Cute Guy from the elevator, she thought. How fitting. She glanced over at him, then back at the road, figuring that was why Scotty had gone along with them and not informed her of what was going on at first. She didn’t like it any better, but at least she understood. “Anything else?”
“No. He’ll call us the moment something comes up.”
“So, what exactly did you tell him we were doing?”
“Going out to breakfast.” He leaned his head back, closed his eyes. “Just don’t wake me until it’s over. Long night.”
All too soon, Sydney was seated opposite Wheeler in an interview room. Again.
She was hating this place. Hating that she’d ever walked in here.
“Yeah,” he said. “You got news?”
“I got news,” she replied, watching his face carefully. “I got news that a photo was taken of you climbing in the back of the pizza place, during your second visit, just before you ripped it off.”
He didn’t answer, and Sydney found her gaze drawn to his white eye, the one that couldn’t see, but seemed to see right through her. He looked away. “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“They’ve made great strides with technology. They can enhance things that might not have been useful twenty years ago.”
“Yeah, they showed those photos in court. Couldn’t prove it was me. Couldn’t even prove it was the pizza deliveryman.”
“Oh, very funny. Did you go back in to take the money from the safe?”
He refused to look at her, and she realized that he had done that very thing.
“I don’t believe it. I broke every rule I held sacred, put my career on the line investigating this thing, trying to help you, and you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. I never said a thing. I didn’t steal nothing. Don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about this.” Sydney laid the photos on the table. He looked at them, his gaze widening at the face shot that DOJ was able to enhance, his hand on the window frame, uninjured, unburned.
“So I went in the back way. That don’t make me a killer.”
“You ripped him off. That makes you highly suspect when you said that he gave you the money.”
“And he did. The money from the till. Never touched the safe.”
“But you went back for more.”
“No, I didn’t. Those pictures don’t prove shit.”
“They’ll speak pretty loudly when the governor is looking at your case for clemency. When’s the big day? Tomorrow? The next?”
He was quiet, looking like he was wrestling with something. His life, no doubt. And Sydney thought about the little things he told her, the things that he couldn’t have known unless her father had told him. Was she wrong? “You told me my father said that you could pay him back on Tuesday.”
“I don’t remember what day he said. I just said Tuesday, ’cause you asked, and it was the day after he was killed.”
And her heart sank. She supposed she’d been so eager to believe him, because by doing so, it meant her father was good, altruistic.. . She’d put her hopes in that he, Wheeler, had the most incentive to tell the truth. How was it that she’d overlooked that he also had the most incentive to lie?
“Why? You went back to steal the money from the goddamned safe! What happened? Did he catch you?”
“Just ’cause I’m a thief, don’t make me no murderer. No, he didn’t catch me. He was too busy talking to someone else.”
“There was someone else there?” Sydney said. “How convenient.”
“And true.”
“You forget to mention that to the cops? Sort of when you forgot to mention that you climbed into the back of the building after he’d already given you money?”
“I told them I saw that guy there. Probably the same guy I saw sitting out in the car when I show to get my green. They did that Identikit thing. I just didn’t say when I saw him, or where I was when I saw him that second time.”
“Why not?”
“You saying I was s’posed to tell them? Hey, by the way, while I was breakin’ in the back way to rob the place? That guy in the parking lot came in and blew away the owner? You nuts? I got my black ass breaking into a white man’s business in a rich white man’s town. I can’t go tellin’ them I was rippin’ the place off. They convict me for sure, I say that. ’Specially I say that after the fact. Like I’m makin’ it up, or somethin’.”
She simply stared at him. Couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She got up, slapped her hand on the door to be let out. “Do you know how many people suffered because you lied?”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell ’em everything. I told ’em what they needed to know. Ain’t my fault they ain’t listening. And I didn’t kill him.”
The guard opened the door. “You done?”
“Yeah,” she said, then turned back to Wheeler, trying so hard not to say something smart-assed. “I’m done.”
“You gotta understand!” He rose, placed both shackled hands on the table. “If I told you right off, you wouldn’t help me! You know that’s true!”
She ignored him, walked out, her footsteps echoing down the long concrete corridor, trying not to think about how much time and energy-and emotion-she’d wasted on this case, how she’d so wanted to believe him, because that meant her father’s life was worth something
… And she couldn’t help but wonder if she hadn’t been distracted by Wheeler’s lies, would Prescott have ever gotten close enough to her to set her apartment on fire? Endanger her sister? Maybe she would’ve foreseen some of the events, been smart enough not to think that everything about her father and his death was a big government conspiracy to cover up the truth, that they weren’t out there manufacturing evidence, that her father wasn’t trying to blackmail someone to pay off a boat. That the photo meant nothing-
She stopped in her tracks. Realized what she’d failed to see there the whole time. Of course it wasn’t about the photo. Not in the sense they’d been looking at. It was the timing. Cisco’s Kid… “Oh my God,” she whispered.
She pivoted, strode back to the interview room where the guard was leading Wheeler back to his cell. “Give me just a couple more minutes,” she said.
The guard nodded, and Wheeler sat back down and Sydney thought of him climbing through that window. “If my father gave you money to get to this job, why would you come back and rip him off?”
“Gotta understand. That was a long time ago. Me being young. Stupid. I got mad at my girlfriend ’cause she was taking off, leaving me with a new baby. My aunt’s all over my ass, gotta grow up, kick the drugs, ’cause I gotta be a father.
We got in a fight over it. What kinda man’s gotta beg for a double-saw from his aunt? That’s why I called your father.
I ain’t never heard of this church, and I’m starting to think maybe they’re like some kind of cult, I mean, what they doin’ pickin’ some loser like me from the streets, gonna make me their project? Aunt Jazz tells me to be careful, but maybe this is my chance, and I think, yeah, this is my chance. I think if I had enough green, I wouldn’t have to borrow nothing to get no job in San Mateo. I could maybe buy a couple bricks, turn it over real quick.”
She was fascinated by the novelty of what Wheeler was saying, the fact it seemed more the unvarnished truth of a young kid who sees opportunity knocking, and is too mixed up to make the right decisions. “So what really happened?” “I show up just like he says, get this gas money to drive down to San Mateo, and he’s busy washin’ glasses. He tells me to look in that little can but there’s only some change, then tells me there’s a twenty under the till. And then I leave.” “And?” Sydney asked, leaning against the door. He hesitated. “So I park around the corner, and I climb in through the back window. A storeroom. Lots of cans of stuff.