Distortion (Moonlighters Series) (7 page)

Juliet fixed her eyes on the first one.

“That him?” Zach asked.

“No,” she said. The next one wasn’t him either. The third and fourth came in. Neither of them looked familiar.

She felt Zach watching her. “Not yet?”

By now Juliet was disappointed, shaking her head. Finally the fifth, then the sixth man came in and turned to face her. Juliet sucked in a breath. “That’s him! The last one.”

“You sure?” Max asked.

“Yes, he’s the one.” An unexpected rage burst inside her, and tears blurred her vision. “I looked him right in the eye at the gas station. He shot Bob.”

Max picked up a phone and spoke into it. “She made him,” he said. “We have a positive ID. Put him in the interview room.”

As the men filed out one by one on the other side of the glass, Juliet lunged for the window. Knowing the man couldn’t see her, she hit the glass. He heard it and turned toward her.

“Why did you do it?” she shouted. “What did you want from him? Why did you kill my husband?”

Cathy touched her shoulder. “Juliet, he can’t hear you.”

Juliet turned back to her son, suddenly self-conscious, trying to catch her breath. Zach’s face was twisted and wet. “I just want to know why,” she said. “I want to be there. I want to hear what he says.”

“You can’t,” Cathy said. “Honey, just be patient. They know how to get him to talk.”

“But if he’s the one who called and left that message . . . I want to know what they want.”

Michael looked at Max. “Mind if I watch the interrogation?”

Max raised an eyebrow at Forbes.

Forbes shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that’ll be okay.”

“But why him and not me?” Juliet asked.

“It’ll take hours,” Max said. “We have to do it meticulously, without emotion.”

Cathy put her arm around Juliet’s shoulders. “They’ll keep us informed. Michael and I will make sure.”

Juliet wiped her face and turned back to Zach. He was still staring at the window behind which the killer had stood. She shook herself out of her thoughts and tried to focus on him. She put her arm around his shoulders. “Sweetie, this is a good thing.”

He nodded. “I know.”

“He’s not going to get away with it. They have him now. And I’m sure all our questions will be answered soon.”

“It doesn’t even matter,” Zach whispered.

“What?” Juliet asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said louder. “Dad’s still dead.”

She wilted next to him, dropping her face into his hair. “I know. It doesn’t bring him back.”

She could hardly breathe as she led Zach back to Cathy’s car. Outside, humidity enveloped them. It smelled like rain, and the wind whipped their clothes and hair.

“What will they do to him?” Zach asked as he took his place in the backseat.

She tried to think. “They’ll read him his rights. Then they’ll charge him with murder.”

“Will somebody bail him out?”

Juliet looked at Zach. How did he know about bail? Of course—he’d probably seen it in a hundred movies.

Cathy spoke up. “He’ll be assigned an attorney if he can’t afford one, and his attorney might request bail. But we’ll make sure he doesn’t get it. Or that it’s so high he can’t pay it.”

“Then what?”

“Then we wait. He might realize how strong the case against him is and plead guilty. Maybe he’ll talk and expose anyone else involved.”

“Will they kill him?”

Cathy looked at Juliet, then back at Zach in her rearview mirror. “Florida is a death penalty state. He could be executed, or he’ll get life in prison.”

Juliet couldn’t tell whether that comforted Zach or made things worse.

“Will they shoot him in the head like he shot Dad?”

Juliet felt as if she’d just turned a corner into a whole new tragedy. Why should her son be forced to think about things like this? “No, they don’t do that, honey.”

“They should.” His mouth shook, and he struggled to hold back tears.

Several moments of silence ticked by. Then Zach spoke again. “Mom, I want to hear that tape.”

“What tape?”

“The message they left on Dad’s phone. I want to hear what they said.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . I’m the man of the house now. I need to know what we’re up against.”

Juliet’s heart plunged even further. “I gave the phone to the police. I don’t have it.”

He was quiet for the rest of the ride.

As Cathy turned into Jay’s driveway, Juliet took a deep breath. “I so dread tomorrow night. The visitation . . . all those people. And the funeral the next day.”

“I’m not going,” Zach said.

