Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
The suspect hadn’t invited her inside yet. But he hadn’t slammed the door in her face, either, so Leanne pressed on.
“This would have been Wednesday night around eleven thirty,” she said.
“Nope.”
Twenty-six-year-old Bryce Biswell slouched against the doorframe, faking nonchalance and giving smug, one-word answers to all her questions.
He got under Leanne’s skin, and not just because he had a rap sheet that included burglary and criminal damage to property stemming from an incident when he took a hammer to his ex-girlfriend’s windshield.
“Now, see, here’s the thing, Bryce. We have a witness who saw two men loading electric bikes into a trailer right there behind Big Sky Sports. And you fit the description of one of those men to a T. Fact, the witness is one hundred percent sure it was you.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Nope.”
“How do you explain this person’s account?”
“Mistaken identity, I guess.”
Leanne watched his eyes for signs of agitation. He had a decent poker face. Fortunately, in addition to an eyewitness, Leanne had footage from a security cam across the street from the bike place. Also fortunately, Bryce Biswell was not the sharpest tool in the shed.
And speaking of sheds…
“That your storage unit?” Leanne nodded at the small metal building beside Biswell’s mobile home. The shed was surrounded by weeds and had a rusty padlock on the door.
He leaned out and glanced at it. “Yeah.”
“Mind if I look inside?”
He frowned. The question was so bold, he seemed to be at a loss for words.
Biswell rubbed his goatee. “Well. I reckon you’d need a warrant for that.”
“Technically, you’re right,” she said. “But that’s a pretty big hassle, to be honest. Are you sure you don’t want to just open it up, let me have a quick look, and we can put this thing to rest? Otherwise, I’ll have to go write something up and make another trip out.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. No can do.”
“Fine. Have it your way.” She took out a business card and handed it over. “If you hear anything about who might have taken those bikes, give us a call.”
Now he looked amused. “Sure will.”
Leanne tromped back to her unmarked patrol car and slid behind the wheel. Biswell stood on his doorstep as she did a three-point turn. She watched him recede in her rearview mirror and then texted Josh.
I’m done.
Leanne pulled out of Canyon Glen and hung a right into the adjacent neighborhood.
She drove down the dead-end street that backed up to an asphalt basketball court that would be empty until the elementary school let out at 3:50.
From her vantage point, she had a view of Biswell’s door and the metal carport beside his home.
She cut the engine and settled in to wait.
Biswell’s trailer was at the end of a long row of homes that ranged in appearance.
Some had flowerpots and yard ornaments while others had sagging gutters and blistered paint.
Despite the run-down condition of many of the places, this neighborhood had become more popular as vacation rentals took over a bigger share of their housing stock and locals were forced out of homes they’d lived in for decades.
Once upon a time Madrone’s poorest neighborhoods had been made up of tiny adobe houses with dirt floors.
But now some of those same homes were being renovated and sold for eye-popping sums to owners who let them sit empty much of the year or rented them to tourists for hundreds a night.
Marfa was full of such bungalows, and the gentrification was making its way here now, too.
Leanne’s gaze settled on a gray double-wide trailer that had once been the home of Sean Moriarty.
Patrick Moriarty had raised his three sons there after his wife left when the boys were in elementary school.
Sean’s dad had worked as a wrangler at the sprawling Miller Ranch north of town.
When Sean was arrested for murder, that job evaporated as area families took sides in the case, with most people lining up with the Rawlses.
Around the time of the trial, Patrick Moriarty moved to Fort Stockton and took a job at a tractor supply store.
Last Leanne heard, Liam and his younger brother were working for an oil company.
She studied the trailer, with its patchy roof and torn screens.
As kids, Leanne and Ben had been warned to stay away from the Moriarty brothers, who were known to run wild, with no supervision.
Sean in particular had a reputation as a troublemaker that Leanne had found both frightening and fascinating.
Besides breaking into cars and vandalizing school property, Sean had a propensity for getting into fights and picking on kids half his size—which was big, as Sean had hit a growth spurt early.
