Cops came like buzzards to a kill, the marked cars and dark sedans, the men in somber suits. Becky sat on the porch with an arm around Dana, who could not stop scrubbing at all the places she’d been stained by the dead man’s blood.
“I need a shower. God, please. A bath. A washcloth.”
Two cops approached, and one said, “We really do need to talk.”
“Give her another minute,” Becky replied.
“How about we question you separately. How about that.” They weren’t questions, and he wasn’t pleasant.
Becky said, “It’s Martinez, right?”
“Detective Martinez.”
“I’m not leaving her, Detective, so give us another minute.”
The cops actually did step back, and Becky used the time to get her head straight. Everything was crooked: the dead man on Chance’s floor, Gibby’s abandoned car. When the cops came back, she said, “You know we had nothing to do with this, right?”
The other cop said, “Of course, sweetheart. We do have questions, though.” He gestured at the bustle around them. “We can go as slowly as you like.”
“We just want to go home.”
“We’ll be quick.” With an understanding nod, he lowered himself to sit on the step below them. “Do you know the man inside?”
“No.”
“You’ve never seen him before?”
“Never.”
“What about you?” He looked at Dana. It took her a moment, but she shook her head. “You girls are in the same class as Gibby and Chance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“Gibby wasn’t in class.” Becky smoothed away a single tear. “I was worried.”
“Kids do skip school. Is there any particular reason today was worrisome?”
There was no right way to answer that question. How much could Becky say? How much would Gibby want her to share? “I was worried.” She kept it vague. “He’s a good student. He doesn’t skip school without good reason.”
“So this is unusual behavior for him?”
“Or he had some good reason.”
“Did he have one?” Martinez asked. “A good reason?”
“I don’t know.”
The nice cop waited a moment, and then tried a different angle. “Is there anything else unusual in your friend’s life? Has Gibby been acting strangely? Has he spoken to you about anything odd that may have happened?”
“Just that his brother’s in prison. You know.”
Martinez said, “Ask her about the car.”
“Ignore my partner,” the nice cop said. “He tends to interrupt. How about you walk us through it in your own words. Tell us what happened. There’s no wrong way to do it. I promise.”
Becky did as he asked. She told them what time they got there, and what happened after she went inside. He wanted details, but the narrative wandered. She had to backtrack; start over. “I know I shouldn’t have gone in someone else’s house without permission, and it’s horrible that Dana fell on the body—crime scene and all, evidence, I mean—but I was screaming, and she was trying to help, and I was just … It was just so…” She smoothed away another tear.
“Take your time, young lady. You’re doing fine.”
“Oh, for God’s sake…”
“Hush, Martinez.”
“Ask about the car.”
The nice cop sighed, but nodded. “The Mustang belongs to your friend, right? We know it does. I’m sorry. That sounds like I’m trying to trick you somehow.” He shook his head as if frustrated by his own questions. “Was the car here when you arrived?” Becky nodded. “And your friend? Did you see him at all?”
“No.”
“What about Chance?”
Becky shook her head, increasingly suspicious of Martinez. He was too intent, the way he leaned forward and stared. “Why do you care about the car?” she asked.
“It’s a routine question.”
“It’s just his car,” Becky said. “He bought it last summer.”
“That’s fine. You’re doing great. Did you see anyone when you arrived? On the street? Anywhere nearby?”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“If someone had left the house through the back door, do you think you would have seen them? As you arrived, or as you entered the house, did you hear anything? A door closing? Footsteps?”
“No.”
“Any sense of movement inside the house?”
“You think he was still in the house? Whoever did this?”
“No, sweetheart. I doubt that very much.”
But Becky thought he might be lying.
Martinez said, “Ask her about the keys.”
The nice cop held up a hand, but did not respond to Martinez. “Look at me, sweetheart. Okay?” He lifted his eyebrows, an invitation for her to stop staring at Martinez, and focus. “A few more questions. Did you happen to notice if the keys were in your friend’s car?”
Becky shook her head.
“How about in the house? Did you see the keys inside?”
“What do Gibby’s keys have to do with someone killing that man?”
“It’s just a question, sweetheart.”
“Will you please stop calling me that?”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I have daughters. It’s a habit.”
Becky looked at Martinez. “And you, you’re scaring my friend.”
Martinez showed his palms, and moved back a step, an almost-apology. The nice cop smiled encouragingly. “The keys,” he said again.
“The keys were beside the body.” Dana looked up for the first time. “That’s why they’re asking. They think Gibby and Chance are involved.”
“Hang on now, no one here thinks that.” The nice cop tried to keep things calm.
“He does.” Dana pointed at Martinez.
“Just questions,” the nice cop said.
But he didn’t seem so nice anymore.
For Bill French, the day was an exercise in bureaucratic futility. He’d gone to the station early, and Captain Martin had been there, waiting.
I’m sending you to Raleigh for a conference. You don’t want to go, but I need you gone for the day.
French had argued back, but the captain was determined.
