Jack had concentrated so hard on not pacing or twitching in the interview room that he’d actually fallen fast asleep, with his head resting on his arms the way kids at school used to do when they came back in from lunch and teachers made them put their heads on their desks. He awakened abruptly and sat up when the door opened. The clock on the wall said 2:05, so more than an hour had passed since Detective Lasko had left the room.
The moment Jack saw the grim expression on the cop’s face, he knew that things had changed—for the worse. Lasko was carrying a clear plastic bag with the word EVIDENCE stamped on it in bright red letters. Inside were Jack’s new Skechers.
Without a word of greeting, the detective slammed the bag down on the table in front of Jack before sitting across from him. Pulling a small printed card from his pocket, the detective began reading Jack his rights.
A Miranda warning? Jack thought. What the hell?
“What’s going on?” he asked when the caution ended.
“Why don’t we take another crack at your telling me what you were doing last night?” Lasko growled. “That blackout bullshit isn’t going to cut it.”
Clearly Lasko’s previous kid-gloves treatment was a thing of the past.
“What’s changed?” Jack asked.
Lasko held up the bag with the shoes in it and shook it in Jack’s face. “This is what changed. The soles on these match the casts we took of footprints found in your clearing near the crime scene last night—the same clearing where we found the murder weapon.”
“So what?” Jack asked, trying to maintain a bit of bravado. “That’s where I hang out every day. Why wouldn’t my shoe prints be there?”
“But those are the only ones we found there, Jack. Nobody else but you was in that clearing last night.”
“Like I already told you,” Jack insisted, “I wasn’t there. I caught the bus home the way I always do, bought some booze, and drank it. That’s it. If you don’t believe me, talk to my roommates. They’ll tell you where I was.”
“We already tried that,” Lasko said. “I dispatched a pair of detectives to interview the people you live with as soon as I left here. They talked to a pair of guys named George Wooten and Tom Mather. Sound familiar?”
Jack nodded. “Sure,” he said. “They’re my roommates.”
“According to them, you stumbled into the RV drunk as a skunk at three o’clock in the morning. So maybe you did end up blacking out eventually, but I’m guessing that happened a lot later than you told us the first time around. You didn’t black out until after you got back from shooting the priest, so help yourself out here, Jack. Tell me what really happened. Did Father Andrew cut you off and tell you no more freebies? Did cutting into your panhandling proceeds make you mad? Is that why you went gunning for him?”
“I’m telling you I didn’t do that. Father Andrew was my friend.”
“Did you argue?”
“No.”
“By the way, the crime lab has located traces of DNA on one of the cartridges inside the murder weapon. Once we’re able to profile it, chances are it will lead right back to you.”
Jack’s head was swimming. “I need to take a leak,” he said.
“Fine,” Lasko replied. “Be my guest.”
Lasko escorted Jack down the hall to a single-stall restroom and then stationed himself against a wall next to the door to wait. Jack did need to pee, but not all that badly. What he really needed was to clear his head and think. Finished at the urinal, he washed his face with cold water and then stared at his bleary-eyed reflection in the mirror. Was it possible he really had done this? If so, why? He’d had no beef with Father Andrew, none at all. And he had no access to a gun either, so how could his DNA be found on a murder weapon? Unless someone had put it there—unless someone was framing him, but that made no sense either.
For several long minutes, Jack couldn’t bring himself to leave the restroom. It seemed likely that these were the last few breaths he would take as a free man. If he stopped talking and asked for a lawyer, Lasko would immediately place him under arrest. After that he’d have a court-appointed attorney, one who would probably be worse than useless. And even if he ended up with a court-appointed lawyer who managed to get the court to grant bail, Jack had no money to post it. No one he knew, with the possible exception of Jimmy, maybe, had any money at all. In other words, he would be stuck in the Maricopa County Jail until the case went to court, which could just as well be forever away. No matter how you sliced it, Jack Stoneman was toast.