by Blake Pierce
“Maybe I wouldn’t have,” he said. “But it’s done now. Let’s take him back to the A1 and see what we can get out of him.”
Without allowing her time for a response, he went got into the car on the passenger side. Avery looked into the back of the car and saw that Wentz’s face was like a stone—perfectly still and cold.
With an uneasy feeling in her stomach, Avery got behind the wheel and took Adam Wentz to A1 headquarters.
CHAPTER NINE
Half an hour later, Avery looked at Adam Wentz through a two-way mirror. Ramirez was with her, as were Connelly and O’Malley. O’Malley was reading through Wentz’s file, grumbling a few words here and there.
“If this cretin is smart enough to kidnap and then burn the body of someone, then I’ll do a little dance on a bar tabletop right now,” he said. “This guy’s a waste of space. Yeah, he likely deserves to be in jail for some reason, but not for the death of Keisha Lawrence.”
“We can’t know that for certain,” Connelly said. “Not until we’ve properly questioned him.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Ramirez said. “It’s like talking to a brick wall…a very badly tattooed brick wall.”
Connelly and O’Malley both looked at Avery. She shrugged and looked back out at Wentz. “I can give it a try, I suppose.”
“And do it without Ramirez this time,” O’Malley said. “The only thing Wentz has said since we sat him down in there was that Ramirez was too rough with him and arrested him on a bullshit charge. Which is technically true. But I can figure things out on that end. We can keep him here for a while.”
“I don’t think we need to,” Avery said. “It’s not our guy.”
“How about you question him before you jump to such a conclusion?” O’Malley said.
Avery sighed and left the room. Before she entered the interrogation room, she took a moment to collect herself. She hated to play the sexism card but she felt pretty sure that the men in the room she had just left might think more of her opinion if she had a penis. It was a nice daydream to think that the workplace had evolved beyond such things but at the end of the day, Avery was well aware of the lay of the land.
Wentz will likely see me the same way, she thought. Got to make sure I don’t give him a reason to.
She stepped into the interrogation room and closed the door behind her. She wasn’t going to play good cop and she wasn’t going to play bad cop. She was going to question him like a good little detective and provide enough proof to the men behind the mirror so they could let Wentz go—and so she could get back on the trail of the real killer. If she needed to, she’d get a little forceful but she didn’t think it would come to that if she played her cards right.
She took the seat on the other side of the small table he was sitting at, ignoring the hateful look on Adam’s face.
“What sort of relationship did you have with Keisha?” Avery asked. “You’ve said it wasn’t a fully committed relationship and you’ve also insinuated that there was sex involved. Would you say you were emotionally attached to her?”
Adam thought about this for a moment with a lopsided smile on his face. “Honestly…no,” he finally answered. “I liked hanging out with her and the sex stuff was really good. But we never lied to each other about what we had, you know? I saw other people and so did she.”
“There is a report in your file from about four months ago where she reported you beating her,” Avery said. “She later dropped it. Why is that? Did you threaten her?”
“No. We got into an argument and I slapped her. Pretty hard.”
“Do you recall what the argument was about?”
“Over the stupid dog,” he said. “I hate that dog. She’d bring it over to my place and it always jumped up on the couch. It would beg me to pet it. She brought it over one time when she wasn’t feeling well and asked me if I’d walk it. I refused and the damn thing ended up pissing on my carpet. So I kicked the dog. And she got upset. We got into an argument, some things were said, and I ended up slapping her.”
“And what about the other reports of abuse on your report? There are two others and they both come from the same woman.”
“My ex-wife. Yeah…”
“Mr. Wentz, I want you to understand that I am not trying to rub your nose in your past. I am simply doing everything I can to help prove that you did not do this. And you have to understand that the way you responded to my partner and I makes things seem a little suspicious.”
Adam looked down at the table. Avery noticed his eyes shifting to the left and right. There also seemed to be a relaxed sort of posture to his shoulders, whereas he had been rigid and upright when she had first come in. These were all signs of a sort of resignation—that he was slowly dropping his tough-guy routine.
“I had to go to court for one of the times with my wife,” he said. “I got drunk, she complained about it, and I responded by pushing her to the ground. When she came charging after me, I stopped her with my fist.”
“Is that why she left you?”
Adam smirked and shook his head. “No. I left her. She wanted kids and I didn’t. She’d try to make me feel guilty about it, so I left her. But what does that have to do with Keisha, anyway?”
“Nothing,” Avery said. “So back to Keisha then. Did you know her well enough to know what the routine of her days was like?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Walk me through a typical day for her, would you? As well as you can.”
He shook his head in disbelief, clearly finding this whole line of questioning over the top. “Her day starts with the damn dog. Walks it every morning right when she wakes up, even before breakfast. She works from home as an editor for some sort of proposal center or something. She doesn’t really get out too much. Other than coming to my place and maybe a bar every now and again, she was a recluse, you know?”
“When she walked her dog, do you know if there was any regular route she’d take?”
