Twin Offerings

by Ruth Parker

  In the silent room, there was a loud, violent buzz. Fletcher turned quickly towards the noise and saw that Pratt’s phone was sitting on the bookshelf. He reached over and grabbed the phone. Sorry buddy, but you should have used password protect, Fletcher thought. He read through Pratt’s text messages.

  “Come on, man,” Fletcher said aloud.

  There was a chain of messages to and from ‘Melissa/Madison.’ Fletcher scrolled to the bottom to start with the first message. The messages were professional, as was the email. The girls were wondering when they’d get their picture. He had to do a little touch up, but he’d send it soon.

  Touch up lol can you work some photo shop magic on us one of the girls had written. Fletcher didn’t know whose number it was, only that Pratt had the number stored as Melissa/Madison.

  No photoshop “magic” required. You girls are beautiful! Just need to fine-tune some colors and lighting. Will send on Thurs.

  Fletcher tapped the contact information button on the phone. Pratt had the girls’ phone number, email, and physical address stored. He knew where they lived. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out what school they went to, what their schedule was.

  Fletcher had to remind himself that the message didn’t make the man a murderer.

  “Fletcher, Underwood!” It was Jennings. Fletcher popped up. He put Pratt’s phone on the desk and left the office.

  Jennings was in the hallway with an orange prescription bottle in his hands. “Fletcher, what did they say was the cause of death for the Clark twins?”

  “Heart failure,” he said, understanding what Jennings was getting at. “Caused by a combination of alcohol and benzodiazepines.”

  “Well, I got here a prescription for fifty Xanax that was filled a mere two weeks ago, but—” Jennings held up the bottle and shook it. Fletcher could hear only a few pills rattling around the bottom. “Only six left. Where’d the other forty-four go, Mr. Pratt?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Pratt said. “I dropped the bottle and a bunch spilled out into the sink and the toilet.”

  Fletcher looked at the other two detectives. In his gut, he still didn’t think that it was Pratt… but the evidence was certainly starting to mount. And saying I don’t think this is the guy didn’t hold up in court or anywhere else. “He was texting the Webb twins,” Fletcher said. “Has their address stored in his phone.”

  “You went on my phone?” Pratt asked indignantly. “You can’t do that.”

  “If only you had that sort of righteous sense of law and order when you were out fucking twelve-year-olds,” Underwood said.

  Fletcher needed to stop this before it got out of hand.

  “Mr. Pratt, when you gave us permission to search your house, I’m afraid that included permission to look on your computer and your phone and anything else that we deem to be pertinent to the investigation,” Fletcher said. “I only looked on your phone because it was on the desk and it rang when I was in your office.”

  “You guys are grasping at straws,” Pratt said. He ran his hands through his hair, defeated. He suddenly looked much older than his forty years.

  “Straws?” Underwood said. “I got some bad news for you. We have much more than straws. The guy we’re looking for is a photographer, so that’s strike one. He used benzodiazepines to kill the girls. That’s strike two. And he likes them twelve years old. That’s strike three. Not only that, but you had physical contact with the girls days before their disappearance. You had their address. You had been communicating via text message. That’s strike four.”

  Pratt looked at Fletcher, pleadingly. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Right now we just have some questions,” Fletcher said. “But based on the circumstantial evidence that Detective Underwood has just eloquently elucidated for us all—and because this is an urgent case—we could get an arrest warrant and come back later today.”

  “Urgent case,” Pratt said with a snort. “That’s what this all boils down to. You need to pin it on someone real quick before the media start giving you shit.”

  “We just have some questions,” Fletcher said. “That’s all. Come down and explain yourself. It’s our job to investigate all possibilities.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Pratt asked. The last thing the cops wanted was for the suspect to get a lawyer. Whenever a suspect asked if he needed a lawyer, Fletcher always lied and said, ‘you don’t need a lawyer if you’re telling us the truth.’ But he saw the hurt and frustration in Pratt’s face, and he couldn’t bring himself to lie to the poor guy.

  “Yes,” Fletcher said. “You do.”

  Fifteen

  Something wasn’t right about the nail polish. Laurel had been running the sample all day, trying to isolate the pigments to prepare it for mass spectrometry. The spectrometry would isolate and catalog the various ions of the pigments. From there, they could identify the brand and shade of nail polish. But she couldn’t get the pigment to separate from the binding agents.

  She was getting frustrated—which was rare. She was too close to this case. It was her case, after all, fifteen years later.

  In the distance, she was dimly aware of the phone ringing. She had to answer it, but the problem with the damn binding agents. She let the phone ring. If it was important, they’d call back. She could just run the whole sample through infrared spectrometry testing, but it was better to isolate the pigments first. With paint, it was usually a relatively easy procedure. A chemical solvent would separate the pigments from the acrylic or polymer binding agents, then a spin in the centrifuge would yield a nice layer of pigment to be siphoned off and analyzed. Identifying the type of pigment would help match the nail polish to the source.

  The phone was still ringing. It had to have rung at least twenty times. She took off her goggles and stripped off her gloves and answered the phone.

  “Crime Lab,” she answered.

