They took a few moments, discussing their children. Then it was time to get to the reason for the visit.
Paris tapped the documents on his desk. ‘I don’t know about the PPD, but we don’t get a lot of requests like this.’
‘Same here,’ Jessica said. ‘We saddle up with the county and the Feds now and then, but most of the bad guys who aren’t homegrown get to meet our Fugitive Squad.’
Paris read over the document in front of him.
‘Crystal Anders was picked up last Saturday on a drug charge. And by drug charge I mean trafficking. Bail was set at 100K. Judges here are feeling the heat, passing it down.’
‘I read her sheet on the way in,’ Jessica said. ‘I didn’t see any violence.’
Paris nodded.
‘So she was here last Saturday?’ Byrne asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What time was she arrested?’
‘She was picked up at 30th and Chester at 11:45 p.m. Part of a long – and I mean long – sting operation. We pulled in sixteen people that night, all of some weight.’
The time frame didn’t rule Crystal Anders out of anything. Jessica now knew that Cleveland was just under an hour from Philly. Crystal Anders didn’t look like a frequent flier, but stranger things have happened.
‘Did she cop to the drugs?’ Byrne asked.
Paris shook his head. ‘It wasn’t my interview, but I read the notes.’
‘Let me guess,’ Byrne said. ‘She was just getting a ride.’
Paris laughed. ‘Something like that.’
‘Think she may have been muling the weight from Philly?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘We checked her for a sheet on NCIC,’ Byrne said. The National Crime Information Center was a national database of criminal justice information. It offered a wide array of data helping police apprehend suspects, locate missing persons, and recover stolen property. ‘We didn’t find any Philly connection.’
‘Neither did we,’ Paris said. ‘She was born in Weirton, West Virginia.’
‘But she lives here now?’
‘Crystal is kind of hard to pin down in that regard. She certainly doesn’t own a home. She hasn’t had a driver’s license in almost ten years.’
‘Did you check with TSA?’
Paris nodded. ‘We did. If she flew, she did it with a false ID.’
They agreed that Detective Paris would handle the beginning part of the interview.
Crystal Anders was a woman who had surely at one time been considered pretty. The scourge that was methamphetamine had slowly eroded her face, her teeth, her body, her life. Jessica was a little surprised at how small she was. Maybe it was all the meth. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, even though her sheet said 5'3'/120.
There was a thick keloid scar on the right side of her neck, a deep crimson in color, that stood out in stark relief to her ashen skin.
They met in a small interview room on the fifth floor. By comparison to the equivalent in Philadelphia, the room was downright spacious – perhaps one hundred square feet – and had somehow managed to camouflage that monkey house smell.
Crystal Anders wore a bright orange jumpsuit. And despite her emaciated appearance, she was shackled to the table. Jessica understood the play. More than one cop had backed off on this, only to sorely underestimate the speed and strength of a seemingly harmless or defeated suspect.
‘Crystal, my name is Detective Paris,’ he said. ‘This is Detective Byrne and Detective Balzano.’
Paris sat at the table, across from Crystal. Jessica and Byrne sat slightly behind him. The door was closed.
The woman looked up for a split second, divided her attention between the three of them, then looked down again. Jessica could see that she’d been in a very similar situation to this many times. She could also see that the woman was in withdrawal.
‘What we’d like to talk about is—’
‘Y’all need to talk to D’Shawn,’ Crystal said. ‘I told t’others. Talk to D’Shawn. Not me.’
Paris sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers. He gave the moment some heft. ‘D’Shawn?’
The woman nodded, chewed on one of her dirty nails. She remained silent.
‘You mean D’Shawn Thomas?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do nothin.’ Talk to D’Shawn. All that was his. I told t’others. I was just getting a ride.’
‘All what was his?’
‘Them drugs. I don’t mess with all that.’
Paris opened the folder in front of him, slid out a rap sheet, slid it to his right so Jessica and Byrne could see it.
Jessica saw that D’Shawn Dixon Thomas was a piece of work. Thirty-nine years old, incarcerated about thirty percent of that – gun charges, ag assaults, forgery, extortion. Suspect in a cop killing. Real citizen.
‘Now, see, Crystal, I would love to talk to D’Shawn,’ Paris said. ‘He killed a police officer a few years back so, trust me on this, everybody in this building would love to talk to him. We just don’t know where he is. Can you help us with that?’
‘He never kilt nobody.’
‘Where is D’Shawn right now, Crystal?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then I can’t talk to him, can I?’
No response.
‘We’ll come back to D’Shawn,’ Paris said. ‘Right now he’s only one of your problems.’
She looked up again, this time chancing a slightly longer glance at Paris. She didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.
‘I’d like to go back to last weekend,’ Paris said. ‘Let’s start with last Friday night.’
‘What about it?’
‘Where were you that night?’
The woman shrugged, said nothing.
‘Did you stay home? Did you go out?’
‘I was home.’
‘All night?’
‘Purt near.’
‘Not sure what that means,’ Paris said.
‘I was home purt near all night.’
‘So that means that you went out.’
