THIRTY-FIVE
I told the story so many times I lost count. In the back of a squad car, on the bumper of an ambulance between breaths through an oxygen mask, while I received treatment for third-degree burns on my left hand and wrist, in a dimly lit interrogation room at the Belmont police station. I told it to people from the sheriff’s department, the Franklin County prosecutor’s office, BCI, since the Belmont police, I assumed, had no say over the situation anymore. I wrote it in longhand on a legal pad and signed a printed copy of a statement and agreed to be videotaped. It was a hell of a story, one that even I would think strained against the limits of the plausible had I not just lived through it. And in between the tellings, there was a lot of waiting. I put my head down on my arms when I was in the interrogation room, and it didn’t feel like I slept, just drifted in and out on a burnt cloud of memory, but each time the door opened, I jerked upright, gasping and coughing.
Light was slanting in through the window near the ceiling when a man in a three-piece suit came in and sat down across from me. He was even wearing cuff links, though it couldn’t be much past eight in the morning yet. That’s how you know someone is important, I thought mildly.
“I’m David Homza,” he said.
The name was familiar. I looked at him: salt-and-pepper hair, Elvis Costello glasses. I didn’t know him. But then I remembered why I had heard of him. “You prosecuted Brad Stockton,” I said. My throat was scratchy from the smoke. I smelled like I had set the fire myself, and bits of ash kept falling out of my hair.
“I did,” he said. “And you’re Frank Weary’s kid.”
I leaned on my good hand, my stomach flip-flopping. “I am.”
Homza watched me for a minute. “Do you need anything? Coffee, soda?”
I asked him for a Coke. He nodded and stood up.
“And is there any way I could get a bit of whiskey in that?” I said when he opened the door. Someone in the police station was bound to have a bottle stashed in a desk drawer, and I figured that if Homza knew my father, he might not judge.
He smiled and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a can of Coke still cold from the vending machine and a coffee mug with a quarter inch of whiskey in the bottom. “Will that do it?” he said.
“It will,” I said. I opened the can one-handed and poured the soda into the mug and took a sip. This was the only drink I was going to have today, I told myself. I was so happy for a second, the sugar and caffeine and liquor giving me a rush as good as any narcotic high.
“You had quite the night,” Homza said a minute later.
“Yes,” I said. “How are Veronica and Sarah?”
“Good,” he said. “Well—you know. Good, considering. They’ve both been sexually assaulted, Veronica pretty violently and recently. They have been admitted to Mount Carmel East for the time being. You’ll be happy to know that they corroborated your account of tonight.”
I nodded. But I hadn’t even been thinking about them corroborating my story. I was just glad they were okay. “Did someone call Veronica’s family?” I said. “And Shelby Evans?”
He nodded.
“What about Sarah’s family? She has an aunt in town, and a cousin.”
Homza leaned back in his chair. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t aware that she had family left and she didn’t say anything.”
I thought about that for a second. Maybe Sarah wouldn’t want to see Elizabeth Troyan, since her somewhat exaggerated testimony had put Brad Stockton in jail. But it might be good to have someone there. “I have their numbers,” I said. Then I realized I didn’t—my broken phone was a useless chunk of metal and glass and I didn’t even know where it was.
“It’s up to her,” Homza told me. “It’s likely they’ve already heard—this is a media circus and a half.”
I nodded. I hoped my client had heard too, because her phone number was lost to the ages as well. I was a detective, though, and maybe an okay one after all. I could probably figure it out.
“Derrow’s going to make it, too,” Homza said.
“Hallelujah.”
“He’s in stable condition. But the bullet shattered his femur. They might have to put pins in it,” he added.
“That’s just terrible,” I said. It wasn’t that I’d hoped I had killed him, although I wouldn’t have lost too much sleep over it. I just didn’t want to hear anything else about him. I remembered the pins in Colleen Grantham’s ankle. Maybe someone would find Jack Derrow’s body in a ravine during another lifetime and identify him because of the pins.
“And,” Homza said, “he’s talking.”
That got my interest. I sipped my drink and said, “Tell me he made a full confession.”
He raised his eyebrows. “He did.”
My jaw dropped.
“I know,” Homza said. “I was surprised too. I guess he knows when he’s been beat fair and square, sick bastard. And he’s a coward. The first thing he said was he’d cooperate if we won’t consider this a capital case.”
I drank a little more. “What did he confess to, exactly?”
He sighed. “Quite a few things. The murder of his ex-wife, Theresa Marr, in 1995, for starters. She apparently moved to Florida after they got divorced. She was reported missing down there, but no one knew she’d come back to Ohio. He also confessed to murdering Mallory Evans, Garrett and Elaine Cook. Kidnapping Sarah and planting the knife in Brad Stockton’s car. Then the murder of Colleen Grantham, kidnapping of Veronica Cruz. And there was another student of his, before any of this started, he said he raped her.”
I shook my head. I almost asked if Derrow said why, but that was a stupid question. There was no why. I might never get any more answers than I already had. “Lassiter had to know about some of this,” I said instead. “The rape? Was that reported? There’s a lot going on here that isn’t exactly aboveboard.”
“That,” Homza said, “is something I can’t comment on. It will be looked into.”
“Seriously?”
He spread his hands. “Sorry.”
“Okay, what about Brad,” I said. “What’s going to happen to him? Can you comment on that?”
He gave me a pained little smile.
“I hope you have a good apology planned,” I added, although it wasn’t exactly fair of me to put it all on him. It took a village to orchestrate the railroad job against Brad Stockton.
“Trust me,” Homza said, “no one is more horrified over this than me.”
“Except Brad. And Sarah. And Veronica.”
We stared at each other for a long time. He didn’t argue with me on that point. He said, “You look just like him, did you know that? Your dad.”
“I’ve heard,” I said.
“Tell you what, your dad would be proud of you today,” he added. He touched my arm and then stood up. “You’re free to go.”
I looked into my mug, blinking hard.