Crowell looks around the office. The only member of his squad at a desk is Allyson Hamlin. He and Hamlin are the day’s early birds: M-40 is on the evening shift this week, so its detectives are not scheduled to start until 3:00 p.m. Investigators usually begin taking cases an hour before the official start of their shift, and they often arrive at the office a bit early to get a jump on their day. But Crowell’s motive for coming in today before noon is more pragmatic: he wants the overtime pay.
Crowell picks up the phone and calls Deere to let him know what he has in mind. Deere agrees with the plan but says he’s tied up at the moment—he has some personal business to take care of, as well as a meeting about another case. He expects to arrive in the office at about the time their shift begins.
After texting Joe Bunce and suggesting that they meet at the house in Mitchellville, Crowell turns to Hamlin and asks if she is working on anything pressing. When she shakes her head, Crowell tells her that he wants to go find the Peeping Tom.
Thirty minutes later, the two detectives park their cars in front of the party house. But as Crowell is marching up to the front door, something strikes him as off. Slowing his pace, he carefully surveys the home and yard: the yellow siding and red shutters are unblemished, and the lawn is tidy and dotted with trimmed bushes. There are no crushed beer cans or shattered bottles in the grass, no glassine drug bags in the driveway. Crowell stops, puts his finger on the address in his notepad, and then cross-checks it against the metal numbers above the front door. No, he thinks, this is the right one.
Taking his final two steps to the door, Crowell glances over his right shoulder and spots Hamlin, who is standing about five feet away, her right hand resting on the butt of her gun. Beyond Hamlin he sees a leafless tree, the quiet street, and low, scudding clouds in all directions. Crowell turns back to the house, presses the bell, and hears a chime.
A moment later, the door opens, revealing a young woman in a neat white blouse and red skirt. Having expected a street thug or a drug addict, Crowell feels whiplashed: instead he’s looking at a smiling June Cleaver.
“Hello, ma’am, I’m Detective Crowell with the county police, and this is Detective Hamlin,” he says, nodding toward his fellow investigator.
The woman scrutinizes the detective at her door. Crowell looks ultraserious in his fugitive-hunting best: gray sweatshirt, bullet-resistant vest, blue jeans, and running shoes. He’s also got a gun on his right hip. Stepping aside, she bids the detectives to enter.
Crowell is immediately overwhelmed by the delicious smell of freshly baked cookies. Or at least that’s what he thinks he’s smelling; for a moment, he wonders if his new diet pills are playing tricks on him. Two days earlier, he visited a doctor and asked for help losing weight. He was given an injection of vitamin B12 and a prescription for phentermine, a hunger suppressant that other detectives had taken with some success. The drug has side effects the chronically hyperactive detective doesn’t need—an increase in energy, euphoria, and restlessness—but Crowell is already swearing by the pills, saying they’ve helped him drop several pounds even though he’s continued eating his longtime staple: fast-food cheeseburgers.
Pausing in the foyer to get his bearings, Crowell tries hard not to betray his befuddlement. He looks around and sees hardwood floors, new bookshelves, and clean furniture in the living room. This is not at all what he was expecting.
“Cookies?” he asks, inhaling deeply. “Chocolate chip?”
The woman beams, and Crowell and Hamlin smile in return as they walk into the kitchen, which in addition to the scent of cookies has the new-appliance smell of steel and plastic. Crowell is now certain they have the wrong house—there is no way this is the neighborhood drug den where Jeff Buck and his crew hung out.
In the kitchen, Crowell is mesmerized by the spotless cabinets. “Cherry?” he asks, rubbing his hand along one.
“They’re beautiful,” says Hamlin. She points to the stove. “Stainless steel? Nice.”
“Thank you,” says the woman as a girl and a pair of little boys scamper into the kitchen, two of the children nearly plowing into Hamlin’s legs before veering into the living room and vanishing down a hallway.
Hoping to clear up the confusion, Crowell asks the woman if she knows Gerry Gordon. When she says no, Crowell gives her a description of the man, but that doesn’t register, either.
“He doesn’t sound familiar,” she says. “No.”
