The Night Stalker jc-2

by James Swain

  “Goddamn it, Carpenter,” the chief swore. “The department has more problems than it can handle, and you’re running around town beating up my men.”

  “Cheeks is dirty,” I said. “You should have arrested him, not me.”

  The chief picked up a spiral notebook lying on his desk. It looked like the same notebook the uniform had used when interrogating me outside of Cheeks’s house. He waved it in front of my face. “I read your allegations, and they’re totally false. Cheeks didn’t destroy evidence in the Abb Grimes case. It got lost. Cheeks didn’t frame Jed Grimes for his son’s abduction. Jed was the logical suspect, and still is our only suspect. And Cheeks didn’t threaten the grocery store manager. He may have leaned on him a little bit, but he didn’t threaten him.”

  “The manager told me he threatened him,” I said.

  “I don’t care what the manager said,” the chief snapped. “Cheeks knew we were shorthanded, and spoke to the manager as a favor to me. He’s trying to help us find Heather Rinker and her son, which is more than I can say for you right now.”

  The chief was giving me the company line. He wasn’t going to haul Cheeks in and question him, but he was willing to humiliate me. I folded my hands in my lap, and waited him out.

  “Look, Jack, I need help, ” the chief said. “Heather Rinker and her son are gone, and I don’t have a single clue as to where they might be. You’re the expert at finding missing people. Help us find them, will you?”

  “I can’t,” I heard myself say.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m under arrest.”

  “Cheeks has said he doesn’t want to press charges. I’m willing to give you a pass. In return, you’ll help us. Do we have a deal?”

  I’d broken enough laws to have myself put away for a long time. The chief had to be pretty desperate to let me skate. I glanced at Burrell, then back at him.

  “Deal.”

  “Good.” The chief leaned forward in his chair, and clasped his hands in front of his face. “Let’s play pretend for a minute. If this was your investigation, what would you do?”

  I stared down at my jailhouse flip-flops, and gave it some thought. Jed had spoken to Heather right before she had disappeared. According to LeAnn, her son had asked Heather to get something for him to eat, and probably knew where Heather had gone.

  “I’d do everything possible to make Jed talk,” I said.

  “We tried that,” the chief said. “Our best interrogators have worked him over, along with an interrogator from the FBI. Jed won’t say a word.”

  “Jed hates cops. You need someone who isn’t a cop,” I said.

  “Any suggestions?”

  “How about his mother?”

  “LeAnn Grimes left town, and her cell phone is turned off.”

  “Any other relatives?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  The room fell silent. Jed Grimes didn’t have many fans, except for one. I pointed at the phone sitting on the chief’s desk.

  “Let me make a phone call,” I said.

  “To who?” the chief asked.

  “His priest.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  D ialing information, I obtained Father Kelly’s phone number in Starke. I called the number, and a woman answered who identified herself as his wife. She was polite, and gave me the number of his parish office in town. I called it, and let the phone ring a dozen times. Father Kelly answered sounding out of breath.

  “I was just leaving for the prison to be with Abb,” Father Kelly said. “What can I do for you?”

  It took me a moment to realize what Father Kelly meant. He was Abb Grimes’s priest, and was going to be at Starke Prison when Abb was put to death.

  “I’m calling about Jed,” I said. “I think he might be able to lead the police to his missing wife and son, but he’s refusing to talk to anyone.”

  “Do you want me to talk with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Consider it done.”

  I asked Kelly to stay by his phone at the parish, and told him someone would call back soon. Kelly promised to be there and hung up. I handed the chief the phone.

  “Put Jed into a room with a telephone, and leave the rest to me,” I said.

  I went downstairs to the booking area and retrieved my clothes and personal items. A long line of perps was waiting to be processed. Looking in their faces, I saw the same desperate look I’d seen in my own reflection a short while ago.

  I changed clothes in a bathroom and dried my gun with the hand dryer. I came out to find Burrell in the hallway. She led me outside the building to the smoking area. It was free of smokers, but she still spoke in a whisper.

  “Listen, Jack,” she said. “I spoke to a couple of older detectives who work in Homicide. Evidence in murder cases just doesn’t disappear. If Cheeks destroyed those slippers and sleeping medication, other detectives in the department knew about it.”

  “You think there was a conspiracy?” I asked.

  “Call it an agreement to look the other way.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe they wanted to make sure Abb Grimes got the death penalty. Didn’t you?”

  I would have been lying if I’d said that I hadn’t wanted Abb to be put to death for the crimes he’d committed. But wanting an evil person to die, and destroying evidence that proved he was crazy, were two entirely different things.

  “Not that badly,” I said.

  We went inside and headed to the basement. While one of the interrogation rooms was being outfitted with a phone, Burrell and I sat in the adjacent room along with the chief, and watched through the two-way mirror as a technician ran a line into the room, then stapled the line to the carpet in the floor.

  “Here he comes,” Burrell said.

