“Thanks for all your help with this,” Mr. Kinney said.
“You’re so welcome.”
Then Adam and Sierra said goodbye to him, and they left his room.
“Do you still have the sketch of the carjacker at the scene?” Adam asked Sierra.
“Yeah, I left it in the car. I was waiting to send it out once I learned Mr. Kinney might be able to give us a better description of the carjacker’s face.”
“Does Mr. Kinney’s version differ much from the one you did at the scene of the accident?”
“Yes. I took pictures of him, so I know he had short-cropped hair, not long. And it was dark, not light brown. He had brown eyes, not blue. Now, it’s possible Mr. Kinney doesn’t remember, due to the trauma he suffered. I didn’t know the carjacker’s nose had been broken before the accident, but I’m beginning to wonder if he had that right either. And his chin was so badly cut up, I hadn’t noticed the cleft in it, but again, was he only imagining that? His eyes weren’t as beady as he said they were.”
“Which was why you had made the eyes on the sketch you were doing for Mr. Kinney larger initially.”
“Right. I’ve never seen the accused before I’ve had to take a witness statement. I had this all worked out in my mind where I would draw his version and validate my sketch of the deceased. It sure didn’t work out that way. What do you think?”
“I think you’re doing great. I believe either Mr. Kinney has had some impaired memories, which is entirely possible after the head injury he had, or something isn’t quite right with his testimony.”
She stared at Adam as they walked out the door together. “He couldn’t have been in cahoots with these men.”
“As a detective, I have to consider every possibility. At first, he seemed like the perfect victim, totally innocent.”
She led Adam to where she’d parked her car. “So what are you saying? He wanted his car stolen for the insurance money? That he set it up, only the guy hit him a little too hard and then ended up accidentally killing himself while fleeing the scene?” She couldn’t believe it. She guessed she could never be a detective and believe the worst about people.
“Or that Mr. Kinney knew them and didn’t want to identify them, in case that testimony came back to bite him. Hopefully, we’ll know one way or another once we get some hits on your sketch. I wouldn’t send off the one you did of his recollection.” Adam glanced at his phone. “Hey, it’s lunchtime. Do you want to have lunch with me?”
She got a call and said, “Hold that thought… Hello, Ethan?” She figured he needed a sketch concerning a DEA job. She just hoped this one was more the usual kind of witness descriptions, unlike the last one—if Mr. Kinney hadn’t been totally honest with them.
“Hey, if Adam hasn’t asked you out to lunch yet—” Ethan said.
“Uh, he just did.” She thought Adam was cute for asking.
“Damn. Okay, I’ll have to take a rain check then.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Ethan. Talk to you later.” She didn’t say she would give him a rain check though. She walked out of the hospital with Adam. “You timed having lunch with me just right.”
“Don’t tell me that was Ethan, trying to get a date with you already.”
“Just lunch.”
Smiling, Adam shook his head. “Where do you want to go?”
* * *
Adam should have figured Ethan would try to get a date with Sierra as soon as she called it quits with Richard. Adam was just glad he had asked her before Ethan did.
Regarding work, now he had a new concern though. He really hadn’t thought that the situation with Mr. Kinney was anything but on the up-and-up, but with the way he seemed so nervous—why would he be?—and then was angry with Sierra for having asked him to give a description of his assailant, Adam was seriously reconsidering his “victim’s” role in all this. The only reason he could come up with was that Mr. Kinney knew damn well he had lied to them about what the men looked like.
They picked a Chinese restaurant they both enjoyed and had ordered their meals and taken a seat when he got a call from Tori. “Yeah, Tori, Sierra and I are grabbing a bite to eat if you would like to join us.”
“No thanks. I already have something to eat. How did things go with Kinney?”
Adam told her what they’d learned. “We can’t use his sketch, and I’ll tell you the rest later. We’ll get the sketch Sierra did of the dead man scanned in and disseminated as soon as we have lunch. What did you learn about the boat?”
“The guy didn’t have a bill of sale, the price was way cheaper than what it should have sold for, and the boat had recently been painted. We’ve confiscated it, but we need Sierra to talk to him about the seller’s description. I took notes, but we need her to do a sketch.”
“I’ll tell her. If we don’t have anything more pressing for me to attend to right away, I’ll go with her and then return to the office after that.” He would have put it on speaker so Sierra could listen in, but he couldn’t in the restaurant. “What did you think of the boat buyer? Gut instinct?” He always listened to his partners’ gut instincts. As wolves, they could discern a lot more about the humans involved in their cases than humans could. Just as he smelled Mr. Kinney’s nervousness when he learned his assailant had died in the car crash. Adam realized he wasn’t as upset about the car as he was about not being told the man was dead before he gave his description to Sierra.
“No need for gut feelings in this case. He was sweating up a storm when I asked the man to produce the title for the boat. He smelled of fear and sweat. He made the motion of looking for the title in an old cabinet in the garage, but before he touched it, the cabinet was covered in dust, not a fingerprint on it. When he closed it, the cabinet drawers and doors had fingerprints all over them.”
“You think he knows the guys who sold the boat to him?”
“Yep. I don’t believe it was a random sale. He was nervous when he gave me the description of the seller. I mean, maybe he knew the price of the boat was too good to be true. And so he figured it was stolen but had been telling himself no one would ever learn the truth.”
The food was delivered to the table, and Adam said, “Hey, food’s here, Tori. We’ll head over there and talk to him after we eat. See you later.”
“Talk later.”
Adam pocketed his phone.
Sierra eyed his plate. “Hmm, your sweet and sour shrimp looks good.”
“Would you like some?”
“Only if you want to have some of my pork and hot pepper sauce.”