Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
The chief intercepted her as soon as she walked into the bullpen.
“Good. You’re here.” He jerked his head toward his door. “Come into my office.”
Leanne glanced across the cubicles. Josh was on the phone, and several uniforms sat at computers, pecking away at their keyboards. No one looked in her direction, but she could tell everyone was listening.
She followed the chief into his office, where Trey Novak occupied a visitor’s chair, his cowboy hat in his lap again. Standing beside the door was Phil Mowry, president of the Madrone Chamber of Commerce. He nodded at Leanne on his way out.
“Miss Everhart.”
“Hello.”
McBride ushered her in and closed the door. “Have a seat,” he said.
Leanne’s shoulders tensed as she took the empty seat. She desperately needed to talk to the chief this afternoon, but she hadn’t planned on doing so in front of an audience.
“I just got a call from a TV producer in Houston.” McBride leaned back in his chair. “They want to interview you.”
She frowned. “Who does?”
“One of the news stations there. They’re looking into the Hannah Rawls case, and they found out we have a detective who’s the daughter of one of the original investigators.
” He paused. “They want to do a feature about you, talk about you going into law enforcement, following in your dad’s footsteps and all that. It’s a human-interest piece.”
She crossed her arms. “How original.”
It sounded remarkably similar to what the Dallas reporter supposedly wanted. She had no doubt that his real objective was to dig up some exclusive dirt about her department.
“We think you should do it,” Novak said.
She blinked. “Excuse me?”
“It could be good for us,” the chief said.
“How?”
“We’ve been dragged in the press for four days,” McBride said. “All this talk about a wrongful conviction, police misconduct. This could soften our image some. You know, humanize us. Put a face on the department.”
“And on the Hannah Rawls investigation,” Novak added.
“There already is a face on the investigation. Hannah’s face.” Leanne looked from Novak to the chief.
“You know how the media is,” Novak went on. “Everything’s black-and-white with them. Good guys versus bad guys. A human-interest story could change the narrative.”
“Right now, we’re the bad guys,” McBride said. “And it’s about to get worse. It’s only a matter of time before we get slapped with a lawsuit.”
Novak checked his watch, then stood up and settled his cowboy hat on his head. “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. Sean Moriarty is lawyer shopping—that’s my bet.” He nodded at the chief. “Talk to you later.” Then he nodded at Leanne. “Detective.”
The district attorney walked out, pulling the door shut behind him.
Leanne looked at McBride, and his calm expression gave her a twinge of panic. Was this what Phil Mowry had been here to talk about? Using Leanne to clean up the town’s image so they wouldn’t take an economic hit from bad publicity?
“Sir, you don’t really think this is a good idea, do you?”
He patted his shirt pockets and glanced around the room. “It could be.”
“But—”
“We haven’t decided yet.” He yanked open a drawer and rummaged through it, probably looking for cigarettes.
“I don’t have time to sit for media interviews,” she said. “I’m focused on our new homicide, plus a regular caseload of domestics and property crimes.”
He tossed an empty pack on the desk and muttered a curse.
“Speaking of which,” she said, changing the subject, “I was just at the university meeting with Jen Sayers.”
McBride hummed the empty pack into the trash. “Who?”
“Dr. Jennifer Sayers, the forensic anthropologist. Turns out, the bone fragment recovered from our crime scene is human. And you know what else? She tells me six different sets of unidentified human remains—including our case from Sunday—have been recovered near Highway 67 between Fort Stockton and Marfa over the past nine years.”
The chief frowned. “What’s your point?”
“The point is…it could be a pattern. Someone could be murdering people and dumping them near the highway.”
“The desert’s a cruel place.”
Leanne stared at him. Annoyance bubbled up as he turned to his file cabinet and fished out a pack of smokes.
“I’m not talking about people out there dying of heatstroke,” she said. “I’m talking about violent deaths. Murders. People who have had their skulls bashed in.”
He lit a cigarette and took a long drag.
“Six known bodies along the same route,” she reiterated. “It could be the work of one person, Chief.”
He leaned back in his chair, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Are you talking about a serial killer?”
“Yes.”
He squinted at her through the haze. “Everhart…exactly how long have you been working here?”
She tried to keep her voice even. “Two years in March. Sir.”
“I’ve been here twenty-four years.” He grabbed a Coke can from the trash bin and ashed his cigarette into it.
“In all those years, you know how many times this department’s been sued?
None. Not once. And now it’s about to happen.
” He leveled a look at her. “I need you to be a team player right now.”
“How do you mean?”
“For starters, don’t drum up any talk of a serial killer,” he said. “We need to focus on the problem at hand.”
“They could be related.”
His face reddened. He took another drag, and she stifled a cough.
“Related to what? You mean Hannah Rawls?”
“Yes. Four of the unidentified victims are female, and the other two are undetermined,” she said. “And when you look at the location where Hannah’s body was discovered—”
“We already know who killed Hannah. Because the motherfucker confessed in that interview room right over there.”
“He also managed to convince a judge that his confession was coerced—”
The chief held up a hand as his face turned red as a tomato.
“Stop. Just stop right there. Those un-IDed bones you’re talking about?
I’ve heard about those cases. And I guarantee you every last one of them were transients coming through here who got mixed up with a criminal element and got themselves killed. ”
“They got themselves bludgeoned, too? Because the forensic anthropologist determined that’s what happened to at least three of them, the same as Hannah Rawls. Maybe Hannah was mixed up with a criminal element. My dad’s case notes mention white powder on her clothing. Maybe she was into drugs.”
McBride went quiet and tapped his cigarette, and she couldn’t tell whether he was done talking or just building a head of steam.
“You want to talk about criminals? Let’s talk about Sean Moriarty,” he said. “He had crack cocaine in his possession at the time of his arrest. And he also confessed to the murder.”
“Under duress, he claims.”
“You bet your ass he was under duress! He was looking at the death penalty. That doesn’t mean he’s innocent. He had the victim’s blood in his goddamn car. It was a rock-solid case.” McBride leaned back in his chair. “Your father’s not here to defend his work, so the rest of us have to.”
The comment landed like a dart to her chest, and she knew it was meant to. It was his way of getting her to stop talking.
He poked the butt of his cigarette into the soda can.
“Listen up, Everhart. Get that case cleared and don’t get distracted. It’s not a pattern. You got me? We have reporters crawling all over, and we don’t need them sniffing out some new story about a serial killer. Jesus.” He rubbed his hand over his shaved head. “That’s the last thing we need.”
Leanne watched him, simmering with frustration. She’d come in today hoping to convince him to let her expand her investigation, and now he wanted her to wind it down. She needed to get out of here before things got any worse. Or before he circled back to the interview request.
She stood up. “I’d better get to work, then.” She reached for the door.
“Hey, since you brought it up—have you read through the Hannah Rawls case file?”
The question surprised her.
“Not completely.”
“Well, I have. I know it backward and forward. So did your dad.” His gaze narrowed. “And let me tell you something. You do this job long enough, you’ll realize everything isn’t always black-and-white. It’s gray.”
She started to respond, then bit her tongue.
“And two things can be true at once,” he said. “Sean Moriarty could have made that confession under duress. And the lying son of a bitch is guilty as hell.”