“Wasn’t us. We were sleeping like babies.”
Reed bent forward and leaned his foot on the bleacher. “Look, Vince, you’re not stupid. You know what this is all about. We’re more interested in finding Jeremiah Sloan than we are in you. If you tell us what happened with Jeremiah and Adrian yesterday afternoon, we’ll talk to a judge about going easy on the drug charges. This is a one-time-only daily deal. Grab it before it’s gone.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’m not buying what you’re selling.”
Reed straightened up and casually jerked a thumb at one of his colleagues. “Okay, forget it. Get this one out of here. I’ll talk to his brother. Nobody says the deal has to be for both of them. One’s all I need.”
“My brother’s got nothing to say!” Vince retorted loudly. As he was yanked to his feet, he repeated in a voice that Will could hear on the other end of the bleachers. “You got that? Will’s not saying nothing to any of you!”
Reed waited until Vince was dragged out of the gym. Then he shoved his hands in his suit pockets and wandered down to the far side of the bleachers, where Will Gruder danced uncomfortably on his butt cheeks as he waited for us. Reed took his time before talking. He sat down next to Will, too close for comfort, and casually stretched out his arms on the bench behind him. Will tried to mimic his brother’s tough-guy pose, but it didn’t work.
“You must be Will,” Reed said after a while.
“Yeah, so what?”
“Your brother tells me he’s not interested in a deal. Are you smarter than he is?”
“We don’t need a deal. We haven’t done anything.”
“Sure. I believe you. Trouble is, I’m not the one you need to convince. Who’s a judge going to like better, Will? A dropout like you who’s been in trouble since he was fourteen or some nice small-town football player like Adrian Sloan? A kid whose little brother is missing. That wins a lot of sympathy points with people. In fact, what’s a jury going to think when they hear that you and Vince were out there in the national forest with Adrian when Jeremiah disappeared? They’re going to assume you two had something to do with that.”
“We didn’t!” Will burst out. He nodded his head at me. “She saw us! Her and that other cop, Twilley. We were here at the school playing basketball yesterday. Then we went to the bar in Witch Tree, and we were there until after midnight. No way we had anything to do with that kid going missing.”
“But you were out there, right? The two of you met Adrian in the campground, and you sold him meth. He already told us you did.” Reed squeezed in until he was practically breathing in Will’s ear. “Come on, kid. We’re talking about a missing ten-year-old boy. Help us out. If you give us a clue and we find him, hell, you’ll be a hero. A judge is going to like that.”
Will glanced at the far end of the bleachers to make sure that Vince wasn’t in the gym anymore. His nose was running, and with his hands cuffed, he couldn’t do anything about it, so he bent over to wipe his face on his knee. “I’m not talking about drugs. You can’t ask me about that. Got it? I’m not saying anything about what went down with Adrian.”
Reed cocked his head at me. He shot me a look that said: This is your town. What do you want to do?
“All right, no drugs,” I interjected. “But we better like what you have to say, Will.”
“We didn’t have anything to do with that kid going missing. No way. We didn’t even know about it until you and Twilley told us.”
“But you were there.”
Will’s knee bounced nervously. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, we were there.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing! Nothing happened, that’s what I’m saying! Vince and me, we set up a meeting with Adrian in the campground. We were supposed to meet him like one o’clock or so.”
“To do what?”
“To do whatever. I told you, no questions about that. Got it?”
“Okay, no questions. Go on. When did you and Vince get there?”
“Like one fifteen or so. Adrian was there, but so was his little brother. Vince wasn’t happy about that. And the kid was being annoying, getting in our faces and asking all sorts of questions. What were we doing, what were we talking about. Vince figured the kid was going to blab to his parents about seeing us. So he told Adrian, either the kid goes or the meeting’s off.”
“What happened?”
“Adrian told his brother to beat it. Said he should take his bike and start heading back to the ranger’s office. He said he’d catch up with him in a little bit.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know. One thirty maybe.”
“Did Jeremiah go?”
“He argued for a while, but Adrian gave him ten bucks. That did it. The boy got on his bike and took off.”
“Which way?”
“South.”
“You’re sure? Away from the lake?”
“Yeah. Back toward the ranger station.”
“What did you and Vince do?”
“We wrapped up our business with Adrian. Then the three of us smoked for a while and hung out. Around two o’clock or so, Vince figured we better blow, so we got in the Bronco and left. Adrian said he was going to have another cigarette, so he stayed behind.”
I was practically holding my breath. “Did you see Jeremiah?”
“We saw his bike.”
“Where?”
“Tipped over on the side of the road like a mile south of the campground.”
“Did you see the boy?”
“No.”
“Did you stop?”
“No. We figured the kid was in the woods taking a leak or something. No big deal. We didn’t think anything was wrong.”
“So Jeremiah left at one thirty, and you left half an hour later. Is that right?”
“About that, yeah.”
“When you were in the campground, did any vehicles pass by on the road? Or did you see any people?”
“Nah, it was quiet.”
I shook my head in frustration. I couldn’t believe we could get this far and come away with nothing. We knew approximately when the boy had disappeared, but beyond that, we were no closer to finding him.
Agent Reed was unhappy, too. “Okay, Deputy, let’s get this piece of crap out of here.”
“You’re letting me go?” Will asked.
“Hell, no, nobody’s letting you go. You’re dealing meth. The county cops are going to lock you up, and then twelve nice people of Mittel County are going to send you away for a long time. You and your brother.”
I took Will by the shoulder and began to push him toward the other end of the gym, but he broke away from me and spun around, nearly falling down. “Wait, wait, wait, I’ve got more. We can talk. We can do a deal. Vince and me, we saw something.”
Agent Reed stood up from the bleachers. His dark eyes shot through Will like lasers. “What did you see?”
“First a deal. No charges. You forget about what Adrian Sloan told you.”
“We’re not making any promises until we hear what you have to say.”
Will looked back and forth between my face and Agent Reed’s. His nose was running again, and he was in full panic mode, watching the next ten years of his life tick by behind the bars of a cell.
“A truck,” he sputtered.
Reed’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“As we were driving north toward the campground, we passed a truck. It was maybe two, three miles before we got there. Thing was on the side of the road. Parked, engine running. Local plates, but I don’t remember the license. There was somebody inside, but we couldn’t see who it was.”
“One person or more than one?” I asked.
“I only saw one.”
“Man or woman?”