Hiding Place (9781101606759) (7 page)

“Why don’t I turn to you then, Detective,” Kate said. “I really appreciate the two of you talking to me together—”

“I want to say one more thing,” Janet said.

Kate nodded. “Of course.”

“I’ve been meaning to say this for a while, so I want to say it now. I hope you can work it into the story.”

“I’ll try.”

“I do have one regret about all of this,” Janet said. “It’s that my mother and brother aren’t buried next to each other. We buried Justin in one part of the cemetery, and when Mom died there weren’t any plots next to Justin. And we can’t afford to move him. I want to see that done someday. I know she’d want it that way. They both would.”

Kate kept right on nodding. “That’s really powerful,” she said. “And I totally get it. I’ll try to work it in.”

“Thanks,” Janet said.

“Okay,” Kate said, turning to Stynes. “I guess it’s your turn now.” She gave him a flirtatious smile. “Was this a tough case to investigate?”

“Of course. The disappearance or death of a child is always difficult.”

“Right,” Kate said. “And have there been a lot of cases like this in Dove Point? I just moved here from Oxford a year ago.”

“We’ve been fortunate,” Stynes said. “Major crimes aren’t a big problem in a city this size.”

“You must not have been a detective for very long,” Kate said.

“Only about a year. I’d been on the force longer than that.”

“And what was the key to solving the case and making an arrest?” Kate asked.

Janet watched Stynes while he answered the questions. He seemed thoughtful, almost professorial as he spoke, but she detected something beneath his words, something that always seemed to lie beneath his speech and his gestures. The man seemed, for lack of a better word, tired. Weary, Janet guessed would express it better. Early in the morning, in the middle of the day, whenever she saw Detective Stynes he looked like a man weighed down by something, and that force seemed to be drawing his facial features a little lower, adding slack to the skin around his jaw, slowing his legs when he walked. Janet knew he didn’t have a wife—at least he never mentioned one—and no children. She wondered if that weight had to do with his personal life, or was it something else?

“Like we just heard,” Stynes said, “Janet was there in the park that day, and so was her friend Michael Bower. They were both small children themselves. Seven years old. But they
did see
”—Janet noticed the emphasis he placed on those words—“a man talking to Justin. So they told us, and we had a sketch artist draw a composite of the man they saw. We circulated that through the media. Dante Rogers’s aunt—he was living with her at the time—thought the sketch bore a strong resemblance to Dante and called us. We went and talked to him and found out he was at the park that day.”

“And I understand he had a stash of child pornography in his room,” Kate said, her reporter eyes narrowing just a little at the mention of the juicy detail.

“We did find some pornographic materials in his room,” Stynes said, his voice level. “He also had a prior arrest for improper contact with a minor child. In addition to the pornographic materials, Dante had a collection of newspaper clippings about the case. And his aunt said his behavior had changed after Justin’s disappearance. He had become withdrawn, moody, paranoid.”

“Janet said that there were a lot of adults at the park that day,” Kate said.

“A number of adults testified to seeing Dante in the park that day. They saw him talking to Justin and some of the other children.”

“But Dante always said he was innocent, that he didn’t hurt Justin.”

“Dante still says he’s innocent,” Stynes said. “I read your story this morning.”

Kate’s cheeks flushed, and she suppressed a little smile. But the gesture almost seemed too practiced, too aw-shucks. Could someone train her body to blush at will?

“I’m so glad to hear that. This is my first big series, and I’m kind of nervous about it.”

“It’s my experience, Miss Grossman, that whether you catch someone drinking and driving or you’re dealing with Dante Rogers, people almost never admit what they did wrong. If they did, we’d have a more efficient justice system.”

“Right.” Kate leaned back in her seat and raised her pen to her mouth. She chewed on the end, her straight white teeth taking a few quick chomps on the plastic. Janet sensed Kate had
something she wanted to say but wasn’t sure how to say it. She removed the pen from her mouth and looked at Stynes. “Okay, so like I said, I just moved here to Dove Point. This is my first job. But I’ve noticed that there really aren’t a lot of black people here in Dove Point. Right?”

“It depends on how you define ‘a lot,’ ” Stynes said. “We’re kind of a smaller town.”

