“So that’s what I know. We were on the phone. Crystal wanted money, again, and we were arguing, again. I got sick of it, and hung up on her. Maybe five minutes later, she calls back and says Joey is missing. I didn’t believe her, because Crystal lies. She’d lie about the time of day. I figured she just wanted me to go to the park so she could get me to talk to her in person, to ask for the cash.”
Evan Warner sat in the same interview room where we’d talked with his wife. A gangly young man, he had a thick crop of curly dark blond hair and the same round, bright blue eyes he’d passed down to his son. In the chair, Evan sat at attention, his left leg propped on his right knee, holding on to his left shin with both hands, as if to keep it from sliding off. His son was missing, but, like his wife, Evan didn’t look worried, only irritated.
“Crystal will say anything for attention,” he told us. “Anything. Like I said, she lies when there’s no reason. I wouldn’t put it past her to stage a fake kidnapping to make everyone feel sorry for her. She’ll probably want a ransom for Joey, then pocket the money.”
David and I both looked at the guy and wondered, but David was the one who formed our thoughts into a question. “You really think your wife would do that to her own child? You’re comfortable saying that’s what happened?”
I figured the boy’s dad would recant, but he nodded. “Yes, I am. She told me I’d be sorry for leaving her. Crystal is a pathological liar. She’s capable of absolutely anything. She tricked me into marrying her, got pregnant so I didn’t have a choice. I know Crystal. If she thought stashing Joey somewhere and claiming he’d been kidnapped would drop a bunch of cash in her lap, she’d do it in a heartbeat.” With his final sentence, Evan pointed at both of us, as if emphasizing his certainty.
Even before we sat down with Joey’s dad, David had confirmed that Evan Warner was working at the bank when his son disappeared. Of course, it was still possible that he’d hired someone to scoop up the boy. The father had a financial motive, in two words: child support. If that turned out to be the incentive, it could be bad news. A father willing to take such drastic measures wouldn’t be worried about keeping Joey alive. The boy’s death would be a financial boon, since judges don’t force parents to pay cash to support dead children.
“What happened when you got to the park?” I asked.
“It took me half an hour to show up. I wasn’t sure I’d go at first,” he said with a self-righteous shrug, as if still unsure he should have responded when his wife called him. “I get out of the car and the first thing out of Crystal’s mouth is that she wants to look around the park before calling the police. So that’s what we did.”
“What was Crystal like when you arrived, how was she acting?” David asked.
This time, Evan threw back his head and looked at the white-tiled ceiling for a few moments before continuing, as if pulling together his thoughts or, perhaps, deciding what he wanted us to know. When he lowered his eyes, he looked directly at David, attempting a man-to-man connection I apparently wasn’t part of. Lowering his voice, he said, “Crystal was upset, but that’s not unusual. She’s got this whole routine that she’s used on me before, lots of tears, makes her look like a real victim. It took me a couple of years after we got together to figure out that it wasn’t real.”
“Mr. Warner, when is the last time you saw your son?” I asked, reinserting myself into the mix.
“Last Sunday, when I took him out for pizza,” he answered. His grip tightened on his shin, and he frowned, his fury at his wife mounting. “When I picked him up, Crystal was mad. Her parents hadn’t been willing to babysit the night before. She couldn’t stop talking about how they ruined her Saturday night. She had some big plans, and Joey got in the way.”
“Did she say what the plans were?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “But they probably involved a bar and some guy she met there. That’s Crystal’s speed.”
“How often do you see Joey?” David asked. “On the average.”
“Once a week, sometimes less,” he admitted, his eyes downcast, as if ashamed. “I’d take him more, but that’d mean I’d have to see Crystal more, and even seeing Joey isn’t worth having to spend any time with his mother. I’m done with her. As much as I love Joey, I wouldn’t live with Crystal again for anyone. Not even him.”
Evan Warner had been more than forthcoming about what he wanted us to think had happened to his son. Now we only needed to figure out if we could believe him. If we could, maybe there was a way to use the information to find Joey. “If your wife is involved in this, is there someone she’d ask to help her?” David asked. “Who is she closest to?”