Crowell asks how she came to live in the house, and the woman says she bought it a few months ago. The previous owners had fallen behind on their payments, she explains, and she and her husband were able to purchase the house at such a steep discount that they still had enough money to renovate. Crowell nods, thinking back over various interviews and realizing that witnesses had mostly talked about spending time in this house during the past summer, before Amber Stanley was killed.
“Good thing, too,” she says. “It was a disaster—a real mess.”
She can’t remember the previous owners’ names, but her description confirms Crowell’s suspicion that they must have owned the party house.
Crowell closes his pad, shakes the woman’s hand, and thanks her for her time. She politely leads the detectives to the front door, where she takes Crowell’s outstretched business card and promises to call if she hears anything about Gerry Gordon.
As the door closes behind him, Crowell wishes more witnesses were like this woman. Regretting not having grabbed a cookie—on these diet pills, he is convinced he can eat anything and still lose weight—he rolls his eyes at Hamlin and trudges down the walkway toward his Impala.
* * *
WAITING FOR CROWELL and Hamlin is Joe Bunce, leaning against the passenger door of his cruiser. After kidding Bunce about his late arrival, Crowell explains that Gerry Gordon and Jeff Buck’s associates haven’t lived here in months. Bunce smacks the door of his car: while digging out the information that the Peeping Tom had been renting a room here, he’d taken the trouble to search computerized land records to verify the address and the owners. The county clerk’s office, he gripes, must be behind in processing deeds.
Bunce looks around. “Where’s Detective En Route?” he asks.
Crowell tells Bunce that Deere is busy with other stuff and that he didn’t feel like waiting for him. Then he eyes the double row of single-family homes stretching away from what he now thinks of as the cookie house. The street and its sidewalks are empty; he doesn’t even see a dog walker.
Turning back to Bunce, he says, “Remember the Crown Vic?”
Bunce nods. Two days earlier, the two detectives were standing on a curb in this very neighborhood when a dark blue battle wagon passed them. Jacked up on struts and with speakers pounding out rap music, the car trailed a plume of marijuana smoke from a rear window, as if powered by a steam engine. Through the thinly tinted glass, Crowell saw a young man looking straight at him, delivering a blatant eye-fuck. He and Bunce hopped in their cars and gave chase, crisscrossing the area for a good fifteen minutes without finding the Ford Crown Victoria.
“Well, I want that car,” Crowell says. “It had drugs and a gun in it—I know it did.”
Bunce rolls his eyes. On the diet pills, his partner is even more intense than usual. For two days, he’s been talking nonstop about the Crown Vic. Bunce decides to move on. “What’s next?” he says.
Checking his notebook, Crowell recommends that they visit the home of the twenty-year-old who caught the STD from Denise. Bunce and Hamlin agree it’s a good idea—the man lives fairly close by—so they climb into their Impalas and head out.
Not forty-five seconds later, Crowell is approaching a major thoroughfare when he spots a pedestrian in a thick black peacoat walking toward him on the opposite side of the street. Crowell draws closer; the man abruptly stops and spins around, then speed-walks in the opposite direction. As Crowell drives by, he glimpses the man’s face.
There’s something about that guy, thinks Crowell. What? What?
<
br /> The investigator’s mind races but comes up empty; he can’t figure out why the man looks familiar. Instinct takes over: Crowell whips the car around and guns the engine. The car lunges forward and then halts with a screech, not ten yards from the startled man, who stares open-mouthed at the detective.
“Hey, buddy, buddy,” Crowell says, leaping from the car. “Can I talk to you? I want to talk to you.”
The man turns and quickly scans his surroundings, clearly calculating his chances for escape.
“Don’t do it, buddy!” Crowell yells. “If you run, it will change your fucking life!”
The man blinks and says nothing, his focus entirely on Crowell now.
“Get your fucking hands on my fucking car!” Crowell yells, pointing to the trunk of the Impala with his left hand while letting his right drop to the butt of the gun on his hip.
