Hiding Place (9781101606759) (36 page)

“Rough going in there?” he asked when she reached his desk.

Janet nodded.

“Here,” he said. “Sit.” He held out a chair, and Janet sat. When she was settled, he said, “That’s the most he’s talked to anybody since he’s been in here.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing,” she said.

“Can I get you some water or something?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“What did he tell you?” Stynes asked. “I don’t mean to be so blunt about it, but if he told you something I need to know about your brother’s case, then I’d like to hear it.”

“He told me a lot of things,” Janet said. “I don’t know how much is relevant to you. I’m still trying to get my mind around it all.”

Stynes took a seat in the chair opposite Janet. He needed to
tell her a few things before she left the station. He hoped that what he had to tell her would be seen as good news and go some of the way toward mitigating whatever she experienced with Steven Kollman. He decided not to press her on the conversation with Steven, at least not yet. He had other things to tend to, so he decided to give her time to decompress.

“I’ve been working on something about your brother’s case,” Stynes said. “This morning I found out about a witness who will also testify to seeing Ray Bower in the woods that day.”

Janet looked up, her face alert.

“I can’t reveal much more than that, but I can say that his testimony pretty strongly corroborates what Michael Bower has told you. It’s someone who was in the park on the day Justin died, someone who was unwilling to come forward in the past but will now. We’re not at the point of filing charges yet, but we’ve been in touch with Ray Bower’s attorney. Apparently, Ray is feeling better, but he’s still in the hospital, and soon we’re going to be able to speak to him and ask him some of these questions.”

Stynes stopped talking. He’d already said too much about the case. He chose to tell Janet only because…because things with her and the Mannings just seemed different. After twenty-five years and all the false hopes, they deserved to know something definitive. And he wanted to give that to them—to her—if he could.

But he couldn’t read Janet. Her face didn’t change. Maybe it was the encounter with Kollman or maybe it was the impact of his words, but she didn’t seem to be fully processing what he was saying to her. He had expected a more substantial response. Grief, elation, regret—something.

“Michael,” she said.

“Michael?”

Her eyes cleared a little. “Does he know? Michael.”

“I was going to ask you about that,” Stynes said. “We want him to come in and give a statement as well, but he’s nowhere to be found. Still. Even his mother hasn’t heard from him.”

“It’s weird,” she said.

“What is?”

“He was so determined to see Ray punished. Why would he leave now?”

“Maybe it’s too hard for him.”

Stynes saw the hurt on her face—and the fear, the fear that Michael left without saying good-bye. His paternal instincts toward Janet kicked in. He made a silent wish that she’d find someone to treat her decently before too long. And if Michael Bower served as a continuing source of pain or anxiety in her life, then he wished he would finally stay away. He just needed him to make that statement—and if Ray Bower felt like unburdening his soul without a trial, he wouldn’t even need that much.

“Well, I have another stop to make before I’m able to go to the hospital,” he said. “I do want to talk to you more about what you discussed with Steven Kollman. We’re going forward with the charges against him as well.” Stynes stood. “Do you need a ride somewhere?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine. I can drive.”

“Are you sure? I can get an officer to give you a lift.”

The steel returned to Janet’s posture. She stood up, pushed her shoulders back. “Really, Detective,” she said. “I’m doing just fine.”

Stynes drove across the tracks into East. While he bounced over the uneven railroad ties and into the neighborhood that didn’t
want him, he thought about what he was about to do. He may have given a measure of false hope to Janet Manning by telling her about Ray Bower before any confession or plea agreement had been struck. But it was a calculated risk. Stynes weighed her years of frustration against the possibility that he’d spoken too soon about a suspect in the case. What he couldn’t be sure of anymore, what he really couldn’t decide no matter how much he thought about it, was who had suffered more: Dante Rogers or the Mannings? Which was worse: losing a loved one and spending a life not knowing how it happened? Or spending the prime of your life incarcerated for a crime you didn’t commit?

