The Abduction (21 page)

“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?”

Jennings was shaking his head slowly, as if in disbelief. “No … I mean, yes! I guess he could’ve done that, I don’t know. But I didn’t do it!”

“Gary, who’s the jury gonna believe when Gracie’s coach takes the stand and points his finger at you”—which Ryan was now doing—“and says, ‘He’s the man that took Gracie’?”

“I didn’t take her!”

“Okay, Gary. One last question: what else are we gonna find in your truck? FBI’s best people are examining every square inch of that vehicle—are they gonna find Gracie’s fingerprints, her hair, her blood?”

“No! She’s never been in my truck!”

Ryan stood and walked to the door, then turned back to deliver the clincher that would surely have this boy making a tearful confession later today.

“I hope you’re right, son, ’cause if they find her DNA in your truck, that puts her in your vehicle and you on death row.”

Ben had arrived while Agent Devereaux and Chief Ryan were interrogating the suspect. The boy’s face seemed familiar. After a moment, Ben placed him: he was the young man with the pregnant wife who had come up to John at the candlelight vigil Sunday night and offered his sympathy. Ben was standing at the window to the interrogation room when Devereaux and Ryan emerged.

“Drunken sex?” Agent Devereaux said to the chief. “That’s his only prior offense? He and a girl get drunk at a frat party, have sex, she regrets it the next morning and files charges? Jennings pleads out because he’s nineteen and she’s one month from legal and gets probation? That makes him a sexual predator?”

Chief Ryan shrugged. “No defense to stat rape. Besides, he pleaded guilty.”

“To indecency with a child, Paul, so he didn’t spend the next twenty years in prison! This boy hasn’t had a speeding ticket in eight years, all of a sudden he decides to abduct and kill a child?”

Ben stepped forward. “He doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not a loner deviant. He’s married, his wife’s pregnant, he’s about to make a lot of money. No bad news in this boy’s life to trigger the abduction, like your profiler said.” Ben held up the flier with the composite sketch of the suspect that had been distributed to the media immediately after the abduction. “He doesn’t look anything like this guy. And the coach put the abductor at six foot, two hundred pounds. What’s this boy, five-ten, one-fifty?”

“He probably looked taller in the black cap,” Chief Ryan said. “Look, Colonel, we got the bad guy, okay? The coach identified him, he had child porn and Gracie’s jersey in his truck, and he called Gracie nine times last week.” He threw his hands up. “What more do you want?”

“The truth.”

“Sorry. The law only gives you a conviction.”

“We’ve got to follow the book or a federal judge will overturn a death penalty.”

Not an hour after the Jennings interrogation, the local mayor and police chief had stood on the front steps of the town hall and proclaimed Gary Jennings guilty of the abduction and murder of Gracie Ann Brice. The locals were always desperate to close a child abduction case—bad for property values; but FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux had refused to participate. He was troubled by Jennings’s demeanor; it wasn’t the demeanor of a sexual predator. Was Jennings that good of a liar? Maybe. But Devereaux decided to wait for the Evidence Response Team’s report before making any judgments about Gary Jennings; he would wait to see if Gracie’s DNA was found in Jennings’s truck. DNA never lied.

But the mayor’s proclamation had brought the family into the command post; Devereaux was now standing on the other side of his desk from Gracie’s parents and grandparents.

“The court’s got to appoint a lawyer to represent Jennings, one with experience in death cases, because the appeals courts will order a retrial if the trial lawyer didn’t know what he was doing. So then we go through another trial all over again, three years down the road.”

“But we’ve got to find Grace!” the mother said.

This was the part that Devereaux always hated. “Mrs. Brice, if Jennings is the abductor, Gracie wasn’t with him. Which means—”

“She’s dead,” the mother said.

“Yes, ma’am. If Jennings is the guy.”

“At least he can tell us where she’s at.”

“Yes, ma’am. If he knows.”

“You’re not sure he’s the abductor, are you?” Colonel Brice asked. “Things don’t fit.”

“No, sir, things don’t fit.”

“Make him take a polygraph,” the colonel said.

“If we administer a polygraph before his lawyer is appointed and he fails, we know he’s guilty but anything we learn from the polygraph may not be admissible.”

“And if he passes?”

“We cut him loose. Polygraphs aren’t admissible in court, but they’re 95 percent reliable, which is a helluva lot better than a jury.”

“What about the other man from the game tape?”

“Colonel, I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t together. Maybe Jennings didn’t know the other man like he says.”

“So what’s the time frame,” the mother asked.

“Several days. The court will appoint a lawyer today, he’ll be arraigned tomorrow. It takes longer to do it right, but if we screw this up, his conviction will be overturned and we’ll never execute Gary Jennings for the murder of your daughter.”

“Well, Eddie, you fucked up the jersey,” the chief said. “Plain sight? In the back of a truck under a bed cover? What, you got X-ray vision?”

Patrol Officer Eddie Yates was sweating. Chief Ryan had called him at home and asked him to come in early before shift change and see him in his office. That had never happened before. Eddie had figured the chief wanted to congratulate him on a job well done. He had figured wrong.

“And the porn picture, now that’s kind of interesting, Eddie, ’cause the only fingerprints they could find on the damn thing were yours. How you figure that?”

The pores on Eddie’s forehead were popping sweat beads like popcorn.

“Chief, I—”

“You entered his truck, searched it, looked under the mat, picked the picture up, and put it back under? How stupid is that?”

“Shit, Chief, I thought I rubbed off my prints.”

“Eddie, you ain’t supposed to tell your chief that, goddamnit!” The chief shook his head. “Damnit, Eddie, that son of a bitch could walk ’cause of you! You’d better pray the FBI boys find her DNA in his truck.”

Barney Fife done screwed up and Sheriff Andy was pissed.

“I’m real sorry, Chief.”

“Did you jimmy the hatch?”

“Oh, no, Chief, I swear I didn’t! It was unlocked, the door, too.”

“Where was the cell phone?”

“In the console. Is that stupid or what? I mean, no one locks their cars in this place, but leaving a cell phone in there? I could’ve taken it, sat in the parking lot, and run out his air time without him knowing it till he got the bill.”

Eddie laughed; the chief didn’t. Instead, he waved Eddie out of his office. Eddie walked to the door then thought of something. He wasn’t sure this was the best time to ask, but he couldn’t wait.

“Uh, Chief …”

The chief looked up.

“Any way I get some of that reward money?”

The chief blinked hard and said, “You’re shittin’ me?”

Eddie took that for a no. He walked out just as the chief’s secretary stuck her head in and said, “Jennings’s wife is here.”

She was just a kid, really.

Ryan had left the door to his office open so his secretary could see and hear them, him and Jennings’s wife. Debbie Jennings had come in to plead her husband’s innocence. He had reminded her that she could not be compelled to testify against her husband; she said they had nothing to hide. She was twenty-five and seven months’ pregnant. They had married two years ago. She knew nothing of his college conviction.

“That doesn’t mean he’s a child molester,” she said. “Gary would never do anything like that.”

She looked like she hadn’t slept since the arrest. She took deep breaths.

“You okay?” She nodded, but Ryan wasn’t so sure. “Mrs. Jennings, where was Gary Friday night?”

“With me. He got home a little after five, we took our walk—the doctor wants me to walk every day—we ate dinner, watched TV. And we picked out names for the baby. It’s a girl.”

“Did you decide?”

“Decide what?”

“Her name.”

“Sarah.”