Juliet closed her eyes. “Of course you are.”

“No, I’m not. I’m staying home.”

She turned toward him. His eyes glistened with unshed tears, and his lower lip trembled. “Honey, you have to honor your father. He deserves it.”

“Why? You’ve told me before that funerals are for the family. What if the family doesn’t want it? Then do they have to do it? I could stay at Uncle Jay’s by myself.”

“You’d regret it, Zach.”

“No,” he said, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “I don’t want him to be dead. I don’t want any of this to be true. I just want to be left alone.”

Juliet didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, honey. You’re going to go. I need you there.”

“But what about what
I
need?”

“We’ll all need different things,” Juliet said. “Whether you
know it or not, you need your family. You’re going, and you’ll sit by me and hold my hand, and we’ll honor your father’s life.”

Tears coursed down his red face. “You can’t make me talk to anybody,” he said. “I won’t smile and laugh and pretend everything’s okay. I’m not going to try to make people feel better when I’m the one who feels lousy.
Everybody
should feel lousy.”

“That’s fine.”

“And I don’t want to be in charge of Abe. I don’t want to explain things to him or make him feel better.”

“I’ll do my best with that myself,” Juliet said. “Cathy and Holly and Jay will help.”

He looked at her as if she’d betrayed him. Then without speaking, he threw open his door and shot into the house.

Juliet sat staring after him.

“Are you going to be all right?” Cathy asked.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I am.”

CHAPTER 11

M
ichael knew his place. He stood in the monitoring room at the police department, watching on the video screen as his brother questioned Jerome Henderson. He studied the man’s slumped posture. He was wearing a white wife-beater shirt that looked as if he hadn’t changed it in days, and his greasy hair hung over his eyes. Wired on whatever drug he’d used before his arrest, his knee jittered.

Max played it easy, leaned back, relaxed in his chair, his calf crossed over his knee, trying to look like a guy having a friendly conversation about murder. “So let’s go back to Friday,” he said. “You say you slept till noon. Then what did you do?”

“I don’t know, man. Hung out with some friends.”

“Smoke a little dope?” Max asked, as if it didn’t matter one way or another.

“No, man. I don’t use.”

Max uncrossed his legs, shifted in his seat. “Well, that’s
funny, because you flunked our drug test when we brought you in. Cannabis, cocaine, and opiates.”

Henderson rubbed his dirty fingers across his lips. “I have a prescription for hydrocodone. Back problems.”

“You have a script for crack?”

The man didn’t answer.

“So what time did you leave your friends?”

“Midnight, maybe.”

“Give us their names.”

“No, man. I don’t want to drag them into this.”

“If you claim you were with them at the time of the murder, you know we have to verify it.”

Henderson just rubbed his face and looked up at Max.

“So why don’t you tell me how you wound up on Highway 57 that night.”

“Man, I wasn’t over there. I didn’t have my car Friday. I let a friend drive it.”

“What friend?”

“A guy named . . .” He glanced to the left. “Goes by the name of Cytrop. I don’t know his real name.”

The glances to the left alerted Michael. When right-handed people glanced to the left, it usually meant they were making the story up as they went along. They glanced to the right when they were remembering things that had actually happened. And knowing the guy only by his nickname was very convenient.

“Does he look like you?” Max asked.

The man slumped again, scratched the side of his nose with a thumbnail. “I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah, a little, I guess.”

“Why did he say he needed the car?”

Michael smiled. Max was letting Jerome talk on about the
friend borrowing the car so that, in court, they could prove he was a liar.

“He had a job interview, man. I’m trying to help him out. I don’t know where he went.”

“Job interview on Friday night?”

“Yeah, man. I don’t know. Maybe he lied.”

“When did you get it back?”

“Not till the next day.”

Of
course,
Michael thought.

“This Cytrop guy,” Max said. “Where does he live?”

“I don’t know, man. I see him at my friend’s house.”

“You have his phone number?”

“No.”

“Then how do you talk to him?”

“I told you, he comes over. He’s a friend of a friend.”

“But you trust him with your car. So give us the friend’s name.”