  Jed entered the interrogation room wearing a pale blue jumpsuit. His handcuffs and leg irons were connected to a chain that was padlocked to a metal belly band encircling his waist. Seeing the mirror, he shook his handcuffs defiantly.

  “Crummy cops!” he shouted.

  His escorts were two muscular guards. One pushed him into a chair.

  “Sit down, and shut up,” the guard said.

  The guard looked at the mirror and raised his eyebrows. The chief pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and handed it to me. Typed on it was a phone number.

  “That’s the number for the phone in the room,” the chief explained.

  I took out my cell phone, and called Father Kelly at his parish. This time, he answered on the first ring.

  “Jed is sitting in an interrogation room at police headquarters,” I said. “I’m going to give you a number for a phone in that room. I want you to call Jed, and see if you can get him to talk.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Father Kelly said.

  I gave him the number and hung up. Ten seconds later, the phone in the interrogation room rang. A guard put the call on speaker phone, and Father Kelly’s voice came out of the speaker.

  “Hello, Jed? This is Father Kelly calling.”

  Jed twitched like he’d been hit by a cattle prod. Bending his body at the waist, he brought his mouth down closer to the phone.

  “Hey, Father Kelly,” he whispered.

  “I need to talk to you, Jed,” the priest said.

  “Okay,” he replied.

  Jed knew we were eavesdropping.

  Each time Father Kelly asked him a question, Jed dropped his voice, and mumbled a one-syllable response, while his eyes shifted suspiciously around the interrogation room. I had known hardened criminals who were not as distrustful of the police as he was.

  Father Kelly didn’t give up. The questions kept coming, and little by little, I saw Jed’s chin drop, and the steely look in his eyes begin to fade. Father Kelly was playing on his conscience, and gradually wearing him down.

  “You love Heather and your son, don’t you?” Father Kelly asked.

  “Yeah,” Jed mumbled.

  “Love them with all your h
eart, and all your soul?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re in trouble, you realize that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We have to help them. You must talk to the police.”

  “No.”

  “Why won’t you talk to the police, Jed?”

  “Because the police lie. ”

  It was the first time he’d uttered a real sentence.

  “You must work with the police,” Father Kelly said emphatically. “They need to eliminate you as a suspect, so they can find the person who’s behind this. I know this is hard to believe, but the police are your friends.”

  Jed jumped up from his chair. “Why don’t you tell that to my daddy, Father Kelly? Tell him what great friends the police are when they stick a needle in his arm tomorrow morning. I’m sure he’d love to hear that.”

  I rose from my chair. Jed’s hatred for the police was too great for him to willingly help us. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get to the truth. I quietly left the room.

  Burrell and the chief must have thought I was going to the bathroom, because they didn’t follow me. I went next door, and entered the interrogation room. Both guards looked at me, and assuming I was a detective, let me enter.

  I stood in front of Jed’s chair. “Remember me?”

  Jed stared at me with hatred in his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “I want to help you,” I said.

  “That’s another lie,” Jed said.

  “I know about your father’s slippers and the sleeping medication he was taking,” I said. “Detective Cheeks told me that he destroyed them. I’m going to make sure a judge knows about it, too. That’s a promise, son.”

  Jed reeled back in his chair, and I saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

  “You mean that?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Your daddy was insane when he murdered those women. You’ve known it for years, but Detective Cheeks made sure that no one would listen to you. Then, when your son was abducted, Cheeks pointed the finger at you so he could get you out of the way.”

  Jed was shaking. “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t kidnap your son, or murder your father’s lawyer, or kill any of those women the police found at the landfill. You didn’t do any of those things, did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “If I asked you to swear on a stack of Bibles, and take a polygraph test, you’d do that to show the police they’re wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I had broken through. Kneeling, I placed my hand on his arm. “Tell me about your conversation with Heather this morning. Where did she go?”

  Jed shrank in his chair, his voice a whisper. “I don’t know.”

  “She offered to get something for you to eat. What was it?”

  He hesitated, thinking back. “I told Heather that all I’d been eating was potato chips and sodas, and she offered to get me something.”

  “Was she going to a restaurant?”

  “She said she was going to surprise me.”

  “What are your favorite restaurants?”

  “You know, the usual places.”

  “Tell me.”

  “McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King. I also like Steak and Shake.”

  “Are all of those restaurants within walking distance to your mother’s house?”

  “Yeah,” Jed said.

  I patted his arm and rose from the floor. Our killer worked in a restaurant somewhere in LeAnn Grimes’s neighborhood. He was right under our noses.

  “You going to find Heather and Sampson?” Jed asked.

  Before I could reply, the door to the interrogation room banged open, and I saw the chief standing in the hall.

  “Get the hell out here!” the chief roared.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  T he chief pulled me into the hall and slammed the door. His eyes were on fire, his body tensed like a clenched fist. He jabbed me in the chest so hard it made me wince.