Gone for the day or suspended for a month. Your choice …
“So here I sit.” French mumbled under his breath, shifting on the hard, plastic chair. “Goddamn it.” He was in a conference room on the third-floor headquarters of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Capital District, one of a hundred city cops from across the state attending a seminar on cross-jurisdictional cooperation. An hour in, and he’d already slipped out three times to borrow a phone and call friends at the station back home. The desk sergeant. A junior detective who owed him a favor. They didn’t know anything, or wouldn’t tell him. He found Burklow on the third call. “Sit tight,” he’d said. “If something breaks, I will track you down. In the meantime, have faith.”
But faith was for rookies and civilians. French knew too much about bad cops, bias, sloppy work.
He looked at his watch.
Eighty-three minutes since he’d first sat down.
It had to be longer than that!
For another twenty minutes, he cooled his heels as some state plebe droned on about the architectural hierarchy of a multi-jurisdictional investigation as might be used in pursuit of a purely hypothetical, cross-county, serial rapist. “If you’ll turn to the diagram on page twelve of your manual…”
“No. Just no.”
He was in the wrong city, doing the wrong thing.
French left the conference room without looking right or left, his steps loud in the hall as he stalked past the outer offices of the Professional Standards Division, en route to the elevator bank. He was almost past the double doors before a young woman interrupted his thoughts. “Excuse me, Detective?”
It was the same pleasant young woman who’d allowed him to use the phone on her desk. “Yes, Agent…?”
“Foil,” she said. “You have a call.”
At her desk, she handed him the phone, and moved away to give him privacy. Four agents stood at a conference table across the room; no one at the adjacent desk. Only Burklow had this number. “Ken?”
“What’s the last thing I said to you?”
There were background sounds. Men in the squad room. Orders. Activity. French’s hand tightened on the phone. The call would not have come without good reason. “You told me to have faith.”
“Shit. No. What was the second-to-last thing I said?”
“That you’d track me down if something major broke.”
“That’s the one. So you give those state cops a nice thanks-for-your-time, then get your ass home, fastest. ’Cause I’m telling you, brother”—a rustle on the line as Burklow shifted the receiver from one ear to the next—“shit down here just went sideways.”
Raleigh to Charlotte was all interstate and open highway, so French lit up the cherry, and put the pedal down. Chapel Hill. Greensboro. Salisbury. He counted cities, pulling 95 in traffic and 120 when the traffic thinned. Eighty-nine minutes after Burklow’s call, he hit the Charlotte line. Two miles in, he braked hard, and rocked into the parking lot where Burklow wanted to meet. He was there, and waiting. “When you said ninety minutes, I didn’t think you could actually do it.”
“I think it took ninety-three. Any sign of Gibby?”
“Not yet. I’m sorry.”
“Gabrielle?”
“She’s still in the dark, and I convinced the captain to keep it that way, at least for now.”
“Does he know you called me?”
“Suspects, maybe. He squawked twice, and left a message at the station.”
“Saying what?”
“That you’re in Raleigh for the day, and he wants you to stay there.”
“What about the body?”
“Transported forty minutes ago. Lonnie Ward. White male, thirty-seven, and big as a house, six-eight, maybe, and about two-ninety.”
“He has a sheet?”
“A few minor convictions: loitering, lewdness, solicitation. There was a Peeping Tom charge that went away back in ’68 when the witness recanted. The DA was an associate then, but remembers the case; thought there might have been some intimidation. No family, far as I can tell. No word yet on occupation or known associates. He has an apartment near the university. Smith and Martinez are there.”
“What about the girls?”
“Becky Collins and Dana White. Scared to death, but home with their parents. They don’t know anything. Other developments since we spoke. They put Gibby’s car on a flatbed, and hauled it out for full forensics. Can’t imagine what they hope to find, but there it is. Still, no murder weapon or witnesses. Martinez and Smith interviewed Chance’s mom, but she knows nothing of use. Never seen the dead guy. Has no idea where the boys could be.”
“How’s this playing with the captain?”
“Honestly? The man is lost. You know how he is, too decent to be a murder cop, and more bureaucrat than street. I don’t think he’s recovered yet from seeing Tyra Norris the way she was.”
“What about the rank and file?”
Burklow rolled his heavy shoulders, almost fatalistic. “You’re well-liked. You know that. Plus, a lot of these guys watched Gibby grow up. There’s respect, too, for how Robert died in the war. But then again, there’s Jason, and he’s a scary dude, even for cops. A few of the newer guys wonder if Gibby has some of those same qualities tucked away inside. The car keys are a problem. Martinez is on that like white on rice. If you’re asking me to lay odds, though, I’d say most cops in the know think the boys got caught up in something they weren’t looking for. Wrong place, wrong time. I’d call it 70 percent.”
“And the other 30?”
Burklow shrugged, soulful and sad. “They think the boys are involved.”
“With Jason?”
“Jason, yeah. Tyra, and Sara. Now the dead man in Chance’s house. None of it feels random.”
“Christ, it does look bad.” French scraped dry palms across his face. “What do I do, Ken? How do I save my family?”