“No, sir. He works for Mr. Brice.”
“ What? ”
“Yeah, Chief, the guy works at BriceWare.”
The chief turned to the father: “You don’t know him?”
Most victims’ fathers begged Devereaux for five minutes alone with the abductor. But this victim’s father had maintained his position at the window throughout the mother’s attack on the suspect. Mr. Brice shook his head.
“No.”
“Chief,” the officer said, “the phone company can identify the cell tower nearest the call’s origination. There’s a tower next to the BriceWare building.”
Chief Ryan gave Devereaux an I-told-you-so shrug. As the new information slowly sank in, all eyes turned and fixed on the young man bleeding and sobbing at the table in the interrogation room. The mother turned to Devereaux and pointed a finger at him.
“Find out what he did with my daughter.”
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney prior to questioning and to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to have one appointed for you prior to any questioning.”
Chief of Police Paul Ryan looked up from his Miranda card at the prime suspect. “Gary, do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?”
The interrogation room reeked of the cleaning solvent used to disinfect the floor and table where Jennings had vomited. Ryan was sitting with his back to the two-way mirror; Agent Devereaux sat at one end of the rectangular metal table, and Jennings sat across the table. His nose was swollen and his lips were fat; the area under his left eye was already turning purple. It looked to be one hell of a shiner. He nodded at Ryan.
“Son, you gotta state your answer for the tape recorder.”
A recorder sat in the middle of the table. They had decided to audiotape rather than videotape; Jennings’s battered face would give his lawyer ammunition to claim any confession was coerced. A judge was not likely to believe that while in police custody the victim’s mother beat up the prime suspect.
“Yes,” Jennings said.
“Yes, you understand your constitutional rights?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re waiving your right to have an attorney present during questioning?”
“Yes.”
Once a lawyer enters the room, any hope of a confession exits. Obtaining a quick confession was particularly urgent in this case because the evidence collected from Jennings’s truck would likely be inadmissible in court-but mostly because a confession got the story off the evening news and the mayor off Ryan’s back. So Paul Ryan put the Miranda card in his shirt pocket, folded his hands on the table, and said in a soft voice, one of disappointment in a teenage son who had taken the family car without permission, “Gary, why’d you take Gracie?”
“I didn’t take her!”
“Mr. Brice said she went to the BriceWare office over the Christmas holidays, nearly every day. Is that when you first became acquainted with Gracie?”
“Yes… I mean, no! We weren’t acquainted.”
“What were you?”
“We were… nothing! I work for Mr. Brice, that’s all!”
“But you saw her in the office?”
“Yeah. She delivered mail, on rollerblades.”
“And you knew she was Mr. Brice’s daughter?”
“Sure, we all did.”
“Has Mr. Brice been a good employer to you?”
“Yeah, it’s a great place to work.”
“Good pay, good benefits?”
“Yeah.”
“Stock options?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan threw a thumb at the two-way mirror behind him. “Gary, Mr. Brice is standing on the other side of that mirror, looking at you, listening to everything you’re saying.” Jennings looked up at the mirror. “For God’s sake, son, at least tell him where his daughter’s body is, so he can bury her properly. Don’t just leave her out there in some field, buzzards picking over her.”
“I don’t know where she’s at!” Jennings tried to stand but the leg irons restrained him. To the mirror, he said, “Mr. Brice, I swear to God, I didn’t take her!”
He looked like he might start crying again.
“But you’ve done this sort of thing before.”
Jennings fell back into the chair. “No, no, no, that was in college, a frat party, we were drunk… How was I supposed to know she was only sixteen?”
Agent Devereaux gestured to Ryan for Jennings’s file. Ryan slid it down the length of the table to Devereaux, who thumbed through it while Ryan continued his questioning.
“The law doesn’t require that you know, only that the victim be under the age of seventeen when you had sex with her.”
“The victim? She was putting out for a bunch of guys at a frat party the next weekend-I saw her!”
Ryan shrugged. “You’re required to register with the police department when you move into town. You didn’t do that, Gary.”
“Yeah, and have my photo plastered across the newspaper again with ‘sex offender’ in big print. I’m branded a sex offender for life and she’s married to a doctor.”
“Why didn’t you register?”
“Because I didn’t want my wife to find out. I wanted a clean start.” Tears welled up in Jennings’s eyes. “I just got drunk at a frat party. I was five days too old for her.”
An exception to the Texas statutory rape statute states that if the defendant is less than three years older than the victim, there is no crime. Jennings was nineteen years, ten months, and twenty-seven days old at the time of the sexual act; the girl was sixteen years, ten months, and twenty-two days old. Five days difference made him a sex offender for life.
“You’re not a child molester?”
“No!”
Ryan reached over to the file and removed the plastic-wrapped picture of the naked adolescent female found in Jennings’s truck. He pushed it in front of Jennings.
“Well, son, why do you look at pictures like this?”
Jennings glanced at the picture and recoiled.
“I’ve never seen that picture before!”
“It was in your truck, under the floor mat.”
“In my truck?”
“Yes, son, in your truck. Possession of child pornography is a federal crime, Gary-that picture alone can put you in prison for most of your adult life.”
“I don’t know how it got in my truck.”
“Well, what about her jersey? How’d that get in your truck?”
“What jersey?”
“Gracie’s soccer jersey. It was in the back of your truck, under the bed cover.”
“Her jersey was in my truck?”
“Yes.”
“This has gotta be a joke, a big mistake!”
“What about the nine phone calls you made to Gracie last week, are those a big mistake?”
“I never called her!”
“We traced the calls to your cell phone.”
“ My cell phone? I don’t know… I leave the phone in my truck. I never lock it.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no crime out here, just like the mayor says! Do you lock your car? Maybe someone used my cell phone while I was at work.”
“Oh, okay, someone’s framing you?”
“Yes!”
Ryan leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and studied Gary Jennings. Twenty-eight years old with a boyish face and frame, he didn’t look like your typical sexual predator; in fact, he looked like Ryan’s son-in-law, a proctologist in Dallas. And most predators weren’t nearly so convincing in their claims of innocence-the boy was good. But he had made a prior trip through the system, so he knew to deny, deny, deny; juries liked that when they listened to the interrogation tape. Ryan decided to ratchet up the pressure, give the boy something to think about.
“Okay, Gary, let’s summarize your defense for the jury: a sexual predator premeditates his abduction of Gracie weeks in advance. He searches the state’s sex offender database and finds you, a convicted sex offender who just happens to fit his description to a T, who just happens to live three miles from the park, and who just happens to work for Gracie’s father. Then, during the week prior to the abduction, he goes to your place of employment, finds your truck unlocked, plants child pornography in it and uses your cell phone to place nine calls to Gracie. Then, after he abducts Gracie and rapes her and kills her in the woods behind the park, he dumps her body and drives over to your apartment and tosses her jersey in your truck to frame you.” Ryan turned his hands up. “Gary, you’re a smart fella. Do you really expect a jury of adults to believe that?”