Color of Blood(10)

After thirty minutes of questioning, Dennis said, “So what happened to your buddy?”

“Man, like I have no idea,” Roby said. “It’s the weirdest thing. He just stopped coming to work. I mean he would sometimes be gone for a long time. Once he was gone for, like, three weeks. He’d usually check in with me. But one day he was here, and the next he disappeared. It’s just weird.”

“Anyone you know who might be interested in ‘disappearing’ your friend?”

“No! Geoff was a really cool guy who didn’t create much trouble.”

“So what kind of drugs did you guys do?” Dennis asked.

“Excuse me?” Roby said, eyes widening.

“You know what I mean. You guys must have done some drugs.”

“No,” Roby said. “We didn’t do drugs.”

Dennis noticed the young man’s eyes darted minutely, and then refocused upon Dennis. Idiot, he thought. He doesn’t even know how to lie.

“You mean to tell me that you and Geoff didn’t even smoke dope? Just a joint every now and then? Give me a break, Roby.”

“Honestly.” He sat forward on his chair. “Really.”

“Roby, you want me to authorize a lie detector test for you? Is that what you want?”

“You can do that?” Roby asked.

“Of course,” Dennis said.

“Christ!” Roby ran his hand through his short blond hair. “My career is going to be ruined.”

“Look, just come clean with me about you and Geoff, and we can skip the lie detector. Once we schedule one of those things, the results go into the official record. Get my drift, Roby?”

The young man stared long and hard at Dennis, his face a mix of despondence and fear, then clasped his head with his hands, looked downward, and sighed.

“OK, so we smoked dope every now and then,” he said, his voiced muffled by his hands.

For just a moment Dennis felt a tinge of compunction for the young man who was getting bullied by a veteran investigator, but it was fleeting.

“I can’t hear you, Roby.”

Roby sat back in the chair and crossed his arms in front. “We smoked a little dope. Not much at all really. Every couple of weeks we might share a joint. Wasn’t a big deal.”

“Who bought the dope?” Dennis asked.

“Me.”

“Geoff never bought any and shared it with you?”

“No, I bought it and rolled the joints. He didn’t mind smoking pot, but it wasn’t his favorite activity. I think he only did it because I did.”

“Where’d you buy the dope?”

“From a neighbor—you’re not going to get her in trouble, are you?” he said suddenly, startled.

“No, I don’t think so. Is she American or Australian?”

“Aussie. Can we please leave her out of this?” he pleaded.

“Probably,” Dennis said. “What other drugs did you and Geoff use? Ecstasy? Coke? Amphetamines? Heroin?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I’m not a druggie. I just like getting high every now and then. Don’t make it sound like we were hardcore druggies.”

“And Geoff? What was his drug of choice?”

“Wine.”

“You mean wine from grapes, or is that a nickname for another drug?”

“No, I mean wine from a bottle. Geoff was a real connoisseur about wine. I guess there are some great wines in Australia, or at least he said so. Hell, I could barely get him to drink beer. If he did other drugs, I never saw it.”

Dennis drilled into the drug issue hoping to pry something useful; he would ask a tough, nearly outrageous question and then ask increasingly mild inquiries, winning Roby’s confidence, and then spring another tough question.

After a while Dennis was convinced that the young man had neither a personality disorder nor a drug problem.

“So what kind of hobbies did Geoff have? What did he do with all his time?”

“Well, he liked watches; he was crazy about them.”

“Wristwatches?” Dennis asked.

“Yeah, really cool watches. He knew everything about them. He wore a different one almost every day. Never knew a person could get so much into watches.”

“Did he have expensive watches?”

“Gee, I don’t know if they were really expensive. But he would go to these, like, watch websites and bid on them. Stuff like that. To be honest, I couldn’t understand his passion for those things, so I just kind of humored him, you know. But I learned a lot about watches, so that was cool.”

“Like what?” Dennis asked.

“Like, you know, a quartz watch is looked down upon by serious watch people.”

Dennis took a sidelong glance at his quartz Seiko. “What’s wrong with a quartz watch?”

“According to Geoff, the best watches are mechanical. They’re difficult to make. They’re more like works of art, or at least that’s what he said. I mean I believed him. He seemed to know his stuff.”

“Don’t you need a lot of money to own expensive watches?”

“He said you didn’t have to pay a lot of money if you knew where to look.”

“Like websites?”

“Yeah, and stores; there’s one in town he used to go to.”