“W
hat do you think, Paul?”
Michael Brent was on his cell phone to Paul Labray at the lab. Esko was driving.
Brent and Esko were returning to the State Police Barracks at Clarence. They'd just finished an interview in downtown Buffalo with a pizza-delivery driver.
“I maybe might have seen that girl that got murdered talking to a man that night. Maybe. I'm all mixed up, man. Sorry.”
Brent was cursing the pizza guy's unreliability.
It had been a day since they'd searched Styebeck's home and things didn't look promising. But now the lab in Olean had something on the rental car Styebeck had used. Labray gave Brent a quick summary. The tread of the tires on the Malibu rented by Karl Styebeck were consistent with the casts taken from tire impressions near the Hogan murder scene.
“I think,” Labray said, “this puts Detective Styebeck closer to the homicide.”
“A lot closer,” Brent said. “Nice work, thanks.”
Brent hung up, punched in Lieutenant David Hennesy's number and relayed the update. Esko's eyebrows climbed as she listened to Brent's end of the conversation.
“Okay,” Hennesy told Brent. “We'll set up a confer
ence call. Our place at four. I'll advise Parson, call Kincaid and the lab.”
Brent slid his phone into his pocket and watched the suburbs roll by.
“This is something, Mike.”
“It's something, all right. Have to see what Kincaid makes of it.”
An hour later, Brent, Esko and several other state police investigators gathered in a meeting room at Clarence Barracks. They'd all reviewed the attachments on the tires Labray had sent to them prior to the call.
At 4:10 p.m., Kincaid was still running late and kept the others waiting on the line.
“Hang on.” Kincaid's voice crackled through the speaker with tinny crispness. “I've just returned from a pretrial motion on another case. Lieutenant Hennesy briefed me on the new evidence. Bear with me while I get up to speed with the material you've sent me. Give me a minute.”
Moments passed. While the others looked over files, Esko tapped her pen and glanced at Brent. He didn't look optimistic and she didn't blame him. For they'd drawn Bob “Slam Dunk” Kincaid as the D.A. for the Hogan murder.
Kincaid, an assistant district attorney, was one of the state's heavy hitters. He handled violent crimes and rarely lost because he made near-impossible demands on detectives to make his case a slam dunk, absent of all reasonable doubt.
“Okay,” Kincaid could be heard flipping papers. “Good work on the tires.”
“So, do we bring Styebeck in now?” Brent asked.
“You mean charge him?”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“First-degree for Hogan. This puts him at the scene and we've got the phone calls from the missing woman.”
“Slow down, there. You're forgetting Styebeck has admitted contact with Bernice Hogan and Jolene Peller. Styebeck has a right to rent a car. This evidence puts his rental car
near
the scene. This break does not make the case. It's a building block.”
“Look,” Brent said, “we've got witnesses putting him with the victim and the missing woman.”
“Mostly prostitutes with axes to grind. And Karl Styebeck, being a detective with confidential informants on the street, has reason to be on Niagara talking to people. As I've said, he's not challenging the fact that he had contact with Bernice Hogan and likely Jolene Peller.”
“What about Peller's relationship to Hogan and Styebeck?”
“What about it? That Peller was helped by Styebeck's outreach group is circumstantial. That Peller's mother reported her missing is also circumstantial given the woman's background.”
“What about Peller's cell-phone calls to Styebeck?”
“No question, you've hit on something there. That Peller's phone surfaced in Las Vegas after calls were placed from a Chicago truck stop to Styebeck is a compelling piece of evidence. Like the tires. They are both building blocks but not enough to make the case.”
“Well, he's refused a polygraph after indicating he would take one,” Brent said.
“That's his right, Mike. But so far, he's cooperated without playing the lawyer card. Look at his ties, his community work with his outreach group to help the girls. His contact with them. All reasonable.”
“You're making this harder than it needs to be, Bob,” Brent said.
“If Styebeck gets an attorney, he'll knock us on our asses based on what we've got so far. He'll point to the fact
that Styebeck's cooperated. He's volunteered his phone, bank, credit-card and computer records. He's allowed you to search his house and his personal vehicles.”
“Of course,” Brent said. “He's smart. He's likely got rid of anything hot. He wouldn't have volunteered if there was anything incriminating to be found.”
“So, what did you find?”
“Some calls to him from public phones all over the place.”
“And?”
“He said they're from informants, or associates,” Brent said.
“To his home?” Kincaid said. “I thought you guys used safe phones.”
“Not all the time,” Esko added. “Depends on the cop and the informant.”
“Some of the calls,” Brent said, “were from phones at, or near, truck stops.”
“Wasn't there a suspicious truck seen the night before the murder?” Kincaid asked.
“Yes.”
“And the cell-phone calls came from a Chicago truck stop?”
“That's right,” Brent said.
“You're close, guys,” Kincaid said, “but it's just not there. His appearance of cooperation will go a long way in front of a jury. And he is considered a community hero. At this stage, we have not removed all reasonable doubt.”
“What do we need?” Brent asked.
“Irrefutable evidence. You've got some strong pieces, but not enough. You need something like a confession, or DNA. Or something we haven't yet thought of.”
“You're talking about a lucky break,” Brent said.
“That's correct, if you want to make this a slam dunk.”
“J
ustin! Wait up!”
Zach Miller was pedaling as fast as he could, fighting to keep up with his big brother. Justin resented how their mother kept forcing the little geek on him whenever he wanted to hang with his friends.
“You can't keep excluding him, Justin, it's not fair.”
All right, he thought, looking over his shoulder, but the little geek was going to pay a price.
