Five Minutes Alone (35 page)

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, thanks.”

“Do you mind waiting here a few minutes alone?” I ask. “I need to use the bathroom.”

“Huh? What? Yeah, yeah, whatever,” he says.

“We’ll be back in five minutes,” I tell him, and I leave the folder on the table and we step out and close the door behind us.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

We go straight from the corridor and into the room next door. There’s a surveillance camera in the interview room and it’s pointing down towards Chris. He looks stressed. He leans forward and then leans back, he runs his hands over his head and grips them behind his neck and tucks his elbows in, then he looks up and his eyes are moving from left to right as he thinks about his options.

“It’s him,” I tell Kent. “I can feel it.”

“You think five minutes will be long enough?” Kent asks me.

“To come up with a story? Yeah. We don’t want to give him too long otherwise he might come up with a really good one.”

He lets go of his neck and reaches forward and puts his first two fingers on the folder I left there, and then he swivels it around so it’s facing him. It’s an old trick, but a good trick, and it’s good for a reason. Guilty men always look. Of course innocent people look sometimes too, but it’s rare that guilty men can sit there and ignore it. Chris Watkins looks at the door, back at the folder, and the door one more time. What happens later today all depends on whether he opens that folder.

He opens the folder.

The top page is a printout of the photographs emailed earlier with the hairs. He looks at them, then uses his hands to judge the distance, and then he reaches behind his head as if remembering just how long his hair used to be back then.

“We got him,” Kent says.

He goes to the next page, which is another photograph. This one of the shirt all laid out flat, the way it was folded out flat on a white table and photographed seven years ago. Kent has used a sharpie to draw two circles, one around each armpit, and then
arrows from those circles go to the side of the page where she has written
Two DNA profiles. Both XY. Male. DNA from blood is XX. Female
. Chris looks at the photograph and he turns it one way and then another as if looking for his DNA. Then there are some crime-scene photographs of the room, and then one of Hailey, and this photo he turns over quickly. Then there is a “
witness statement
” from one of Hailey’s nonexistent “friends” that we typed up that is dated seven years ago, saying she knew her friend was seeing somebody.

Then there is a memo written from the superintendent—though we actually wrote it half an hour ago—that sums up the position about the clothes by saying,
I can confirm these can now be used as evidence, but this will take some time and will be expensive, and hopefully both of those things can be avoided. What we need is the murder weapon used on Hailey McDonald. We have contacted the owners of the original crime scene, and they are allowing us to search their house, which is scheduled for nine
a.m. tomorrow morning. If that weapon is there, we will find it, even if we have to dig up the entire garden. Then we can save time and money by not getting those clothes tested, then we can all learn from this experience and get it right next time.

Chris closes the folder and pushes it back into place. We give him two more minutes, and then Kent grabs a can of Coke and we head back in.

“Sorry about that,” I tell him.

Kent hands him the Coke. “Thanks,” he says, and he rolls it across the back of his neck.

“Too hot in here?” I ask.

“A little, but I’ll be okay.” He opens the can and takes a big mouthful, then winces as he swallows. “I’ve been thinking,” he says. “Ron was a good guy, he was, but he’s dead now, and there’s no need to keep secrets for a dead man, right? Dead men can’t hurt you, and you can’t hurt them.”

“You’re keeping a secret?” Kent asks.

He nods, and then shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this, but if it’s going to come out, then it’s going to come
out.” He starts flicking the tab on the Coke can with his finger. “Ron, Ron was a good guy, right? But things at home were stressed. Him and Hailey were fighting all the time. He said he hated her. Absolutely hated her. And they were going to get a divorce, right? Which meant she was going to get half of everything, and he said to me . . . Ah, shit,” he says, “I don’t want to tell you. I really don’t.”

“You need to,” I tell him. “It could tell us what really happened.”

“Well he said that classic line, right? Like marriage can be for life, but you only get ten years for murder. We were having a few drinks after work. He had just met Naomi, and he was saying he’s going to lose half of everything he had, and if he just killed his wife and did the time he would come out of it financially better off. I just thought, you know, he was kidding, right? Blowing off steam.”

I lean forward. I show him my
I’m annoyed
face. “Why didn’t you tell us this back then?”

