Mayor Knox
suddenly became alert, as if he suddenly thought of something that hadn’t crossed his mind just seconds earlier.
“What are you saying, Keal? Are you saying there may be a serial killer out there?”
“No, Paul, that’s not what I am saying. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have absolutely no reason to believe that’s even a remote possibility.”
That’s all he needed
, Marty thought to himself; the mayor spreading panic throughout the city.
“Katie, please, this is very important.” Marty turned back to the teenager. “You must remember something about the person that picked you up. Was it just one person? Man or woman?”
“Um… man,” she answered, but her eyes were cast down at the table, avoiding Marty’s gaze.
“How old?”
“I don’t know… Mom, please,” she said, turning to her mother, pleading.
“Look, Keal, that’s enough, I’m taking her home!” Spittle came out the side of his mouth as the mayor raised his voice, making an awkward attempt to take control of the situation.
“Sit down, Paul.” Marty stood up, his body towering over the fat politician, getting within inches of the shorter man’s face.
“I’ve got a dead kid lying in the morgue, and your stepdaughter may be a material witness.” His voice was starting to show signs of impatience. He turned back to Katie, frustrated by her lack of cooperation and now, evidently, lying.
Humiliation was something that the mayor did not take in stride, especially in front of his wife and stepdaughter. His face turned tomato red and he started to perspire profusely. He was just about to pull the “I am the mayor” card and throw his weight around when the door to the interview room opened.
Marty let out a sigh of relief the second Jean walked through the door.
***
I felt the tension in the air the moment I walked in. Marty looked like he wanted to take a swing at His Honor, the mayor. I had seen that look on my partner Moran’s face in regard to this same individual more than once. There was something about the tubby politician that got on everyone’s nerves, and I was not exempt from those feelings.
The crime scene photographer had printed up a few digital photos of the scene and I had run into him a few moments earlier. I was holding a manila folder in my hands. Inside were those photos.
I handed Marty the folder, which he quickly opened and then passed on to Frank. I didn’t know what kind of information he had been able to obtain from the teenage girl, but I was reasonably sure by the look on his face and the vibes he was giving off that he wasn’t having too much success.
Realizing that the temperature in the room was getting tropical and something needed to be defused, I called Marty outside.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, mayor. I need a few minutes with Detective Keal.” I dropped the closed envelope on the table in front of Detective Robinson.
I heard His Honor mumble something under his breath, something about “teaching the kid manners.” I smiled politely, pretending not to hear.
Before Marty followed me out the door, he turned to the mayor, a strange smirk on his face.
“Hey, Paul, how’s Cameron?” he asked, not waiting for a reply. Marty kicked the door shut behind him with the back of his heel.
I looked at Marty inquisitively.
“Long story… some other time,” he told me.
I let it go.
“She give you anything?” I already knew the answer, but I had to ask.
“She still says that they hitchhiked up there, but she has no clue who picked them up, doesn’t know the make of the car, doesn’t remember anything—just that it was some man.”
“You think she’s lying?” I asked him.
“Damn straight she’s lying. Did you speak to the other girls yet? Maybe they were a little bit more observant about who gave them a ride.”
“No, I just got back from the Camp’s house.” I turned to look through the window of the interrogation room, where I could see the mayor bending Frank’s ear.
“Apparently there was some sort of physical altercation between our victim and Ms. Hepburn a few weeks back. They got into it over some boy and they were both suspended from school. I take it from the look on your face that she didn’t bother to tell you that?”
He ran his hand through a mass of black hair, his fingers disappearing in the thickness of it for a few moments. It was a habit he had.
“So we go from material witness to suspect. That should rattle His Honor’s feathers.” He turned around, glaring at the mayor through the window.
“Why don’t you try and rattle one of the other girls?” I told him. “Try working Tiffany. She seems the most vulnerable right now. I’ll go play bad cop with Ms. Hepburn in there, maybe shake her memory loose.”
“Jean, do you think that these girls could have done this?” Marty asked.
I could see he was starting to toy with the idea, but my telling him about the girls fight wasn’t the catalyst. It had already crossed his mind, but Marty was still green and hadn’t been doing this long enough to become jaded. He had seen ugly, but sometimes ugly has to keep slapping you in the face before you really recognize it. Marty still saw monsters that looked like monsters. I knew that it wouldn’t be too long before he realized that monsters came in all shapes and colors, and soon he would be able to recognize the pretty monsters as well. One of them might be seated only a few feet away.
