“You found that glass and cut your way out with it?”
“There was a bottle inside. I broke it and made a knife.”
Another voice, from behind him: “Mr. Shaw?”
He turned to the blond officer who’d been dressed down by the detective earlier.
“Detective Wiley asked me to bring you to see him.”
Sophie reached out with her good arm and gripped Shaw’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she whispered. And her eyes began to well with tears.
The officer said, “Please, Mr. Shaw. Detective Wiley said now.”
18
Shaw followed the officer to where Wiley stood, by the loading dock, lording over the crime scene, snapping at yet another young deputy.
Shaw wished Detective Standish had drawn the case. However obnoxious, he couldn’t be as insufferable as his partner.
As they approached, Wiley gave a nod and said to the officer who’d brought Shaw to him, “Kathy, dear, do me a solid. I sent Suzie out front. See if she’s got anything for me. Hop hop.”
“Suzie? Oh, you mean Deputy Harrison.”
Wiley was oblivious to the snap of the correction whip. He simply added, ominously, “And don’t talk to a single reporter. Am I clear on that?”
The blond officer’s face grew dark as she too reined in her anger. She disappeared down the broad driveway between the manufacturing building and the warehouses.
The detective turned to him now and patted one of the stairs on the loading dock. “Take a pew, Chief.”
Remaining standing, Shaw crossed his arms — Wiley lifted an eyebrow, as if to say, Whatever — and Shaw asked, “Did they find any CCTV at that intersection, Tamyen and Forty-two?”
“It’s being looked into.” Wiley pulled out a pen and pad. “Now, whole ball of wax. Tell me from when you left my office.”
“I went back to the Quick Byte. Somebody’d taken the Missing poster Sophie’s father’d put up.”
“Why’d they do that?”
“And replaced it with this.” He patted his pocket.
“Whatcha got there, Chief? Tobacco chaw? A fidget stick?”
“You have a latex glove?”
Wiley hesitated, as Shaw knew he would. But — also as Shaw anticipated — handed him one. Shaw pulled it on and fished in his pocket. He extracted the sheet of paper from the Quick Byte. The eerie stenciled image of the man’s face. He displayed it.
“So?” Wiley asked.
“This image?”
“I see it.” A frown.
“In the room where he put Sophie? The same thing — or close to it — was graffitied on the wall.”
Wiley pulled on his own gloves. He took the sheet and gestured a crime scene tech over. He gave her the paper and asked her to run an analysis. “And check in the databases if it means anything.”
“Sure, Detective.”
Bullying and talent, Shaw reminded himself, are not mutually exclusive.
“You were in the café. And after that?”
“I went back to San Miguel Park. I thought you were going to send a team there.”
Wiley set the pad and pen down on the chest-high loading dock. For a moment Shaw actually believed Wiley was planning to deck him. The detective removed a metal container, like a pill bottle, from his front slacks pocket. He unscrewed the top and extracted a toothpick. Shaw smelled mint.
“Better if you stay on message here, Chief.” He pointed the toothpick at Shaw and then slipped it between his teeth. He wore a thick, engraved wedding ring. He reversed the ritual of the container and picked up his writing implement once more.
Shaw continued with his chronology: Kyle approaching him and the car on the ridge.
“Was it you?” Shaw asked. “In the car?”
Wiley blinked. “Why’d I do that?”
“Was it?”
No answer. “You see that vehicle?”
“I didn’t.”
“Lot of invisible cars around here,” Wiley muttered. “Go on.”
Shaw explained his conclusion that Sophie had been raped and killed and the body disposed of. He went looking for the most logical places where that might have been and ended up here. “I told Kyle to go to Sophie’s house. He didn’t.”
“Why do you think the kidnapper didn’t come after you?”
“Thought I was armed, I’m guessing. Detective, all the doors on the ground level were screwed shut, except one. Why would he leave it open?”
“The whole point, Chief. He came back to rape her.”
“Then why not put a lock on that too, like he did the gate?”
“This’s one sick pup, Chief. Can’t hardly expect people like that to behave like you and me, can we now?” The toothpick moved from one side of his mouth to the other, via tongue only. It was a clever trick. “I suppose you’ll be getting that reward.”
“That’s between me and Mr. Mulliner, a business arrangement.”
“Arrangement,” the officer said. His voice was as impressive as his bulk. Shaw could smell a fragrance and thought it was probably from the ample hairspray with which he froze his black-and-white mane in place.
“At least tell me how you heard about it, Chief.”
“My name’s Colter.”
“Aw, that’s just an endearment. Everybody uses endearments. Bet you do too.”
Shaw said nothing.
The toothpick wiggled. “This reward. How’d you hear about it?”
“I’m not inclined to talk about my business anymore,” Shaw said. Then added, “You might want to get security video from the Quick Byte and go through the past month. You could find a clearer image of the perp — if he was staking it out.”
Wiley jotted something, though whether it was Shaw’s suggestion or something else, Shaw had no idea.
The young woman officer Wiley’d sent to search for “it” returned.
Wiley raised a bushy eyebrow. “What’d you find, sweetheart?”
She held up an evidence bag. Inside was the Walgreens plastic bag containing the rock stained with what Shaw now knew was Sophie’s blood.
“It was in his car, Detective.”
Wiley clicked his tongue. “Hmm, stealing material evidence from a scene? That’s obstruction of justice. Do the honors, sweetheart. Read him his rights. So, turn around, Mr. Shaw, and put your hands behind your back.”
Shaw courteously complied, reflecting: at least Wiley’d dropped the “Chief.”
19
In the sprawling cabin on the Compound, where the Shaws lived, several rooms, large rooms, were devoted to books. The collection came from the days when Ashton and Mary Dove were academics — he taught history, the humanities and political science. She was a professor in the medical school and was also a PI — principal investigator, overseeing how corporate and government money was spent at universities. Then there was Ashton’s flint-hard devotion to survivalism, which meant yet more books — hard copies, of course.
Never trust the internet.
This one too was so obvious Ashton didn’t bother to codify it in his Never rulebook.
Colter, Dorion and Russell read constantly, and Colter was drawn to the legal books in particular, of which there were hundreds. For some reason, on the exodus from Berkeley to the wilderness east of Fresno, Ashton had brought along enough jurisprudential texts to open a law firm. Colter was fascinated with the casebooks — collections of court decisions on topics like contracts, constitutional law, torts, criminal law and domestic relations. He liked the stories behind each of the cases, what had led the parties to court, who would prevail and why. His father taught his children the rules for physical survival; law provided the rules for social survival.