“But whatever answers you’re looking for, they’re not in there.” Jesse pointed at the bottle of vodka on the table.
“That it?” she asked, grabbing the bottle in defiance, just as he would have done a year ago.
“That’s it.” He stood. “You ever just want to talk, you call me.”
With that, he left.
Outside the house, he headed straight to the car. He used to be good at separating himself from the victims’ families, from their grief and anger, their guilt and recriminations. It had been one of the great benefits of his self-containment, but it was tough to separate himself from the torture Patti Mackey was inflicting on herself. He had been there, right there in the wake of Diana’s murder. It was all so painfully familiar. Patti Mackey seemed about ready to take the dive off the high board into the deep end of the bottle and, unlike him, she wouldn’t even have Ozzie Smith for company.
He drove away from the house and headed back to Chris Grimm’s address. Maybe he would catch the kid’s less-than-charming mother at home alone, without his even-less-charming stepfather. And if he really got lucky, he’d catch the kid there unsuspecting, though Jesse never counted on luck. He took it when it came his way. All cops did. Luck had solved more cases than law enforcement types would ever admit, but relying on it was just plain dumb. Jesse was a lot of things. Dumb wasn’t one of them.
Twenty-nine
Chris Grimm wasn’t there, but his mother was. As he hoped, Kathy Walters was alone. No hard-assed husband to deal with. Maybe that was why she seemed more welcoming, or maybe it was something else. Just like the other night, she had a dangling cigarette at the corner of her mouth. But this time she asked Jesse in and headed straight to the kitchen.
“Coffee?”
He wasn’t really up for it, but he didn’t want to ruin the vibe. “Sure.”
She put a mugful in front of him, got milk out of the fridge, and slid the sugar bowl over to him. There was already a mug and ashtray in front of where Kathy Walters settled down. Jesse sipped his coffee and, just as he’d done earlier with Patti Mackey, waited for her to fill in the void. Didn’t take long.
“He ain’t been home for two nights,” she said, taking a long pull on the cigarette. “I’m worried.”
“Is that unusual? His stepfather didn’t seem to be a big fan of Chris’s.”
She smiled. “They ain’t exactly fans of each other. Chris usually comes home. There’s been times when he comes in real late, but he does come home. Sleeps in his bed and then leaves before Joe gets up.”
“He hasn’t called?”
She shook her head, blowing smoke in a steady stream out the side of her mouth as she did.
“Nothing. Not a word.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Jesse asked. “I left a card with your husband.”
“Joe... he...”
That was answer enough for Jesse. “Can I have a look at Chris’s room?”
She didn’t like that, hesitating to answer.
“Listen,” Jesse said, “if you want me to start looking for your son, you’re going to have to cooperate.”
She didn’t say anything. She stood up and nodded for him to follow her. Kathy Walters walked slowly up the carpeted stairs. The carpet worn thin, the steps creaking as they went. At the landing, she pointed at the third door to her left.
“He keeps it locked,” she said.
“Key?”
She shook her head, doing that smoke-stream thing again. “He wouldn’t trust me not to give the key to Larry, our neighbor, and he wouldn’t trust Joe as far as he could throw him.”
“You mind if I break the lock?”
There was that hesitation again. Jesse supposed that she was more afraid of her husband’s reaction than of what he might find in the kid’s room. He understood her fears. Just because she didn’t bear any obvious scars or because those fading yellow bruises from the other night were now almost gone, it didn’t mean she wasn’t in an abusive relationship. He’d answered enough domestic abuse calls in his time to get the picture. He knew how easy it was to judge people like Kathy Walters. Why stay with a man who hurts you and hates your son? Why not leave? Always easier to quarterback on Monday morning than on Sunday afternoon. The problem was, there wasn’t much Jesse could do for her in this instance.
“Any way this plays out, he’s going to be mad at you.”
“I know,” she said, voice quivering.
“I can get you into a shelter, if that’s what you want.”
She shook her head furiously. “No. No. I want to be here when Chris gets back. I really do love him, but it’s hard for me to show it. And Chris doesn’t make it easy. I’m not a good mother, but I’m the only one the kid’s got.”
Jesse waited.
“Go on, do it.”
Jesse gloved up, stepped a few feet back, built up some momentum, and kicked the door just below the lock. The door swung open violently. He turned to Kathy and asked if she’d like to accompany him to make sure he handled things properly.
“No, that’s okay. I’m going downstairs. I need a drink.”
Jesse said he’d come down when he was done and waited for her to leave before heading into the kid’s room. The moment he entered, he knew something wasn’t right. The kid had a huge wall-mounted flat-screen TV, every video game system in the known universe, three classic guitars in his closet, including a classic Les Paul with a sunburst finish, a Fender jazz bass, and a Rickenbacker twelve-string. He had a drawer full of gold chains, diamond rings, watches, and iPads. A lot of the jewelry was women’s jewelry. The watches ranged from cheap Timexes to Rolexes. The Rolexes had different people’s names inscribed on their backs. It didn’t take an experienced detective to figure out that some, if not most, of the items in Chris Grimm’s room were stolen goods. Only issue was, Jesse saw every report of theft and robbery in town and he recognized only two of the items in the kid’s room — the jazz bass and one of the watches — as reported stolen.
Jesse’s instincts about how the kid had acquired all these goods were confirmed when he found a box of off-the-shelf, disposable cell phones under Chris’s bed. All the phones were still in their clear plastic packages. Chris Grimm hadn’t stolen any of the items in his room, but Jesse was willing to bet most of them were bartered for drugs and that Chris eventually turned these items into cash. It occurred to Jesse that there were now several possibilities as to why Chris Grimm hadn’t returned home for the last two nights.
He called Molly and told her to send Peter Perkins over to the address and to prepare paperwork for a search warrant on the entire premises. Jesse stepped out of the room and went downstairs to have a different kind of talk with Kathy Walters. The kind of talk no mother, not even a bad one, wants to have.
Thirty
While Peter Perkins did a more thorough search of the upstairs rooms, Jesse remained in the kitchen with Kathy Walters. She was really shaken, as much by the fact that the cops were going to have to search the entire house and garage as by the probable truth of her son’s drug dealing. He could see in her face the regret over having opened up the door to Jesse and the fallout that would likely ensue.
“Kathy,” Jesse said, “I’m not here to make your life or your marriage any harder, but if there are things we are going to find in the house that shouldn’t be here, tell me now and I’ll see what I can do. If we find something when we’re searching for more of the stolen goods, it will be out of my hands and up to the DA.”
Her deep blue eyes, the blueprints for which she had passed on to her son, were darting from side to side as she thought about what Jesse had said. That meant only one thing to Jesse: She and/or her husband had something to hide.