  “Laurel?” She recognized the voice easily. The low, gravelly calm made her feel a shiver of excitement. She could imagine him whispering all sorts of things in her ear with that voice.

  “What do you need, Fletcher?”

  “We have someone in custody. I want you to observe the interview.”

  “You caught him?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was tucked away in the lab, agonizing over whether or not the nail polish was pigmented with cadmium or iron oxide. When he was out there on the line, actually doing something.

  “Well,” he started to say.

  “You didn’t catch him? Do you have a witness? What the hell is going on in there?” She was shouting but she didn’t care. The architect of all her nightmares, all her guilt, all her dark hate, could be handcuffed in an interrogation room mere yards away in the next building.

  “We have a suspect,” he said, speaking slowly, choosing his words carefully. “However, he does not fit the profile.”

  “So what?” she said. She propped the phone between her ear and her shoulder so she could clean her lab station. She emptied beakers of solvent and put her instruments in the tray to be sterilized. “Profiling isn’t an exact science. You said that before.”

  “Which is why we’re considering all possible suspects and investigating them thoroughly. As of right now, this guy’s our only strong candidate.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said. She hung up the phone. Laurel stored the nail polish sample and returned it to the locked cabinet, but left the rest of the equipment out for the lab assistant to clean and stow. Someone else could separate the damned pigments.

  As promised, she crossed over into the Sheriff’s Department building in eight and a half minutes. She wove her way through the cubicles and workstations and found Fletcher standing outside an interview room and frowning. When she saw him, her heart raced, and it had nothing to do with possibly seeing the man who had taken Leigh all those years ago. Fletcher was wearing a wrinkled suit and his black leather shoes were scuffed and the soles were caked in mud—but he was still good-
looking enough to stop her in her tracks. She had to stop thinking about him. Nothing good could come of it. “Where is he?” she asked. She was trembling. She couldn’t help it. What if it was really him? She wanted to feel Fletcher’s strong arms wrap around her, to draw strength from him, but she could not let herself think about that. She had to face the demons of her past alone.

  “He’s in Interview Room Two with Underwood and Jennings. We can go into Room One. There’s a two-way mirror that we can look through. We can also listen in through the intercom system.”

  “Why do you think he’s the killer,” Laurel said.

  “I told you that I’m not sure that he is,” Fletcher said. He opened up the door to the interview room and motioned for her to enter. He did not turn on the lights. They would only be able to see through the two-way mirror if their side was dark. Standing in the dark that close to Fletcher, the urge to go to him was strong. She wanted to tell him everything, but knew that she couldn’t. If he knew the truth, he’d want nothing to do with her. He’d look at her with that same dispassionate look of disgust that she’d seen in his eyes during the investigation. The weariness of knowing he was in a world full of horrible people who did horrible things. She couldn’t bear to see him look at her like that.

  He pulled back the curtains that covered the mirror and stepped aside. Laurel walked on numb feet to the mirror. She looked through and saw the back of Underwood’s head. Facing the mirror was a man, about forty years old. He didn’t look familiar—except maybe the eyes. There was pain in his eyes.

  Fletcher clicked on the intercom and after a short burst of static, Laurel could hear the voices. She closed her eyes, trying to remember.

  “You assholes,” the man said. He was angry. The man who took Leigh was never angry.

  “Calm down,” Underwood said. He raised his hands in a placatory manner that Laurel thought was condescending.

  “I can’t calm down. You assholes are too stupid to do anything more complicated than hide on the side of the freeway and give out speeding tickets. When you get a real crime, you don’t know what to do so you throw a dart at the sex offender list and go knocking on whoever’s door it lands on.” The suspect was screaming, his voice distorted by the microphone feed.

  Laurel’s first reaction was that they had the wrong suspect. He was all wrong. His hot denials, his righteous indignation, the way he flailed his arms around. It was all wrong. It wasn’t him.

  “You got a lot of strong words, but I don’t hear you denying that you fucked a twelve-year-old,” Underwood said, his thin lips peeling back into something that was almost like a smile.

  “Jesus, that was twenty years ago,” Pratt said. “And we’ve been married for almost twenty years. Does that count for anything? That we got married and we have two kids?”

  “I never fucked a twelve-year-old,” Underwood said. Laurel wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Fletcher refused to give her any details.

  “Jesus,” Fletcher said. Laurel looked over at him. His dark eyes seemed to turn black. “He married her?”

  “Can you tell me what’s going on?” she asked.

  “Do you think he’s the guy?” he asked, ignoring her question.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Okay,” he said. He didn’t question her, didn’t doubt her. “This guy owns a photo studio. He was the one who took those photographs that I found under the girl’s bed. He had the girls’ address, was text messaging them a few days before they were abducted. He has a history as a sex offender. But shit, hold on. Do not go anywhere.”

  Fletcher left the room. Through the two-way mirror, Laurel saw the door swing open and Fletcher walk inside the other room. She could tell he was having a hard time restraining his anger. He tapped Underwood on the shoulder and whispered something that the microphone did not pick up. The two men left the room. Laurel heard the door close and Fletcher let go of whatever restraint he’d been holding onto. Laurel could hear them loud and clear. Probably so could half the station.

