The Night Monster_ A Novel of Suspense - James Swain [15]
In the hall I found Jessie slumped in a chair, fast asleep. I woke her up and explained that I was leaving with the detectives.
“Don’t you have practice this morning?” I asked.
“I was going to skip it,” my daughter said.
“You need to go. It will take your mind off things.”
“Okay. Can you lend me some money for a cab? I’m kind of broke.”
“Not a problem.”
Jessie called for a cab. Ten minutes later, it pulled up in front of the hospital. Before climbing in, my daughter hugged me, and I felt her heart pounding against my chest. She was like me, and tended to hold things in. I could only imagine what all this was doing to her.
The cab drove away. Detectives Boone and Weaver stepped out from the side of the building. They’d been smoking cigarettes, waiting for me.
“Ready when you are,” Boone said.
———
They drove me to the Days Inn. My Legend was still parked in the back. I’d had the car for sixteen years and had almost forgotten what the original color was. But it still drove, and that’s all I cared about.
I followed the detectives to the county jail on SE 1st Avenue, which everyone called the Inn on the River because of its proximity to the New River. While Boone arranged to have Tyrone Biggs put in a lineup, I chatted with Captain Mike, who’d been processing criminals into the jail for as long as I’d been a cop.
“Who are you here to see?” Captain Mike asked.
“A suspect named Tyrone Biggs,” I replied.
“The basketball player? I processed him through this morning.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s one of those white guys who thinks he’s a black gangsta. I told him I had Florida State in the office college basketball pool this year, and he growled at me.”
“Mister Personality.”
“He’s an asshole, if you ask me.”
Boone appeared and had me follow him. We walked down a hallway to a small room with a two-way mirror. We went inside and Boone shut the door. I stood next to the mirror, my breath fogging the glass.
Standing in a lineup in the next room were seven white males. Each was extremely tall, and ranged in height between six-five and six-ten. I recognized several as longtime perps, and I guessed Boone had pulled them out of the lockup.
Tyrone Biggs stood in the center of the line wearing a sleeveless black athletic shirt—what cops called a “wife-beater”—and ragged blue jeans with a gaping hole in each leg. His arms were covered in tattoos, one of which snaked up his neck and stopped just below his ear. I’d admired his play on the basketball court, but I didn’t like what I was seeing now. Biggs’s eyes glinted with hostility and both hands were clenched into fists. I understood why Boone and Weaver were so certain he’d abducted Sara Long. His body language suggested he was guilty of something.
“What do you think?” Boone asked.
“The guy I saw was more muscular,” I said.
Boone let out an exasperated breath.
“I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“You got knocked out,” Boone said. “Did it ever occur to you that your imagination might have distorted what you saw?”
“My imagination didn’t distort anything.”
“But it could have.”
“Not here.”
“You suffered a concussion and were unconscious for most of the night. What if your imagination turned Tyrone Biggs into someone else, and substituted him into your memory? Stranger things have happened.”
I wasn’t changing my story. Boone needed to see the light.
“Here’s an idea,” I said. “Grill Biggs, and let me be in the room with you. See how Biggs reacts when he sees me. If he’s guilty, you’ll know it soon enough.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s against procedure.”
“Come on. I was a detective for sixteen years.”
“So what?”
“There is no procedure.”
Boone looked at the lineup. The seven men were growing uneasy, their bodies slick and shiny with sweat. Of the group, Biggs looked the most uncomfortable.
“What the hell,” Boone said.
The interrogation cells were in the basement of the jail. Each was small and windowless, with sophisticated eavesdropping equipment wired into the ceiling light fixtures. Boone