The Stranger You Seek - By Amanda Kyle Williams Page 0,83

the interrogation room, Rauser stepped in front of Charlie. He said very calmly, “I’m gonna get a warrant for that fancy town house and we’re taking it apart down to the pipes. I dare you to dump some evidence. You’re done, Ramsey. Just a matter of time.”

Then he stalked out of the interrogation room.

“No confession?” Balaki said with a grin when Rauser and Williams joined us.

“Uh-unh,” Rauser growled. “Be more likely Nancy Pelosi will come in here and give us a lap dance.”

“Yeah, baby,” Balaki said, and pumped his neck. “Now we talking.”

We all looked at him. A moment of awkward silence followed, then Rauser said, “We gotta cover this guy twenty-four/seven and we gotta do it in two shifts. Pull Velazquez and Bevins in.”

Groans came from the two detectives. It meant twelve-hour shifts doing excruciatingly boring work. They were used to long hours. It’s the sitting and the waiting that makes cops nuts.

“We’ll take the first shift at dusk, okay?” Balaki said. “Give us time to kiss our wives and get a thermos of coffee.”

Rauser reached for the observation room door, then turned and looked at me. “What the hell happened to Dobbs anyway? Where is he?”

“Count your blessings,” I said.

25

We had taken the elevator to garage level, where Rauser’s Crown Vic was parked. As we reached the car, I heard heels against the concrete and spun around.

“Oh shit,” Rauser said.

She was coming at us fast across the parking garage. A heavyset guy was huffing behind her with a camera on his shoulder, and she was holding a microphone out in front of her like it was an Olympic torch.

“Wait, Lieutenant, wait, please,” she was yelling. “Lieutenant, is it true you have a suspect in custody in the Wishbone case?”

Her name was Monica Roberts and she liked following cops and city workers around to make sure they were doing their jobs. I’d watched her reports and rooted for her. Not so much at the moment, however. My mind was clicking. Rauser’s must have been too. Here we were together again on camera. When Chief Connor got wind of this, I imagined a giant black cloud spinning with debris like a twister over City Hall East.

“No comment.” Rauser had been well warned that only officials much higher up than he were to speak to the press regarding the Wishbone investigation.

“But you’ve interrogated a suspect.” It was not a question.

“Press briefings are at noon every day,” Rauser said. “You know that, Monica.”

“Can you explain why the profiler hired by the Atlanta PD, Dr. Jacob Dobbs, was not present for the interview?” Monica looked at me and the camera followed. I eased the car door open and sank quietly into the passenger seat.

“No comment,” Rauser repeated.

“Okay, then can you explain why the profiler who was sacked from the case was present at the suspect’s interrogation?”

Rauser climbed in and threw the old Ford into gear. “Christ,” he groused, slamming his door. “Where’s she getting her intelligence? If she knows that much, she already has Charlie’s name.” He seemed to think about that for a minute. “Actually, more pressure on Charlie boy may not be a bad thing.”

He pulled left out of the garage onto Ponce de Leon and headed toward Peachtree. It was that odd time of day when the city seems buttoned up. Lunch was over and it was still a couple of hours before quitting time, when the office buildings would empty out and jam our streets. The afternoon was so still and cloudless it might have seemed entirely without weather but for the stinging heat. The tires on Rauser’s Crown Vic were a steady crackling against the city streets. The windows were down. Rauser had had bad luck with air conditioners lately, he said. The police scanner was chattering in the background. We were silent. I was tired and maybe even a little depressed. I thought Rauser must be too.

“Ten-fifty-four-D-B, possible one-eighty-seven,” the scanner reported, and got Rauser’s attention. “Juniper and Eighth.”

“Two-thirty-three responding. ETA two minutes,” he said into his radio, and glanced at me. “Possible dead body, possible homicide. It’s just around the corner. I gotta take it.”

He flipped on his lights and siren and the cars in front of us began a paranoid migration into different lanes. Rauser barreled up another block and turned off Ponce. Moments later we were pulling up on Eighth Avenue near Juniper. I saw two women standing in the front yard of a Victorian with baby-blue shutters. They were big-eyed, both of them,