  “You crummy bastard,” the chief said.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “Don’t play games with me. You know the interrogation room is wired, and your conversation was being recorded.”

  “So?”

  “The district attorney will listen to those tapes when he prepares his case, and hear you say that Cheeks destroyed evidence. He’ll want to start an inquiry. You just opened Pandora’s box, and there is not a goddamn way I can close it.”

  I stood my ground. I wasn’t going to hide the truth. The chief jabbed me again.

  “Say something for yourself, Carpenter,” he said.

  “I was trying to get Jed to open up.”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Yes, it did. Jed told us that Heather went to buy food in his mother’s neighborhood. That should help us find her, and her son.”

  “You believed him?”

  “Yes. Strap Jed into a polygraph if you think he’s lying.”

  “The kid’s a sociopath. Polygraphs don’t work on sociopaths.”

  I started to argue, but the chief cut me off. “I gave you a get-out-of-jail-free card earlier, and now I’m taking it back,” he said. “I’m giving you two days to prove that Ron Cheeks purposely destroyed evidence in Abb Grimes’s case. If you can’t, I’m going to charge you with assaulting a police officer, and throw your ass in the county lockup.”

  My mouth had gotten me into more trouble than anything I’d ever done. Without thinking I said, “Two whole days? That’s awfully generous of you.”

  He gave me another jab in the chest.

  “Make that one day,” the chief said.

  He stormed into the stairwell. For the first time, I noticed Burrell standing at the end of the hall. She was slouched against the wall, and staring dejectedly at the floor.

  “What did he do to you?” I asked.

  “He’s putting me on paid leave,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “He thinks we’re in this together.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and we walked up the stairs in silence. The first floor was a whirlwind of activity, and Burrell pulled me to one side, and lowered her voice. There was an intensity to her eyes that I didn’t remember seeing before.

  “We need to prove our case,” she said.

  “I’m with you,” I said.

  “I’m having the detectives in Missing Persons call every restaurant in LeAnn’s neighborhood, and collect the names of each employee, along with their Social Security numbers,” she said. “I’m going to run background checks on them, and see who has a criminal record. I’ll e-mail you the ones I think might be our killer.”

  I’d always been good at making creeps, and I said, “You want me to see if I can pick him out?”

  “Yes.”

  Burrell was directly violating the chief’s orders, an act that could lead to her being fired. She could have been content to let things play themselves out, only that wasn’t who she was. I said, “Call me once you have something.”

  She nodded stiffly and went to the elevators.

  I was blinded by the afternoon sunshine as I walked through the front doors of the station house. There was a reason I was no longer a cop, and I got reminded of it every time I came here. I started across the lot toward the pickup truck, which the cops who’d arrested me had driven to the station and, at my suggestion, left the keys beneath the floor mat.

  “Hey, Jack! Hold on a minute.”

  Chuck Cobb, the smart-mouthed detective everyone thought was my brother, was smoking a cigarette by the front door. He came over and whacked my arm good-naturedly.

  “Just the man I was looking for,” Cobb said. “I need you to review the Piper Stone murder report.”

  It was common practice during homicide investigations to have witnesses reread their own accounts of murder scenes. This allowed the detectives working the case to iron out inconsistencies, while letting witnesses get their facts straight.

  “Sure,” I said.

>   “The report’s in my computer. Do you mind coming upstairs so I can print it out?”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said. “I’m on the chief’s shit list.”

  “Whoops. Well, how about I print it out, and bring it to you?”

  “I can wait,” I said.

  Cobb went inside, and a motorcycle cop came outside.

  “Are you Carpenter?” the motorcycle cop asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’m your escort,” the motorcycle cop said.

  “I don’t need an escort,” I replied.

  “The chief thinks you do.”

  I felt like I’d been kicked in the teeth. The chief had assigned a cop to watch me, and make sure I didn’t stick my nose where it didn’t belong. I glanced up at the building, and found the chief’s office on the top floor. Something told me he was up there, watching this.

  I drove to the Sunset with Cobb’s murder report lying on the passenger seat and the motorcycle cop riding my bumper. I pulled into the lot, and the motorcycle cop parked beside me. He lowered the visor on his helmet, and eyed me suspiciously. As I started to get out, my cell phone rang. It was Rose. I rolled up my window before answering.

  “Do you still need me to bail you out of jail?” my wife asked.

  “Not today,” I replied.

  “Are you still in trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  “There must be something I can do.”

  I hesitated. I didn’t like pulling my family into cases, but there was something that Rose could do. She could help prove that Cheeks destroyed evidence, while I spent my time looking for the killer, and hopefully finding Sampson.

  “There is,” I said. “A serial killer named Abb Grimes was given an experimental sleeping drug in the mid-1990s by a clinic in Broward, which later shut down. The drug begins with the letter Z, and made him hallucinate. I need you to find those records.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “No?”

  “Not when you know how to use the Internet.”