Unhinged (23 page)

It was my first time at the field office, although I had passed the large, brown four-story building often. An agent parked me in a room on the top floor, which was clearly used for interrogation. It wasn't dirty with cheap furniture as seen on television. It had a nice table and chairs from IKEA. I sat down, and the agent left the room, closing the door behind him. The games were beginning again. They were going to make me wait it out.

Forty-five minutes had passed when Dorrick and a young agent finally returned. “State your name for the record, please,” the slick, well-dressed agent said. He couldn't have been older than twenty-seven.

“Are you going to record all of this?” I asked, knowing they were. I looked at both Dorrick and the man with the salon haircut, the only two men in the all-white room. I wondered about the boyish agent sitting across from me. “You're spending a lot of time on this case, Deputy Director. Who's handling your job while you're here?” I took a sip of coffee that had been delivered earlier.

“It's none of your business, but the assistant director in charge is taking over my duties in Washington. Greenwood told me about your attack.” Dorrick stared at my forehead. “It was random, correct? Gene Lotz had nothing to do with it?”

“Do
you
know if it was random?”

“You got something to say, Detective? Let's get this on the record.”

“Where's Agent Wayne? He should be here. And who's this?”

“Agent Wayne has been reassigned. You will no longer have contact with him.”

“Is he in early retirement, too?” I was pissed off.

“You're going to be here a very long time if you don't cooperate,” Dorrick said. “It can go hard or easy. We ask the questions, and you answer them. I want details.”

“Details on what? You know the case as well as I do.”

“There're certain details we don't have,” he said lazily. It looked as if he were fighting sleep. “We want audio of all facts pertaining to this case. Agent Zachary here is the new agent in the investigation, and he needs to be brought up to speed. Now answer the questions, beginning with your name and address for the record.”

“My name is Decland Dupree. I'm a detective on the New Orleans Police Force. How's that?”

Dorrick settled into his chair, which I noticed was cushioned, unlike mine.
More FBI mind tricks,
I thought. He rested his hands on the table and intertwined them, keeping an unwavering gaze on me.

I gave solid details for an hour until I spoke of June, the first girl murdered.

“Did you ever have a relationship with her?” Dorrick asked mechanically.

I anxiously waited for the young agent to say something—anything. He was really creeping me out the way he sat there staring.

“We were kids. Did we play doctor? No. We shared our first kiss, but we were buddies.”

“Keep going.”

I lowered my eyelids and focused on my cup of coffee. I imagined someone behind the mirror freaking out if I spilled a drop on the spotless table, running in like a tennis ball boy to wipe it up. My tale went on from one side of my brain as I daydreamed in the other, thinking about how a baseball bat would look upside those bushy eyebrows.

“Do I need a lawyer?” I asked with my eyes closed.

“A lawyer?” Dorrick chirped, throwing his head back. “What do you think we're doing here? This information is for us to use as an investigative tool. Every statement is now officially on tape, and Agent Zachary and two others are witnesses.” He pointed at the mirrored window.

“What else, then?” I asked.

“After the first murders, did you think of Gene Lotz?”

“No. He was somebody I knew a long time ago. I hadn't thought about him in years. I had no reason to suspect Spider.”

“Even with Paulina's disappearance and presumed death so long ago and Gene Lotz's involvement?”

“He was never a serious suspect in that. He was questioned and cleared.”

“Boy, you're some detective,” Dorrick said, smiling for the first time. “You couldn't put two and two together if you had a calculator. You were once bald, just like the woman, and you don't think back to your girlfriend's sister who was abducted and probably killed while she was with you? While you were bald? Why not?”

“It just didn't click.” I paused, perhaps showing weakness, but I couldn't help it. I took a sip of lukewarm coffee.

Dorrick appeared pleased. “Tell me again how you first met Gene Lotz.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to tell this story. It seemed like he was stalling to keep me here, and I knew I wouldn't be able to leave until I went through the whole ball of yarn.

I spouted irrelevant facts that I hadn't thought of in years, just to try to make Dorrick yawn. He didn't.

My story went on. “He told me everyone called him Spider ‘cause when he was twelve he put a spider down a girl's shirt in the school yard, hoping she'd take it off. Apparently she was developing faster than the rest of the girls. I thought that was a funny story.”

“Did you wonder why he had taken such a shine to you when he snubbed the others at the grocery?” Dorrick asked, then turned to the glass mirror and pointed at his coffee cup. “More coffee?” he asked me.

“No,” I answered, feeling my bladder filling up. “I figured I was the only one cool enough to talk to. The guys who worked there were okay, but most of them were nerdy.”

“How did your relationship develop?”

“We got pretty chummy at work. We started this thing where we'd tell each other stories of what happened to us when we went out to bars. It became a ritual at the end of the night. He had some pretty bizarre tales, which now, of course, we know were lies.”

