Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
JOE PRIOR GETS in his truck at quitting time and catches his foreman watching him. Joe wonders what the wiry bastard is thinking. Maybe he’s thinking it’s the last time he’ll ever see Joe Prior.
Earlier that afternoon, the foreman had approached Joe from across the dusty construction site with a serious look on his face and showed him something on his phone. It was a photo of Joe, a bit blurry, but it was definitely him. Joe didn’t let on, but he’d seen it all already. He has a phone too. He already knew that the police wanted to talk to him in connection with the girl who’d been found earlier that day in a local farmer’s field. He was just waiting for somebody to say something. Joe looked down at his foreman’s phone and read the story with apparent misgiving. He scrolled further down and saw her picture on the screen too.
Shit.
The picture of him had to be a still from video surveillance from the fucking Home Depot. He looked up at his foreman, who was eyeing him suspiciously. ‘I had nothing to do with this,’ Joe said.
‘Sure,’ the other man said. ‘But maybe you should go talk to them.’
‘Yeah, okay, I’ll go now, if that’s okay.’
‘No, you can go at the end of your shift.’ He added, ‘Maybe give them a call, though, tell them you’re coming.’
His foreman is an asshole. Joe had called the police station and told them he’d be coming in later that day. He noticed the guys at work giving him the side-eye all afternoon.
Now Joe starts his truck and bumps out of the construction site, then turns onto the road into town to the police station. He doesn’t bother to go back to his apartment to change first.
They have a picture of him from Home Depot. They know he was flirting with that girl, obviously. No point in denying it. There’s no law against that. He’ll submit to their questions voluntarily. He doesn’t see that he has a choice – people at work know him; they would have found him soon enough.
He parks in the lot of the police station. He gets out of his truck and walks into the station, still wearing his dirty jeans and a flannel shirt that smells of sweat, and his steel-toed boots, but he doesn’t think they’ll care. He approaches an officer at the front desk, who looks up at him with widened eyes. ‘I understand somebody wants to talk to me,’ he says. She summons another officer, and he’s led into an interview room.
He doesn’t have to wait long. Two detectives enter the room and introduce themselves. Joe studies them both carefully. Detective Stone, a man maybe fifteen years older than Joe, looks sharp enough; the other one is a woman called Godfrey, who looks pretty smart too. But Joe doesn’t think he has much to worry about here. He sits back in his chair, at ease.
‘I understand you’ve been looking for me,’ he says.
‘Yes, we have,’ Stone says. ‘Thank you for coming in.’
‘Of course,’ Joe says. ‘I would have come in earlier, but my foreman wouldn’t let me go till the end of my shift.’ He adds, ‘He can be a bit of a jerk.’
Stone nods. ‘Do you mind if we tape this interview?’
‘No, not at all,’ he says affably.
‘Your name?’ the detective asks, his voice neutral.
‘Joe Prior.’
‘Address?’
‘One nineteen Division Street, Fairhill. Apartment two fourteen.’
‘And what do you do for a living, Joe?’
‘Construction, mostly.’
Stone nods. ‘Who do you work for?’
‘At the moment, Byford Construction. But I move around. Go where the work is. I do general construction – never learned a trade.’
‘You quite often go to the Home Depot here in Fairhill,’ Stone says.
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ Joe replies, and smiles.
‘You know who Diana Brewer is,’ the detective says. ‘You know why we want to talk to you.’
‘Yeah. Shit. Shame about what happened to her. Pretty girl.’
‘You showed a particular interest in her.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Joe says. ‘I was just being friendly.’
‘Friendly,’ the detective repeats. ‘That’s not the way we heard it.’
Joe frowns. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We heard you harassed her. Bothered her at work. Flirted with her. She didn’t want your attention.’ Joe shrugs, lets this roll off his shoulders. ‘Did you ever see Diana outside of the Home Depot?’
Joe shakes his head. ‘No.’
‘Ever try to contact her? Send her messages?’
‘No.’ He’s had enough of this. He leans forward. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree. You’re looking for a murderer, and you want it to be me. Sorry to disappoint you. I didn’t do it.’
‘Where were you last night?’ Stone asks, also leaning forward, placing his elbows on the table.
‘I was at home.’
‘Can anyone confirm that?’
‘Yes, actually,’ Joe says. ‘I had a buddy over after work. We had a few too many beers and he crashed on my couch. Didn’t leave till this morning.’
‘His name?’
‘Rodney Donnelly, goes by Roddy.’ He adds, ‘If you want to talk to him, I have his number right here.’ He shows it to Stone in the contacts on his phone. The detective writes it down. ‘Is that all?’ Joe says.
‘Just one more question. What do you drive?’
‘A 2015 Dodge Ram truck. It’s in the parking lot.’
‘Mind if we take a look?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Not because I have anything to hide. Just because I think individual rights need to be protected in this country.’
‘Okay,’ Stone says, nodding. ‘That’s all we need for now.’
Joe leaves the station and climbs back into his truck. He hits the gas and floors it home.