Justin signaled to his pals and they all accelerated their bigger bikes, speeding through the treacherous terrain of Clear Ridge Crossing, the new subdivision being carved out of farmland at the southern edge of Wichita, Kansas.
“Justin!” Zach's voice grew distant. “Wait for me!”
“Go home if you can't catch up, Zachary!”
But Zach had reached the point of no return. Not yet close enough to be part of Justin's posse, and too far from home to ride back alone. All the boys knew the psychology at work here. Zach would have to earn his right to ride with them. Prove himself worthy, or go home like a baby.
Zach gritted his teeth, squeezed his handlebars and pumped, hell-bent on being accepted by the older boys. But they had vanished ahead of him behind the tall scrub of a downhill slope into the next valley.
That did it.
Zach invoked the power that ruled over him and his big brother.
“I'm telling Mom!” he yelled.
“Go right ahead, you little shit!” Justin yelled back.
“I'll tell her what you're really going to do in the woods! I will, Justin!”
Defeat blossomed across Justin's face. He rolled his eyes, then locked his brakes, grinding everything to a stone-spewing, dust-churning halt.
“Jesus, Zach!”
Justin's cohorts, Brody, Devin and Aaron, stopped out of duty to their leader. Like outlaws on the run, they leaned on their handlebars and caught their breath as they watched Zach bring up the rear.
“Little guy rides pretty fast,” Brody said.
Justin half grinned, begrudging Zach a modicum of respect for his perseverance. It grew into pride watching how he put his whole heart into a hard ride just to keep up. For deep down he loved his little brother who'd always had to battle the odds.
One night when Zach was two, he'd stopped breathing. Mom and Dad freaked out. Mom rode in the ambulance. They got him breathing but the people at the hospital couldn't tell them what the problem was. His parents prayed for a miracle and Zach pulled through.
But then came all those years when Zach used to wet the bed and their family learned a couple of new words.
Nocturnal enuresis.
Justin would never forget Zach's shame and anguish. Night after night Justin watched him sleep on the floor of their room and cry himself to sleep. Justin helped clean up, promising him that it would get better.
And it did.
Zach hadn't had any trouble in nearly three years now.
Except for Justin. Who gave him a hard time. Every time. To make him stronger. Out of love.
Justin was Zach's protector.
The bond between him and his little brother was unbreakable. And Lord have mercy on anyone stupid enough to harm a hair on Zach's head.
Zach's gasping filled the air when at last he joined the older boys.
He was red-faced and on the brink of tears at having nearly been abandoned such a long way from home.
Clear Ridge Crossing was new territory for him.
As far as they could see, cookie-cutter houses were in stages of evolution. At one end, rows of finished homes lay adjacent to lines of wooden skeleton frames of homes in progress. Next to them, an expanse of open grassland was undergoing transformation into earthen lots.
Columns of dust dimmed the sky as the racket of hammering and sawing blended with the diesel roar of battalions of graders, loaders, earthmovers and convoys of big trucks rolling in and out of the zone. It was dotted with the portable white trailers of contractors' offices that backed onto a marshaling area where all kinds of material was stored.
The southeastern fringe was lush with dark forests, an inviting haven for Justin and his friends.
“So, what is it you think we're going to do?”
Zach pushed his glasses back up his nose, sniffed, then nodded to Brody and Aaron, who had their school packs strapped to their bikes.
“You're going to drink beer you took from Brody's dad's fridge and watch movies of girls doing sex stuff Aaron downloaded off his brother's computer. I heard you talking back when we started. Devin's voice is loud.”
Justin absorbed the information then held his fist under Zach's chin.
“You can come but if you tell anybody about this I'll hammer you.”
“I won't tell anybody.”
Justin then led the group along a network of earth roads at the edge of the subdivision. They slipped deep into the woods where the boys had built a tree house using scrap wood they'd taken from the site.
With the din of the work softening behind them, they dismounted at the base of a thick hardwood tree. An uneven ladder of mismatched wood ascended the trunk to a crude structure affixed and hidden among the branches twenty feet up.
Aaron and Brody unfastened their backpacks from their bikes and slid them on. Then, like small soldiers, they climbed up the ladder with commando precision. Devin went next, then Justin, followed by Zach, who, being a first-timer, smaller and nervous, took his time.
Zach was excited by his initiation into his big brother's group. But just as he reached the entry, he was barred.
“Not yet,” Justin said.
“How come?”
“You gotta get some wood so we can make a seat for you. Got to do your share to help build our fort.”
“Where do I get it?”
Justin pointed to an area in the forest thirty yards off where he and the others had hidden the discarded scraps they'd carried from housing sites.
“Find four boards as tall as you and bring them back here. We'll drop the rope for you to tie around them, so we can haul them up one at a time.”
Zach climbed down, never suspecting Justin's goal was to keep him out of the tree house. He dutifully navigated his way through the forest stepping through patches of creeper, sumac and dogwood as he searched for the cache.
But he couldn't find it.
He'd lost his bearings.
He glanced back and upward toward the tree fort, but it was obscured by the branches and leaves of other trees.
He turned and moved on in another direction.
After taking a few steps, he froze.
At first he thought it was a trick of the sun, the way rounded spots of color played in light and shadow.
Just old branches, bushes and leaves.
Right?
But what he was seeing, hearing and smelling was real.
The drone of flies was as loud as his pulse thumping in his ears.
Zach was transfixed by what he saw.
Gooseflesh rose on his arms.
As he slowly backed away, Zach shut his eyes but the image burned before him.
Is that a human?
The tiny hairs at the back of his neck stood up. All the saliva in his mouth evaporated, muting his cry for help.
Then a familiar warm fluid ran down his legs.