When Death Draws Near

by Carrie Stuart Parks

  “Maybe a copycat?”

  “Something like that. I can arrange for you to watch the interview.”

  “Sounds good. And what about surveillance videos? I can develop a sketch should you have something blurry or from a weird angle.”

  “We might have one,” Clay said. “It may not be anything, but the timing was about right and no one could make hide nor hair from the photo.”

  “Let me look at it and let you know.”

  Clay punched a button on his desk phone. “Reed here. Have someone set up the conference room and pull the Johnson interview . . . Oh. When will they be done? Okay, set it up for then. Yeah. Okay.” He disconnected. “I’ve set it up for this afternoon. I’ll run you back to your hotel.” He stood.

  “Okay, but—”

  “I’ll send a car at one thirty to pick you up.”

  He opened the door to his office and glanced at me.

  “One more thing.” I rose from the chair. “I was almost hit last night.”

  Clay frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I was walking back to the hotel when someone driving a black pickup tried to run me down.”

  “Did you get a license plate?”

  “No. The truck sped around the corner before I could get a good look at it.”

  Clay rubbed his chin, then tugged his ear. “Well, Miz Gwen, I suspect that was just a drunk. Why would anyone want to hurt you?”

  Except you told the local television station. Which means you’re lying. Again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CLAY’S RESPONSE PUT ME ON HIGH ALERT FOR black pickups. Unfortunately, black seemed to be the most popular color for trucks in this part of Kentucky.

  Driving from one end of town to the other didn’t take long. The horseshoe-shaped town of Pikeville had a population of just under seven thousand. Tree-covered mountains rose steeply on all sides.

  During the short drive, Clay relaxed enough to update me on the history of the community. “Although folks have lived around here since the mid-seventeen hundreds”—he pointed to a terraced mountain rising above the road—“that’s what really helped the town grow. The Pikeville Cut-Through Project. Officially started in 1973, it took fourteen years to move eighteen million cubic yards of earth. That allowed the town to grow to more than four hundred acres.”

  “Which explains why a lot of buildings look new.”

  “Yep. We have a university, new library, shopping center—everything a big city has but with a small-town feel.”

  Including big-city crime. I kept my thoughts to myself as we pulled up in front of the hotel. “Did you grow up here?”

  “Nearby.”

  “You sure seem proud of your town.”

  “And of Kentucky. We have plans—” He stopped abruptly.

  I pretended not to notice a possible slip of the tongue and stepped from the car. “See you later.” Plans? We?

  The stricken look on the clerk’s face told me Ina Jo hadn’t been found locked up in the laundry room. I didn’t much feel like eating, so stopped off at the vending machine on the way to my room. I bought cheese puffs, Oreos, and a chocolate bar. With my daughter safely with her father, I didn’t have to be a good example.

  The phone was ringing as I entered, but no one was on the line when I answered. I rang the front desk. “Did you just put a call through to my room?”

  “No. I mean, it’s an automated system. If someone knows your room number, they can dial direct.”

  I hung up and stared at the phone for a moment.

  The maid had cleaned my room, leaving my clutter of art supplies on the table. I opened the cheese puffs and started stuffing my face. Still munching, I strolled to the bedroom, sat on the bed, and kicked off my shoes. My feet constantly hurt. Chemotherapy had permanently damaged the nerves in my soles, making it feel like I was walking on gravel.

  The looming vision of returning cancer drove me off the bed. I paced from the bedroom to the living room and back again. What if they gave my interagency job to someone else because I had cancer? How would I pay for treatments? Where would I live? How would I work?

  “This is ridiculous.” I picked up my cell and dialed Beth.

  “Gwen! I thought you’d never call. How are you feeling? How is Pikeville? Have any bodies shown up? Did you catch the rapist? Do you need a partner?” As usual, Beth sounded breathless.

  “Fine. Small. Yes. No. No.”

  Beth was silent for a moment. “You do know I hate it when you do that.”

  “I’m teaching you—”

  “I know. Effective interview techniques.” The background musical theme from a forensic show stopped and Winston, my Great Pyrenees, barked.

  “How’s my dog?” I selected a lead holder from the pencil box and sat at the kitchen table.

  “Aha! Something is wrong.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you wouldn’t call this early in the morning to ask about Winston and you’re tapping a pencil rapidly on some surface.”

  I stopped tapping and pulled a sketchbook in front of me. “Actually, everything’s fine—”

  “Ha! Another clue!” Beth sounded jubilant. “You used the word actually. That means actually there really is something wrong.”

  Doodling Beth’s face, I silently vowed I’d never teach Beth another thing about statement analysis. “I need you to research a couple of things for me.”

  “Sure, but I have houseguests, so unless I can find time, I’ll have to email or text you the answers.”

  “That’s fine . . . um, but weren’t you just watching one of your forensic shows?”

  “It’s my cousins from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and they’re even crazier about crime stuff than I am.”

  “Is that possible? Don’t answer that. Can you look up Sheriff Clayton Reed? R-e-e-d. Anything you can find out.”

  “Will do. Now are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  I drew a halo over her sketched face. Why didn’t I tell her? She was my best friend. Oh, and, Beth, by the way, my cancer’s returned. I’m going to die.

