Five Minutes Alone (34 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

We take another ten minutes to prepare, and then I knock on the door to the interview room and open it up. No detective likes being interrupted during an interrogation, but this isn’t an interrogation—at least not yet—and one of these guys got a text message ten minutes ago to prepare them for this.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I say, “but we just got a call from your wife,” I say to one of the two detectives. “She’s just gone into labor.”

“Oh shit,” he says, and he stands up quickly, responding to the code we’ve used in the past if we need to switch detectives in front of somebody who has just become a suspect without warning that very suspect.

“I’ll drive you,” his partner says, also standing up, and then to us he asks, “can you two take over here? It’s all basic stuff.”

“Ah, yeah, I guess,” I say, then look towards Rebecca who is in the hall behind me. “That okay with you?”

“I was about to grab something to eat.”

“Should just take a few minutes,” the detective tells us.

“In that case, sure, why not?”

“Good luck with the baby,” Chris says, as the other two detectives rush out of the room where, no doubt, Stevens will update them on the situation and where, no doubt, they’ll be annoyed they weren’t given the chance to conduct the interview.

“Right, right,” I say, and I’m carrying a cup of coffee that I put down on the table in front of me, a little bit of it spilling over the edge. I wipe my hand on my shirt, then I put down the folder I’m carrying too, then I sit down and look over the notes the detectives left behind. “Chris, right?”

“Right,” he says.

“Hang on a second,” I say, “just let me see . . . so . . . so it says here you work, or worked, for McDonald.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

I keep looking at the notes, scrolling through them with my finger. “And . . . and it says here . . . oh, you were the one who called it in.”

“I spoke to you last night, remember?”

I look up at him. I tilt my head slightly. “That was you?”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling. “Long night, huh?”

“It’s why God invented coffee,” I say, and sip at mine. “Yeah, yeah, of course it was you. At the crime scene, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m Theo,” I say, and reach out and shake his hand, “and this here is Rebecca.”

“Hey,” Rebecca says, and she sounds bored. Then she glances at her watch. Then she yawns. Then she leans back in her chair.

“Must have been a hell of a thing, going inside like that and seeing Ron that way. A hell of a thing.”

He nods.

“You want something else to drink?” Rebecca asks.

“I’m all good,” he says, and holds up a can of Coke and shakes it so we can hear it’s half-full.

“Well if you need anything let us know,” she says. “I know spending your day in the police station isn’t any fun, but we’ll try to make this quick for your sake as much as mine. If I don’t eat something soon I’m going to go crazy.”

“I know you guys are just doing your job,” he says, “and anything I can say that might help find who did this . . . well, you know. Ron was a good guy. A really good guy. You know when people die and other people say the world won’t be the same without him? That’s what it’s like with Ron. Even years ago, when you lot were adamant he killed his wife, nobody who knew him really believed that. And me, hell, I’m the guy who had to tell you that I had gone into his
work and he wasn’t there. It was because of me you figured he was lying, and you know what? When he was let go I thought the first thing he would do would be to fire me. He took me into his office and said I’d done the right thing, that I was only saying what I had seen and my job was still mine if I wanted it. I told him of course I wanted it.”

“You never thought he was guilty?” I ask.

“Never.”

“Just guilty of having an affair,” I say.

He leans forward. “Ron was a good guy,” he says, “so let’s not go there, huh?”

I lean back. “Go where?”

“Go back to you blaming him for what happened to Hailey.”

“Fair enough,” I say, moving on, but of course we’ll move back soon enough. “So the last few years, things have been good at work?”

“I suppose,” he says. “I mean, we’re always busy.”

We ask him about that. We engage him in five minutes of conversation about how work was, how many hours they were putting in, what the customers were like.

“The notes here say you were with your wife last night when Naomi called you, is that right?”

“Yeah. Her parents were around and we had made dinner for them. They can all tell you I was there,” he says, “if that’s what you’re getting at,” he says, and adds a smile.

I laugh. “Nothing like that. We’re just trying to build up the time line. You left work at five o’clock, is that right?”

