The Unwilling(106)

“He does.” Dana pointed at Martinez.

“Just questions,” the nice cop said.

But he didn’t seem so nice anymore.



* * *



For Bill French, the day was an exercise in bureaucratic futility. He’d gone to the station early, and Captain Martin had been there, waiting.

I’m sending you to Raleigh for a conference. You don’t want to go, but I need you gone for the day.

French had argued back, but the captain was determined.

Gone for the day or suspended for a month. Your choice …

“So here I sit.” French mumbled under his breath, shifting on the hard, plastic chair. “Goddamn it.” He was in a conference room on the third-floor headquarters of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, Capital District, one of a hundred city cops from across the state attending a seminar on cross-jurisdictional cooperation. An hour in, and he’d already slipped out three times to borrow a phone and call friends at the station back home. The desk sergeant. A junior detective who owed him a favor. They didn’t know anything, or wouldn’t tell him. He found Burklow on the third call. “Sit tight,” he’d said. “If something breaks, I will track you down. In the meantime, have faith.”

But faith was for rookies and civilians. French knew too much about bad cops, bias, sloppy work.

He looked at his watch.

Eighty-three minutes since he’d first sat down.

It had to be longer than that!

For another twenty minutes, he cooled his heels as some state plebe droned on about the architectural hierarchy of a multi-jurisdictional investigation as might be used in pursuit of a purely hypothetical, cross-county, serial rapist. “If you’ll turn to the diagram on page twelve of your manual…”

“No. Just no.”

He was in the wrong city, doing the wrong thing.

French left the conference room without looking right or left, his steps loud in the hall as he stalked past the outer offices of the Professional Standards Division, en route to the elevator bank. He was almost past the double doors before a young woman interrupted his thoughts. “Excuse me, Detective?”

It was the same pleasant young woman who’d allowed him to use the phone on her desk. “Yes, Agent…?”

“Foil,” she said. “You have a call.”

At her desk, she handed him the phone, and moved away to give him privacy. Four agents stood at a conference table across the room; no one at the adjacent desk. Only Burklow had this number. “Ken?”

“What’s the last thing I said to you?”

There were background sounds. Men in the squad room. Orders. Activity. French’s hand tightened on the phone. The call would not have come without good reason. “You told me to have faith.”

“Shit. No. What was the second-to-last thing I said?”

“That you’d track me down if something major broke.”

“That’s the one. So you give those state cops a nice thanks-for-your-time, then get your ass home, fastest. ’Cause I’m telling you, brother”—a rustle on the line as Burklow shifted the receiver from one ear to the next—“shit down here just went sideways.”



* * *



Raleigh to Charlotte was all interstate and open highway, so French lit up the cherry, and put the pedal down. Chapel Hill. Greensboro. Salisbury. He counted cities, pulling 95 in traffic and 120 when the traffic thinned. Eighty-nine minutes after Burklow’s call, he hit the Charlotte line. Two miles in, he braked hard, and rocked into the parking lot where Burklow wanted to meet. He was there, and waiting. “When you said ninety minutes, I didn’t think you could actually do it.”

“I think it took ninety-three. Any sign of Gibby?”

“Not yet. I’m sorry.”

“Gabrielle?”

“She’s still in the dark, and I convinced the captain to keep it that way, at least for now.”

“Does he know you called me?”

“Suspects, maybe. He squawked twice, and left a message at the station.”

“Saying what?”

“That you’re in Raleigh for the day, and he wants you to stay there.”

“What about the body?”

“Transported forty minutes ago. Lonnie Ward. White male, thirty-seven, and big as a house, six-eight, maybe, and about two-ninety.”

“He has a sheet?”

“A few minor convictions: loitering, lewdness, solicitation. There was a Peeping Tom charge that went away back in ’68 when the witness recanted. The DA was an associate then, but remembers the case; thought there might have been some intimidation. No family, far as I can tell. No word yet on occupation or known associates. He has an apartment near the university. Smith and Martinez are there.”

“What about the girls?”

“Becky Collins and Dana White. Scared to death, but home with their parents. They don’t know anything. Other developments since we spoke. They put Gibby’s car on a flatbed, and hauled it out for full forensics. Can’t imagine what they hope to find, but there it is. Still, no murder weapon or witnesses. Martinez and Smith interviewed Chance’s mom, but she knows nothing of use. Never seen the dead guy. Has no idea where the boys could be.”

“How’s this playing with the captain?”