Apex Predator (11 page)

And now that they were standing in front of the man, Mullins and Grady stole a sideways glance at each other and could understand what they had read. There was nothing remarkable about the guy, he looked nice enough, he was clean cut and professional, not a wrinkle on his clothes, but there was something that made it seem like he was playing a role, like he had the conversation and the exchange already planned out.

The three men walked into the living room. Donald sat on the love seat and the two detectives sat on the sofa. Grady opened his briefcase and pulled out a file. He laid it on the coffee table, opened it and brought out the pictures of the missing girls. Donald looked at all of them and lingered on the pictures of Emily and Mia and his face softened.

Grady picked up on it, “Do you recognize any of these girls, Mr. Riche?”

Donald looked up at him, “Of course, you guys know I watched Mia and Emily for Nancy. I am just sick about all of this. I don’t know how to console Nancy and I just don’t know how to go about helping.”

Mullins picked it up from there, “Do you recognize any of these other girls.”

Riche looked at him, puzzled, “No, I’ve never seen any of them.”

Mullins went on, “I think the best place to start is how you came about watching the girls for Nancy Hunt, how you came to meet them.”

Donald went into the story about the girls in the office going to
The Lion King
and Nancy being disappointed and how he had wanted to help her out. Mullins wrote down some notes.

Grady interjected, “So you didn’t have any plans of your own and you wanted to help Nancy?”

Donald answered, “That’s pretty much how it went.”

Mullins asked, “Had you watched Mia and Emily before?”

Donald shook his head, “No, in fact that was the first time I met Mia, at the office with Nancy.”

“And what about Emily?”

Donald responded without hesitating, “I didn’t meet her until I got to Nancy’s house.”

Without having to compare notes, the two detectives could tell this guy had his story straight and that he was well within his comfort zone, which is exactly where they wanted him, comfortable. Now, also without having to coordinate, they knew it was time to start throwing this guy a couple of curve balls.

Grady started it, his tone changed a bit and his body language also shifted. He moved closer to Riche, “So you own a van?”

Riche was a bit puzzled, “Yes, yes I do.”

“What kind of van is it?”

Riche answered, “It’s a 2002 Ford.”

Grady pressed on, “What do you use the van for?”

Riche was a bit taken aback, “What do you mean what do I use it for? I use it for transportation.”

Grady smiled, “I would imagine that, but you know, when someone owns a van, they usually have things they need to transport.”

Riche now had a questioning look on his face and the veneer of control was starting to crack, “I don’t have anything to transport. I just bought the van because it made it easier to move from college and things like that.”

Mullins interjected seamlessly, taking on the ‘good cop’ role so subtly and smoothly, Riche never saw it, “I totally understand. I used to have one of those old VW buses. I went everywhere in it. It sure was convenient.”

Donald took the lifeline, “Exactly, so you know.”

Mullins nodded, “Sure I do, I brought home my clothes, my furniture, you know, all my college stuff. What do you use yours for?”

Donald continued, “Well, the same things, you know, clothes, furniture, that kind of thing.”

Grady watched the exchange with a detective’s eyes. He noticed how Riche got flustered at the question, how his pupils dilated and his palms left wet marks on the table.

He had to be careful, though. Any subject being interrogated by the police was apt to get nervous, and if this guy was a promising lead, they had to tread on eggshells.

Grady softened up a bit, “So you just use it to haul your stuff around, is that it?”

Donald nodded, “Exactly. Just whatever I need it for.”

Mullins and Grady were taking notes and, as was often the case with persons of interest, it is something they say on their own that makes them even more interesting.

It was no different with Donald Riche, “Sometimes I go up the coast and look for antiques. There really are some hidden treasures up there.”

Without looking up from their pads, Mullins and Grady paused for just a beat and glanced sideways at each other.

Without deciding which one was going to take the opening, Grady stepped up, “Do you deal in antiques, Donald, you don’t mind if I call you Donald?”