“No clue. Whenever she started talking about the dog, I sort of tuned out.”
“When you spoke to her on that last night before she left your apartment, were things on good terms?”
“Yeah. Things have been on good terms for a while now. We’ve had a pretty good month. Well…had, I guess.”
“And I guess if she didn’t get out often, she really didn’t make many enemies, did she?”
“None that I know of.”
Avery nodded and drummed her fingers on the table. “Can I ask you something a little personal?”
“Why not? It’s not like you’re not going to ask it anyway, right?”
Ignoring his stubbornness, Avery went on. “Why is it that you don’t seem too upset? You do understand why someone might find that suspicious, right?”
“Yeah, I do. And you know what, maybe I did cry a little when I got that call. But there’s something about the way she was killed…I don’t know. It makes it almost unreal. It’s so obscene, you know?”
As he said this, he looked dismissively to the table again. Avery was certain that he had worked on his tough-guy persona over the years and that it was finally breaking down in a moment of vulnerability.
Maybe that’s why he is coming off as so emotionless during this while ordeal.
“Yes, I think I could understand that,” Avery said. “From here, I’m afraid we’ll have to reach out to your employer to ask them some questions. Very basic stuff, just to help the investigation along.”
“Do whatever,” he said, again looking at the table.
She wanted to apologize to him for the way he had been brought in but also knew that if she had caused him to break a bit and discover his grief, he needed to be left alone.
She left the room and reentered the observation room. O’Malley and Connelly were looking at her with confused expressions. Ramirez smiled at her but didn’t seem to know how to feel.
“That’s it?” O’Malley asked.
“That’s it. He’s not our guy.”<
br />
“How can you be so sure?” Connelly asked.
“Several reasons. If he was the killer, he would have admitted it to it by now—or, at the very least, been covert about dropping clues. Someone that kills people the way our guy is doing it wants the attention. More than that, Adam Wentz doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not motivated enough. A domestic abuse charge on his record does not equate to murderer-who-burns-his-victims.”
She could see that her explanation was getting through to them. But she knew Connelly well enough. He’d try to hold on to Wentz for as long as he could…just to have someone sitting in the A1 as a suspect while a hunt was underway for the real killer. It was his way of feeling productive.
“You’re sure?” O’Malley asked.
“Almost positive. I was right about the identity of the remains we found, right? Why’s it so hard to believe I’m right about this? And not only this, but also that we likely have a serial killer on our hands?”
The two superiors exchanged a confounded look which ended with a frustrated smile on O’Malley’s face.
“All right, Black,” Connelly said. “I’m going to keep Wentz here for a while longer to see if he offers up anything new.”
“He won’t,” she said.
Ignoring her, Connelly added: “In the meantime, why don’t you and Ramirez get out there and prove yourself right. Again.”
“Gladly,” she said.
She glanced through the window again and was not at all surprised to see Adam Wentz with his head in his hands, doing his best to hide the fact that he was finally crying.
CHAPTER TEN
The day rounded out with no leads and no new clues and, as such, led Avery to the A1’s bar of choice later that afternoon, Joe’s Pub. She took her usual spot at the bar with Ramirez beside her. A few other cops were with them, drinking beer and watching the Red Sox lose on the TV mounted behind the bar. As was the norm, the little cluster of cops had their own little part of the bar along the far side of the building. It was there that they gathered to talk about current cases and let out their frustrations over beer, darts, and watching the Red Sox or Patriots on TV.
Avery sat there and looked back on her day, seeing if she could dig out any missing pieces from everything that had occurred. She and Ramirez had worked with the guys in Forensics to go over the ashes and the remains but no matter how they looked at it, they had no new information. Avery knew that cases like this usually took some time to come together but still felt as if she was failing. And it had been that looming sense of failure that led her to the bar. She did not drink to drown her sorrows and failures, but to sort them out and find a way to change them.
She wished she could just zone out and enjoy the baseball game on TV or a game of darts in the back of the bar, but she didn’t quite work that way, though. While she was well aware of the chatter from her co-workers all around, she remained deep in thought. She was trying to figure out the sort of man who had the patience, the experience, and the twisted mind it took to kidnap someone, burn them, and dump their remains in a public area. She wondered if the location had some significance. She wondered, albeit briefly, if the empty lot was where the killer had abducted Keisha Lawrence. The lot itself hadn’t been too far away from her apartment. And if she had been walking her dog when she went missing—
These recycled and rehashed thoughts tapered off as she heard one of the nearby officers mention a name that grabbed her interest.
“Did you hear that Desoto is getting out early?” one of the cops said.
“Bullshit,” replied the other. “How?”
“Good behavior, if you can believe it.”
“Unreal. We’re talking, what…almost a full year?”
“Something like that.”
“Someone is pulling some strings somewhere,” came the reply.
