James Swain: The Night Stalker

“He’s the anti-Lassie.” Cheeks dropped into a chair and undid the knot in his necktie. He was wheezing from the climb, and took a moment to catch his breath. “If you were smart, you’d have him put to sleep.”

“You need to get in shape,” I said.

“Round is a shape.”

I leaned against my desk, and waited him out.

“I got your e-mail about Sampson Grimes,” Cheeks said. “I want to see what Abb gave you at the prison.”

I handed Cheeks the kidnapper’s photograph and ransom note. The detective removed his shades and gave them a cursory glance. His eyes were watery, ringed from lack of sleep. He stuffed both items into his jacket pocket.

“I know who kidnapped Sampson Grimes,” he said.

“You do?” I asked.

“It was the kid’s father, Jed Grimes. Unfortunately, I can’t prove it.”

“How can you be certain?”

Cheeks held up his outstretched hand, touching each of his fingers as he spoke. “Jed Grimes was the last person to see Sampson. Jed failed a polygraph test. Jed’s fighting with the kid’s mother over custody rights. Jed has a long history with the police. Is that enough circumstantial evidence for you?”

“Not really,” I said. In most cases, that would have been enough to convince me. Only this situation was different. Abb Grimes had received a ransom note in which the kidnapper was threatening to kill the boy. It was far too important a lead to be swept under the rug.

“Look, Jack, I’m going to stop beating around the bush. I want you to drop this case. The last thing I need right now is you running around town, stirring up the pot. Jed Grimes is guilty. It’s just going to take me awhile to prove it.”

I bit my tongue in anger. I didn’t care about Jed, just the boy.

“What about Sampson?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“He’s been gone three days. We need to find him.”

“We’ll find him eventually.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’d bet my reputation on it.”

I nearly laughed in his face. Years ago, Cheeks had fallen asleep on his desk, and woken up with the word Homicide printed backward on his forehead, the words picked up off an internal report. He’d walked around for hours without knowing it. He didn’t have a reputation, at least not one worth betting on.

“I’m not dropping the case,” I said.

“You’re making a mistake.”

I shrugged.

Cheeks retied the knot in his tie. “Okay, then I’m going to set some ground rules. One, no leaks to the press. Anything you learn, I hear about first. Two, no withholding information. If you find something out and don’t tell me, I’ll kill you. Three, no talking to suspects or visiting the crime scene without my permission. Four, no grandstanding. If you locate the kid, I don’t want you rescuing him. That’s my responsibility. You can stay in the shadows and collect your money. Understand?”

“Loud and clear.”

Cheeks stood up, and put his shades back on. We’d been friends once, or so I’d thought. The man standing in front of me now was not my friend.

“You and I go back a long way, so I’m going to give you some advice,” Cheeks said. “Drop this case, or it will be your last.”

I had been threatened before, but never by a cop. The words carried a lot more menace coming out of Cheeks’s mouth than I would have liked.

“Sure I can’t buy you a burger?” I asked.

“I’ll ruin you,” he said.

“They’re really good. I’ll even throw in a beer.”

“You’re not funny, Jack.”

“How about some dessert? The chocolate cake is to die for.”

Cheeks went to the door and jerked it open.

“Think it over,” he said.

“I’ll definitely do that,” I said.

He gave me a parting look, then shook his head. I listened to his feet pound the stairs on the way down.

I sat at my desk and stared into space. Music from downstairs was making the whole building shake. I tuned it out and tried to think.

Before I’d left the police department, I’d written a turnover report. No one had asked me to, and it wasn’t part of my job description, but I’d written one up anyway. It had been a hundred and fifteen pages long.

This turnover report contained every open missing persons case in Broward County, some dating back to my first day on the job. It included the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who’d gone into a department store and disappeared, and another about an elderly man suffering from dementia walking out of a nursing home, and never being seen again. If Cheeks had bothered to read any of what I’d written, he would have known that I had continued chasing leads on those cases long after they’d gone cold. Call it an obsession, but I’d refused to file them away.

I never quit a case.

My unwillingness to give up had defined my career as a detective, and later on, it had cost me my job and ruined my marriage. It was both my good side and my bad side, and I was past apologizing for it. Cheeks should have known better than to ask me to drop Sampson Grimes’s case.

I booted up my computer. I had read about the Sampson Grimes case in the newspaper, but the news reports on the Internet tended to have more information than the paper did, and I now pored through them.

There were six different stories posted about Sampson’s kidnapping. Each had been filed within twenty-four hours of the boy having gone missing. Reading them, I saw an unusual similarity. From the start of the case, the police had considered Jed Grimes their primary suspect, and had focused their investigation on him. Cheeks was quoted in two of the articles as saying that a break in the case was imminent.

I do my best thinking on my feet. I went to the window and parted the blinds. A conga line of drunken revelers had spilled from the bar and was winding its way down to the marina. I thought I knew what was going on. Cheeks didn’t like Jed Grimes and had decided that he was guilty. As a result, Cheeks had not conducted a thorough investigation. Cops called this personalizing a case. It was the surest way to screw up an investigation that I knew of.

I needed to look at the crime scene. Unlike Cheeks, I wasn’t wearing blinders, and I had a suspicion I might see things that Cheeks had missed. Cheeks had warned me not to go there, but I was going to ignore him.

I pulled the phone book out of my desk, and found Jed Grimes’s address. He lived in Davie, about a twenty-minute drive. I clapped my hands, and Buster lifted his head.

“Let’s go for a car ride,” I said.

I got on 595 and headed west. Tourist season was in full swing, and the line of cars’ headlights stretched in both directions as far as my eyes could see.

Fifteen minutes later, I exited into a middle-class neighborhood sandwiched between Davie and Cooper City, and found myself staring at poorly lit street signs as I searched for Jed Grimes’s address. I had once known these streets like the back of my hand. Rampant development had changed that, and blurred the lines between where neighborhoods began and ended.

Five blocks later the scenery changed, and the streets turned mean. The houses were now made of cinder block, and many had iron security bars on their windows. Cars filled with angry young men roamed the streets, looking for trouble. Buster sat at stiff attention beside me, his lip turned up in a snarl.

Jed Grimes’s street appeared in my headlights. It was called RichJo Lane, and was lined with falling-down bungalows built during the middle of the last century. I parked in front of a bungalow with yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter. Printed on the mailbox in black Magic Marker was the word Grimes.

I took a look around before getting out of my car. It was a rough-looking area. Had I still been a cop, I might have called for backup. I glanced at my dog.