“I would like to see the look on her face when you confront her about them fighting,” he remarked.
I gave him a look, hoping he wouldn’t fight me on changing tactics and would go to speak to the other girl. He smiled, his dimples making an appearance.
“You want to keep Frank?” he asked me. It was his way of acknowledging that he was accepting the change of course of the interview.
“Yeah.” I glanced through the window. “Looks like slimeball and Frank have bonded.” I said sarcastically.
“Good luck,” he said as he walked away.
“Yeah, you too.” I turned the doorknob with a twist of my wrist and walked back into the room.
When I entered, it was apparent to me that His Honor the Mayor was trying to play upon Detective Robinson’s pseudo good nature. What he didn’t know was that Frank was a first rate actor, and played his role of good cop and sympathetic cop to the hilt.
Detective Robinson was far from a fan, but was giving the mayor an Oscar-winning performance.
“Yeah, you’re right, Mayor Knox, that young detective is a little over the top. I agree with you that the guy is probably a little overzealous, this being his first major case and all, but maybe if we can give him something, I can talk him into letting you guys go home.”
In an effort to appear bored, so the small group would consider him less of a threat than Detective Keal, he began doodling on a blank piece of scrap paper that he found in front of him.
Glancing down, I was sure that the overweight cartoon-like character with horns he created was a caricature of the mayor himself, but the mayor would be too vain to recognize it. If he was starting to catch on, his attention was diverted when I walked into the room.
“Sorry about that, Mayor, Mrs. Knox. Detective Keal needed to go speak with Tiffany. She would only talk to him.”
I turned to Frank. “I guess it’s those baby blues, huh, Frank?” I commented. “That boy’s got a way with the women.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I took a seat across from Katie. I looked to see if she showed any sign of being threatened by my news. If she was disturbed by it, she was doing a good job of covering it up.
I started out the interview acting sympathetic.
“Katie, I know you’re tired and upset, but the sooner you can give us some answers, the sooner you can go home. Can you think a little harder and try and remember who picked you up?”
“No, I told the other detective, I don’t remember. It was just some man!” Her eyes darted from one target to another, unable to focus on anything or anyone .She began looking around the room, as if planning her escape.
Suddenly, as if she had a flash of memory, she turned to me.
“Um… he was old, and I think he had gray hair… yeah, yeah—he was old.”
“How old do you think, Katie?” I had picked up the folder with the crime scene photos and shuffled it back and forth between my hands.
“I don’t know,” she told me, shrugging her shoulders.
“Take a guess: sixty? Seventy? Was he older than me? Younger than me?”
I knew I wasn’t imagining it; she had a smirk on her face when she answered.
“I don’t know, maybe sixty, younger than you,” she answered, as if she was getting bored.
I wanted to slap the smirk right off the little brat’s face. I was tired and cranky and some sixteen-year-old girl was lying in the morgue with her beautiful face burnt off, her parents devastated, and this kid was being flippant.
I knew what I was about to do next would probably end the interview right then and there, but I lost my cool. I opened up the envelope and took the photos of Jamie Camp’s body and laid them down on the table. Mrs. Knox put her hand to her mouth and tried unsuccessfully to muffle a scream of horror. The mayor turned his fat face away in disgust. Katie looked down at the photos for a second and then turned and stared back in my direction.
“Do you want to tell me about the fight you and Jamie had, Katie?” I asked.
“That’s it! This interview is over.” The mayor turned back around and slammed his chubby hand down on the table. “I’m calling my attorney. Katie, don’t you say another word!” he ordered her.
I picked up the photos and with a deliberate slowness, I placed them back in the envelope.
“Suit yourself, mayor. Maybe the other girls will be a little bit more forthcoming and tell us exactly what happened in the woods last night.”
The mayor grabbed his wife’s arm.
“Let’s go, Donna,” he said, as he practically pulled his wife out of the chair.
“You have no reason to hold my stepdaughter here. You have any more questions, they can be directed to my attorney,” he told us. His teeth were clenched tight, but somehow spittle still managed to escape before his jaw locked shut.
He was right. I didn’t have any proof that his stepdaughter was guilty of anything. All we had was what the three girls had told the first officer who responded to the 911 calls.
All three girls had told Officer Beck the same story. Jamie Camp had wandered off and they were concerned, so they went looking for her. When they found her, she was already dead.