“Easy, MacLeod, easy,” she heard Giovanni’s voice cut through the screaming.
She struggled with him, but he held her tightly.
“Easy,” he whispered.
Her rage would not be so easily denied. She twisted in his grasp, trying to get back at the man, to crush him, to rip him apart.
“MacLeod, it’s over,” Gio whispered. “They’ve got him in cuffs.”
Hearing that, she went slack in Gio’s arms, defeated. At the same time, the screaming stopped. She realized it had been her voice making that terrible noise.
“It’s all right,” Gio said.
She’d never heard words that were more false.
THIRTEEN
1115 hours
“I thought this crime analysis stuff was the wave of the future,” Tower observed dryly, giving Browning a sly look. The three of them stood in the confined office room, huddled around Renee’s desk. Tower figured the office was probably used as a storage closet until office space became so premium.
Renee snorted. “Crime Analysis is just the buzzword of the decade for good old detective work. The only difference is that I’m a civilian and this,” she pointed to her PC, “is a computer instead of a pile of paper.”
“A lot of good it’s done us,” muttered Tower, tapping his pen on his notebook.
“It has, though,” Renee said. “Without my computer system and expert analysis, you’d be two weeks away from knowing you had nothing.”
Tower rolled his eyes at her.
Browning sipped his coffee and asked, “Let’s see if we’re missing anything.”
“Fine,” Renee shrugged. “But we haven’t.”
“Humor me.”
“It’s your dime,” she said. “Ask away.”
Browning considered, then asked, “The child witness said the Hispanic guy called the black guy Wesley. Any hits on that?”
“The only two black males named Wesley in River City don’t fit the age description.”
“How close?”
“One’s four and one’s eighty-two.”
Browning sipped his coffee. “You check Department of Licensing?”
Renee looked at him as if he’d just asked a monumentally stupid question. “I did. There were several black males named Wesley with Washington State driver’s licenses or identification cards. None had vans of any kind registered to them. All were on the west side of the state, near Seattle. Only one had a criminal record and he’s in Walla Walla State Prison right now.”
“How about Idaho DOL?” Browning asked. “The panhandle’s only ten minutes away.”
“Of course I checked,” Renee said. “And there were no black male Wesley’s in any of the northern panhandle counties.”
“Okay. How about any hits on the descriptions of the suspects?”
“No,” Renee said. “Or rather, yes. Hundreds of black males and hundreds of Hispanic males. The descriptions were too general. I mean, some of our own officers matched up.”
“How about the tattoos?”
“All dead ends. All subjects who fit the race and tattoo are incarcerated, except for five. One of those was Antonio Lopez and you talked to him.”
Browning nodded. “He was a decent guy. Owns a catering business. He said the tattoo was from when he was fifteen years old. He’s definitely not involved. But what about the other four?”
“All four have moved out of the area,” Renee said. “I called the police agencies in their new digs and asked for a courtesy interview. All had solid alibis. Besides, the closest one was in Arizona.”
Tower grunted.
Renee ignored him. “Just in case she was mistaken about the race, I ran all tattoos containing a spider or a spider web on either arm. I cross-referenced them to known sex offenders and-”
“And we checked all those sickos,” Tower finished.
Renee pressed her lips together, but nodded. “Yeah.”
The trio fell silent for a while. The hum of the computer fan filled the room. Tower stared at the comic strips Renee had clipped from the newspaper, but didn’t read them. Browning sipped his coffee. Renee fumed.
Finally, Browning asked, “Why spider webs and spiders, Renee? And why both arms? Why not just run the specific tattoo and arm? You’d narrow your list that way.”
“True,” Renee said, irritation seeping into her voice. “But I didn’t know which report was right, so I ran it both ways.”
“Which report was right?” Browning asked. “What’s that mean?”
Tower leaned forward. “One of those reports was mine.”
“I know,” Renee said. “And the other one was from Officer Giovanni. And they were different.”
“Different how?” Browning asked.
Renee pulled copies of both reports from her file and laid them side-by-side. Browning and Tower stood over each shoulder and watched as she flipped through pages in both until she found what she was looking for. Each report had a section outlined in red.
“See,” she said, pointing with her pencil to the handwritten report. “Giovanni’s report says the male had a spider tattoo on the inside of his left elbow.”
Both men read over the description, nodding in unison.
Renee moved her pencil to Tower’s typed report. “Your report says it was the right arm and a web tattoo on the elbow.”
The men read it for themselves, still nodding.
“That’s why I ran it both ways,” Renee said.
Browning pointed. “Your report also has the guy yelling after her and having an accent.”
“And the name Wesley,” Tower said.
Renee looked back and forth between both men. “You guys didn’t know about this other report?”
Tower shrugged. “I interviewed the little girl. I didn’t think I needed to read Giovanni’s report, at least not yet.”
Browning offered no excuses, but wandered back to an empty chair and sat down. He didn’t like the fact that he had read only Tower’s report. He should have been more thorough, even if the information would have been redundant. But they’d been so tied up in trying to find the guys, he hadn’t spent the time he should have reviewing the case material.
“Damn,” Tower muttered.
Browning’s mind was whirring. “Do you suppose Giovanni made a mistake?” he asked Tower.
Tower looked over at him, knowing very well that the question applied to him, too. He didn’t take offense. The question was necessary. “I don’t know. Possibly. But I interviewed her very carefully.” He pointed to his report. “That is definitely what she told me.”
“Maybe she was confused when she talked to the patrolman. Still scared.”
The men looked at each other, both thinking the problem through. Neither mentioned another possibility.
Renee did. “Could she be lying?”
“She’s six,” Tower said.
“Kids lie,” Renee answered.
“But not without a reason.”
“Maybe she’s scared of something,” Renee suggested.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Tower scowled.
“We’ll probably need to interview her again,” Browning said. “But first I want to check with Giovanni and see if he’s sure on this description.” He picked up Renee’s telephone and dialed Police Dispatch.
“Dispatch. Carrie Anne.”
“Carrie, Browning here. Is Officer Giovanni working today?”
He heard the sound of a keyboard being used in the background, then she answered. “Yeah. Adam-257. He’s down at the bridge at the crime scene.”
“Crime scene?” Browning asked. “What crime scene?”
1205 hours
Kopriva found her in an interview room. Even though the door was wide open and there was no one guarding the room, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she looked like a prisoner. She sat at the table with her face buried in both palms.
He reached out to touch her shoulder. “Hey, girl,” he whispered to her.
Katie looked up at him, her eyes rimmed with redness. When she recognized him, her eyes filled anew with tears. She stood and fell into his arms.