It went on like that for a while, Max letting Jerome drone on about this fictitious Cytrop who had taken his car, providing the alibi that supposedly made it impossible for him to have shot Bob.

Then Max threw in a twist. “You know, Jerome, we have video that shows you in your car that night, minutes before the murder.”

He looked at Max now, straightening up and rubbing his mouth again. “No way.”

“You went to the gas station before going to the U-Haul store. We have video of
you
, not some guy named Cytrop. You were alone. We have a witness who saw you there.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I told you we look kind of alike.”

“Well, you have to produce this guy so we can see that for ourselves.”

Jerome said nothing.

Michael studied the suspect’s posture on the screen, wishing the picture was sharper, that he could see his expressions more clearly, whether his top lip was sweating and his hands were shaking.

“We found the gun in your car,” Max said. “Was it registered to you?” Max already knew the answer. It wasn’t registered. But Michael knew that Max was trying to catch Jerome in more lies to impeach his testimony.

“No, it was his.”

“He just left it in the car?”

“Guess so. I didn’t even know it was there.”

“You own a gun?” Max asked.

“No, man. I hate guns.”

Michael shook his head. Henderson must have been high the night of the shooting if he’d forgotten to dispose of the murder weapon.

After a while, Forbes stood up and leaned against the wall, letting the guy know that he was getting impatient. His size was intimidating, and his age gave him a gravitas that Max’s youth didn’t convey. “We’ve got a few problems with your story, Jerome,” he said. “We know it was you in the car, and your prints are all over that gun. And that’s too bad for you, because that gun was the murder weapon.”

The guy looked toward the door, as if calculating his escape path.

“How did you know Bob Cole?”

“I didn’t know him. Man, you got the wrong guy.”

Max gave a long-suffering sigh. “You were identified in
the lineup. At least one witness saw you shoot him. You had the murder weapon in your car.”

“Are you charging me with murder? Because you ain’t read me my rights.”

“We read you your rights before we brought you in.”

“Yeah, but that was for drug charges, not murder.”

“Still applies.”

Michael closed his eyes. He wished Al hadn’t spelled that out yet. Now that Henderson realized he was about to be charged with murder, he would ask for a lawyer. Then the interrogation would end, and the only answers they’d get would be filtered through the attorney.

Michael rubbed his mouth and realized his own lip was perspiring. He pulled out his phone and texted his brother.

Max, play the good guy. Sympathize. Try to get him to say if somebody else paid him to do this.

He watched the screen as Max read the text. Max’s lips tightened, and for a moment he was silent.

Henderson squirmed.

Max looked back up. “You need some water?”

Henderson nodded. “Yeah, I could use a smoke too.”

“I’ll get you some water,” Max said and came out the door. In seconds the door where Michael stood flew open. “What do you think you’re doing?” Max asked. “Texting me while I’m interviewing a witness! You know, I don’t have to let you be here.”

“I’m just saying, you’re pushing too hard. He’ll ask for an attorney before you find out who he’s working with.”

“I know how to do my job.”

“I know you do. You remind me every time I suggest anything about a case. But we can’t afford for you to screw this one up!”

“
I’m
not the one who screws them up.”

Michael bit back his flaring anger and threw up his hands. “Okay, no more interference.”

Without answering, Max left the room and closed the door. Seconds later, he reentered the room on the screen, a bottle of water in his hand. He tossed it to Henderson, sat down, and slid his chair up to the table across from him. Henderson guzzled the water.

Max sat down and leaned on the table. “Look, Jerome,” he said after a short silence. “I can tell you’re a good guy. And maybe this wasn’t premeditated. If it wasn’t, that’s a huge difference in the charges we’ll bring. We’re talking the difference between life and death, and decades in prison.”

Henderson stared at him through narrowed eyes.

“Did somebody ask you to do it? You had a bunch of cash in an envelope. Were you paid?”

Henderson sat back in his seat and looked down at the floor.

“Because I can understand how it would happen,” Max said. “You need some drugs, you’re low on money . . .”

Henderson looked up at him.

“Somebody offers you cash to do a hit. Easy money. Just follow him, hit him when he gets out of the car, get paid. It’s all over. Maybe you didn’t even know the guy.”