It didn’t take either Matt or Olivia long to figure out what was going on. This was Municipal Court, primarily occupied with misdemeanor level violations of the law, primarily traffic offenses.
And it was a smooth-running operation. The clerk called a case number. The accused, sometimes accompanied by his counsel, or his mother and/or father, approached the bench. One of the uniforms then detached himself from the knot of fellow police officers and stood facing the bench. The clerk read the charges, and the judge asked how the defendant pled. If the defendant pled “guilty,” sentence was immediately dispensed. If the defendant pled “not guilty,” the arresting officer testified, the defendant (or his counsel, but not, Matt noted with a smile, his mother and/or father) was permitted to cross-examine the uniform, and when that was done, the judge immediately decided guilt or innocence and handed out the sentence.
Then the next case was called.
A hand tapped Matt’s shoulder. He looked around and saw a middle-aged man he instantly decided was a lawyer. The lawyer was pointing to the cracked-open double doors of the courtroom. Matt saw the enormous sergeant beckoning to him.
He and Olivia made their way through the standees in the rear of the courtroom and out the door.
“You’re the cop from Philadelphia?” the enormous sergeant asked in a thick southern accent.
Matt saw that he had a highly polished name badge reading “Sgt. D. Kenny” pinned to his crisply pressed shirt.
This is the guy I talked to when I called from outside Olivia’s apartment.
“Cops from Philadelphia,” Matt said. “This is Detective Lassiter, and my name is Payne. I’m a sergeant.”
The sergeant stopped Matt from producing his identification with a wave of his huge hand.
“The chief says that Sergeant Paul doesn’t know anything about the peeper; that court will probably last until about ten-thirty, maybe later; and that you can wait for him if you want but that he’d much rather talk to you in the morning. About eight.”
“Can I ask you two questions, Sergeant?”
“You can ask.”
“Is your peeper going to make bail and walk out of here tonight?”
“No.”
Matt took his laptop out of his case. The enormous sergeant watched silently and without expression as Matt turned it on.
“I’d really be grateful, Sergeant, if you could tell me if this knife looks familiar to you.”
Matt turned the laptop’s screen so the sergeant could see it. It was one of the digital images Matt had taken from the camera the doer had left in Cheryl Williamson’s apartment. It showed a visibly terrified young woman lying on a bed, tied to the headboard with plastic binders. Her breasts were exposed. Lying between them was a large knife, its tip almost touching the soft skin under her chin. There were several thumbnail-sized drops of a thick, milky white fluid on the highly polished blade.
The enormous sergeant looked at the image, then at Matt, and then back at the computer screen. Then he handed the laptop back to Matt.
“Wait,” he said.
In two minutes, he was back with the chief.
Matt wordlessly raised the almost closed laptop screen and extended it to the chief.
“Where’d you get this?” the chief asked.
“Our doer forgot his camera when he left the scene,” Matt said. “Possibly because by then he knew he’d killed Miss Williamson and was a little frightened.”
“Sonofabitch!” the chief said, instantly adding, “Excuse me, ma’am.”
Olivia made a gesture indicating she understood.
The chief, taking care that Olivia could not see the screen, returned the laptop to Matt.
“You’re the sergeant who talked to me and Sergeant Kenny this morning, right?”
“Yes, sir. I’m Sergeant Payne, and this is Detective Lassiter.”
“Let me tell you how it is, Sergeant. Sometime tonight, in there, a man is going to appear before the judge to have both the suspension of his DUI sentence and the suspension of the revocation of his driver’s license challenged by me. I personally got him again for DUI two nights ago, and one of my not-too-smart officers let him go on his own recognizance after he’d had time to sober up. He’s a lawyer, and he’s got a damned good lawyer, and nothing would make either of them happier than for them to show up only to hear that I’m not there. I think they’re sitting in a car someplace waiting for some other lawyer to call, telling them I’ve gone. You follow me?”
“Yes, sir. Another continuance. And you don’t want that to happen.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I understand, sir. I was a little concerned that your peeper would get out on bail.”
“That’s not going to happen, not tonight,” the chief said. “Kenny, you bring these officers up to date on what happened last night. We can do that much. And later tonight, if you’d like, or in the morning-which would be better for me-we can talk about what we’re going to do about this Peeping Tom Jabberwocky caught.”
“Yes, sir, Chief,” Sergeant Kenny said.
“And tell the people in the lockup that the only person who can let Mr. Homer C. Daniels out of his cell is me.”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
Sergeant Kenny led them through a corridor, then a locked door into what was obviously the administrative department of the Daphne police department. It was a fairly large room with several rows of desks. Offices opened off it, and Matt saw signs identifying those of the chief, the deputy chief, and then-just as they reached it- one reading “Sgt. Kenny.”
He waved them inside, closed the door, and gestured for them to sit down.
“Okay. I don’t know how much you know-”
“Not much,” Matt said.
“I don’t know how many details you have, so if I start telling you something you already know, stop me.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t think the chief dislikes Colonel Richards,” Sergeant Kenny said, “but the chief doesn’t know what a fine officer the colonel was when he was in Special Forces. I do.”
“And does the chief know that you know-”
“I don’t think that’s ever come up in conversation, come to think of it.”
“I understand.”
“Good,” Sergeant Kenny said.
He met Matt’s eyes for a long minute.
“Okay. I wasn’t there at the Yacht Club, but the dispatcher called me at the house and told me what had gone down. So I came here. And while they were booking him, a concerned citizen who didn’t identify himself called me and said he smelled that this peeper was more than a peeper.”
“Interesting.”
“Well, after they booked him…”
“On what?”
“Peeping. It’s a misdemeanor.”
Matt nodded.
“Our detective sergeant and the chief interviewed him. I got to listen.”
“ ‘Your’ detective sergeant?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we have two. A detective and a detective sergeant. ”
“I see.”
“This was three o’clock in the morning. And this guy said he wasn’t going to say anything, even give us his name, without a lawyer.”
“He’d been Mirandized?”
“Sure. Well, hell, I thought that was a little strange. This wasn’t even serious. Not even like DUI. This was peeping. We catch peepers every couple of weeks. The judge fines them two hundred dollars and court costs, and threatens them with having to register as a sex offender if they get caught again. I can’t recall any peeper ever going to jail.”
“I understand.”
“Then the chief tried to identify this guy through the car, and got nowhere. That made him a little more suspicious, so he charged him with leaving the scene of an accident, which is either, depending on the circumstances, either a first-class misdemeanor-thirty days in our jail, max- or a felony.
“Anyway, they just left him in a cell to think things over. I guess he did, because in the morning-just before you called-when the chief got him a lawyer, he’d changed his tune. Now he was all remorse. He was ashamed, and was going to be embarrassed when all this came out, and all he wanted to do was take his punishment.”