“Because back then I didn’t think he had done it. People say shit all the time. My wife told me on the weekend she wanted to kill me. Sometimes I’ll say I want to kill the bank manager, or the neighbor, or some idiot customer, but it means nothing.”

“Just blowing off steam, as you said, right?” I say.

“Right.”

“Which means you lied to us earlier,” Kent says.

“I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”

“Tell us about Ron,” I say.

“Ron, well, there is this side to him that nobody else knew, right? Well, maybe Hailey knew, and maybe Naomi knows, but you’d have to ask her. But it was there, this dark side that would pop up on occasion, not much, but enough to know you should never mess with him. I asked him if he’d done it. This was two years ago, which was way after everything had settled down. We were in his office and it was a late Friday afternoon and work had closed up for the day. So we’re in there and we’re having a few drinks. He starts talking about how he hates everybody thinking he’s a killer. So I’m getting drunker and drunker, and he starts talk
ing about Hailey and starts saying what a bitch she was, so I say to him it really sounds like he did what the cops say he did. And that’s when he said it.”

“Said what?” I ask.

“He said she got what she deserved.”

The room goes quiet then, except for a
din-dink
of his Coke can as he presses one side of it in, releases the tension, and it comes back out.

“You’re saying he confessed to the crime,” I say.

He shakes his head. “No, he didn’t confess, but it sure as shit sounded that way.”

“You should have come to the police.”

“And then what, huh? I didn’t want you guys arresting him because of some throwaway line he said when he was drunk. And even I knew Hailey could be a right pain in the ass when she wanted to be.”

“So you did know her pretty well,” I say.

“No, no, not that well, but he was always complaining about her, right? And the times she did come into work, well, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but she could be a real bitch. I think what happened is she just pushed and pushed and pushed, and then he just snapped.”

“And you kept this to yourself,” Kent says. “All this key testimony that we could have used.”

“I know,” he says, and he hides his face in both his hands for a few seconds, then talks through them. “I screwed up. It doesn’t matter now anyway, does it? If he did kill his wife, then justice was done. And he did kill his wife. I’m as sure of that as I’m as sure of anything, and I’ll sign anything you put in front of me to say that, and I’ll pay whatever price there is for not coming to you guys two years ago when he told me, but he did it. I know he did it.”

I look at Kent, and Kent looks annoyed. “You made a serious mistake, you know that, right?” she asks him.

“Right.”

“And there will be consequences,” I say. “We don’t know what,
but you may face charges.”

“I know. But at least you can save some money on those tests, right? That has to put me slightly back towards the good books.”

“Why?”

“Because now you know he did it. No point in getting the clothes tested.”

“Maybe,” Kent says. “Or maybe we’ll send those clothes out anyway.”

“Always good to dot the i’s and cross the t’s,” I tell him. “But in saying that, we have something else we’re hoping might pan out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And if it does, maybe it’ll make us happy enough we can forget all about your screw up.”

“Shit, okay, okay, anything I can do to help?”

“Nothing,” I tell him. “Just go home and stay there the rest of the day.” I push my chair back and stand up. “We’ll be back in touch tomorrow morning when we know more. For now we’re done here.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

“You seem confident,” Stevens says.

“I am confident.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then I’m wrong. Still doesn’t change the fact we’re going to find more than one source of DNA on that shirt. I’m sure of it.”

Stevens thinks about it for a few seconds. “DNA which we can’t use. So now what?”

“So now we put one unmarked car at the old house. If we follow him, then we risk spooking him. Best just to have somebody waiting where he’s going to go. But it won’t be until tonight. I’ll contact the current owners and see if I can get them to let us use the house.”

“Then get it done. It’ll be easier with their cooperation,” he says. “There’s something else. I just got word we’ve got a witness. The auto body shop next to McDonalds’ workshop. He only just got into work, which is why we only just spoke to him. He says he was leaving work last night when he saw a bald guy waiting outside the front door around six o’clock. Says he saw Ron opening it up and letting him in. He says the sedan was parked right out front. He says he couldn’t tell if the guy looked like the guy in the picture we’re showing around because he had his back to him, but you know the best part about body shop workers and mechanics, right?”

