Chapter Eight
Sean stood beside Brad in the interrogation room and studied Stuart Crowell across the scarred metal table.
The man had been given a chance to clean up, but it hadn’t done much good.
Dried mud still clung to his hairline and flaked from his clothes onto the chair, tabletop, and floor with every twitch.
Under the harsh fluorescent lights, he looked less like a murder suspect and more like something dragged out of a drainage ditch.
Sean had to bite back a laugh as Crowell scraped at the dirt packed beneath his fingernails. It was a hopeless effort. Short of a pressure washer, nothing was getting that mess off him.
The room stayed silent.
The sharp scent of disinfectant lingered in the stale air, and through the small glass pane in the metal door came the muted ring of a phone from somewhere beyond the interrogation room.
Sean let the quiet stretch, watching Crowell grow more agitated beneath it. Most suspects hated silence and rushed to fill it.
Sure enough, after another few seconds, he glanced up. “What?”
Neither Sean nor Brad answered. They kept their attention fixed on him until the man’s confidence began to crack. His shoulders shifted. His foot bounced beneath the table.
Brad pushed off the wall and stood across the table from their suspect. “Where were you this past Saturday night and Sunday morning?”
Crowell shrugged, forcing a careless expression that fooled no one. “I don’t know.”
Brad planted both hands on the table with a sharp smack that made the metal legs screech against the floor.
The young man jerked backward so fast his chair tipped on two legs.
“You’d better know,” the detective growled, his voice low and hard. “Because I’ve got a dead body you’re looking real good for.”
“What?” Beneath the faded streaks of dirt, Crowell’s face drained of what little color it had. His eyes darted from Brad to Sean and back again. “Wait a minute. I didn’t kill nobody. No way, man. You got the wrong guy. I never killed anybody.”
Sean stepped in before Brad could press harder, playing the good cop. It was an old routine, but it worked more often than not.
“Well, then help us clear you.” He kept his voice even, almost reassuring. “Tell us where you were Saturday night and Sunday.”
Crowell licked his cracked lips. “I... I don’t remember.”
Another sharp smack against the table made him flinch.
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” His gaze shot upward as he scrambled for an answer. “Sunday. Sunday, I was working most of the day. Yeah. That’s where I was.” Relief flickered across his face as the memory surfaced.
“Working where?” Sean asked.
“The Auto Palace in the Caldwell Shopping Center. I was there from ten in the morning till five.”
Leaning on his hands, Brad scowled at the suspect. “What about the rest of the day and late Saturday night between eleven and two thirty?”
“Before and after work, I was home. My mom can vouch for me. She saw me. And Saturday night... um... where was I?” Fingers drummed against the table as he frowned in thought. Then his face brightened. “Oh yeah.”
The relief vanished as fast as it came. “Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh?” Brad arched a brow. “What does uh-oh mean?”
“If I tell you, I’m screwed.”
The detective's voice sharpened. “And if you don’t tell us, you’re in even deeper trouble. Where were you?”
Crowell dropped his gaze to the table. “Man, this is so messed up. I was... I was over in Wanchese with a buddy.”
“And?”
Understanding clicked into place as Sean recalled what one of the arresting deputies had said about the tools found in Crowell’s possession. “And you were burglarizing a house.”
A reluctant nod confirmed it. It wasn’t the crime they’d hoped for, but it was enough to shift the interview into an official interrogation. Brad read him his Miranda rights, then asked, “Do you understand these rights?”
Crowell rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I’ve heard them before.”
“Are you willing to speak to us without a lawyer?”
“Whatever. If I don’t, you’ll pin the murder on me.”
Brad pulled a Miranda waiver from a folder, slid it across the table, and dropped a pen on top of it, waiting until the signature was in place. “What’s the address of the house?”
Defeat was written across Crowell’s dirt-streaked face. “Don’t remember the number. It was on Pond Road. White with red trim.”
The waiver disappeared, replaced by a yellow legal pad. “Write down everything you took. If it matches the homeowner’s report and the timing checks out, we can clear you of the homicide.”
“But now I’m on the hook for the burglary, right?”
Sean crossed his arms and shrugged. “Five to seven is better than twenty-five to life.”