Stynes decided the answer was above his pay grade. All he knew with any certainty was that two halves of the equation, the people suffering over the years as the result of the same murder, could easily make a case that he was to blame for it all. If he’d investigated more thoroughly, if he’d listened to his gut, if he’d stood up to Reynolds.
If, if, if…

So he really didn’t care about jumping the gun. He needed to tell someone like Janet Manning and someone like Dante a little bit of good news, no matter how tenuous it might be.

The Reverend Fred laughed when Stynes came through the door of the church office. He acted like he had just heard a particularly salty joke. He clapped his hands a couple of times.

“Well, well,” he said. “The great white hunter. What are you here for? Trying to meet your quota of brothers to arrest?”

“I’m here to see Dante. Is he here?”

“Oh, he’s here,” Fred said. “I don’t know if he wants to talk to you.”

Stynes started down the hallway to the literature room.

“I got an interesting phone call today,” Fred said. “A reporter.”

Stynes turned around. “From the
Ledger
?”

“Our hometown paper,” Fred said. “Her name’s…Katie something. Katie—”

“Kate Grossman.”

“That’s it. Grossman. She sounded very…starched,” Fred said. “You know, they’re only hiring white girls over there.”

“What did she want?” Stynes asked, although he suspected he knew.

“She’s just like you. She wanted to talk to Dante. I told her he wasn’t taking calls at the moment, but I represented his interests if she wanted to run something by me. So she did. And guess what she told me?”

Stynes didn’t answer but wished he could slap the knowing smirk off the Reverend Fred’s face.

“She told me the police had a new witness come forward in the Justin Manning case,” Fred said. “One who might just be able to exonerate Dante.”

“She can’t know everything.”

“I guess she knows enough,” Fred said. “Of course, I just listened mostly. Except I did say that if it were up to me to give good counsel to a brother like Dante, I would suggest he hire a civil rights attorney and take the city of Dove Point and the Dove Point Police and all the investigators who worked the case to court for twenty-two years of pain and suffering at the hands of our criminal injustice system. That’s what I told her I’d do, Detective.”

“I’m not sure I’d disagree with you about that, Reverend,” Stynes said.

For a moment, Stynes found joy in the surprised look on the Reverend Fred’s face. If he’d expected a fight, Stynes wasn’t going to give him one. And Stynes couldn’t blame Dante if he did try to recoup what he’d lost as a result of his years in prison.

“What does Dante think of all this?” Stynes asked.

It took a moment for Reverend Fred to respond, and while he held Stynes’s gaze, even more of his certainty slipped away. The Reverend Fred held a strong initial hand, but his lack of an immediate answer told Stynes something.

“We’re still working on that,” Fred said. “As you can imagine, it’s just a bit overwhelming for him after all this time of being treated like a pariah.”

“I guess you’ll have to keep working on him, won’t you?” Stynes asked.

“I will. Don’t forget I was a victim here as well.”

“You mean the money from your accounts?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry,” Stynes said. “Mr. Bower will answer for that if need be. We’re already checking to see if other clients of his were stolen from. I suspect they were.”

Reverend Fred leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. He nodded his head. Stynes took it for a gesture of appreciation.

“I’m going to go talk to Dante now,” Stynes said. “This is about him, remember?”

Dante sat at the same sagging folding table as before. Rather than stuffing envelopes, he was surrounded by file folders, and he seemed to be sorting them into stacks. One of the stacks stood so high on the end of the table that it looked like it could pitch over onto the floor at any moment. Dante didn’t look up. He kept shuffling the folders around, his lips moving as he did his work.

“Dante?”

He answered without looking up. “Yes, sir.”

“Do you mind holding off on your work for a minute?”

Dante stopped. He practically froze in place and still didn’t look up.

Stynes came farther into the room and pulled a chair out from the opposite side of the table. He sat down, feeling the uncomfortable metal dig into his back.

“I guess Reverend Fred told you what’s happening with the case.”

“He did.”

“Is there anything you want to say to me about it?” Stynes asked.