The man shrugs, shuffles to the car, and places his hands on the trunk. Crowell keys his radio and lets Bunce and Hamlin know that he’s just grabbed someone. They respond that they’re on their way.
“What’s your name?” Crowell asks. He frisks the man for weapons; finding none, he spins him around.
When the man tells Crowell his name, Crowell asks him to repeat it. He does.
No way, thinks Crowell. It’s Jeff Buck’s alibi witness, Scott Allen,1 the friend the dealer said he was probably hanging out with on the night of Amber Stanley’s murder. Allen is on their list of witnesses to interview, because he could help undermine at least one of Buck’s potential alibis; he’s also a close friend of the dealer and knows the players in the crew. Crowell has seen his photograph a couple of times. Perhaps the detective somehow recognized the man, or maybe he just got lucky. Either way, he feels charmed—he and Deere and the others could have spent weeks trying to find Allen and come up dry.
Crowell looks down at Allen’s right hand and notices that it’s not lying flat on the trunk of his car; it’s half open, as if the guy can’t quite make a fist. A scar runs across the thumb, near the wrist. It looks like a fairly recent knife wound. Maybe he cut his hand while raping Denise, Crowell thinks. Maybe the blood on her shirt is his.
“What happened to your hand?” Crowell asks casually. “You cut it?”
“I lacerated my tendon,” Allen says. “I lost the nerve. I can’t feel anything.”
“How did you do it? That is what I asked.”
“Car accident in Texas,” says Allen, his voice carrying a slight quiver.
Crowell is certain the man is lying.
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, Crowell and Bunce are devouring Big Macs at their desks while Allen is stewing in Interview Room 1. Crowell finishes his cheeseburger, a Coca-Cola, and a large container of fries. “I feel like I have nitrous in my system,” he says, meaning the fuel additive for racing cars.
“How much have you lost?” Bunce asks.
“Eight pounds,” says Crowell.
“That’s good.”
“This shit is like gold,” Crowell says. “My wife called me, asking where I had left the pills. I told her on the counter. She wants to use ’em. She says she just needed one. I told her not to take another until tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“Because then there won’t be any left for me! I told her, ‘Get your own shit—stop stealing mine.’”
Ten minutes later, the two detectives take their seats across the table from Scott Allen in the box. Allen’s coat is slung over the back of his chair, and he is wearing a plain gray long-sleeved T-shirt. The room isn’t particularly warm, but sweat is dripping down the man’s forehead. He’s also wringing his hands.
Though Crowell can see that his witness is nervous, he’s not sure how to play this. He needs Allen’s consent to obtain his DNA, but if he asks for it without explanation, Allen might shut down and refuse. The detective doesn’t want to mention the murder yet; he’d like to find another way to persuade the man that he has good reason to ask for his consent, something serious but absurd enough to prevent the guy from freaking out.
Crowell begins the interview in the manner of a dull bureaucrat and learns that Allen graduated from a PG high school a few years ago. He’s twenty-one, has a girlfriend, and still lives with his parents. As he listens to the man answer his questions, the detective twirls his pen in his fingers, and looks at the ceiling.
“Listen,” Crowell says abruptly, “I know this is going to sound far-fetched, but did you have sex with a twelve-year-old girl?”
Allen’s eyes grow wide with incomprehension. “Wha-wha-what?”
“It’s just, just—that’s what somebody told us,” Crowell says, his tone offhand. “We have an individual alleging something. Look, I don’t think you’re having sex with twelve-year-olds, but I am wondering if we can get your DNA sample. It will prove you didn’t.”
“Sure,” Allen says, rubbing a sweaty cheek. “Sure.”
“Sign here,” says Crowell, passing the required form across the table. “It’s really no big deal. Just have to check this out, a twelve-year-old girl and all.”
As soon as Allen affixes his signature, Crowell summons an evidence technician into the box to swab the man’s cheeks. After she has finished and shut the door behind herself, Crowell scrutinizes the sweaty man in front of him. No better time than now, he thinks.
“So, you know anything about a girl getting killed?”
