Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
N ATHAN’S THOUGHTS TURNED to Colby Ellis as he drove toward Sonora and the city jail. The kid was a liar and a thief, but like he told Hanna, Nathan couldn’t see him as a cold-blooded killer, and he trusted his instincts. He’d let Colby sit in jail over the weekend. Hopefully by now he’d be willing to tell the whole truth.
Manny was already at his desk when Nathan got in.
“I’ve got all the outstanding warrants on Ellis here. He’ll be in custody for at least six months on those. You ready to talk to him?”
“Oh, yeah, more than ready.” Nathan set his briefcase on his desk and locked his gun inside the desk drawer. Friday night all Ellis had done was insist that he was not lying. He didn’t invoke his Miranda rights though, and that was a good thing.
Manny already had Ellis sitting in an interview room. Nathan turned on the observation camera and tape and unlocked the door.
Ellis looked bad. Nathan guessed he was coming down off something, God only knew what. His red hair was matted to one side on his head, his face full of red blotches, and his nose runny.
“Sure looks like you had a bad weekend,” Nathan said amiably as he sat across from the kid. The body odor emanating from him was rancid, and Nathan tried to breathe through his mouth.
Ellis only grunted.
“Are you ready to tell the truth today?”
“Will it get me out of here?” he asked with a froggy voice.
“You have outstanding warrants, Colby. Nothing I can do about that. The thing is, do you want me to tack murder on to the charges?”
Ellis shook his head, his eyes bleary. “I didn’t kill that woman and you know it.”
“I don’t. Because you’re lying to me. You’re lying at most about committing the murder or at least assisting with the murder. Come clean, and maybe I’ll help get you into treatment.”
Ellis rested his forehead on the table and groaned.
“You need some water or coffee?” Manny asked.
He got an assenting grunt in response.
Nodding to Nathan, Manny got up and left the room. Nathan decided to wait and said nothing. Manny returned and put the coffee in front of Colby, who lifted his head and grabbed the cup in both hands. Nathan let the kid take a couple of sips.
“Better?”
Ellis nodded, rubbed his hands all over his face, and then his fingers through his matted hair. “Okay, um, here it is, um, I didn’t lie about everything.”
Nathan leaned back in his chair. “Okay, what’s true?”
“I was hitching. No one was s-s-stopping.” He gulped some more coffee. “I had to pee. That’s what I was doing when the guy pulled up.”
“Did you think it was a ride?”
Ellis shook his head. “I thought it was a cop.”
“What?”
Ellis, more awake now, nodded. “It was a big black SUV. Cops drive those. I started for it, then stopped and watched for a few minutes. I saw him open the side door and drag that woman out of the back seat.”
“Why lie?”
“’Cause if it was a cop, I’d be dead. I’d have been left on the roadside with the woman. Now I’m here, and you can’t kill me.”
“You don’t think it was a cop now?” Manny asked.
Ellis gave another head shake. “Things are clearer now. He had cowboy boots on. There was a normal license plate on the car, not a cop plate. And there was a bumper sticker.”
“Do you remember the plate numbers or letters?”
“No, no, just that it was white.”
“And the bumper sticker?”
“Yeah, I remember that. They’re everywhere. It said, Vote Keyes for Chief .”
Nathan felt a jolt and struggled to keep his face blank. “Did you get a good look at the guy?”
Ellis leaned back and closed his eyes. “Oh man, he was tall; it was dark.”
“Come on, Colby, no more lies.”
He put his hands over his ears and moaned.
Nathan resisted the urge to reach over and shake the kid. Instead, he slid a legal pad and a pencil across the table. “Write down everything you remember. The truth, Colby. If you help us catch this guy, there may be a reward in it for you.”
That brought a little more light into the kid’s eyes. He reached for the pen, and Nathan waited while he wrote.