“Do you remember, Detective Stynes, if anybody on Dante’s jury was black?”

Stynes took a long moment to answer. “I don’t think so.”

Kate nodded and chewed the pen again. She wore a look that said,
Isn’t that interesting?
She probably dreamed she could win a Pulitzer for exposing racism in the jury selection procedures of a sleepy Ohio town.

“He had a lawyer defending him,” Stynes said.

“A public defender, right?” Kate said.

“That’s usually the case for people in Dante’s situation.”

“You mean people without a lot of money?” Kate asked.

“I guess that’s what I mean.”

“And I know…” Kate tapped the pen against her wrist. “I know Dante’s lawyer asked for a change of venue and was denied.”

Stynes didn’t respond.

“Do you know how much experience his public defender had?” Kate asked.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well.” Kate reached out and picked up the tape recorder. “I think I have enough for the story now.” She turned the recorder off and dropped it and her pen into her oversized bag. “I do appreciate the time you took to talk with me. If I need anything else, I can just call you guys, right?”

“Let me be clear about something,” Stynes said.

Kate stopped what she was doing and gave him her full attention. Stynes didn’t raise his voice or lose his cool, but he did seem determined to speak his mind to Kate Grossman.

“We did a solid investigation here,” he said. “We had the witnesses, and it went to a jury. It even stood up on appeal.”

Kate nodded. “I know, Detective. It’s my job to ask these questions.” She reached into her bag again and brought the tape recorder back. “Do you want to say something else on the record? I can add it.”

She flipped the switch and held it out toward Stynes, who looked at the recorder like it might bite him. He cleared his throat and leaned forward.

“The world was a better place with Dante Rogers behind bars,” he said. He punctuated his words with a quick nod.

Kate recognized her cue, shut the recorder off, and put it away.

Janet didn’t know if Kate picked up on what she had—a key element of Detective Stynes’s final statement. He’d said the world was a better place with Dante Rogers behind bars.

Given the chance to say so definitively, he didn’t say he thought Dante Rogers was guilty. He didn’t say that at all.

Stynes walked Kate to the door and watched her stroll down the walk—her young hips moving back and forth—and climb into a new red Honda Civic. A graduation gift from Dad, Stynes figured, watching her drive away. Most of the reporters he knew drove older cars held together by rust and prayer. One more reason to resent her, even if she did look good both coming and going. A rich college girl turning over the race card. Stynes felt his back molars grind against one another.
Let it go. Let it go.

He turned to say good-bye to Janet and found her standing right behind him in the doorway. Before he could say anything, he saw the look in her eyes. Something pleading, almost fearful.

“Don’t worry about that stuff—”

She cut him off with a nod of her head. Toward the porch. She wanted to talk outside.

Stynes held the door, and they stepped out into the heat of the late afternoon. The sun glanced off the chrome and glass of the parked cars. The street shimmered. Stynes didn’t sit, but Janet did. She settled into a lawn chair and looked up.

“I just wanted to talk about all of that,” she said, pointing toward the general area where Kate’s car had been parked.

“Like I said, don’t worry about it. She’s just a kid trying to make a name for herself. She thinks a race angle might play big in a story like this. Little does she know people in Dove Point
would rather attend free colonoscopy day at the hospital than dwell on racial issues. It probably won’t even get into the story. I know the features editor at the
Ledger
—”

“I don’t mean the race stuff,” Janet said.

Stynes shifted his feet. He wore a suit coat over a polo shirt, and he felt the sweat forming on his back. He had about two hours of paperwork to do back at the station, and he wanted nothing more than to get home in time to watch the Reds play the Cardinals. For the first time in years, the Reds had a prayer of reaching the playoffs, and Stynes wanted to enjoy it. The simple things, he called them. The simple things.

“Which stuff do you mean then?” he asked. “You just mean her questions? Did they upset you?”

Janet turned her head and looked over her shoulder to the front door, wanting to make sure her dad wasn’t there listening. When she was satisfied he wasn’t, she spoke in a low voice. “She seemed to be suggesting that Dante Rogers is innocent,” Janet said.