The man is obviously puzzled, his mind desperately churning. His eyes dart between Crowell and Bunce, and his shoulders slump as he realizes that this is no pro forma interview to clear up ridiculous allegations involving a sexual assault.
When Allen doesn’t answer, Crowell gets more specific. They are investigating the murder of Amber Stanley back in August, the detective says. Does he know anything about it?
“I—I don’t.”
Bunce opens a folder and slaps color mug shots of Jeff Buck and his associates on the table, one after another.
“Know him?” Bunce asks, tapping the photo of Jeff Buck.
Allen shakes his head.
“How about him?” Bunce asks, pointing to a picture of someone else.
Again and again, no. Six times, no.
“Bullshit!” Bunce says. “We know you know these guys. Why lie to us? You hang out with them!”
“You lie about the little shit, you make us question what you say about the big shit,” says Crowell, drumming the table with the fingers of his left hand.
Allen says nothing.
“You look nervous,” Crowell says.
“I am nervous. Your questions—”
“You’re sweating,” Crowell says.
“I sweat a lot.”
“You sweat a lot?” asks Crowell, shaking his head, looking at his partner. “Joe, there’s a medical condition like that. What is it?”
Bunce doesn’t reply. He stares at Allen and watches a drop of the man’s sweat hit the table. Allen swipes his damp cheek with a forearm.
“We know you’re tight with Jeff Buck,” says Bunce.
“I don’t—”
Crowell slams the table with both palms so suddenly that both Allen and Bunce sit bolt upright.
“I’m out of patience! I don’t want this to be a long fucking day!”
Allen’s eyes grow wide again.
“Come on!” Crowell yells. “This is bullshit! Tell me why you’re so nervous!”
“I’m—I’m worried about myself.”
“You’re worried about going home tonight?” Crowell asks.
“No,” Allen says, his eyes now glued to one of the mug shots on the table. He nods toward the photo, the one closest to Bunce. “I’m scared of him.”
Crowell and Bunce eye the picture—it’s the one of Jeff Buck.
“I lied earlier,” Allen says. “I know him.”
It takes the detectives a half hour more to peel away silly lies—Allen gives two fake names for his girlfriend, another for his baby’s mother, a bad phone number for his girlfriend in Texas. They learn th
at he cut his thumb in a fight with his girl, not in a car accident. Most important, by checking airline records and speaking to Allen’s mother, the investigators confirm that Allen was in Texas from at least August 13—four days before Denise’s rape and nine days before Amber’s murder—through the end of December.
At first, Crowell and Bunce are disappointed: they had almost believed that they’d stumbled across the man who had raped Denise. But there’s some good news, too, because what Allen has told them appears to have eviscerated the best of Jeff Buck’s alibis. If Allen was in Texas on August 22, Buck wasn’t hanging out with him on the night of the murder.
As the interrogation wears on, Crowell and Bunce probe deeper into Allen’s friendships with Buck and his associates. Allen claims he doesn’t know much about Amber Stanley’s murder beyond some neighborhood gossip and what he read on a flyer posted at a gas station. When Crowell asks him whether he’s ever seen Jeff Buck with a gun, Allen says he once saw Buck and his enforcer brandishing pistols at a party held in the house Crowell had visited that very morning.
Crowell asks Allen where Buck keeps his guns.
“I honestly don’t know,” Allen says, “but I know he doesn’t trust nobody, not after some shit got lost.”
“Shit got lost?” asks Bunce.
“A gun.”
“Who lost it?” asks Crowell.
Allen provides the name of one of Buck’s friends and says Buck told him that this man had “misplaced” the pistol.
“When did he lose the gun?” asks Bunce.
“During the summer,” Allen says. “When I was in Texas.”
“When did you hear he lost it?”
“Jeff told me about it when I got back.”
“Why did he let his friend have the gun?” Crowell asks.
The friend “had to take care of something,” Allen says, shrugging.
Maybe Buck lent the gun to his friend to kill Denise, Crowell thinks.
“What happened to the gun?”
“I don’t know. It just got lost.”
“What kind of gun?” asks Bunce.
Allen tells them its precise caliber.
A Good Month for Murder Page 11