Dante swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing on his puffy neck. “I’m glad that family will have some peace.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

Dante shrugged. He picked up one of the folders and held it in his hand. He looked like he wanted to return to his filing, but he didn’t. He just held the folder in his lap, gently tapping it against his thigh.

“Dante, I want to tell you how sorry I am about your conviction. We made some mistakes during our investigation. We…There were witnesses, but it looks like their testimony was probably influenced by someone in a position of authority.”

“You mean those children.”

“That’s right. If we’d listened to what they said that day, right after Justin disappeared…”

“They were scared. Kids get scared.”

In his mind, Stynes had pictured the whole scene going another way. He had imagined feeling differently about everything he would say to Dante. He had hoped to speak to him and then feel a wave of relief and calm wash over his body and mind, a release from the burden of guilt he carried. But nothing like
that came. Instead, he looked at Dante, a broken middle-aged man, and understood the limits of his own words and actions to make any kind of significant difference in Dante’s life.

Stynes reached into his suit coat and brought out one of his business cards. He wrote his home phone number on the back of the card and handed it over.

“If there’s ever anything I can do to help,” he said. “If you need a job or anything, let me know.”

“Thank you.”

Dante tucked the card into the pocket of his jeans without reading it. He tapped the folder again.

“Okay, I’ll let you get back to your work.”

“Okay.”

“Dante?” Stynes said. “Why did you keep those newspaper clippings about Justin Manning in your room? Why were you interested in the case?”

Dante stared at the tabletop when he spoke. “I remembered that boy from the park. I saw him that day. I played with him, carried him on my shoulders and made him laugh. I could do that with some kids, make them laugh. After he disappeared and you all started asking me questions, I started keeping the newspaper stories. I just felt connected to the whole thing, I guess.” He paused, then went on. “I’m not saying I wanted to, you know, touch him that day. But I might have done it if I’d had the chance. It was a close call for me.”

“Why are you so calm, Dante? If someone put me in jail for something I didn’t do, I don’t know if I could control myself. You act like nothing happened.”

Dante didn’t answer, so Stynes stood up and moved toward the door. But before he left the room, Dante said, “Prison helped me a little.”

“What’s that?” Stynes said, turning back to the table where Dante sat.

“It helped me,” he said. “I found God there.”

“You can find God out here, too, Dante. You’re in a church.”

“I had desires back then.” He started shuffling the folders again and talked while he shuffled. “I had a desire for small children. Being in prison helped me with that.”

“Are you saying it cured you?” Stynes asked.

“God did. He healed me.”

“So you don’t have those desires anymore?”

Dante put his head down and kept working. He acted like Stynes had already left the room.

“You should get help, Dante. Counseling of some kind.”

“The Reverend Fred counsels me.”

“I mean a real counselor.” Stynes tried to correct himself. “The reverend is fine with the spiritual side of things, and I’m sure he’s been a good friend to you. But you have to believe me about this—I’ve seen other guys like you. Other guys with your…desires, let’s say. My experience is they tend not to go away.”

“Not without counseling?” Dante asked.

Never,
Stynes wanted to say.
For guys like you, they never go away.

But he didn’t say it.

“Just keep at it, okay, Dante? Keep fighting the good fight.”

Dante nodded and added the file in his hand to the tall stack, pushing it that much closer to toppling over.

Janet drove to Rose Bower’s house. She turned the air-con-ditioning off and rolled down the windows, letting fresh warm air into the car as she moved through town. She turned the car radio off as well. She didn’t want distractions. She didn’t want to hear happy music or sad news or anything really. Nothing except Michael’s voice, telling her he hadn’t been using her, that he hadn’t been trying to use Steven against her. She wanted to hear Michael say they weren’t just pawns as Steven had said.

She’d known him her whole life. She hoped she would get to the house and Michael would be there, opening the door to her. And they’d talk the whole thing through, the way they would have when they were kids. And she’d understand, and it would all make sense.

But when Rose Bower opened the door to the little house, Janet could tell by the look on her face—something between surprise and pity—that Michael wasn’t there.