Another shrug.
‘What time did you leave the house, Crystal?’
The woman looked at her now bloodied, raw fingernails, as if the timeline might be located there. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe eleven, some.’
‘Was there anyone else at your house with you at that time?’
‘Gingerbelle was there.’
‘Who is Gingerbelle?’
Another shrug.
‘You don’t know who that is? Is that a person, a dog?’
‘My friend.’
‘Gingerbelle is a woman?’
Crystal looked up at Paris as if he were crazy, as if a man would be called Gingerbelle. Jessica could think of a hundred scenarios where a wisecrack would be called for. This wasn’t one of them. The woman just nodded.
‘What is Gingerbelle’s last name?’
‘Wallace or Watkins,’ she said. ‘Like that.’
Jessica thought: How many Gingerbelles could there be? She made the note.
‘Was there anyone else there Friday night?’
‘No.’
‘Okay,’ Paris continued. ‘When you left the house, did Gingerbelle go out with you?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘She had to get some formula for her baby, so we went to the Food Mart.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one up to 71st Street.’
‘Where did you go after that?’
More squirrelly moves. ‘We went to Billy’s for a spell.’
‘That’s the biker bar? The one on Payne?’
Crystal obviously knew that he knew that it was. She just nodded.
‘Did you score while you were there?’
‘Score?’
Paris moved on. ‘Tell me about Saturday.’
A one-shoulder shrug this time. ‘I slept late.’
‘Until what time?’
‘Noon, some.’
‘
What time did you leave town?’
Because Jessica knew this question was coming, she watched the woman closely. Crystal Anders was hard to read.
‘Leave town?’
‘Yeah,’ Paris said. ‘What time did you go to the airport?’
The woman took a moment to glance at Jessica and Byrne, as if maybe this was a joke. Neither Jessica nor Byrne were smiling. Crystal didn’t either.
‘Airport? I didn’t go to no airport.’
Paris shuffled a few papers, leaned back, crossed his legs. ‘You know that there are records of all this now. If you took a flight to anywhere on last Saturday – or any day, for that matter – I can get that information in about thirty seconds,’ Paris said. ‘If you tell the truth about anything here today, Crystal, this would be the time.’
‘I ain’t lying.’
Paris took another moment. ‘I may not have mentioned this, but detectives Byrne and Balzano are from Philadelphia.’
Another quick glance up, then back to chewing her nails.
‘They would like to talk to you about some things that have been happening in their city.’
Byrne pulled his chair forward. ‘Crystal, once again, my name is Detective Byrne. I think you know you’re already in a lot of trouble. I’m not going to insult you by trying to sugarcoat it for you.’
After a long uncomfortable minute, when Byrne didn’t continue, Crystal was forced to look up.
‘As Detective Paris said, there have been some events in Philadelphia recently. In the course of our investigation, we’ve discovered an item that brought us here, to Cleveland.’
‘I don’t know nothin’ about it,’ she said. ‘I ain’t never been.’
‘Not only did this evidence bring us to Cleveland, Crystal, it brought us to you.’
This got her full attention.
‘To me?’
Byrne reached into his bag, removed a folder. From within he produced a glossy color photograph of the swan barrette found at the Nicole Solomon crime scene, the barrette bearing Crystal Anders’s fingerprint.
When he set it on the table, and pushed it toward Crystal, all three investigators watched her reaction.
When Crystal looked at the picture of the barrette, something happened to her, something Jessica had seen before, but not for a long time. It wasn’t something that was a behavior characteristic common to drug addicts, or meth addicts in particular. It was something that happened to mothers, especially those who have dark and troubled histories with their children.
When Crystal saw the barrette she imploded.
The untrained eye might not have seen it, but Jessica did, and she was certain both Kevin Byrne and Jack Paris saw it as well. It seemed to be the final step in the dismantling of a human being. There was no doubt that Crystal recognized the barrette, and her reaction told Jessica it could only have one connection, one visceral link to her life, and that link was a child.
She was finally able to choke out the words. ‘Where … where did y’all find this?’
‘We’ll get to that in a while,’ Byrne said. ‘For the moment, tell us what you know about it.’
Crystal shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Byrne said. ‘Are you saying you can’t remember, or you can’t tell us what you know about it?’
‘I-I can’t,’ she repeated.
‘Were you in Philadelphia last Saturday, Crystal?’
She again shook her head, then dabbed at her eyes with the back of her right hand.
‘I need you to help me understand, then,’ Byrne said.
‘Understand what?’
‘I need to understand how this item, with your fingerprint on it, ended up at a crime scene in Philadelphia last Saturday.’
Seeing the barrette, and being hit with the questions, might have been too much. The color was rapidly draining from the woman’s face. It appeared as if she might be getting ready to faint.
Byrne pressed on. ‘Tell us about the barrette.’
‘I … I ain’t seen that in years.’
‘So you do recognize it?’
She rocked back and forth, nodded slowly.
‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘Tell me about it. How did you come across this before?’
‘I … I stoled it.’
‘You stole it?’