The man sighed and picked up the pen again.
At ten after five, Sheriff Griffin and the task force crowded the conference room, frustration thickening the already stuffy air.
The hum of the overhead fluorescent lights drilled into Sean’s skull, adding to the ache building behind his eyes.
After hauling Stuart Crowell back to a booking cell, he and Lynch had spent the last hour methodically confirming every piece of the man’s alibi, checking off each detail until there was no room left for doubt.
Crowell’s boss confirmed he’d worked from ten to five on Sunday.
His mother swore he’d been home before and after his shift.
Two neighbors backed her up, both insisting they’d seen the young man's car parked in the driveway the entire time and hadn’t noticed him leave, whether on foot or in another vehicle.
Brad had also pulled the burglary report from 31 Pond Road. The stolen inventory matched Crowell’s list of what he and his mystery accomplice had taken from the house. The only loose thread was Crowell’s refusal to give up the name of the other guy involved.
The task force couldn’t care less about that.
The guy was dirty, but he wasn’t their killer. The evidence had cleared him of Daphne Jones’s murder, and the burglary case had already been kicked over to the property crimes detectives. Let them deal with him.
Brian and Rafe hadn’t brought back much more to work with. Several employees at the nightclub remembered Daphne well enough—hard not to notice a woman in a tight red dress—but no one recalled seeing her with anyone for any length of time, and no one remembered watching her leave.
The surveillance videos from the club had been a bust too.
While Daphne was spotted several times, Brad couldn’t get a clear picture of anyone she was talking to or dancing with.
“She must have left through the back door of the place because the only time she appears on the front door video is when they first got there. Unfortunately, the video for the back is worse than the rest. It was too distorted to distinguish anyone, and since it’s in black and white, I couldn’t even look for a red dress. ”
Sean leaned back in his chair, the metal frame creaking under his weight. Every dead end scraped at his patience. “Did our UNSUB know the video equipment sucked, tamper with it himself, or did he just get lucky?”
Brad dragged both hands over his face before rubbing at his tired eyes.
The man looked as wrung out as Sean felt.
“Lucky would be my guess. For a popular place, they have a terrible surveillance setup. It looks like the lenses are caked with smoke and grime. Probably haven’t been cleaned since they were installed.
There’s no sign of tampering with the cameras or digital system.
So we’re back at square one—no suspects and no leads. ”
“And no idea who his next victim is,” Brian added.
The room fell silent, those final words dropping over the table like a shadow.
A chill crept up Sean’s spine despite the stale heat pressing against the conference room walls.
Every hour they came up empty gave the killer more time to find another woman to torture, and somewhere out there, that predator was walking free while they sat around this table with nothing to show for the day.
“Anything on similar homicides in N-DEx?” Brad asked.
“No. There’s a glitch in the system, and the program’s down.” Sean fought the urge to curse at the timing of it all. “The techs are working on it, and I’m told it should be running again in the morning. As soon as it’s back up, I’ll re-enter the parameters.”
The detective blew out a breath and dropped back in his chair. “Jeez, can’t catch a break today, can we? Does anyone have anything positive to add to this mess?”
Sean pushed to his feet and rolled the stiffness from his shoulders, trying to work out the knots that had taken up residence there. The motion sparked an image of Grace’s hands working the tension from his muscles, her touch warm and sure.
He shoved the thought aside, at least for now. The case demanded every ounce of his focus.
“Well, I’ve got one of the best FBI profilers coming to see us tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Her name’s Dr. Suki Ralston. I’ve worked with her on a few cases, and the woman knows her stuff.”
Brad leaned forward, skepticism written across his face. “I know you feds claim profiling has helped in the past, but does it really work, or is it just a guessing game? I mean—”
Griffin lifted a hand, cutting him off. “It could be voodoo for all I care, but if it helps us catch this bastard, I’m all for it.” He shifted his attention to Sean. “What time is she coming?”
“She’s flying into Elizabeth City from Quantico and should be here sometime after two. Knowing her, she’ll dig right in and be up half the night going through the files. My guess is she’ll have a preliminary profile ready first thing Thursday morning.”