  I knew why the words wouldn’t come. I didn’t want her pity.

  “Gwen? Hello?”

  “Everything’s fine. Just wanted to hear a cheerful voice.”

  “You dropped the pronoun I, so I don’t believe you. I’ll leave you with this: ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ Take things one day at a time, and when you’re ready to talk, I’ll be here.”

  My eyes burned. “Thank you, Beth.” I managed to disconnect before my throat closed up. Now I was feeling sorry for myself, and that was unacceptable.

  I went to the bathroom, got a tissue, and blew my nose. Stop it! Returning to the table, I pulled closer the pad of paper I’d been doodling on. At the bottom of the page I wrote Known and Unknown, then drew a line between them, forming two columns. Under Known I wrote: likes young women, has distinct victim type, has isolated location to hold them, likes torture, gets them to leave town or no report. I stopped writing. Was that all I had on him? Under Unknown I wrote: smokes? (cigarette burns), convinces them to leave town? knows about forensics? Check photos (if available) to see if similar appearance.

  This wasn’t useful. I simply didn’t have enough solid information.

  Checking my watch, I was startled to see it was almost time to head over to the sheriff’s office. I swiftly packed up the items I needed, grabbed a denim jacket, and headed to the lobby. A deputy waited in a patrol car parked by the front door, and I slipped into the front seat next to him.

  He greeted me once I had the seat belt fastened, “Ma’am,” and drove the short distance to the sheriff’s department. We entered through a side door opened with a key card, and I followed him to a well-appointed conference room. Large windows overlooked a colorful autumn hillside, while comfortable tweedy chairs surrounded an oversize walnut table. Clay waited next to the television and video setup. “Have a seat. You’ll be happy to know thanks to you we iden
tified the body already. Notified the family.”

  “Glad I could help. By the way, have you been calling my room?”

  “No.”

  “Did you give out my room number?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Never mind.” I turned to the set.

  “We’ve been working on the Hillbilly rapes for months,” Clay said in an oddly rehearsed way. “This sort of thing reflects badly on our community.”

  Not to mention the poor victims.

  “We welcome your expertise and input to help identify the perpetrator.”

  There’s that elusive “we” again.

  “Let’s see what you can find on the Teri Johnson interview.” He used the remote to turn everything on. A striking blonde in her mid- to late teens appeared on the screen. She sat on one side of a stark metal table while a detective faced her on the other. The detective reminded me of the handsome actor Derek Morgan on the television show Criminal Minds. An open file rested in front of him.

  Clay handed me the remote. “Push this button to start, this to pause, this to reverse, and this to stop.” He hesitated a moment. “Did you want me to tell you why we were suspicious of her?”

  “Not yet. Let me watch this, make some notes, and then we’ll talk.”

  “Okay.” He moved to the door. “My office is just up the hall. Come and get me when you’re ready.”

  I gave him a half wave.

  As soon as he left the room, I started the tape. The young woman was speaking. “You remind me of a TV star or something. Are you, like, famous?”

  “No, ma’am,” the detective answered. “Are you okay? Can I get you something? Water, a soda . . .”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Thank you for coming down here today. You’re not in trouble, and as I said before, I believe you, but I need to be sure we have all the information we need to follow up on this.”

  “Sure.”

  He shuffled the papers in front of him. “Now, could you start at the beginning? Just tell me the same thing you said to me in the hospital.”

  “Sure. My boyfriend drove me home after going to a movie. Some kind of science-fiction flick. I hate science fiction, and this movie was really stupid.”

  My boyfriend? I jotted a note.

  “He and I were sitting in the car in front of my house and he started saying stuff like I was flirting with some other boys.” She waved her hand as if swatting away the comments.

  He and I? Another note.

  “Well, I wasn’t flirting. They were friends.” Her voice rose. “He’s so jealous. He saw a delivery guy drop off a box and he was convinced I was dating someone. That night he said some really mean things, like the rapist wouldn’t touch someone like me because I was too old and, like, well, he called me a bad name. I told him he was wrong and a pig, you know, stuff like that, and then, you know, sort of got out of the car.”

  I wrote her story as fast as I could, noting the cluster of “you knows.”

  She leaned forward. “He drove off, you know, and left me, didn’t even see if I was safe or anything—”

  “What time was this?”

  Bad interview technique, Derek Morgan clone. Never interrupt the witness.

  “About ten. It was dark . . .” She took a deep breath. “Do you think this will end up on TV? You know, like a special or maybe in the paper?”

  “Your name won’t be released, if that’s what concerns you.” He paused in his writing. “And I don’t think he knows where you live.”

  “Oh.” She absently played with her long hair. “That’s good. And I know you’ll protect me. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Serve and protect? You know how awful this guy is.” She reached for a tissue and dabbed her eyes.

  The detective awkwardly patted her arm. “You’re safe now.”

  She smiled slightly at him. “Okay. Like I said, it was dark. I decided to walk around the block before going in. I was still mad—”

  “Were your parents home?”

  Interruption number two.