The summer after his freshman year, one of the coaches took note of Sean’s height and recruited him into the football program, where for the next three years he found an outlet for some of his aggression.
Sean proved to be a natural athlete and worked his way from a second-string cornerback to starting wide receiver by his junior year.
His senior year, he and Jake Rawls led their team to the regional championship.
Sean’s talent on the field made the Moriartys more socially acceptable—but only to a point.
People would talk to Patrick Moriarty in the stands on Friday nights, but that didn’t mean they wanted his son dating their daughters.
Being from a prominent family, Hannah Rawls was way out of Sean’s league.
But Hannah had a rebellious streak, which was probably why she started seeing Sean after her older brother went off to college.
During the dark days following Hannah’s disappearance, a half dozen different law enforcement agencies had converged on Madrone to help with the search.
Leanne remembered all the talk about “pulling together” and “taking care of our own” and someone coining the term “Madrone Strong.” At the time, she’d felt a sense of pride in her town, amid all the chaos.
Leanne studied the dilapidated trailer and tried to imagine the three big Moriarty boys growing up there.
She wasn’t fifteen anymore, and she looked at Madrone through a different lens now, the lens of someone who’d been a cop for almost a decade.
She had spent a lot of time thinking about Patrick Moriarty, a mean drunk who didn’t mind smacking his sons around.
People talked about it as though it was one of those unpleasant facts of life, like tornadoes or hailstorms, something people didn’t much like but were powerless to change.
Would things be different for everyone—especially the Rawls family—if someone with a badge had done something differently back then?
Could Leanne’s father have done something?
Why had everyone in her supposedly tight-knit hometown looked the other way as three young boys suffered through a crappy situation?
Despite his volatile track record and violent temper, Sean Moriarty was a kid from this community, same as Hannah Rawls.
I’ve had fifteen years to think about all the people who wronged me.
Leanne pictured Sean’s dead gray eyes as he’d said those words.
What did he mean, exactly, by being “wronged”?
Lee Everhart had plenty of failings. Leanne knew them better than almost anyone. But she also knew he had a moral compass. It was part of who he was, part of his very being. She couldn’t accept the idea that he had coerced a confession from a nineteen-year-old suspect.
Movement down the street caught her attention. She snatched up her phone.
He’s leaving, she texted Josh.
Seconds later, her phone chimed.
“Which car?” Josh asked.
“Don’t know yet. He’s locking his house.” Leanne watched Biswell fumbling with his keys. “I think it’s the minivan.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got a feeling about it.”
Leanne held her breath, waiting to see which of the two vehicles under the carport Biswell would choose. His girlfriend’s gray minivan had a registration sticker that was three months expired. But if he chose his white Honda, they were shit out of luck today.
The taillights on the minivan flashed as Biswell clicked open the locks.
“It’s the van.”
“You sure?” Josh sounded as amped up as she was.
“He’s pulling out now. Get in position.”
“Roger that.”
She clicked off as Biswell drove away in his girlfriend’s vehicle.
He was about to be pulled over for an expired sticker and—Leanne would bet her right arm—arrested for possession of stolen property.
The storage shed question had been a decoy, and if Leanne’s legwork proved accurate, the stolen bikes were stashed in the back of that van.
She left her surveillance spot and retraced her route through the neighborhood, feeling good about her job for the first time in days. As she neared a stop sign, she spotted a blue Kia in her rearview mirror.
She slammed on the brakes and grabbed her phone.
You got this? I need to handle something.
Josh texted back, I’m good.
She shifted into reverse and gunned it until she was even with the dinged blue car.
She whipped into the driveway of the house where it was parked, a 1970s bungalow with a flat roof and peeling paint.
She strode up the sidewalk and rapped on the door.
Nobody answered, but she heard music inside. She rapped again.
The door swung open. Roland Rivas stood there in faded jeans. No shirt, no shoes, but he had a green bandana wrapped around his head. Roland was a talented bass player and a suspected drug dealer. Leanne had had her doubts about the drug part until now.
“Where’s Ben?” she asked.
He took a drag from a cigarette. Then he opened the door wider and stepped back.