Avery knew the name Desoto well. After all, she had managed to take him down, along with four of his best men. It was one of the cases that had made Avery something of a figurehead around the A1. Desoto was the head of at least two gangs—maybe more—and had gained such a boogeyman status that a lot of people had not even believed he really existed—not until Avery had brought him in. And now that there was a chance he was getting out early…
That’s another little treat to look forward to, she thought. He’ll be looking for revenge right away when he steps foot out of prison.
“You good?” Ramirez asked her, gently nudging her arm.
She blinked her thoughts away and nodded. “Yeah, I’m good,” she said, taking a sip from her beer.
“You really don’t feel good about Adam Wentz, do you? You really don’t think he’s our guy?”
“No, I don’t. And I think it’s almost criminal to hold him.”
“Yeah, but even if he isn’t our guy, he might know something, right?”
“I doubt it. He would have told me when he started to crack. He was crying like a baby when I left that room.”
“So tell me this: if we did find out it was him and tomorrow this case is closed, would you be okay being wrong?”
She thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. “No. It’s never okay to be wrong. But in this case, there’s no worry. I’m not wrong.”
He sighed and then chuckled. He ordered another beer as one of his work-buddies came over. His name was Eldridge and although he was a damned good cop, he was also something of a frat boy at heart. Finley, who had become a good friend to Avery over the last few months, was shadowing him.
“You guys having a love spat or something?” Eldridge asked.
“Hardly,” Avery said.
“I know sexual tension when I see it,” Eldridge said. “I can say this with full confidence because the tension stage is about as far as I ever get.”
“A stand-up specimen like yourself?” Avery asked sarcastically. “I don’t believe it.”
“What are you two doing here anyway?” Finley asked. “A long day of work, I think a better reward than a beer would be some stress-sex.”
Avery decided not to say anything else. She didn’t know if they were insinuating something or if they knew about them somehow. She and Ramirez had been teased about a sexual relationship before, but never as bad as they had been over the last day.
Apparently picking up on Avery’s shift in mood, Ramirez recovered for them both. “If you two think she’d sleep with me in the first place, you’re shitty cops. She’s got standards, man.”
Eldridge and Finley laughed at this and after some further goodhearted ribbing, they got their drinks and headed back to their end of the bar.
“Sorry about that,” Ramirez said. “Look…I haven’t told anyone.”
“I didn’t say you had.”
“Maybe it’s just the afterglow,” he joked. “Maybe the sex is so good, we have an aura about us or something.”
“Getting cocky now, are we?” she said, her voice low.
“Are you kidding? I slept with you last night and woke up with you this morning. So yeah…I’m feeling a little arrogant.”
She smiled at him and a large part of her thought Eldridge might have been right. Maybe she would rather be in a bed with Ramirez than in a bar. On the other hand, if they left together that would only add more fuel to the fire. And she hated to be in the spotlight…especially over something like this.
“They might be on to something, though,” Ramirez said. “You want to get out of here?”
“I am after this beer,” Avery said. “But I’m going home alone.”
“You sure?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “And that’s nothing against you…I just need to try to get ahead on this case.”
He nodded and smirked. “That’s one of the reasons I like you, Avery.”
She finished her beer and returned his smirk. “Careful,” she said. “With talk like that, people might start to think there’s something going on between us.”
***
When she was in her apartment with
the case files spread out around her, she knew she’d made the right decision. And she was pretty sure Ramirez knew her well enough to know that she had, too. She looked over the notes that Forensics had mocked up and although they made little sense to her, she knew enough about them to know that there were no answers there to be had.
The one thing of note they had managed to come up with was that there was a chemical present in the ashes but it was so disintegrated that it was hard to make out what it was. It could have been anything from basic rubbing alcohol to a toxic agent.
Probably some kind of burning accelerant, she thought. Could be something as simple as gas or kerosene.
Midnight crept up on her faster than she’d expected. When she turned out the lights and readied herself for bed, she thought it would be nice to have Ramirez there. She nearly called him but did not want to seem needy. In fact, she wasn’t needy at all. What had happened the night before had been nice but she did not want him to think that she needed it. She had never needed a man in order to feel complete and she wasn’t about to start now. Yes, she supposed she cared for Ramirez, but was she ready to settle down and commit herself to a relationship?
That was a stretch…
She lay in bed for fifteen minutes before she realized that sleep was not going to come as quickly as she hoped. There was just too much on her mind. The case, Ramirez and the complications he brought with him, and, perhaps most burdensome, Rose.
Thinking of Rose, Avery sat up in bed and flipped on her bedside lamp. It was too late to call her, but maybe a text that she’d get in the morning would be okay.
Avery considered it for a moment but then decided not to. Instead, she opened up Facebook. Sadly, Facebook had been her only reliable outlet over the last year to see how her daughter’s life was going.
She pulled up Rose’s page and saw that she had been blocked.
She knew it should be a silly offense at most, but it actually hurt her. She checked Instagram and Twitter as well but she was blocked there, too. Apparently, her backing out of their girls’ day had been the last straw.