“No, she wasn’t—”

“And I was wondering the same thing,” she said, her voice still low but forceful. “Did you have enough to convict him?”

“We did convict him.”

“But like Kate said, in Dove Point—”

“Hold on.” Stynes held both hands out in front of him like he wanted to push something away. The sweat ran faster down his back and sides and suddenly the thought of his air-conditioned office seemed even more appealing than Kate Grossman’s backside. “Don’t let this girl get into your head. The story this morning, this interview—it’s all just talk. It doesn’t change the past.”

Janet nodded. She looked mollified, and Stynes took quiet pleasure in having found the right words for the right situation
and shutting things down effectively. He sometimes thought the ability to talk, to placate, to smooth ruffled feathers in the heat of the moment was the most useful skill any cop or public servant could have.

“Janet, call me if—”

“Was the evidence against him just circumstantial?” she asked.

Stynes deflated.
So much for my placating skills,
he thought.

“This isn’t
CSI: Dove Point
. We don’t have oodles of DNA and fiber evidence when someone commits a crime here. Usually, someone knows the person or knows someone who knows the person, and nobody is surprised when they find out who did what to whom. Now, we had witnesses who saw Dante with your brother, including you, and we had the pornography and the newspaper clippings, the prior arrest, and the testimony of his aunt. Twelve citizens of this community listened to the evidence and rendered a verdict. Who cares if they were white or black?”

Stynes waited again while Janet processed his words. He thought he’d made another good pitch, but while Janet didn’t say anything else, she didn’t look at peace with his explanation.

“Janet?” Stynes asked. “Is there something else at play here? Why are you so worked up about this?”

Janet looked back to the door again, her lips pressed into a tight line.

“Is this about your father?” Stynes asked. “Is he upset about something?”

She turned back around, shaking her head. “It’s something you said. Or didn’t say, I guess.”

“What did I say?”

“When that reporter asked you about Dante’s trial and conviction, you didn’t say he was guilty.”

“Yes, I did.”

Janet shook her head with more force, like a dog in the rain. “You said the world was a better place with him behind bars.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You didn’t say he was guilty.”

Stynes raised his hand to his forehead. He wiped droplets of sweat away, then brushed his fingertips against his pant leg. Wasn’t it the same thing? Wasn’t it the same thing as saying he was guilty?

“Maybe it was a mistake to have you do this interview,” Stynes said. “Maybe it’s just bringing up unpleasant memories for you. Like I said, this is probably the last time you’ll have to do this. Maybe it just needs to be over for all of us.”

“Were there other suspects?” Janet asked. “Was there anything that indicated it wasn’t Dante?”

“Has someone been talking to you about this?” Stynes asked. “Is it Dante? Did he try to talk to you? Because the conditions of his parole—”

“No.”

“I can’t help you or even protect you if you don’t tell me.”

Janet took a long time to answer, but then she shook her head. “There’s nothing wrong, Detective. No one is bothering me.”

“You’re sure?”

“I am.”

Stynes paused, examining her face. She didn’t reveal anything. She didn’t crack or speak. If there was something going on—and Stynes suspected there was—she wasn’t ready to give it up to him. Not right then. Stynes checked his watch and told her he had to get back to the station.

“But you know how to reach me if you need something, right?”

“I do. Thanks.”

Stynes went down the walk, his mind turning over the events of the past hour. Not just the reporter’s questions but Janet’s as well. His own doubts were stirring, like silt in the bottom of a clear streambed.

And how do you plan to navigate these troubled waters, Stynes? What are you going to do
?

Ashleigh walked home from the park. She took the long way, exiting the park closer to where Kevin’s family lived than on the side near her own house. She wanted the extra time to think. She ignored the heat and let her mind work, trying to process what she’d seen—
who
she’d seen—in the middle of the woods.

As soon as Dante ran off and disappeared from sight, Ashleigh regretted letting him go. She wished she had continued after him, running hard so she could catch up and ask him what he had been doing at the place her uncle died. The question circled in her brain. And even while she thought about it and imagined catching up to the man, a more rational, more logical voice spoke in her brain as well: What would you do if you caught up to him? Tackle him? Punch him? Take him to coffee? What would a fifteen-year-old girl do with a convicted murderer?