeated.
“Before or after Scot’s arrest?” Deputy Harris waited to give the answer, so Emory demanded, “Answer me!”
Deputy Harris jumped. “After. But it couldn’t have been him.”
Wayne asked, “Did you see the delivery guy come through the front door?”
“How else could he…” the deputy started to answer before his voice trailed off.
Wayne followed up with, “What exactly did you see?”
Deputy Harris recounted, “I was taking a call, and I looked up and saw a delivery guy walking to the front door with a water bottle on his left shoulder. I didn’t make out the face, but I wasn’t paying attention to him.”
Emory asked, “Besides the fact that he was carrying a water bottle, was there anything else about him that led you to believe he was, in fact, a water delivery guy? Uniform? Anything?”
“No,” Deputy Harris mumbled. “It just seemed…normal.”
Deputy Loggins gave the sheriff a look of vindication that said, “I told you it wasn’t me.”
Emory asked, “What time did you see him go?”
Deputy Harris responded, “Not long after you left. Maybe around five o’clock.”
Wayne shook his head. “He’s got a seventeen-hour head start on us. He could be anywhere.”
“I’m so sorry about this,” the sheriff said. “Now we know how he got out the front door, but I’d like to know how he got out of the holding room.”
The men headed to the room, and halfway down the hall, the sheriff stopped at the wall cabinet to get the key. Once the sheriff unlocked the holding room, Wayne investigated the open door for signs of damage while Emory and Jeff scanned everything else. The sheriff and his deputies loitered in the middle of the room watching the others.
“I already checked the door,” said Deputy Harris. “It hasn’t been tampered with.”
Inspecting the bed, Emory told them, “Then he must’ve had a key.”
“How on Earth could he have a key?” Deputy Harris asked.
Finishing his inspection of the door, Wayne stood up straight. “I don’t know, but the lock wasn’t picked, and he sure didn’t walk through it.”
The sheriff said, “Well, even if he did have a key somehow, we emptied his pockets, and we still have his personal effects.”
“Did you search him?” Jeff asked.
“Standard procedure,” the sheriff answered. “When you first brought him in, I processed him – fingerprints, mug shot and search. I made him undress, and I did a thorough search of his person and his clothes before we started questioning him. The only way he had a key on him was if he stuck it somewhere I wasn’t about to search.”
“No,” Emory said. “He had no warning that he was about to be arrested, so he would’ve had no to time to hide a key…in himself.” His mind clicked onto the answer. “The water.”
The others looked at him like they were waiting for an explanation, but Jeff said, “Yes! He went to the water cooler before he was brought into this room.”
Emory and Jeff hurried from the room, followed by the others. Once they reached the water cooler, the two began inspecting it for a possible hiding space. As Jeff checked the front, Emory looked at the side where the cup dispenser was attached. He noticed that the Algarotti logo to the left of the dispenser was inside a rectangular groove. He pushed on the logo, and a small drawer about the size of a deck of cards popped out. “Found it!”
Sheriff Rome folded his arms. “I’ll be. So he hid the key in there? I should’ve never let him get water alone.”
“But how did he get the key in the first place?” Deputy Harris asked.
Emory responded, “He told me he came in regularly to service your cooler. My guess is he took the key from the cabinet when no one was looking, got a copy made and returned it to the cabinet.”
The sheriff asked, “Why would he go to all that trouble?”
“He was arrested before in college,” Wayne told them. “He wasn’t convicted, but he did spend a couple days in jail. He probably wanted to make sure that never happened again, so he planned ahead once he started with his drug scheme. If the evidence against him was insurmountable, he’d escape.”
Emory nodded. “You have his wallet, but I bet he has another ID and credit cards stored somewhere safe so he could get out of town, maybe out of the country.”
“We’ll never find him,” Deputy Harris said.
“Speak for yourself,” Wayne said. “He hasn’t gone up against me yet. I’ll find the son-of-a-bitch.”
Emory told him, “While you do that, Jeff and I are going to chase the other lead we talked about.”
“Fine.” Wayne turned his attention from his partner to say, “Deputies, I’m going to need your help.” He led them back into the deputy room, leaving Sheriff Rome, Emory and Jeff at the water cooler.
Emory told his father, “I have to ask you for another favor.”
“First, are these yours?” Sheriff Rome pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.
“Oh, you found them.” Emory attached them to his belt.
“They were on the floor by the fireplace. How’d they end up there?”
Emory lied. “I’m not sure.”
“So what’s the favor?”
“I need you to talk Judge Harper into giving us two more search warrants. The one for Scot’s place should be easy. It’s the other one I’m concerned about.”
“He should be on his way,” the principal said after she paged Ian Algarotti on the overhead PA system. “I have to say, following your previous visit, I’m a bit leery of this whole affair.”
Emory shifted in his seat, an unpadded, wooden chair facing the principal’s austere oak desk. “I apologize for any…uneasiness on your part. I could always go to his class.”
“No, no, no.” The principal waved her forefinger as if she were admonishing a student. “We’ll not have another brash race through my halls.”
Seated next to Emory, Jeff spoke up for him, “A murder investigation is rarely a perfect process.”
“I understand,” the principal said. “It’s your timing that’s lamentable. School ends in eighty-seven minutes. Couldn’t you come back then?”
Emory shook his head. “With serious crimes, once we have enough evidence for an arrest, I have an obligation to carry it out, regardless of convenience.” He placed a hand on her desk. “I do promise you, we’ll be as delicate as possible.”
Jeff arose from his chair. “I’ll stand by the door and block it once he comes in to make sure he doesn’t run.”
“Are you sure about this?” the principal asked. “Ian can be a little tightly wound, but to honestly believe…”
The principal had no time to finish her thought for, at that moment, Ian walked through her office door. He looked up at a cross-armed Jeff, who had his back against the wall beside the door. He turned his attention to Emory, who stood to face him. “Has something happened to Dad?”
“No,” the principal told him. “Your father’s fine, Ian.”
Emory took over, explaining as he stepped toward the boy, “Ian, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Britt Algarotti, the murder of Rick Roberts and the attempted murder of Pristine Algarotti.” Emory retrieved the handcuffs from his belt.
The principal jerked out of her chair, half-shouting, “Is that truly needed?”
With a nod from Jeff, Emory figured they could keep him under control, so he returned the cuffs to his belt. “You have the right to remain silent…” As Emory continued reciting the Miranda warning, tears streamed down the principal’s anguished face.
“Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you?” Ian answered with a single nod. “Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?” The boy shook his head.
Emory escorted Ian out of the office, keeping a hand on his shoulder. The boy walked without emotion past the students and teachers, refusing eye contact, during the short distance from the principal’s office to the nearest exit.