Howie was holding the door to the interview room open with his foot so it wouldn’t re-lock. “They want to take cheek swabs, Terry. You okay with that? They’re going to get them anyway, and I need to make a couple of quick phone calls.”
“All right,” Terry said. Dark circles had begun to form under his eyes, but he sounded calm. “Let’s do everything we have to do so I can get out of here before midnight.”
The man sounded absolutely sure that was going to happen. Ralph and Samuels exchanged a glance. Samuels raised his eyebrows, which made him look more like Alfalfa than ever.
“Call my wife,” Terry said. “Tell her I’m okay.”
Howie grinned. “Number one on my list.”
“Go up to the end of the hall,” Ralph said. “You’ll get five bars.”
“I know,” Howie said. “I’ve been here before. It’s kind of like reincarnation.” And, to Terry: “Say nothing until I get back.”
Officer Ramage took the swabs, one from each inner cheek, and held them up to the camera before putting each into its little vial. Officer Gould placed the vials back in the bag and held it up to the camera as she sealed it with a red evidence sticker. She then signed the chain-of-custody sheet. The two officers would take the samples down to the closet-sized room that served as the Flint City PD’s evidence locker. There it would once more be shown to an overhead camera before being filed. Two more officers, probably State Police, would convey it to Cap City the following day. Chain of evidence therefore remains intact, as Dr. Bogan would have said. Which might sound a bit prissy, but was no joke. Ralph intended that there should be absolutely no weak links in that chain. No slip-ups. No way to break free. Not in this case.
DA Samuels started to return to the interview room while Howie was making his calls by the door to the main office, but Ralph held him back, wanting to listen. Howie conversed briefly with Terry’s wife—Ralph heard him say It’s going to be okay, Marcy—and then made a second, even briefer call, telling someone where Terry’s daughters were and reminding the someone that there would be press clogging up Barnum Court, and to proceed accordingly. Then he came back to the interview room. “Okay, let’s see if we can’t sort this mess out.”
Ralph and Samuels sat down across the table from Terry. The chair between them remained vacant. Howie elected to stand beside his client, a hand on his shoulder.
Smiling, Samuels began.
“You like little boys, don’t you, Coach?”
There was no hesitation on Terry’s part. “Very much. I also like little girls, having two of my own.”
“And I’m sure your daughters play sports, with Coach T for a dad, how could they not? But you don’t coach any girls’ teams, do you? No soccer, no softball, no lacrosse. You stick to the boys. Baseball in the summer, Pop Warner in the fall, and Y basketball in the winter, although I guess you just spectate at that one. All those Saturday afternoon trips to the Y were what you might call scouting expeditions, right? Looking for boys with speed and agility. And maybe checking out how they looked in their shorts, while you were at it.”
Ralph waited for Howie to put a stop to this, but Howie kept silent, at least for the time being. His face had become an absolute blank, nothing moving but the eyes, going from one speaker to the next. He’s probably one hell of a poker player, Ralph thought.
Terry, however, had actually begun to smile. “You got that from Willow Rainwater. Must have. She’s a piece of work, isn’t she? You should hear her bellowing on Saturday afternoons. ‘Box out, box out, pick up your feet, now GO TO THE HOLE!’ How’s she doing?”
“You tell me,” Samuels said. “After all, you saw her Tuesday night.”
“I didn’t—”
Howie grabbed Terry’s shoulder and squeezed before he could say anything else. “Why don’t we stop Interrogation 101, okay? Just tell us why Terry’s here. Lay it out.”
“Tell us where you were on Tuesday,” Samuels countered. “You started, go ahead and finish.”
“I was—”
But Howie Gold squeezed Terry’s shoulder again, this time harder, before he could go on. “No, Bill, it’s not going to work that way. Tell us what you’ve got, or I’ll go right to the press and tell them you’ve arrested one of Flint City’s premier citizens for the murder of Frank Peterson, thrown mud all over his reputation, terrified his wife and daughters, and won’t say why.”
Samuels looked at Ralph, who shrugged. If the DA hadn’t been present, Ralph would already have been laying out the evidence, in hopes of a quick confession.
“Go on, Bill,” Howie said. “This man needs to get home and be with his family.”
Samuels smiled, but there was no humor in his eyes; it was your basic show of teeth. “He’ll see them in court, Howard. At the arraignment on Monday.”
Ralph could feel the fabric of civility fraying, and put most of the blame for that on Bill, who was genuinely enraged at the crime, and at the man who had done the crime. As anyone would be . . . but that didn’t pull the plow, as Ralph’s grandfather would have said.
“Hey, before we get started, I’ve got a question,” Ralph said, striving for cheeriness. “Just one. Okay, counselor? It’s nothing we won’t find out, anyway.”
Howie seemed grateful enough to turn his attention away from Samuels. “Let’s hear it.”
“What’s your blood type, Terry? Do you know?”
Terry looked at Howie, who shrugged, then back at Ralph. “I ought to. I give six times a year at the Red Cross, because it’s pretty rare.”
“AB positive?”
Terry blinked. “How did you know that?” And then, realizing what the answer must be: “But not that rare. If you want really rare, you want AB negative. One per cent of the population. The Red Cross has people with that type on speed-dial, believe me.”
“When it comes to rare, I always think of fingerprints,” Samuels remarked, as if just passing the time of day. “I suppose because they come up so often in court.”
“Where they rarely figure in the jury’s decision,” Howie said.
Samuels ignored him. “No two sets exactly alike. There are even minute variations in the prints of identical twins. You don’t happen to have an identical twin, do you, Terry?”
“You’re not saying you have mine at the scene where the Peterson boy was killed, are you?” Terry’s expression was pure incredulity. Ralph had to give it to him; he was a hell of an actor, and apparently meant to play the string out right to the end.
“We’ve got so many fingerprints I can barely count them,” Ralph said. “They’re all over the white van you used to abduct the Peterson boy. They’re on the boy’s bike, which we found in the back of the van. They’re on the toolbox that was in the van. They’re all over the Subaru you switched to behind Shorty’s Pub.” He paused. “And they’re on the branch that was used to sodomize the Peterson boy, an attack so vicious that the internal injuries alone might well have killed him.”
“No need for fingerprint powder or UV light on those,” Samuels said. “Those prints are in the boy’s blood.”
This was where most perps—like ninety-five per cent—would break down, lawyer or no lawyer. Not this one. Ralph saw shock and amazement on the man’s face, but no guilt.
Howie rallied. “You have prints. Fine. It wouldn’t be the first time fingerprints were planted.”
“A few, maybe,” Ralph said. “But seventy? Eighty? And in blood, on the weapon itself?”
“We also have a chain of witnesses,” Samuels said. He began ticking them off on his fingers. “You were seen accosting Peterson in the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries. You were seen putting his bicycle in the back of the van you used. He was seen getting into the van with you. You were seen exiting the woods where the murder took place, covered with blood. I could go on, but my mother always told me that I should save some for later.”