  “Yes. I got to the alley at the end of the block, the one next to the Kramer house, and this guy jumped out and grabbed me. I guess he was hiding behind that big maple tree. I was going to scream, but he put his hand over my mouth.”

  “He grabbed you from the front?”

  Leading question. You’re flunking the interview, Derek.

  “No, from the back. He pulled me tight against his body. He was very strong. He said if I screamed, he’d cut me with a knife. He showed me the knife.”

  “What kind of knife?”

  “A big one. Like this.” She held her hands about eight inches apart. “Then he put a blindfold over my eyes. I was so scared.”

  “I’m sure you were. That had to be terrifying.”

  “It was. He started to drag me somewhere when I told him I had AIDS. I said I was dying. That’s when he let me go. I took off the blindfold when I heard him moving away.”

  The detective tapped his pen on the paper for a moment. “Did you see him?”

  “Mostly just from the back. He was walking away slowly, looking over his shoulder at me. He had dirty black hair and walked with a limp.”

  “Excellent.”

  Not really. You just gave direct, qualitative feedback, encouraging her to invent information.

  “He disappeared down the alley.”

  “Did you see him get into a car?”

  “Um, no. The alley was dark and he kinda went out of sight.”

  “What happened to the blindfold?” he asked.

  She shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. “Oh. Um. What do you mean?”

  “You said he put a blindfold on you and you took it off. Did you drop it at the scene?” His pen hovered over the paper he’d been writing on.

  “I’m not sure. Are we going to be much longer? My mom’s waiting . . .”

  “Nope. I’ll just have you read over what I wrote and sign it.”

  Turning off the video, I tapped my pencil on the table while I thought about what I’d seen. This wasn’t a copycat frightened off by the threat of AIDS.

  This was a liar.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AFTER ONLY ONE WRONG TURN, I FOUND CLAY in his office. He was once again on the phone.

  He finished his call and hung up. “Well?”

  “She invented almost the whole thing.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “We knew there was something wrong about her story. What do you mean, though, when you say she invented almost the whole thing?”

  I pulled a chair up to the other side of his desk. “She told the truth about the fight with her boyfriend. The rest was an invention.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Forensic artists have about fourteen clues we watch for and two tests we give to determine if someone is being truthful—”

  “This wasn’t a composite interview.”

  “I know that. But many of the clues are the same in both a regular police interview and a composite interview.”

  Clay steepled his hands in front of his mouth as if he were praying. Great. Certain body language always caught my attention. Unless Clay always did this action—and in the short time I’d known him, he hadn’t—steepling was a sign of superiority. Steepling in front of the mouth meant he not only felt superior but was holding back telling me. He knew Teri Johnson was lying. He was either testing me or wasting my time and keeping me from working on the missing woman.

  “Well, anyway, I just thought you should know.” I stood to leave.

  “No, sit down. I want your thoughts.” He leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk.

  I hesitated, then sat back down. “Of the clues we look for, the victim or witness needs to display three or more signs to show deception.”

  “Why?”

  “One or even two clues could have actually happened. But as soon as the different indicators start to pile up, we know we have deception in the incident.” I pulled out my notes. “S
he gave nine clues and two verbal indicators.” I read them from my notes as I ticked them off on my fingers. “Quasimodo Effect, Betty Boop Display, Scary Movie, Gothic Romance, Indiana Jones Syndrome, Spotlight, Safe Haven, Check-off List, and Revenge Rule.” I beamed at him.

  “Huh?” Clay frowned.

  “Oh, sorry. Those are my nicknames for the different actions and displays she showed.”

  “Well, that’s about as clear as mud.”

  “Law enforcement likes acronyms. FBI, ATF, DEA, STS. I just use words I can remember and that have a great visual. Don’t you know it’s all about the visual?”

  He twisted his mouth as if smelling something bad but didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “I wrote it all down.” I handed him a sheet of paper with sketches and brief descriptions. “I started with the Revenge Rule. When a witness gives a statement of what happened to them, they’ll want someone to know how they came to be in that situation, what happened, and the aftermath, or how this event changed them. Their statement will have three parts.”

  The phone rang. Clay ignored it. “Go on.”

  “When the story starts with a fight, say with a boyfriend or spouse, my lie-detector antenna goes up. There’s a good chance that the story they’re about to tell will be made up to exact revenge on the boyfriend. Kind of a ‘Because of you, I was almost killed.’ ”

  “But what if the fight had nothing to do with the event?”

  “That’s why we need three or more clues.” I consulted my notes. “The fight was the truth, as was his jealousy over a deliveryman. Her language reinforced that. She said ‘my boyfriend’ and ‘he and I.’ ”

  “But it was her boyfriend. He confirmed he let her off—”

  “That’s not the point. Calling him ‘my boyfriend’ without giving his name is what we call an incomplete social introduction. The rule is that in telling a story to a stranger, in this case the detective, the victim wants to make herself understood. She needs to ‘introduce’ the various people she will be talking about. A complete social introduction would have been ‘my boyfriend, John.’ My, possessive pronoun; boyfriend, title; and first name, John.”

  Clay absently pulled out a gold metal cigarette lighter and opened and closed the lid with a small snap. The odor of lighter fluid soon filled the room.