Lee Child - MatchUp

“My mistake. Which officer handled that scene?”

“All of them.”

Joe glanced at Perry, who looked back at him with a cocked eyebrow as he said, “How many would that be?”

“Three,” she said.

Joe considered that and said, “Nobody else has shown up? Feds, Georgia Bureau of Investigation?”

“Nope.”

He sincerely doubted that the DEA’s corruption concerns stemmed from a three-man department in a tourist-trap village, so if the GBI had been kept at bay this long, it suggested they were of interest.

“Is there someone we could speak to who was at the scene this morning?”

“Not right now. They all went up to Cleveland to talk to the sheriff. We got bigger problems ahead of us than this thing you all are so interested in, you know. There’s a storm coming, supposed to be the all-time record. There was a public safety meeting in Cleveland. I expect they’ll be back soon, though.”

“In the meantime, who polices the town?” Perry asked.

She gave him a stone-cold stare. “That would be me.”

Joe figured she’d do a fair-enough job of it, too.

“If you think they’ll be back here soon, we’ll hang out for a bit,” he said, thinking that this was actually a hell of an opportunity to ask some questions around town without having the local law breathing down their necks.

God bless the blizzard.

“Fine by me. They won’t be much longer, I’m sure.”

“What happened to the guy you arrested, the cop from Alabama?”

“Still got him in a holding cell. And as far as I’m concerned? He ought to stay there.”

“Yeah? You think he shot her?”

“I don’t know about that.” She looked at him primly. “But that man ran right through town in nothing but his underpants. Now, you tell me, isn’t that some kind of crime?”

“Some kind,” Joe agreed, and then he and Perry left and walked out into the cold. A few stray snowflakes were falling now.

“So we head for the closest Cleveland?” Perry asked.

Joe caught one of the snowflakes in his palm, watching it melt, and thought again that he would like to have rented a four-wheel drive. He didn’t know what the all-time record storm was in Georgia, but it didn’t sound encouraging.

“We could do that,” he said. “Or could take advantage of a little time in town without a local deputy at our sides.”

“I vote for the latter,” Perry said. “I don’t know what in the hell brought Antonio to a place like this, but my guess is, he stuck out once he arrived. People are likely to remember him.”

“Agreed.”

They didn’t have to go far to find their first eyewitness, and they didn’t have to interview her long to determine that she wasn’t an eyewitness at all, but since she’d heard all about the shooting from someone who had talked to someone else who had probably seen it, she basically felt like she had herself, you know?

Pritchard assured her that of course he understood this, but all the same they’d like to talk to someone who actually had seen things. Police protocol and all that. It was a bitch that they couldn’t just take her word for it, but, you know, it was the law.

“Ain’t nobody going to say a single word different,” she said with a pout. “He ran out of that motel in his underpants, and then came the shooting. He told the police she was trying to steal his car, but it wasn’t even his car, so you tell me whether he’s guilty or not? Answers itself. And doesn’t matter if I saw or heard it, all of that’s gospel, mister.”

“It sounds authentic,” Joe agreed, and then they thanked her and crossed the street to where she’d indicated the shooting had happened, an alley that angled downhill, behind the hotels. Outside of a hotel called the Linderhof, a guy wearing a long denim jacket that flapped around his legs like a duster was spreading snowmelt on the steps and smoking a cigarette. Maintenance man, probably.

“Want to see whether he, too, has heard the gospel?” Perry asked.

“I expect it spreads fast around here, but it might have some variations,” Joe said. “We might as well hear them all.”

They went up and badged him and he looked at them sourly while he smoked the cigarette.

“Cleveland, you say?”

“Cleveland, Ohio, yes.”

“You interested in the black fella? I don’t say that ’cause he was black. I say that ’cause he drove the car in.”

“The car where Nora was shot?” Perry asked.

“That’s the one. Sweet car. Older Mustang, maybe early ’70s. Nah, that ain’t right, not with those taillights. Late ’60s.” He took a long drag and then repeated, “Sweet car.”

“Where was it impounded?” Joe asked.

“It wasn’t. They just left it right where it was. There’s police tape on it. I assume it’s likely locked, too.”

Perry glanced at Joe, clearly impressed by this police work, and said, “Was there anybody working here who might have had a view of what happened this morning?”

“Nope.” Another puff on the cigarette, then, “I keep meaning to watch the tapes and see if there’s anything useful on them. But, hell, with this storm, the manager keeps busting my balls about getting ice-melt down.”

“You’ve got security cameras here?”

“Sure. A couple pointed right at the alley. I figure they might be of some use.”

“I figure you’re right,” Joe said. “Let’s take a look.”

The security footage that hadn’t been reviewed or even requested by the three-man Helen Police Department, currently occupied with plans for snowplow routes, offered more than a view of the car.

It showed the shooting.

“I’ll be damned,” the maintenance man said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

Joe was starting to get a headache. He wondered how many homicides had been investigated in this town in the past century. Whatever the total was, it had to be matched exactly by the number of cold cases.

“Probably going to want to pass this along to the guy they’ve got in jail,” Perry said as they watched the grainy-but-indisputable image of Antonio Childers opening fire on Nora Simpson. “It seems potentially useful to the defense team, what with the video of someone else doing the killing and all.”

“How about the girl, though?” Joe said. “She’s driving like she’s expecting someone. Cruising slow through that alley. But she sure as hell wasn’t expecting Antonio. She’s cruising, and he’s running. She seems surprised by him. If she just stole his car, that doesn’t jibe.”

“Remember what the girl who was spreading the gospel told us,” Perry said. “The cop they locked up said Nora Simpson stole his car, but that he was lying about that, because—”

“It wasn’t his car,” Joe finished. “Right. Could be some of Detective Tolliver’s testimony had been bent around the edges by the time it got to her. So let’s say Nora sleeps with him, and then she steals a car. Problem is, it’s Antonio’s car. All fine. But how in the hell does she start it?”

“Hot-wire, maybe?”

“If she’s hot-wiring cars, she doesn’t need to steal keys.”

“We need to chat with Detective Tolliver,” Perry said. “I’d rather hear his version of things first. And alert him to the presence of this video. Seems like the kind thing to do, before they send him to the electric chair.”

“Hang on,” Joe said. “Can you go back?”

He had been focused on the shooting the first time through, but now as they watched it again he’d seen that just after Antonio Childers left the frame and just before the guy in one shoe and his boxer shorts arrived, there had been a blur of motion that looked like another vehicle pulling in. Pulling in too close to the scene not to have been part of it.