Kent shakes her head, but I know the answer. “They know how to identify a car,” I say.

“Exactly. We’re looking for a dark blue Honda Accord. Says it would have been about ten years old. Is in pretty good condition, but there are some small dings and dents along the side that he saw. The other thing he said is the car had two brand new tires, maybe
four if he had seen the other side. Said they looked like they’d just come off the rack. He said in reality they couldn’t have been older than a week.”

“Hutton said the burned-out car at Grover Hills had the spare wheel missing,” Kent says.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Stevens says. “So maybe the other car got two flat tires. Maybe this bald guy put his own spare on, and needed another. We’re going to pull up a list of vehicles from the Transport Agency and start cross-referencing them with police, and also with family members of victims.”

“A Honda Accord roughly ten years old? That’s thousands of cars,” I say.

“Maybe even more,” he says, “but it’s a starting point.” He looks at his watch. “I’ve scheduled a media conference. We have enough that the public may be able to help us, and the media is breathing down our necks anyway. It starts in thirty minutes, and you’re both part of it.”

“I hate doing those things,” I say.

“Do you also hate leading the investigation? Because you can’t have one without the other, Detective.”

“You’re right,” I tell him. “What I meant to say is I love doing them.”

“Good. Get hold of whoever owns the McDonalds’ old house and get surveillance sorted. I’ve assigned you another six detectives and I’ve already got them going from tire store to tire store with the sketch of the bald guy, and hopefully this guy paid for two tires on a credit card. Maybe we’ll be lucky, huh?”

“Do we mention this at the media interview?”

“No,” he says. “We don’t want this guy scuffing them up. At the moment it’s what makes that car different from every other Honda Accord out there. You been to see the medical examiner yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay. As soon as the press conference is over, that’s your next stop, okay?”

I go to my desk and set about figuring out the name and phone
number of the house McDonald used to live in, which takes two minutes, and half of that is just waiting for my computer to come on. I type in the address and the information comes up, and I’m expecting it to be another Williams, but it’s not—the house is owned and occupied by Lee and Nancy Charters. I make the call. Nancy answers, and I identify myself and then she asks me if I’m calling about what happened to Ron McDonald.

“You got there quickly,” I tell her.

“It was all on the news,” she says, and I can hear a small child in the background, somebody going
fower, fower,
over and over, “and I know we live in the house he used to live in. Lee, my husband, he didn’t want to buy the place because of what happened here, but it was a good price and as I kept telling him, as long as you don’t believe in ghosts they can’t hurt you. And we . . . Oh, shit,” she says. “I’m doing that thing again.”

“What thing?” I ask.

“That thing where I always have to justify why we live here. What can I help you with?”

I tell her. It’s simple really. We want to put a couple of officers in her house because we believe with the case making the news again, there is risk of vandalism. “These things can happen sometimes.”

“My husband is a used-car salesman,” she says.

“That isn’t going to make you any safer,” I tell her.

She laughs. “My point is you can’t be married to a used-car salesman and not learn the fine art of knowing when somebody is bullshitting you. So tell me, why do you really need our house?”

“I can’t say.”

“Are we in danger?”

“No.”

“And it’s just for today?”

“And tonight.”

“Are you here to search the place? Last thing I need with a fifteen-month-old baby here is an even bigger mess.”

“No.”

“Okay, well, if you’re happy for a couple of guys to be here at
dinnertime and bath time and sleepy time for a baby, then be my guest, but I warn you, it can be like a battle zone.”

“I remember it well,” I tell her.

I meet Kent downstairs in the conference room where the press interviews are held. There’s a table running almost the width of the room at the front, it’s raised up a few feet on a platform so everybody can get a better view. At the moment it’s empty, except for a bunch of microphones clipped along the front of it. The room is already half-full of journalists, it sits thirty but in big cases you can get another twenty standing around the edges. I get the sense today will be like that.

I make my way to the front with Kent. The superintendent is standing in the corner talking to a couple of people, and when he finishes he comes over and we talk about what we’re going to say to the media. Fifteen minutes later the room is almost full. He asks me if I’m ready, and I tell him I am. We climb onto the platform and we sit down behind the table and then it begins.