She nodded.
‘From where, Crystal?’
She pointed at one of the walls. ‘It was one of them places with all the sunglasses and things at the mall.’
‘You mean a kiosk? A vendor that sets up in the middle?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What mall?’
Another point. ‘The Richmond one.’
‘Okay, then,’ Byrne said. ‘What did you do with it afterward?’
Now came the real tears. Jessica had no idea what complicity, if any, this woman had in murder. She still couldn’t just sit there. She reached into her bag, pulled out some Kleenex, reached across the table and handed them to Crystal. The woman nodded a thank you.
‘Crystal,’ Byrne said. He had softened his tone. ‘Tell me what you did with that barrette.’
‘I gave it to my baby girl.’
‘Your daughter?’
Crystal nodded.
‘When was this?’
She shrugged. ‘I was eighteen, some.’
‘How old was your daughter then?’
‘She was three. It was her birthday.’
Jessica looked at the sheet. Crystal was now thirty-two. This was fifteen years ago.
‘Where is your daughter now, Crystal?’
More tears. This time the woman leaned forward, placing her face almost on the battered metal table. For a long time no sound emitted, then:
‘I … don’t … know.’
Byrne looked at Paris. Paris nodded.
‘Crystal, we’re going to take a little break,’ Paris said. ‘Can I get you a water or something?’
The woman didn’t look up.
They stood outside the interview room. Paris had gotten them both a cup of coffee. It was truly awful.
‘I’ve had this coffee before,’ Byrne said. ‘I thought it was a Philly blend.’
‘I think it’s universal,’ Paris said.
The door to the interview room was closed. Still, they spoke in hushed tones.
Jessica had read the rest of the notes on Crystal Anders. According to the report, Crystal was found to have left two children at Richmond Mall, a mall on the city’s east side. The children were put into emergency foster care. When Crystal was picked up, she spent three days in county jail. When she was bailed out, she skipped town.
‘The report says two kids,’ Jessica said.
‘It’s my understanding that she had two, a boy and a girl.’
‘Do we know where they went?’ Jessica asked.
‘As you know, this is ancient history,’ Paris said. ‘But I can make a few calls. Chances are they went into the county system, and they tend to keep better records than the city.’
‘What do we know about the father?’
‘Not a clue,’ Paris said. ‘I haven’t really dug into this yet. The only reason she’s on my radar is because of your department’s request. I ran across her three years ago when D’Shawn Thomas killed one of our own, but she wasn’t directly involved. She was just a KA.’
Jessica knew what he meant. Crystal Anders was a known associate.
‘I’ve got a younger detective pulling everything we can find together for you,’ Paris added.
‘Much appreciated,’ Byrne said.
Paris looked at the monitor on the nearby table. It showed a high angle shot of the interview room and its occupant.
‘It looks like she’s calmed down a bit,’ Paris said. ‘Ready for round two?’
Byrne just nodded.
‘Crystal, it’s important that we trace the history of this barrette, from the time you gave it to your daughter, right up until last Saturday,’ Byrne said. ‘I can’t promise you anything o
n your other charges, but everything you do – good or bad – goes into the file.’
No response.
‘Are you with me, Crystal?’
She nodded. At Byrne’s request, they had taken off the shackles. She dabbed at her eyes and nose with a big wad of tissue.
‘The report says there were two children at Richmond Mall that day,’ Byrne said. ‘Is that accurate?’
She nodded.
‘Was the boy your son?’
A few more tears, but not like earlier. Crystal Anders was understandably cried out. ‘My baby boy.’
‘How old was he?’
‘He was three.’
‘So the boy and girl are fraternal twins?’
She did not respond. It was possible that she was unfamiliar with the term.
‘Where was the father in all this?’
This time there was not a shrug or a tear. This time Jessica saw the woman stiffen, and shift her eyes side to side. She raised her right hand to touch the scar on her neck.
‘Crystal?’
‘We was never together like that,’ she said. ‘We was never a couple or nothing’.’
‘Do you know where he is now?’
‘I ain’t seen him or heard from him in years. No mind to.’
Byrne made the note. ‘Did he give you that scar?’
She shook her head, but she wouldn’t look up. She was lying.
‘What’s his name?’ Byrne asked.
Another shrug, but Crystal knew immediately this wouldn’t fly.
‘Crystal?’
‘His name is Ezekiel,’ she said. ‘They call him Zeke.’
‘Ezekiel what?’
Crystal mumbled something unintelligible.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Moss.’
Jessica had been looking in Paris’s direction when Crystal said the name. As soon as Paris heard it Jessica saw the color rise in his face. He uncrossed his legs, sat a little straighter. It looked like he wanted to jump into the interview, but he said nothing.
This name had meaning for him.
‘So a man named Ezekiel Moss is the children’s father,’ Byrne said. ‘Do you think the children may be with him now?’
She shook her head.
‘And why is that?’
‘He was a trucker. He didn’t call no place home. Not mine, sure.’
‘Okay,’ Byrne said. ‘Where and when did you meet him?’
The Doll Maker Page 25