Donald thought about it and realized they probably already knew the answer to that, “No, I don’t. I go looking mostly for myself.”

Mullins and Grady then did look up from their pads and looked around the apartment. They looked at each other and then at Donald.

Now it was Mullins that asked the question, “Donald, man, I got to tell you that coming in here, I don’t know what the name of this type of decoration is, but what I do know is that I don’t see any antiques anywhere in here.”

Donald looked around. He hadn’t thought about that when he said it. He looked at the walls, at the furniture all around and at the furniture they were sitting on. And then a palpable change came over him.

Grady and Mullins saw it immediately. The ready smile, that open demeanor, the helpful and sensitive eyes were all gone. His body language also changed.

He moved farther from the detectives, he sat up straight and he looked at them with a cold and determined look, “Detectives, I don’t like the way this conversation is going. I invited you into my home. I told you both on the phone that I would like to help you any way that I could, and what I think I’m getting is a bunch of questions that don’t have to do with the girls or trying to get them back and I don’t like how this is going.”

Grady was kicking himself; he might have come at him too quick. He should have eased into it a bit. Mullins had also been a bit surprised at how quickly Grady had tried to throw Riche off, but here it was.

Mullins had to figure out a way to bring his guard down again, if it could be done. “Mr. Riche, there’s no reason to get upset, we’re just trying to think of anything that might help us. You can understand that, right?”

Mullins was trying to make him a partner in the search, someone that they were looking to for help. If they were right about this guy, it would definitely appeal to his ego.

Riche had flipped, though. He now understood he wasn’t just one of dozens of other people they were interviewing, they had put him on a short list of possible suspects.

Once he made that determination, he stopped the façade and knew he had to do whatever he needed to do in order to protect himself, to protect his work really. “Gentlemen, I appreciate what you are trying to do and as I told both of you, I am more than willing to help in any way that I can. I met the girls Friday just over one week ago at Nancy Hunt’s house.

“I felt I was doing Nancy a favor because she really wanted to go to the theater with the rest of the girls. I showed up at her apartment at the time she asked me to with DVDs for the girls. They watched movies in Nancy’s room and I watched movies out in the living room. Nancy came home at around eleven thirty, the girls were asleep on her bed and that was it.

“I really don’t have anything else to say to you gentlemen that I think would be useful to your investigation, so if there’s nothing else, I really have some things I need to get working on.” Mullins and Grady closed their notebooks.

While Mullins was getting ready to take his leave, Grady wasn’t quite ready to just get up and leave, “Mr. Riche, I understand what you are saying, but I want you to understand something also. Nine little girls are missing. Nine families are going crazy trying to figure out what happened to them. Mia and Emily were taken within a day of each other. They were the only two girls taken who knew each other, which means that whoever took them had to have seen them together or spent time with them together.

“You see, we don’t believe in coincidences like that. And maybe it is just really bad luck that it was you, but as you have quite eloquently explained to us, you both saw and spent time with both girls the week before they went missing. So yeah, we’re going to ask you and anyone else who might have also been with them
whatever
we need to ask in order to eliminate them as a suspect or to figure out anything that might help us. We’re going to ask it, whether it makes you uncomfortable or not.”

Mullins could see this going sideways quickly and tried to pull it back, knowing it was probably too late. “Mr. Riche, we’re asking these types of questions of everyone that was with the girls. It’s nothing against you personally.”

Riche didn’t break eye contact with Grady and his look was decidedly different than that with which he had welcomed them.

His eyes were hooded and cold now and he was in full defense mode, “Of course, I’m sure all the people you’ve talked to own vans and are single males and babysat the girls the Friday before the week they were taken.”

He stood up and stretched out his hand, “Well, detectives, as I said, there really isn’t anything else to say. If you have anything else to ask, I will give you the name of my attorney and you can deal with him directly.”

Grady and Mullins both stood up and shook his hand. Riche escorted them to the door, opened it and waited for them to leave.

