Maggie glanced at Nick, who slumped against the hard credenza and rubbed at his eyes. His hair was tousled from too many reckless run-throughs with his fingers. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing muscular forearms. He had gotten rid of the tie and had undone several buttons on his wrinkled shirt, exposing enough of his chest to distract her. She shook her head, grabbed a report off the floor and tried to stay focused.
“The Wilson boy, on the other hand-”
“I know,” Nick interrupted, sitting forward. “His hands were bound in front with duct tape, no rope. He was stabbed to death- no signs of strangulation. His throat wasn’t slashed. A hunting knife was used. Though there were plenty of puncture wounds…”
“Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two puncture wounds, but no carving.”
“The Wilson boy was also sodomized, repeatedly.”
“And his body was found in a park Dumpster, instead of by the river. Jesus, this stuff makes me sick to my stomach.” He shoved the pizza aside, grabbed his Pepsi and emptied the can, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, there’s a lot of differences, but couldn’t Jeffreys have changed things? Even the sodomy, couldn’t that be seen as…I don’t know…an escalation?”
“Yes, it could. But remember the sequence was Harper, Wilson, Paltrow. It would be very unusual for a killer to change, to experiment, to escalate and then go back to the exact format. He uses one knife-something with a small blade-perhaps a fillet knife. Then he changes to a hunting knife, then back to the other knife. Even the styles are very different. The Harper and Paltrow murders are meticulous in detail. Both boys were murdered by someone taking his time-someone who enjoys inflicting pain. Very much like Danny Alverez’s murder. Bobby Wilson’s murder, however, looks like it was done in the heat of the moment with too much emotion and passion to pay any attention to detail.”
“You know, I always thought it seemed too easy,” Nick said wearily. “I’ve been wondering if my dad wasn’t so caught up in the media circus that he may have overlooked something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how you hear about things getting missed in the excitement, the so-called rush to judgment? My dad’s always enjoyed being the center of attention. The year I started as quarterback for UNL, he’d meet me at the locker room, insisted on it, in fact-every single game. My mom said it was because he was so proud of me. Except there were too many times when he greeted the TV cameras before he even acknowledged me.”
Maggie listened patiently, then waited out his silence. Nick and his father obviously had a complex relationship. And though he was uncomfortable discussing it, she knew he was trying to tell her something important, something pertinent to the Jeffreys investigation. Did Nick really believe his father may have mishandled the case?
Finally, he glanced at her as though he’d read her thoughts.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying my dad would purposely jeopardize any case. He’s very well respected and has been for years. In fact, I know I would never have been elected if I wasn’t Antonio Morrelli’s son. I’m just saying that it all seemed a bit too easy-the way my dad caught Jeffreys. One day there was an anonymous tip, and the next day they had Jeffreys babbling out a confession.”
“What kind of anonymous tip?”
“It was a phone call, I think. I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t living here at the time. I was teaching down at UNL, so I got most of this stuff secondhand. Isn’t there anything in the reports?”
Maggie searched through several file folders. She had read most of them and couldn’t remember any phone calls being mentioned. But she also had seen no phone logs of any kind, even for a hot line.
“I haven’t seen anything at all about an anonymous tip,” she said, handing him the file labeled Jeffreys’ Arrest. “What do you remember?”
He seemed flustered, and she wasn’t sure if it was his memory he questioned or his father. She watched him look over the reports filed and signed by Antonio Morrelli.
“Your father’s reports are very detailed, including a blow-by-blow of the actual arrest. He even includes the evidence they found in the trunk of Jeffreys’ Chevy Impala.” She checked her own notes and read the list. “They found a roll of duct tape, a hunting knife, some rope…wait a minute.”
She stopped to check that she had copied the list correctly. “A pair of boy’s underpants, which were later identified as belonging to…” She looked up at Nick, who had found the list in the report and was reading the same items she had in front of her. His eyes met hers, revealing he was thinking precisely what she was.
She continued, “A pair of underpants later identified as Eric Paltrow’s.”
Maggie rifled through the coroner’s report to double-check her memory, though she already knew what she would find.
“Eric Paltrow’s body was found with his underpants on.”
Nick shook his head in disbelief.
“I bet even Jeffreys was surprised to find all that stuff in his trunk.”
They stared at each other, neither wanting to acknowledge out loud what they had stumbled upon. Ronald Jeffreys had been framed for two murders he hadn’t committed, and there was a good chance the frame-up had been done by someone in the sheriff’s department.
Chapter 29
Tuesday, October 28
The day had not gone well, and Nick blamed the two hours of sleep in his office chair. Maggie had gone back to her hotel room at three in the morning to rest, shower and change. Instead of driving the five miles to his house in the country, Nick had fallen asleep at his desk. All day his neck and back had reminded him again that he was only four years away from forty.
His body certainly wasn’t what it used to be, although his concerns about sexual performance may have diminished thanks to Agent O’Dell. Last night, the touch of her lips against his fingers, the look in her eyes, the electricity. Jesus, he was grateful the county jail’s shower blasted only cold water. Even he had rules about married women. Now if only his body didn’t talk him into changing the rules.
Unfortunately, his stash of clean clothes at the office had been used up in the last few days. He had resorted to the uniform browns, a more appropriate choice for the morning press conference. Not that it had made a difference. The press conference had quickly turned into a lynch mob within minutes, especially after Christine’s morning headline: Sheriff’s Department Ignores Leads in Alverez Case.
He thought for sure Eddie had checked out where old lady Krichek lived, a long time ago, after her first call. Why the hell wouldn’t he have realized Krichek had a perfect view of the parking lot where Danny had been abducted? Jesus, he wanted to strangle Eddie or worse, offer him up to the media as a scapegoat. Instead, he let him off with a simple and private verbal lashing and a warning.
Hell, right now he needed every officer he had. It was no time to be losing his cool, which he almost did at the press conference when the questions got ugly. But O’Dell, in her calm and authoritative manner, had rapidly put things back in perspective. She had challenged the media to help find the mysterious blue pickup, making them a part of the hunt for the killer instead of hunting for faults in the sheriff’s department. He began wondering what he’d do without her and hoped he wouldn’t have to find out any time soon.
He turned the Jeep onto Christine’s street just as the sun made a rare appearance from a hole in the clouds, then sank slowly and gently behind a line of trees. It had gotten colder with a biting wind promising the temperature would drop even more.
Maggie had spent the entire trip next to him quietly buried in the Alverez file. Photos from the crime scene and her own Polaroids were scattered across her lap. She was obsessed with completing her profile as though it could somehow save Matthew Tanner. After an afternoon of contradictory leads and a string of unimpressive witnesses, Nick worried that it was too late. Since Matthew’s disappearance, a hundred and seventy-five deputies, police officers and independent investigators had been searching almost nonstop. Not one shred of evidence brought them closer to finding the boy. It really did seem as though someone had pulled up alongside Matthew and had him willingly get into his vehicle, just as Sophie Krichek had described.