24
Now
“Yes,” Bette hissed, pulling the door open and squatting down.
“Keep him talking, Garret,” she whispered as she slid into the driver’s seat, ducking her head low.
She popped open the glove compartment and rifled through Wes’s stuff. A handbook for the car was inside, a pack of spearmint gum and a few CDs. Under the driver’s seat, she found a Twix wrapper but nothing else.
Leaning over, she searched beneath the passenger seat, pausing when her finger brushed something hard. She wiggled it loose, recoiling when she realized she held the black handle of a sheathed knife.
“Shit.” She dropped it. She shouldn’t have touched it. Now her fingerprints were on the handle.
Bette pulled her shirt over her hand and picked up the knife a second time, sliding off the sheath.
It was a hunting blade, sharp with a serrated edge. A scary knife, and just looking at it caused goose bumps along her forearms. She leaned closer, studying the blade, searching for stains.
“Wes, wait!”
The sound of Garret shouting startled her, and she dropped the knife. It clattered to the mat on the passenger’s side.
She peeked over the dashboard and spotted Wes leaving the apartment building.
He paused and looked back at Garret, who was waving his arms, his face ashen.
“Oh, crap.” Bette dipped her head, not bothering to cover her hands, and stuffed the knife back into the sheath before flinging it under the seat.
She slid out of the car and pressed the door closed. Peeking beneath the car, she watched Wes’s shoes moving across the parking lot.
Bette crawled on hands and knees, concrete biting into her kneecaps, but not daring to stand. When she got behind a van, she stopped, shifting to a squat and listening as Wes climbed behind the wheel.
She waited until he pulled from the parking lot to emerge.
“Holy smokes, Bette,” Garret breathed when he saw her. “Have you gone mad? He nearly caught you.”
Bette didn’t speak. Her heart was still racing. Her fingertips tingled where she’d touched the blade of the knife.
“Officer Hart,” Bette called, trying to get his attention across the busy police station.
He stood next to the desk of another officer, both of them gazing at a sheet of paper.
“Hart,” she tried again.
He didn’t look up.
“He has a knife in his car!” she shrilled, attracting stares not only from Hart and the officer next to him, but from four or five additional cops.
Hart closed his eyes as if preparing to deal with another lunatic who’d stumbled in from the street.
Bette had a moment of embarrassment, immediately followed by a vision of her sister. The embarrassment vanished, and she marched towards Hart.
“Did you hear me?” she demanded.
“The sandwich shop across the street heard you,” he retorted.
“Well, if you had looked at me, I wouldn’t have screamed it,” she snapped. “I said Weston has a knife in his car. You need to search his car. What if he used it to—?”
Hart held up a hand to silence her, shot an exasperated look at his colleague, and steered her to an empty room.
“How did you get access to his car, Bette? Please tell me he invited you to borrow it or take it for a ride, because if you broke in, we have a problem."
“I didn’t break in,” she exploded. “It was unlocked.”
“I see. So, you consider an unlocked door an open invitation? If a man’s walking down your street and turns the doorknob to your house and finds it unlocked, he’s welcome to come inside and have a look around?” Hart asked.
Bette fumed. She planted her hands on her hips.
“If that man’s sister is missing, and he has reason to believe I might be hiding her in my house, then hell, yes, come on in, man! Ransack the place. Why do I feel like Weston Meeks has more rights than the rest of us here? What about my sister? Who’s worrying about Crystal’s rights? It sure as hell isn’t you guys. The supposed upholders of the law.”
Hart stared at her incredulously.
“I’ve been working day and night on your sister’s case. Day and night. But I’m a police officer,” he said. “Bette, not only am I bound by a code of ethics and actual laws, any bending of those laws will almost guarantee that Weston Meeks is never held accountable if he did hurt Crystal.
“Don’t you get it? If I search his car without a warrant, anything we find in it is inadmissible in court. We could find a knife covered in Crystal’s blood and it’s useless. The jury would never hear about it, and guess who decides if Weston Meeks is guilty? A jury. Yeah, so you’re right, Bette, we’re treading carefully around Meeks’ rights because when it comes time to nail him, we need a rock-solid case. He has a wife with money, which means he’s going to have a slippery lawyer who gets guys like Meeks off all day long. And once he’s off, once he’s acquitted, we can never try him again. He’s free forever, and whatever happened to Crystal…” Hart shrugged and let the words hang between them.
Bette had been filling up with air as he spoke, gathering a storm of rage on which to fly her rebuttal. Instead, she sagged against the wall with a defeated sigh, the fight leaving her body.
“But—” she managed, shaking her head, still high on the discovery of the knife. Still convinced it was the smoking gun that would force Meeks to talk.
“I’ll grab us some coffee and fill you in on the latest. Okay?” Hart said, his frustrated tone replaced by one of sympathy.
Bette nodded and sat down.
A mirror took up most of one wall - a one-way mirror investigators used to watch criminals squirm under the harsh fluorescent lights.
Bette wanted Weston Meeks in that room. She wanted to stand behind that glass and watch his eyes dart from floor to ceiling as sweat spread out in a halo beneath his armpits.
Hart returned a few minutes later holding cups of iced tea.
“Paulette, the receptionist, turned off the coffeepot and is forcing everyone to drink tea this afternoon.” He shook his head. “Here, it’s terrible.”
Bette took it. It was unsweetened but flavored with fresh lemon.
Hart took a drink, stared at it, repulsed, and slid the cup away as if preferring to put distance between him and the tea.
“We interviewed Hillary Meeks,” he said.
“And?” Bette slid to the edge of her seat.
“She was not very forthcoming.”
“Okay…”
“She didn’t know about the affair, but she didn’t react in the typical way. She was rather—”
“What?” Bette demanded.
“She was rather frigid. My partner called her Siberian,” Hart explained.
“Siberian?”
“Yeah, cold. I’ve told spouses about affairs more than once and, well, let’s just say her reaction was unusual. Women often cry. Men get angry. She sat like a statue. When we finished, she said, ‘Is that all?’ and grabbed her purse like she might leave. I explained that no, it wasn’t all. The woman Meeks was having an affair with was pregnant and had disappeared.”
“And then what?” Bette pushed.
“And then nothing,” Hart admitted. “She barely batted an eye. She said she’d never heard of Crystal, and that if Wes had an affair, it was something they’d handle at home, not in a police station.”
“Did you ask about his behavior? If he’d ever been violent toward Hillary? And how about his alibi? I mean he said he was in Traverse City that day, right?”
Hart nodded. “Never violent. She sort of smiled when I asked that question. It was the most emotion I saw out of her that day. She said ‘Wes gathers up mice in a little box and lets them out the back door when they get into the house.’ He doesn’t hit her. He doesn’t even kill rodents, apparently. She also said he was in Traverse City the day Crystal vanished. He’d gotten sick the night before, and she believed he spent the day in bed. She was running errands and visiting a friend, so she can’t confirm. He was home in bed when Hillary returned at 10 p.m.”