Chasing The Dead

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Interrogating a suspect was like putting on a play where everyone but the suspect knew their lines. The other actors had to be rehearsed and ready and the stage had to be set to keep the suspect unbalanced, desperate to catch the right cue.

Rossi liked flashing his badge in front of the suspect’s family, coworkers, or nosy neighbors and asking if there was someplace private they could talk. Catching suspects cold, he’d watch them stammer and stutter, littering their stories with tissue-thin lies that would trap them later.

Knocking on a suspect’s door and telling him they were going downtown for questioning could be just as effective. Whether the suspect spent the ride asking his own questions or stewing in silence, the uncertainty softened him up. And if it didn’t, the perp walk from the car to the interrogation room with cops holding each arm and dozens of heads tracking every step made all but the most hardened thug afraid they would mess themselves. And having met him at Robin’s house, Rossi knew there was nothing hardened about Ted Norris.

Rossi wanted to know as much as he could about Norris before he asked the first question. He wanted to know his work history, his criminal history, and his financial status. He wanted to have copies of the restraining order from the divorce and the one Sonia Steele had obtained, for the moment when Norris denied ever threatening her. He wanted surveillance video from the parking lot where Norris rear-ended Robin’s car, for when he claimed that never happened.

More than anything else, he wanted Norris’s car. He pulled Norris’s license and vehicle registration records. The car was a black six-year-old Camry, not the white Ford Escort Norris had been driving when Rossi escorted him out of Robin’s house a few days ago.

Putting all of that together took time, so Mitch Fowler grudgingly assigned a couple of detectives to sit on Norris and make sure he didn’t run, warning Rossi that Norris better be their guy or the overtime was coming out of Rossi’s paycheck, an empty threat Rossi ignored. By Tuesday morning, less than twenty-four hours after he met with Sonia Steele, Rossi had everything he wanted except for Norris’s car.

The surveillance video from the parking lot confirmed that Norris had been driving the Camry when that accident happened. The detectives babysitting Norris reported seeing only the Escort, so Rossi had dispatch issue a be-on-the-lookout for the Camry. When the BOLO didn’t turn up anything overnight, Fowler ordered Rossi to bring Norris in for questioning.

The detectives watching Norris banged on his door Tuesday morning at seven o’clock. They hammered loud and long enough to rouse the neighbors on either side before Norris opened up. They let him throw on some clothes and brought him in, bleary-eyed and hungover, depositing him in an interrogation room. Rossi watched him through the two-way mirror. Unshaven and disheveled, Norris gazed around the room, drummed his fingers on the table, and then laid his head down using his folded arms as a pillow. Rossi poured a cup of coffee and joined him.

“Good morning, Mr. Norris.”

Norris raised his head, squinting at Rossi. “You’re the cop from the other night?”

“Detective Rossi. Thought you could use this. It’s not exactly hair of the dog, but it’s the next best thing.”

Rossi put the cup of coffee on the table in front of Norris, who raised it to his mouth, inhaling the aroma before taking a sip.

“What am I doing here? The other guys, all they’d tell me is that it was something to do with Robin.”

“That’s right. We’re making progress in our investigation, but we need your help to clear up a few things.”

Charlie Wheeler knocked on the door and stepped inside, right on schedule.

“Mr. Norris, I’m Detective Wheeler. I did the reconstruction on your ex-wife’s accident. Sorry to interrupt, but I need to talk to Detective Rossi for a minute. Won’t take long. Do you mind waiting?”

Norris took another sip of coffee. “No. Take your time. You got a newspaper or something?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Wheeler said.

Mitch Fowler met Rossi and Wheeler out in the hall.

“How long are you going to let him sit like that?” Fowler asked.

“Couple of hours at least,” Rossi said. “I’d like to find his car before I go at him.”

“Still nothing on the BOLO,” Wheeler said. “Airport police are still checking all the lots in case he stashed it out there, but there are thousands of cars for them to look at.”

“Why would he leave the car at the airport?” Fowler asked. “Why not take it to a body shop and get rid of the evidence?”

“Because he knows we’ll check the body shops and they all take before-and-after photographs for insurance purposes,” Wheeler said. “He could take it to a chop shop that handles stolen cars if he knew where to find one or he could sell it to a salvage yard for scrap, but they’d probably just take his money and sell it to someone else since it’s worth more as a used car than a hunk of steel. So hiding it in an airport parking lot until he can figure out how to get rid of it isn’t a half-bad idea.”

“Checking all those parking lots could take a couple of days,” Fowler said. “And if he didn’t leave it there, he could have parked in any number of garages or lots on either side of the state line. Are you going to search all of them?”

“If we have to,” Rossi said. “But I like the airport because once he ditched the car he could take a shuttle to the terminal and a different one back into town.”

“What about the Escort?” Fowler asked.

“I ran the tag. He rented it from Enterprise. They delivered it to his apartment the morning after Robin was killed.”

“And if he left the Camry at the airport,” Wheeler said, “there may be video of him driving into the lot and getting out of the car.”

Fowler thought for a moment. “Okay. I’ll send some uniforms to the airport to help out. You can let him sit for two hours, but then you go at him, car or no car. If you don’t have enough to hold him, cut him loose. I don’t want any more goddamn harassment lawsuits.”

Two hours later, Rossi and Wheeler went back to the interrogation room. Norris was standing in front of the two-way mirror, cupping his hands around his eyes, staring at the glass. He turned around when the door opened.

“You guys get off watching me sitting in here, scratching my nuts waiting for somebody to tell me what the hell I’m doing here?”

“Sit down, Mr. Norris,” Rossi said.

“I’m not doing shit until you tell me what’s going on.”

“What’s going on is that you are going to sit down and answer our questions.”

“Maybe I should call my lawyer first.”

“That’s your right at any time, but it would sure make me wonder why you’d think you need a lawyer before you even know what we want to talk to you about. Wouldn’t that make you wonder, Detective Wheeler?”

“Sure would, unless Mr. Norris is hiding something.”

Norris raised both hands above his waist, palms out. “Hey, I’m not hiding anything. You guys wake me up at the crack of dawn and drag me down here, leave me sitting here for half the morning. . anybody would want to know what it’s all about. Doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything, ’cause I don’t have anything to hide.”

“Good,” Rossi said. “So there’s no reason you can’t sit down and answer our questions.”

Norris shrugged and took a seat. “Fire away.”