For a few moments, the boy’s father appeared to consider the possibilities, and then he shook his head. “Crystal’s kind of antisocial. People don’t like her. It takes a while, but eventually they figure her out and don’t want anything to do with her. She says she’s got some new friends, but I don’t know them. Like I said, my guess is she met most of them in a bar,” he said. “Her parents are the only ones she’s got any kind of real relationship with. They’re not my favorite people, mainly because they believe everything Crystal tells them like it’s gospel, when most of it’s lies. But they love Joey. They’d never hurt him. As much as I dislike Ginny and Danny, I don’t think they’d be involved.”
That question answered, I wanted him to consider other possibilities. “Mr. Warner, suppose for a moment that your wife isn’t involved. Is there anyone who’d be angry enough with you or with her to do something like this?” I asked.
Again, he didn’t appear even to consider the possibility. Instead, he looked me in the eyes, annoyed. “The only one who’d be angry enough is Crystal,” he said without hesitation. “And ask anyone. The way she talks about Joey, no one who knows us would be surprised if she’s behind this. Crystal complained that the kid was ruining her life. I figure she found a way to turn him into an asset and cash in on him.”
I looked at the guy and wondered, Was he telling the truth? What if the boy’s mother hadn’t taken him? “You know, Mr. Warner, you want to hear what I’m thinking?”
“Sure,” he said with a frown. “Why not?”
“I’m thinking you don’t seem very worried about your little boy,” I said with what I was sure was outright doubt printed across my face. “Not very worried at all. If that were my child, I’d be frantic, doing whatever I could to help, including searching for the kid myself. You don’t look like you care.”
Warner smiled back at me and at David, a scornful smile that came with a slight shake of the head. “You’re right, I’m not worried about Joey. That’s absolutely true. Why? Because I don’t believe anyone really took him.”
“How can you be so sure?” David asked.
“I saw Crystal at the park, kind of halfhearted looking around, spending most of the time talking to me about coming back to her. The usual Crystal stuff,” he said. “I’m telling you the truth. Crystal is behind this, and at some point Joey will turn up, safe and sound. Only, if her scheme works, Crystal will have a pile of money to spend.”
“Mr. Warner,” David started, “maybe, but—”
“What you two cops need to do is pin this kidnapping thing on her,” Warner cut in. “Crystal needs to go to jail. I want her out of my life, and then I’ll be free to take care of my son, while she rots behind bars.”
Watching the boy’s father carefully, David asked, “Crystal tells us that you have a girlfriend, a teller at work, a pretty blonde. Is that true?”
I had to give Warner credit, because he didn’t back down. “Yeah, I have a girlfriend,” he said without any sign of guilt or remorse. “So what? I’d be happy to introduce you sometime. But that has nothing to do with Joey’s disappearance. I love my son, and I’d never do anything to hurt him.”
“Okay, I’m sure Agent Garrity or one of the detectives on the case will take you up on that,” I said. “But first we’ve got a request. We have a polygraph machine down the hall with an expert to run it. Crystal agreed. She cooperated and took the test, answered questions for us with the lie detector hooked up. We’d like you to do the same.”
“I bet she didn’t pass, did she,” he said with an air of certainty.
“That’s not the issue on the table,” David said. “What we want to see is that you’re cooperating as fully as your wife.”
“I don’t know,” Evan said, giving a slight shake of the head that appeared noncommittal. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I mean, do those things really work? What if I didn’t like what I was being asked? Would I have to answer? I mean, you could ask anything, right?”
“What wouldn’t you want to answer?” David said, deflecting a question with a question. “Wouldn’t you be willing to answer anything that would bring Joey home?”
“Well, I guess it would be all right,” Evan said. “I’m telling the truth, so—”
A sharp knock on the door, and Evan was interrupted. David, with his tendency to forget to hang up his suit at night, was an oddity among investigators. Most of them looked like the detective who stuck his head in, a precisely cut flattop, spit-and-polish neat, maybe to the point of appearing square. “Agent Garrity,” the detective said, “there’s someone out at the front desk demanding to see you.”
“Not now,” David said. “Tell them to wait.”
“They’re causing a commotion. I think you’d better talk to these people,” the detective answered. “Right away.”