“We all did, except for Ron. He had this dickhead of a customer he was trying to help out, some guy who had blown up the gearbox in his Toyota.”

“Is that this Stephen Becker I’ve heard about?”

“That’s him.”

“Things were argumentative between them?”

“No. Just, you know, the guy was a dick, and Ron, and I don’t know why Ron felt this way, but he wanted to help the guy out. He
figured he’d put in an extra hour at the most. He said he was going to leave around six.”

“Making him the last person there?”

“Yeah.”

“Would the workshop door the cars are brought through have been open or closed by then?”

“I closed it before I left.”

“And the office door?”

“Ron would have locked that. Nobody ever works there alone with the door unlocked. Often you’re making noise and you’d never hear if anybody snuck in.”

“So last night, how do you suppose the person who killed Ron got inside?”

He shrugs. “My guess is somebody knocked on the door and he tried to help them out.”

“Like the Becker guy for example. If he was unhappy with the work, maybe he came back to voice that. Or maybe your boss completed the job and called him.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe somebody was waiting for him outside and forced him back in.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know what else to tell you, I really don’t.”

“That’s okay,” I tell him, “this is all helpful stuff. It’s just building up a picture, you know? You need another drink there?”

“I’m still fine,” he says. “I wish there was more I could add, but I really can’t think of anything.”

“You’re doing good,” Rebecca says, and gives him one of her biggest smiles. He smiles back at her.

“So all the staff has keys, right?”

“Yeah, because all of us have worked there at least six months. That’s the rule—you gotta work there six months before you get a key. In fact the newest guy has been there two years. It’s not exactly the kind of job with a high staff turnover, you know? But if you think it was one of us, well, you’re heading in the wrong direction.”

“So it’s safe to say you know everybody fairly well,” Kent says.

“Yeah, I do. I’ve been there ten years, right from the beginning. Other guys have come and gone over the years, but me and Ron, we’re the core.”

“Did you know Hailey?”

He takes another drink of Coke, then shakes the can so we can all hear it’s nearly empty. “Actually, is it okay if I grab another one?” he asks. “It’s kind of hot in here.”

“Sure, no problem, but we’re almost done here anyway,” I say. “Just a couple of final questions. How well did you know Hailey?”

“She’d come into the workshop occasionally. I guess I could count the amount of times on one hand. And of course she came to my wedding, they both did, back before you know, before she was killed. She was at work functions too, like Christmas parties and summer barbecues.”

“You liked her?”

“Sure, she seemed nice enough. We all liked her. She was always friendly to us. What happened to her, geez, I hate to think about it.”

“And you’re convinced Ron had nothing to do with that,” I say.

“No chance at all.”

“That’s what we’re starting to think too,” I tell him.

He has the Coke halfway up to his mouth ready to drink the last few ounces then stops. “Excuse me?”

“We’re saying we’re open to the possibility that Ron was innocent,” Kent says. “What happened last night, well of course that means we have to take another look at what happened seven years ago.”

“Why’s that?” he asks.

“In case the same person was involved.”

“But what about the clothes in Ron’s car?”

“What about them?” I ask.

“I mean, yeah, Ron’s a great guy, one of the nicest, but you know, those clothes, well, they were in his car, right?”

“Right,” I tell him.

“We think they were planted there,” Kent says.

“Planted? Really? I thought that kind of thing only happens in TV shows.”

“Not just TV,” Kent says.

“They were ruled inadmissible or whatever the word is, right? That’s why Ron never went to jail, right?”

“They were inadmissible,” Kent says. “But not now.”

He looks confused. He looks worried. “What do you mean?”

“See, the thing is, it’s like you were saying,” she tells him. “People plant things like the way they see it in TV, but it’s never that simple.”

“What we’re about to tell you has to stay strictly between us, okay?” I say. “You can’t go and tell your wife, or your friends or anybody else you work with. But you seem like a good guy, and you obviously really care about Ron. The thing is, the clothes we found had blood on them, and that’s because the person wore them when he killed Hailey, whether that person was Ron or somebody else, the killer wore those clothes.”