  “He married the girl?” Fletcher yelled. “This guy isn’t a fucking child molester. It was statutory rape at best. They’ve been married for twenty years? He’s not our guy.”

  “You don’t know that,” Underwood said defensively, his eyes narrowing to tiny brown dots pushed into his face.

  “I do now,” Fletcher said. “Laurel was watching the interrogation too. She says he’s not the guy.”

  “I don’t give a screaming fuck what Laurel says,” Underwood spat out. “She’s a liar and probably more than a little nuts.”

  There was a thud and the mirror shook in its frame. Laurel couldn’t see what was happening out there but she didn’t need to know that Fletcher had slammed Underwood against the wall.

  “She’s the best lead we’ve got in this sorry case, so you should treat her with a little respect,” Fletcher yelled. The sound of his voice—his authority, the raw manly power behind it—was making her feel that pesky little flutter in her stomach again. Now was not the time to be thinking about that, but she couldn’t help it. She was surrounded by cops every day, but she’d never met a man before who was so unafraid of confrontation, so quick to stand up to assholes like Underwood. It didn’t hurt that Fletcher could probably kick the ass of almost anyone who was foolish enough to take him on.

  “She is not the best lead we’ve got,” Underwood said. “She’s unreliable and has changed her story. I don’t even know why they let her near the evidence in this case. Who knows what she could do to it.”

  “If you’re insinuating that she’d tamper with the evidence, you’re mistaken. She’s one of the most dedicated people on this damned case. If you had just a shred of her passion, we’d have caught this asshole by now. Instead, you’re busy throwing darts at the sex offender registry.”

  “Bullshit,” Underwood said. “This guy was with the girls. He’s a photographer. He knew where they lived. He texted them.”

  Laurel watched through the two-way mirror as Fletcher entered the interview room and sat down in the chair recently vacated by Underwood.

  “Mr. Pratt,” Fletcher said, “the minor that you were convicted of having sexual intercourse with, you are married to her now?”

  “Yes,” Pratt practically yelled. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his thinning hair was sticking out in odd clumps. “I always tell you assholes that, but you don’t listen. I admit, I was probably too old for her back then. But we went to the same school. She was in seventh grade and I was in twelfth. She was in my math class, for Christ’s sake. That’s how we met. We started hanging out, then started dating. We were boyfriend and girlfriend. The school found out and her parents pressed charges because the school told them to. And don’t go thinking I was the captain of the football team with muscles and a moustache, preying on a little twelve-year-old girl. I was a skinny dweeb who wasn’t even good at math. She was very mature. Even after the trouble with the law, we stayed together. Her parents signed the papers and let her get married when she was seventeen and graduated high school.”

  Fletcher sighed. No wonder Pratt was so pissed off; the last twenty years as a faithful husband and father had earned him no credit in the eyes of the law.

  In an instant, Pratt’s face lit up and a smile overtook his face. “You said the girls were kidnapped on the way home from school, right? I was probably at the studio and I have security cameras there. I bet I can prove my whereabouts.”

  “When can you get the footage?” Fletcher asked. Just then, Underwood barged back into the room.

  “Hidden cameras in the photo studio—why do you have cameras in your store? You record the little girls when they’re changing clothes?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Fletcher said. “Security cameras are twenty bucks and any business owner would be a fool not to have one. You’re a little too obsessed with fucking little girls if you ask me.”

  Underwood roared a stream of obscenities, mostly regarding Fletcher’s ma
nhood and his future employment as a garbage collector. Jennings, who had heretofore been quietly taking notes, got up and carefully led Underwood out of the room. Laurel shrunk back, away from the doorway, lest the angry detective see her.

  “When can you get the footage?” Fletcher asked Pratt again.

  “If you guys have good internet, we can look it up now. All the footage goes into cloud storage. I just gotta log in to my account.”

  “How much footage is archived?” Fletcher asked.

  “It auto-saves for thirty days.”

  “That means you have footage of the day the twins came into your studio to get their pictures taken too. Let’s go find a computer.”

  The footage of Greg Pratt’s photography studio was excellent. Cameras gave two feeds—one camera trained on the front desk, the other on the backdrop where the photography sessions took place. Pratt hadn’t purchased cheap twenty-dollar cameras, instead, shelling out some cash on top-of-the-line, high resolution recorders.

  Fletcher, Underwood, and Laurel were crowded around a workstation, watching the security footage of Greg Pratt’s photo studio. Jennings was supervising Greg Pratt back in the interview room.

  Fletcher watched the feeds of Madison and Melissa Webb the day that they’d gone to the photo studio. The photo shoot was as boring and uneventful as Fletcher remembered his own school’s picture day. The whole thing took less than thirty minutes and the girls were gone.

  “So?” Underwood said.

  “It’s not him,” Laurel said. Her voice was weak. She did not have it in her to go up against Detective Underwood. He was fueled by rage and everything made him angry. That was part of what made him a good detective—if you got on his bad side, then he would stop at nothing to see you destroyed. Unfortunately, Greg Pratt had gotten on his bad side. The more Laurel defended Pratt, the closer she got to winding up on Underwood’s shit list. Except, she had a feeling she was already on it.