Officer Wilberforce: Being taken care of as we speak, sir. Now I believe you were out fishing this morning?
Czerny: Well, that was the plan, but as it turned out, I never even wet a line. I went out just after sunrise, to what they call the Iron Bridge. You know, out on Old Forge Road?
Officer Wilberforce: Yes, sir.
Czerny: It’s a great place to catch catfish. Many people don’t like to fish for them because they’re ugly—not to mention that they’ll bite you sometimes while you’re trying to get the hook out of them—but my wife fries them up with salt and lemon juice, and they taste pretty damn good. The lemon’s the secret, you know. And you have to use an iron skillet. What my ma used to call a spider.
Officer Wilberforce: So you parked at the end of the bridge—
Czerny: Yes, but off the highway. There’s an old boat landing down there. Someone bought the land it’s on a few years back and put up a wire fence with NO TRESPASSING signs on it. Never built anything yet, though. Those few acres just sit there growing weeds, and the landing’s half under water. I always park my truck on the little spur road that goes down to that wire fence. Which is what I did this morning, and what do I see? The fence is knocked down, and there’s a little green car parked on the edge of that sunken boat landing, so close to the water that the front tires were half-sunk in the mud. So I went down there, because I figured some guy must’ve left the titty-bar drunk the night before, and run off the main road. Had an idea he might still be inside, passed out.
Officer Wilberforce: When you say titty-bar, you mean Gentlemen, Please, just out at the town line?
Czerny: Yeah. Yes. Men go there, they get loaded, they stuff ones and fives into the girls’ panties until they’re broke, then they drive home drunk. Don’t understand the attraction of such places, myself.
Officer Wilberforce: Uh-huh. So you went down and looked in the car.
Czerny: It was a little green Subaru. Nobody in it, but there were bloody clothes on the passenger seat, and I thought right away of the little boy that was murdered, because the news said the police were looking for a green Subaru in connection with the crime.
Officer Wilberforce: Did you see anything else?
Czerny: Sneakers. On the floor of the passenger side footwell. They had blood on ’em, too.
Officer Wilberforce: Did you touch anything? Try the doors, maybe?
Czerny: Hell no. The wife and I never missed an episode of CSI when it was on.
Officer Wilberforce: What did you do?
Czerny: Called 911.
13
Terry Maitland sat in an interview room, waiting. The handcuffs had been removed so his lawyer wouldn’t raise hell when he got here—which would be soon. Ralph Anderson stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, watching his son’s old coach through the one-way glass. He had sent Yates and Ramage on their way. He had spoken to Betsy Riggins, who told him Mrs. Maitland hadn’t arrived home yet. Now that the arrest had been made and his blood had cooled a little, Ralph again felt uneasy about the speed at which this thing was progressing. It wasn’t surprising that Terry was claiming an alibi, and it would surely prove as thin, but—
“Hey, Ralph.” Bill Samuels hurried up, straightening the knot in his tie as he came. His hair was as black as Kiwi shoe polish, and worn short, but a cowlick stuck up in back, making him look younger than ever. Ralph knew Samuels had prosecuted half a dozen capital murder cases, all successfully, with two of his convicted murderers (he called them his “boys”) currently on death row at McAlester. That was all to the good, nothing wrong with having a child prodigy on your team, but tonight the Flint County district attorney bore an eerie resemblance to Alfalfa in the old Little Rascals shorts.
“Hello, Bill.”
“So there he is,” Samuels said, looking in at Terry. “Don’t like to see him in his game jersey and Dragons hat, though. I’ll be happy when he’s in a nice pair of county browns. Happier still when he’s in a cell twenty feet from the go-to-sleep table.”
Ralph said nothing. He was thinking of Marcy, standing at the edge of the police parking lot like a lost child, wringing her hands and staring at Ralph as if he were a complete stranger. Or the boogeyman. Except it was her husband who was the boogeyman.
As if reading his thoughts, Samuels asked, “Doesn’t look like a monster, does he?”
“They rarely do.”
Samuels reached into the pocket of his sportcoat and brought out several folded sheets of paper. One was a copy of Terry Maitland’s fingerprints, taken from his file at Flint City High School. All new teachers had to be fingerprinted before they ever stepped before a class. The other two sheets were headed STATE CRIMINALISTICS. Samuels held them up and shook them. “The latest and the greatest.”
“From the Subaru?”
“Yep. The state guys lifted over seventy prints in all, and fifty-seven are Maitland’s. According to the tech who ran the comparisons, the others are much smaller, probably from the woman in Cap City who reported the car stolen two weeks ago. Barbara Nearing, her name is. Hers are much older, which lets her out of any part in the Peterson murder.”
“Okay, but we still need DNA. He refused the swabs.” Unlike fingerprints, DNA cheek swabs were considered invasive in this state.
“You know damn well we don’t need them. Riggins and the Staties will take his razor, his toothbrush, and any hairs they find on his pillow.”
“Not good enough until we match what we’ve got against samples we take right here.”
Samuels looked at him, head tilted. Now he looked not like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, but an extremely intelligent rodent. Or maybe a crow with its eye on something shiny. “Are you having second thoughts? Please tell me you’re not. Especially when you were as raring to go as I was this morning.”
Then I was thinking about Derek, Ralph thought. That was before Terry looked me in the eye, as if he had a right to. And before he called me a bastard, which should have bounced right off and somehow didn’t.
“No second thoughts. It’s just that moving so fast makes me nervous. I’m used to building a case. I didn’t even have an arrest warrant.”
“If you saw a kid dealing crack out of his knapsack in City Square, would you need a warrant?”
“Of course not, but this is different.”
“Not much, not really, but as it so happens, I do have a warrant, and it was executed by Judge Carter before you made the arrest. It should be sitting in your fax machine right now. So . . . shall we go in and discuss the matter?” Samuels’s eyes were brighter than ever.
“I don’t think he’ll talk to us.”
“No, probably not.”
Samuels smiled, and in that smile Ralph saw the man who had put two murderers on death row. And who would, Ralph had little doubt, soon put Derek Anderson’s old Little League coach there, as well. Just one more of Bill’s “boys.”
“But we can talk to him, can’t we? We can show him that the walls are closing in, and that he’ll soon be so much strawberry jelly between them.”
14
Statement of Ms. Willow Rainwater [July 13th, 11:40 AM, interviewed by Detective Ralph Anderson]