“They’ll have DNA on them too,” Kent says.

“DNA?”

I carry on. “See, we think whoever wore them would have sweated in them. So there’ll be DNA in the armpits, around the collar, maybe all over the place. We think whoever wore them probably wore his clothes underneath them too in the hope his DNA wouldn’t get anywhere on the shirt,” I say.

“Seems like smart thinking, doesn’t it?” Rebecca asks.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Yeah, you’d think so,” I say, “only it’s not that smart. The thing is, DNA gets everywhere. Whoever wore that shirt will be all over it. Ironically, if we’d been allowed to test it seven years ago we would have found out then somebody else had been wearing it.”

“You’d have tested it for somebody else’s DNA even though it was Ron’s shirt and was in his car and had his wife’s blood all over it?” he asks.

“Sure we would have,” Kent says.

Chris goes pale. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t end up saying
anything, and after a few seconds it closes. “You could have arrested the right guy back then?”

“That’s right,” Kent says.

“What about now? Won’t the DNA have degraded over time?” he asks.

“That’s a good question,” I say. “But the way we store things means that’s not going to happen. Nope, that DNA is going to one hundred percent be there. And now that the clothes are admissible again we should send them out for testing.”

“Hang on a second. Admissible again?”

“That’s right,” Kent says. “Now that Ron is dead, and now that we’re no longer considering him an official suspect, it changes the conditions of the illegal search seven years ago.”

“Changes them? Changes them how?”

“Well, it’s too difficult to explain in lawyer speak,” I tell him, “but I can try to boil it down. It sounds pretty insensitive, but basically we can do this now because Ron can’t complain.”

“You can do this because he can’t complain?”

“On account of him being dead,” Kent says.

“Jesus, I know he’s dead, okay? It’s just . . . just nothing,” he says.

“We figure it’s in his best interests,” I say.

“No,” Chris says.

“No?”

“If Ron is guilty, then it’s not in his best interests at all. As it stands he’s an innocent man, and if you go testing clothes you weren’t allowed to test seven years ago, but are allowed to now, then you might change that.”

“Change him from innocent to guilty?” I ask. “I thought he didn’t do it?”

“That’s not what I mean,” he says. “I mean I remember what it was like seven years ago. You tried to railroad him back then, and it sounds like you’re going to try and do the same again.”

I take the last mouthful of coffee. “I see your point, Chris, but you don’t have to worry about that. See, even you think he’s in
nocent. You knew him much better than us, and hearing what you have to say, I really think getting those clothes tested is the way to go. I think later today or tomorrow we’ll box them up and ship them to the lab. We might even get an answer this week. It’s expensive, and we weren’t going to do it, but hearing what you’re saying, well, I think it’s the next step.”

He stares at the empty can of Coke, his hands wrapped around it.

“We think Hailey was having an affair,” Kent says. “We’re going to talk to all of Hailey’s friends because one of them might know about it.”

“And at the same time we’ll ask everybody who knew Hailey and Ron to contribute DNA samples so we can compare them against the samples,” I say.

“You can do that?” he asks. “Wouldn’t you need a warrant or something?”

“Sure we would,” Kent says, “but almost everybody is going to say sure, you can have my DNA, take as much of it as you want. Only one person is going to say no. Only one person is going to say we need a warrant. You want to guess who?”

“Whoever killed her,” he says.

“Exactly,” she says. “So we run all the DNA we can get hold of, and within a month or so we’ll know who wore those clothes.”

“Or sooner, once somebody won’t volunteer their DNA,” I point out.

“But is that fair?” he asks. “I mean, you’re saying people who don’t want to help are guilty.”

“Fair? Probably not,” I say, “and we know there’ll always be some asshole who will hold out just to prove some kind of point, but that’ll only slow things down a little. We’ll follow all the holdouts and dig into their lives and see what comes up. But remember, this is just between us, okay? Last thing we need is this information getting out and the killer doing a runner.”

“I need a break and a drink,” Kent says, and then she points at Chris’s drink. “You want a fresh one?”