Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [8]
Inside the building, Matthews reported to Lieutenant Dick Hynds, who worked under Steve Davis in supervising the detective bureau. All went smoothly enough at first. Hynds, whom Matthews had never met, was a heavyset old-timer who carried maybe 240 pounds on his six-foot frame—the kind of guy Central Casting would send over if you called and asked for “a cop.” The two exchanged a few pleasantries, then Hynds walked him down a corridor to the desk of Detective Jack Hoffman, lead investigator on the Adam Walsh case.
Hynds explained to Hoffman that Matthews had come up from Miami Beach to lend a hand in interviewing and polygraph examinations. Hoffman glanced up impatiently from a report in front of him. He was a heavyset, dark-haired guy with a bushy mustache that accentuated the droop of his lips. He looked like a guy who disapproved of most things on general principle, Matthews thought.
“Why do we need somebody from Miami Beach?” Hoffman asked Hynds brusquely. He hadn’t so much as glanced at Matthews. “We’ve got our own polygraph people.”
“This is the guy who trained our people,” Hynds offered, but Hoffman turned back to his report without a word.
Matthews thought it an unnecessary display of territory marking, but he’d been around a lot of cops. Some guys just seemed to think it necessary to protect their turf. Besides, he knew Hoffman was under considerable pressure, and after all, he’d come up from Miami Beach to help, not start trouble. He shrugged and followed Hynds out of the room without comment.
“Anyway, we want you to start with the father,” Hynds told Matthews as they walked back down the hall, and Matthews nodded. It was natural. Something goes wrong—a spouse is shot, a child goes missing—you begin by looking at the people closest to the situation. Law of averages.
Hynds suggested that they set up the polygraph exam for the day after tomorrow. Meantime, Matthews could familiarize himself with the case files and review what John Walsh seemed to know about his son’s disappearance. On Friday, Matthews would go to work on Walsh himself.
Hollywood, Florida—August 7, 1981
If they had in fact shown him everything, Matthews concluded after studying the files, then indeed the Hollywood PD did not have much to go on. According to her statement, Revé Walsh had run up and down the aisles of the Sears store for a few minutes after she’d returned and found her son gone, calling for Adam by his nickname, “Cooter, Cooter, where are you?”
Finally, she spotted a store security guard, seventeen-year-old Kathy Shaffer, and rushed to Shaffer to report that she had lost her child. Revé reached into her wallet and pulled out Adam’s first-grade picture to show it to Shaffer. “Look, he’s even wearing this same shirt,” Revé said, pointing at the red-and-white-striped shirt she’d dressed him in that morning. Shaffer studied the photograph for what seemed a maddening amount of time, then finally shook her head.
“We can page him, though,” Shaffer told Revé, who glanced at her watch. It was almost 12:45. She and Adam had entered the store almost forty-five minutes ago.
Revé waited nearby while Shaffer made a call, then listened as the announcement crackled over the store’s PA system. “Adam Walsh, please report to the information desk. Adam Walsh, your mother is waiting for you.”
“It was like I was drowning in a pool and couldn’t reach the edge,” Revé would say, trying to describe how unreal her world had suddenly become. “I was trying to reach my child, but he couldn’t hear me. I felt so helpless. I kept thinking that if I could just get everything to slow down for a minute, then I could catch my bearings and catch hold of everything. And then I could reach out and pull Adam back.”
The announcements were repeated again