Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

“Finally, I want to make it clear that I’ll tell you everything I can to help your case,” I said. “But information is a two-way street in my town. And so is trust. You have to trust me that I’m not going to put anything in the paper that will get you in trouble with your bosses. And I have to trust you that I’m not going to get blindsided by some press release announcing an arrest-or, worse, by a story in one of the New York papers that we didn’t have first.”

His back straightened a little.

“I’m not here to make deals,” he said.

“Well, in that case I guess I’m wasting my time,” I said, rising from the booth and grabbing my lunch.

I turned to leave like I was going to storm out-though, as storms go, mine was hardly a raging nor’easter. It was more like light, spitting rain on a balmy June day when the sun is still shining and there’s only one stray cloud in the sky. I practically had my hand cupped to my ear so I wouldn’t miss the sound of him asking me to stay. It was, all in all, a pretty horrible bluff.

Thankfully, he didn’t call me on it.

“Hang on,” he said. “Just hang on. All I’m saying is, I don’t have the authority to make any deals on behalf of the department .”

I stopped but remained standing.

“Sergeant Raines,” I said. “I can tell you’re a man of honor and I’m telling you I’m one, too. I don’t need a deal with your department. I just need your word that if I help you now, you’ll remember me down the road. Is that fair?”

He held out his hand. I shook it, then sat back down.

“Damn,” he said, cracking a half-smile for the first time. “You’re tough.”

“Eh, once you get to know me, I’m easy like Sunday morning,” I said, smiling back.

“Oh, now you’re talking Lionel Richie,” he said, with a sudden burst of enthusiasm. “Now you’re talking my kind of music.”

Ah, the magic of Lionel: Raines had gone from stony to practically glowing with the mere mention of the former Commodores’ front man. I had finally penetrated the outer defenses of Sergeant Raines. It was just me and ol’ Kev now, gabbing away. Even his voice had changed-you could actually tell you were talking to a black man.

“Well, hello, it’s me you’re looking for,” I said.

He laughed out loud.

“All right, all right,” he said, still chuckling. “You’re pretty good. You’re pretty good.”

We guffawed a little bit more, but I didn’t want to push it too far with my newfound buddy. And before he had us booking tickets to see Lionel’s next tour, I got back to business.

“So, you got yourself a hell of a case with Windy Byers,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” he said, shaking his head.

“You’ve heard about his girlfriend by now, yes?” I asked.

“I heard some rumors, but nothing I really put stock in. He must have kept it pretty quiet.”

“Well, she’s not a rumor. Her name is Akilah Harris,” I said as he pulled out one of those small cop notepads and wrote down the name. “And she’s not just a girlfriend. She’s practically his second wife. She’s had two kids by him.”

“Whoah!” Raines said.

“That’s not even the best part. Windy bought her a house.”

“A what?”

“A house,” I said. “It was a little more than two years ago.”

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

“But there’s more,” I said. “The house he bought her was the one on Littleton Avenue, the one that burned down with two kids inside.”

“Yeah, I heard about that.”

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an accident,” I said.

He nodded and asked, “When did it happen?”

“Sunday night, around nine P.M.”

“Which is also around the last time anyone saw Windy Byers alive,” Raines said, shaking his head. “I’ll be damned.”

“So what do you think,” I said. “Sound like jealous wife gone nuts to you?”

He leaned back and took a swig of his water.

“I certainly haven’t heard a better theory,” he said.

“Okay, so I’m going to go ahead and write that Rhonda Byers is the Newark Police Department’s chief suspect in Windy’s disappearance,” I said, winking.

“Oh, hell no,” he said. “But, strictly, strictly off the record, I like her for this. I really like her. I’ve been going all through Windy Byers’s council career and there’s not a single red flag. And nothing else has jumped out at me. Now maybe there’s a big political conspiracy out there, but I don’t see it.”

“Me, neither,” I said. “What do you make of the blood in his house?”

He flashed a look that was somewhere between chagrined and, well, just a grin.

“You heard about that, huh?”

“I got my sources,” I said, smiling back. “Is the blood his?”

“Don’t know yet. This isn’t CSI . Our lab doesn’t turn stuff around during commercial breaks.”

“Fair enough. So where do we go from here?”

“Let me think about it for a second,” he said.

He leaned back in the booth and finished the rest of his water in one long swallow while I chewed my pizza. He crushed the bottle between his hands, screwed and unscrewed the cap once or twice, keeping his attention focused downward. Then he looked up.

“I think I got something you can do for me,” he said, then added, “if you’re up for it.”

“Shoot,” I said.

And that’s how I found myself heading back to Fairmount Avenue to interview Rhonda Byers.

* * *

My deal with Raines was that I would approach Rhonda Byers with questions about the last few days, so I could assemble a timeline of the hours leading up to her husband’s disappearance. I’d take careful notes, of course-that’s sort of what I do-and then I’d call Raines and we’d compare the story she gave me to the one she had already given Raines, searching for the kind of inconsistencies you usually find when someone is pulling a story off the fiction shelves of their brain.

For Raines, it was a way to grill a suspect without her realizing she was being grilled-or that she was a suspect. It also allowed him to sidestep or at least delay the rather prickly task of accusing a councilman’s wife of a felony.

For me? It was a good way to make sure the lead investigator on the biggest crime of the year kept taking my phone calls. And it might even give me something useful for the paper.

I was glad I didn’t have Sweet Thang in tow, because I didn’t feel like explaining that, once again, I was walking a very fine ethical line. Should I be doing a cop’s work for him? Of course not. But it’s not like he asked me to slap cuffs on Rhonda Byers. He just wanted me to talk to her, which is what I do for a living anyway. So what’s the harm in sharing a little information with my newfound source when it might lead to greater understanding of a story?

Besides, Sweet Thang was a bad fit for this particular task in at least one other way. For as good as she was at getting people to talk, I don’t think Rhonda Byers was going to be in the mood to spill her heart to an attractive younger woman, i.e., the kind of woman who stole her husband. There had been enough bodies dropped in Newark already.

As I drove back toward Fairmount Avenue, I called Tommy. It was mostly a courtesy. This was his beat, after all, and he deserved to know what was happening.

“Hey, what’s up,” he said, without the usual Tommy zip in his tone.

“That’s all you got? ‘What’s up?’ ” I asked. “No snappy rejoinders about how my clothes make you think of Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties ? No catty comments about how my family ought to organize a hairstyle intervention?”

“No. I just don’t have the energy to point out the obvious right now,” he said, heaving a melodramatic sigh.