I squinted while I tried to catch up to his cryptic words. “How?”
“What?”
“How did you know about Spencer?”
Will shrugged with an eye roll. “How could I not? The Whiskey Lake Killer is popular among my kind.” He gestured around him.
I licked my lips because Spencer’s involvement with the killer wasn’t made public yet. He obviously knew something.
“Screw this.” I started to leave. I knew the drugs were probably forty percent out of his body, and by now he’d feel like there were bugs under his skin.
“Wait.” He cursed under his breath. “Jim keeps tabs on her.”
And just like that, I went from annoyed to rage. “How?” I gritted out.
“He has people watching her.”
My body temperature rose. “Where?”
“Look, I’ll tell you, but first I need your help.”
I almost laughed. “Why should I do that?”
“Because you like my sister, and she’ll listen to you.” He blew smoke through the bars, and the cigarette bounced between his lips as he spoke. “I remember you now.” He tapped his head. “I’m good with faces when I’m clear.”
“What do you want to tell Spencer?”
Both hands came up, and he rubbed his eyes with his palms. Dry eyes. Another sign of detox.
“She always wanted to know what I remembered from our parents’ death. If I’m clear, I have to try to do right by her.”
I leaned against the wall, feet spread, head back. We stood in silence while I thought how this could help her cope. One more shade of color to the evidence palette.
Will moved back and forth as he dragged his nails down his arm. It could backfire, or it could help.
“Prove it to me.” I changed my tone so he knew I wasn’t playing. “Share something so I know you’re not going to fuck up your sister’s life again.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Okay, okay.” He leaned forward and threaded his arms through the bars to rest. “Mom wanted Dad to come to get me out of rehab. That’s why I was there that day. Dad wasn’t happy about it, but Mom always had a weak spot for me. A lot of it is hazy, but I remember the guy was white, my height, but heavier.”
“If I showed you a lineup of photos, could you pick him out?”
“Maybe?” He shrugged.
I wondered if he was making this up, although I knew that picking a guy out of a lineup when you weren’t absolutely sure could put an innocent person in jail, and I respected that. But this guy didn’t seem the type to care.
“You just got out of rehab, so when did you get back on drugs?”
“That’s the strange part. Once I got released from the hospital, the nurse handed me my shit in a bag. Spencer wasn’t talking to me, so I called Jim, who picked me up. Halfway home, I pulled out my stuff and found a baggie of coke.”
I shook my head like I didn’t follow.
“I just got out of detox. How the hell did I have drugs on me?”
“Jim?” I tossed out for an idea.
“Nope, he never came by to see me. Also, after that, I often found little baggies around. I just thought I was lucky, but now I’m clear…now things don’t add up.”
Okay.
“Look, man,” he sniffed like he just took a hit, “I just want to see my sister so she can see me like this. Tell her what I remember so she can see there is still some good in me, in here.” He rubbed his chest. “I’m sure I’ll remember more details when I’m talking to her.”
He was good at lying. He had a long rap sheet for it, but I would consider it for her.
With a silent conclusion, I stared straight ahead and watched him in my peripheral vision.
“I have a brick of cocaine that I could add to my statement on you if you so much as set her back.”
I pushed to my feet and walked back down the cold concrete hallway.
Once outside, I raced back to the office and filled the sergeant in on what was going on. After he pondered it, he agreed it couldn’t hurt to speak with Spencer. Anything was something.
“Hey, Detective?” The receptionist knocked on the door. “Sorry for interrupting, Sarge, but Blake, we have a possible witness who thinks they saw something on the latest murder.”
I glanced at Sarge, who gave me a nod to go see what was up.
“Show them into my office.”
She nodded and left. I stood and leaned into the back of the chair.
“How much do you trust your nephew?”
“As much as I trust a starving snake not to eat a rabbit.” He stacked some files on top of one another. “But…”
“Yeah, okay.” With a twist, I headed toward my office.
“Hi.” I closed the door behind me and studied the young guy, who looked to be in his late teens. “I’m the lead detective on this case.”
“Okay, I’m Julian.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“I do, but I don’t feel comfortable giving it, you know, given why I’m here.”
“Fair enough.” I lowered into my chair and leaned back to calm his nerves. “Why are you here?”
“I…I think,” he shifted in his seat, “I think I might have seen something, but you know how your eyes can play tricks on you and stuff?”
“I do.” I nodded and flipped open my notepad. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you think you saw?”
“I won’t get into trouble?” He eyed me.
“Unless you killed someone, I don’t care what you were doing.”
He nodded and looked over his shoulder out the window into the busy office. “I was buying weed off a friend. I had just finished rolling a joint when I heard someone yell, but, honest, I didn’t see anyone.” He squinted at the table as he thought. “I lit my joint and started to smoke when I heard a loud crack. I thought maybe it was thunder, but it sounded different. Like when you hit a hard ball all the way to left field. It echoed, then I heard someone again, but this time it was cursing.”
“Okay.” I tapped my pen top on the desk to draw the tip out and started to write on a pad of paper. “Then what?”
“I started to walk toward the noise, but something odd came over me. I thought it was just the weed making me paranoid, but then…” He trailed off and became nervous.
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
“I saw a person dressed in jeans and a dark jacket drop something into the snow by the lake.”
I slowly leaned forward in my chair and rested my chin on my hand. “Okay. Did you see their face?”
“No, just a flash of white.”
I scribbled on my pad. Caucasian.
“Male or female?”
“Definitely male.”
“Why?”
“Whatever he was carrying looked heavy. I don’t think a woman could move around like he did.”
“Build?”
“Taller than me. Not fat, but not super slim either.” He looked frazzled. “Look, man, I was really far away.”
“That’s okay.” I kept my eyes down as I jotted more notes. “Anything else?”
“Just that he went back into the woods and came out with something else.”