My visit to Little’s house yesterday had given us that.
When Rivera and I had gone to his home, I’d told Little we were there to conduct a follow-up interview regarding the bombers’ case. With his residence being only a few doors down from where the brothers had been captured, asking additional questions to help connect evidence seemed like a justifiable reason for a visit. Reluctantly, he let Rivera and me inside. While I was keeping Little busy with the interrogation, Rivera took pictures of the room with a hidden camera he had clipped to his tie, specifically of the framed photographs that were by the TV and side of the couch.
Most of the photos were too dark and grainy to make out, but forensics were able to match one of the pictures with several we had on file of Mills, the girl who had been taken from Dorchester, who had been missing a few days shy of six months.
Rivera also took several pictures of Little, and we presented those to Mills’s mother to see if she could identify him as someone who’d had a relationship with her daughter. The mother had had no knowledge of him or their relationship or a reason why he would have multiple photos of her daughter in his home.
We were back to get that answer.
Before we’d gotten in the van this evening, we’d done our homework. We researched his accounting firm and the hours he spent there and the ones he was at home. We pulled registration on the two vehicles he had in his driveway, and we knew he had made his final mortgage payment almost a year ago. He paid his taxes, had voted in the last four elections, had graduated from Wentworth and UMass.
After speaking to the detective who had been on the second story of Little’s home the night we captured the brothers, I now knew Little had a secret fetish. An affinity for dolls—life-sized, petite, and every length in between. The detective had told me they were in Little’s bed, on every surface upstairs. One guest room was a dedicated space for crafting these dolls, another for fucking them.
The man certainly had kinks, but what didn’t make sense was why this fifty-two-year-old guy had multiple photographs of Mills in his home.
While the team waited a block away in the van, listening through hidden microphones, Rivera and I knocked on Little’s door.
As soon as Little opened it and saw us on his front steps, his stare narrowed, and he snapped, “I told you everything yesterday. I know nothing more. This is harassment.”
I raised a photo of the missing girl, observing Little’s face as I said, “We’re here to question you about Kerry Mills.” I showed him the piece of paper I had in my other hand. “And this allows us inside to ask you anything we’d like.”
A tic quivered through his chin as his eyes moved from the photo to me. “I don’t know where she is.”
I hadn’t asked him that.
In fact, I hadn’t said a word about her disappearance.
“Let us in, Little. Or we’ll let ourselves in.”
His chest rose, nostrils flaring, as he took several deep breaths, gradually stepping aside.
Remembering the space well, I pointed at the couch. “Why don’t you take a seat over there?”
I waited for his ass to plant before I walked over to the closest framed photo, holding it in my hands. Easily identifying the girl, I pointed the picture toward him while Rivera scouted the rest of the room, and I asked Little, “You obviously know Kerry Mills has been missing for six months, so why don’t you tell me why you have photographs of her in your home?”
He shrugged. “She’s someone I knew.”
“How?”
“I took a few classes at Northeastern. Kerry was in one. We hung out a few times.”
We knew Mills was a part-time student. If Little had taken classes at Northeastern, we would have found that information, and it would have been flagged.
“We have no record of you enrolled in any class at Northeastern.”
“And that’s my problem?”
There was something so smug about this asshole, and I wanted to punch the look right off his fucking face.
“I’m asking why you’re not registered in their system.”
While I waited for him to respond, I took my time in studying the photo. Mills was on her knees with her hands behind her back. A white dress covered her body that almost resembled a maid’s costume. Behind her was mostly darkness, beneath her a dirty, bare mattress.
“I don’t know why I’m not,” he answered.
I didn’t believe that.
I met his eyes again and said, “How many classes have you taken there?”
“Just the one we were in together.”
His story was already changing.
In my earpiece, one of the guys in the van said, “I’m digging into the school’s system right now. Give me thirty seconds.”
I turned the framed photo toward Little and said, “Explain this picture.”
“What’s there to say?”
I walked closer to where he was sitting and dropped the photo on the table in front of him. “Don’t play fucking games with me. When I ask a question, you answer.” I pointed at the frame. “Why are her hands behind her back? Why is she in a dress that’s unlike any style we saw in her closet at home? Where was this picture taken?”
He sighed, like I was wasting his goddamn time. “She liked to be dominated. She wore that outfit, and it was a little game we used to play.”
A team member said in my ear, “We’re reaching out to her mother right now to see if she can locate the dress in Mills’s room.”
“How long were you two intimate?” Rivera asked him.
“Couple of months.”
“Did she bring you home? Did you meet her family?”
He laughed, and even though his glasses didn’t fall, he pushed them high against the bridge of his nose. “I’m thirty years older than her. I’m not the guy you bring home to mama.”
“Then, what kind of guy are you, Mr. Little?”
He tilted his head, almost like a dog. “The one who likes to fuck after the bell rings and not speak again until the next class.”
“There’s zero record of Ronald Little at Northeastern,” my team member said in my ear. “We’ve tried running his address, phone number, work line, and Social Security number. He doesn’t exist in their system.”
I glanced at Rivera, who had just heard the same information in his earpiece, and then looked back at Little. “When was the last time you saw Mills?”
He crossed his legs, his hands folding in the center. “I’m not positive, but it was before tax season. She stopped coming to class, and I never saw her again.”
“Did you try to call her?”
“I didn’t have her number.”
“Did you stop by her house to see if she was all right?” Rivera inquired.
My thoughts were interrupted again as a team member came through my ear and said, “The mother has never seen that white dress before, and it’s not in Mills’s closet.”
“I didn’t have her address.” Little scratched his bald scalp. “Like I told you, we were fuck buddies, nothing more.”
“Tell me how someone—a business owner, a homeowner, a man who, on paper, seems to follow all the rules—attends class at a university, and the school has absolutely no record of him being there.”