On his way out, Grady stopped midway out the door, “We’ll be waiting for your lawyer’s information.”

Just before continuing to leave the apartment, Grady paused again, “Mr. Riche, you rent a warehouse in an industrial area near the Brooklyn Bridge, right? Probably to keep all those antiques and all…”

Riche kept his expression neutral, “Good evening, gentlemen, you’ll hear from my attorney.”

He closed the door behind them and then turned to lean his back against it. He put his head in his hands and tried to pull himself together. He had made a mistake and he knew it. He shouldn’t have taken Mia and Emily; they were too easy to relate to each other.

No matter, too late to take it back. The only thing he was really worried about was the fact that he might not get to finish his work the way he wanted to. Not the thought of prison, the death penalty or any other possible punishments, it was just the work that concerned him.

He would have to hire a lawyer and not say a thing and, who knew, it may all just blow over. They had absolutely nothing other than the fact that he had met the girls. No physical evidence, nothing.

As he thought about all this, Trinity started to feel more confident and he actually began to feel something new, a new sense of pride that he had completed the work he had in the midst of forces that were stacked up against him.

He did his work by himself, and all the forces against him had many men and resources to pit against him. He was equal to the task; he had been equal to the task all along. Now it was time to find the best lawyer he could find.

Mullins and Grady walked to the elevator without talking and without looking at each other.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, Mullins started, “Bob, I know what…”

Grady turned to face him, shaking his head with a sardonic smile on his face. “He did it. The son of a bitch did it.”

Mullins was already shaking his head, “C’mon, you can’t make those kinds…”

Grady pushed the stop button on the elevator and looked at Mullins square in the eye, “Goddamnit, Mark, I know the protocol and I know what we have, which isn’t shit, but you know that motherfucker took those girls. Nobody else we have interviewed, none of the 36 possibles have even come close.

“Did you see how he got when we asked about the van? Did you get a look at his apartment? We’ve both been doing this long enough, and even though I will never admit to this conversation outside of this elevator, you and I know this is our guy. Now we just have to build something to take to the DA.”

He pulled the stop button. On the way down, Mullins said to Grady, “We have to figure out how to get a search warrant for that van and for that warehouse.”

Grady hung his head and nodded, “I know, and any judge will laugh us out of his chambers with what we have so far.” They stood next to each other without saying anything for a few seconds.

It was Mullins who broke the silence, “You know, I was just thinking this might be a piece of news we could share with Steven Loomis.”

Grady looked at him, and Mullins went on, “I mean, he does have resources and he’s not bound by any of those probable cause, search warrant tie-ups we’re bound by. He’s a citizen.”

Grady was smiling, “And you’re the one that wanted to hold out on him.”

Mullins chuckled as they got to the ground floor and walked out of the elevator. “Well, you do this shit long enough and you take whatever you can, whatever way you can get it.”

As they exited the building, Grady stopped and faced Mullins. “Seriously, we share what we have, including Riche as part of the investigation, and we let him take it from there. It can’t look like we’re getting this guy to do our dirty work for us.”

Mullins nodded, “I got it. Do you really think Loomis would just go barreling in? No, he’ll take it nice and slow and will be really meticulous about it.”

Grady continued walking, “Yeah, now we just need to coordinate with the rest of the task force and start spinning a story the Garcia kid can put down on paper.”

They walked without talking for a couple of blocks then Mullins said, “I like that kid. He’s no bullshit and he doesn’t go for the tabloid angle.”

Grady agreed, “Yup, so let’s work something up with the public information office and get it ready.”

Loomis met Grady at a coffee shop on 5th avenue. Grady was already sitting in a booth digging into a plate of eggs, bacon and hash browns.

Loomis sat down and the waitress came over, “Do you know what you want?”

Loomis answered, “I’ll just have a coffee.”

As soon as she left, Steven turned to Grady and quipped, “Do you always have breakfast like this?”