I considered heading straight home, and I got on the freeway heading north. There seemed to be a new wave of stragglers bunching up, trying to get on and off the expressways, maybe those who’d procrastinated and then, at the last minute, based on the size of the storm on their television screens, nervously decided to leave. I went one slow mile before reevaluating and instead turning on my siren and heading back downtown. Sitting in traffic, I’d decided on one last stop, a detour to the county jail, where Crystal had been taken to ride out the storm until her bail could be set.
On the way, I called the ranch, hoping to reach Maggie. But Mom answered and told me she was out in the barn. “How’s my daughter?” I asked.
“Still asking for you,” Mom said. “But okay. Hanging in there.”
“I’ll be home soon,” I assured her. “Within a couple of hours.”
After that, I called Evan Warner and asked him to meet me at the jail. I waited half an hour or so before he walked in with his parents. The Warners all looked as fatigued and anxious as I felt. The jail’s lobby was nearly empty, just a skeleton crew on, guards and personnel who were preparing the building for the hurricane and making plans to keep the facility secure throughout the storm. After Evan and his parents placed their belongings in lockers and I checked my Colt .45 at security, we walked through the scanners and then toward a rear elevator we took upstairs to the women’s floor. When we arrived, I asked to use an empty lunchroom. Surrounded by vending machines, a gurgling coffeepot, and the aroma of an unidentifiable brown liquid that had thickened on a day when few had taken the time for a cup, I explained to the Warners why I’d asked Evan to come to the jail. I wanted him to talk with Crystal, to urge her to admit her involvement in Joey’s abduction and tell us everything she knew about the man who’d taken him, especially anything about Benoit’s car or where he might be.
In contrast with our first meeting, this time Evan’s parents said little. They appeared apprehensive but resigned to the prospect that their son was the only one who might be able to help save the life of the little boy they now acknowledged was their grandchild.
“Why do you think Crystal will talk to me?” Evan asked, his expression doubtful. “I left her for someone else, and we’ve done nothing but fight.”
“I noticed when she talks about you, she’s angry, but she still sounds as if she’s sorry the marriage ended, that she wants you back. And I know something else,” I said, nodding at Evan’s parents. “She thinks the two of you, Mr. and Mrs. Warner, are rich, and she regrets not ever being able to tap into any of your money.”
Evan’s parents exchanged a knowing glance, as if signaling that they had both understood that from the beginning.
“So you want me to do what?” Evan asked, unsure.
I sighed. This was delicate. “Listen, Evan, I can’t make false promises to Crystal. But you can.”
“Why would she listen to me?” Evan asked again, combing through his hair with his fingers and looking both frightened and frustrated. “Why would Crystal do anything to help me?”
“She won’t. But she’d do anything to get what she wants. And what she wants is you and a foothold into your parents’ checkbook,” I said, laying it out. “I can’t tell you what to say to her, Evan. I can’t tell you to lie to her. All I can say is that we need to get her talking, and you’re the only one who can make that happen.”
“You?” Crystal mouthed, shooting her husband a questioning glance as a white-shirted guard unlocked the handcuffs on her wrists. He sat her down in one of the stiff, high-backed metal chairs, then stepped back, far enough to assure her that he couldn’t hear. With the hurricane bearing down on Houston, Crystal and Evan were the only ones in the jail’s cavernous visitors room, separated by thick Plexiglas. Each picked up a black headset mounted on the divider and put it to an ear.
“Why did you come?” she asked, peeved. We had the audio feed plugged into a phone I sat listening to in a nearby office, peering through a one-way mirror at them while a recording device ran on the line. We weren’t breaking any laws. Inmates were told when booked that anything they say over the jail phones could be monitored, recorded, and used against them. “Did you come to rub it in? To see how I look locked up?”
“I miss you,” Evan said, I thought rather convincingly, looking a bit doe-eyed at her. “I’ve broken up with Sami, that woman I was seeing from work. I know now that I’m not in love with her, and I’ve been thinking a lot. With Joey gone, I’ve been thinking about what we were like as a family, missing him and missing you.”
Crystal appeared more than dubious. “Sure,” she scoffed. “You bet. Suddenly you’re the great husband and dad.”
“I understand why you don’t believe me, but you have to understand. Something’s happened,” Evan said. He fidgeted just a bit in the chair and leaned forward as if reaching out to her. “This whole thing with Joey got me thinking, how he’s our son and we’re his parents, how we need to take care of him. And there’s this other thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I figure most of our fights were over money, Crystal. Weren’t they? Don’t you think that was our real problem?”
She turned her head slightly, held the phone away from her ear, then replaced it and said, her voice thick with doubt, “Yeah. I guess.”
“Well, I love you, and I love Joey,” Evan said, giving her a warm smile. “It wasn’t ever that I didn’t love you. It was that I couldn’t take care of us. I wanted to finish college, to get a degree and be able to support both of you, but without my parents’ help, I couldn’t do it. That made me feel bad, and we had a lot of fights.”
“Yeah,” she said, eyeing him as if he were a stranger, a man she wasn’t sure she could trust. “So what changed?”
“Everything,” Evan said. “That woman ranger showed my parents Joey’s picture. My mom, well, she never thought he was mine. My dad didn’t believe it, either. But once they saw Joey, they realized he had to be mine. They said he looks just like me at that age. They believe now that he’s my kid.”
“Yeah,” Crystal said with a sullen sneer. “So now, with Joey gone and me in here, now they believe he’s yours?”
“I know the timing sucks,” he said, putting his hand on the window as if wanting to touch her. “I understand. But they’re offering to help us out. They want their grandson to live a good life, with both of his parents. If we get Joey back, my mom and dad offered to buy us a house and pay our expenses, including my tuition, until I graduate from college. Then I can get a really good job and support us. I’ll be able to pay the bills, and we can be a family again, but without the money problems.”
From her expression, Crystal wasn’t convinced, and she didn’t raise her hand to meet his on the window. “You think they mean it?” she asked. “Really?”
“I know they do,” Evan said, his eyes intent on hers, as if willing her to believe him. “I love you, Crystal, and I want to be with you and Joey.”
With that, Crystal sat back as far as she could in the chair, as far as the telephone cord would stretch, thinking. “But Joey’s gone,” she said. “What if we can’t find him?”
“We have to find him,” Evan said.
“But Evan, what if we can’t? Maybe we’ll never find him.” When her husband didn’t answer, Crystal leaned forward, narrowing the distance between them. “We could still be a family, have more kids, couldn’t we? Wouldn’t your parents be happy with that?”
For perhaps the first time in days, I smiled. Evan was leading her down a path, and he just had to nudge a little harder to close the deal.
“No. I love you, Crystal, but my parents want Joey. There’s no other way. We have to get him back. Plus, I don’t think we’d make it in our marriage if we didn’t find him. It would just be too painful to lose him like this,” Evan said, beginning to cry. That part I figured wasn’t acting. “And my parents, part of this is that they want to get to know their grandson. If we don’t find Joey, they won’t help us. Things will be like they were. No house. No tuition money. And if that happens, we can’t make it. Crystal, we already tried that and it didn’t work. I want to take care of you, but I can’t, not without a good job, and right now, I can’t get one. We need my parents’ help, and to get it, we need Joey.”
Since he’d first put it on the glass, Evan’s hand waited. Now Crystal raised hers and put it parallel to his, as if touching, the window separating them. “Really, Evan?” she asked. “You really do love me? Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry for everything I did, for making you sad.”
“I love you, too, Evan,” she said, a smile inching its way into a grin. She looked happy, content, as if all her problems were over. Then, as if she’d just remembered: “But what are we supposed to do about Joey? How do your parents expect us to find him?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said, shaking his head. “I really don’t. I wish there was something, anything you could do to help that Texas Ranger find him. If you did help, I know that my parents would be grateful to you, that you’d be a hero. They’d be even happier to accept you and help us build our new life together.”
At that, Crystal’s hand slunk down off the glass onto the ledge in front of her. She looked at it, then up at Evan’s face, as if considering what to do.
“I’m sorry you don’t know anything to help,” Evan said, his voice shaking. “I wish you did, so we could get our family together again, only living in a nice house, without any money problems, without all the trouble we had before.”
Crystal bit her lower lip, as if in pain. Moments passed, and she said nothing. Then: “Maybe I know something,” she said tentatively, her mouth sloping into a downward comma. “Maybe I do. But, Evan, if I tell the cops, we’ll never be together. I’ll be in jail. My lawyer said not to talk to them.”
“But if you don’t, we won’t get Joey back,” Evan said, wiping away a tear. “And if we don’t get Joey back, Crystal, it’s over. All of it, us, the new house, our new life. It’ll all be gone.”
Again, Crystal cinched in her lip and held it in place with her teeth, biting down hard. “That lawyer I have, he’s not very good. He didn’t know how to negotiate a good deal,” she said. “But maybe, if you brought that ranger and the prosecutor back, we could work something out.”
Evan wiped away another tear. “Do you think so? Will you be able to tell them everything, so they can find Joey, Crystal? Do you know enough to help?”
“Yeah,” Crystal said. “Just tell them that I’m ready to talk.”