“Did he ever come on to you?” Dorrick asked, finally getting his coffee brought in to him by a man in a white shirt and a blue tie. He looked like a Mormon.

“We acted gay sometimes, but it was just for fun. He was never serious about it, and neither was I. We tried to hang out outside of work with my friends, with his friends. It never worked. No one in either clique liked the other.”

“This didn't agitate him?”

“I didn't get a sense of it. We went on as usual, telling our stories. Sometimes we'd all go out to Abby's Bar after work with our manager, Donny Packard. Spider and I could hang out there together because we had other Dixie-Mart people around us, including the female cashiers. We eventually had a pretty tight-knit group that used to go after work at least twice a week. I'm sure it was one of these nights that I told Spider about June. And then about a week after Paulina disappeared, Spider quit and I never saw him again.”

“Another interesting coincidence you couldn't pick up on. Tell me about Paulina, your girlfriend's sister. Go into greater detail about the night she disappeared, please.”

Paulina Wilder. I could recall every moment that I spent with her, and I really didn't want to share anything with this asshole. It was personal, and he expected me to talk about it for his precious files.

I closed my eyes and thought back, pulling up my memories of Paulina like a bucket of water from a well. I couldn't help but smile. “What do you want to know?”

“Why don't you start with when you went to work the day of her abduction?”

I kept my eyes closed and began to tell the same old story. The first time I told it had been to the police the day of the disappearance, then the detectives who took on the case. I told it to Paulina's parents (leaving out the sordid details), then to Jennifer after I got involved with her (again, omitting certain parts), and then the same detectives one month later when they couldn't find anything. I had told it so many times I had it memorized.

“Saturday I pulled into the Dixie-Mart parking lot, taking the farthest available space from the front entrance next to Spider's car. He had told me—with a smile, mind you—that his mom saved up the money to buy it from whoring. I never did know what to make of comments like that.

“It was June—the month—and it felt like it had taken forever for Saturday to arrive. It was only the second time I was seeing Paulina, but here it was, beautiful, warm, and sunny. I wasn't much on relationships, but I wanted this one to happen. She had model looks. A girl that young wouldn't stay in a relationship for too long, but I wanted to enjoy it while it lasted. She was only sixteen, but I didn't care.

“That night flew by in an instant. I went up to the registers to say hi to Paulina. She was still struggling as a cashier. The store closed, and Donny Packard offered everyone a beer when they finished cleaning up. Paulina drank one, too. By the time everything was done and everyone was punching out, it was 12:30 a.m. Donny told us he was going to go home instead of meeting us at the bar, and the rest of us decided to get some beer and sit in the parking lot.

“There was Richie, Jason, Paul, Spider, Paulina, and me. I went and bought some beer, while the guys drove up to the store entrance so we could listen to some music.

“As we sat there, Spider tried to rile Paulina up. He kept asking her about the night before when I drove her home and what we did together. I remember there was something in his tone I didn't like, but Paulina played along. She didn't say much, leaving everything to his imagination.”

To my surprise, Agent Zachary finally spoke up. “What specifically did he ask?” His voice had a tinge of California surfer dude.

“He started off with innocent questions. Did we like each other? Did we kiss? Then he asked if I felt her up, which was a little out of line, but if you knew Spider, you knew to expect it. He asked if she felt my bone and if I lit her up. Some people can get away with that if you like them, but nobody there liked him but me. By that point, Paulina was red in the face, and I think he knew to stop.”

Agent Zachary nodded and looked at Dorrick, who turned back to me, indicating I should continue.

“We were running out of beer, so I told everyone I was going around to the back of the store to get a case I had stashed near the Dumpster. I did that once in a while when I knew we were going to be drinking in the parking lot.

When I got up to go, Paulina volunteered to join me as I hoped she would. We started walking, and Spider got a phone call and said he had to leave. He said he had a deal brewing. The police found out later that he had no call at that time. He admitted to making his phone ring so he could have an excuse to leave early. They did find out that there was one call on his phone later that night. He had called the manager to see if he could work another shift the next day. Spider loved working as many hours as he could, so it wasn't unusual.

“Anyway, I held Paulina's hand as we walked between the fence and the back of the store. It was dark in spots and well lit in others. We got to the Dumpster and found the case of beer with a half-melted bag of ice on top.”

“For a future cop, you took some chances, didn't you?” Dorrick asked.

I shook my head and smiled. “I was young. They were perks. No one cared anyway as long as we made inventory.”

“What are your perks for being a detective?” Dorrick asked smugly.

I ignored him and spoke to Agent Zachary as if we were at lunch. “We kissed by the Dumpster. The next thing I knew, it was morning. I was lying near the Dumpster, the back of my head was bleeding, and there was no sign of Paulina. Everyone else had gone home, thinking we went somewhere to do it.”

Dorrick stood and cracked his knuckles. “Okay. I think it's time to take fifteen. I need to make some calls. There's a shitter at the end of the hall if you need it. The coffeemaker is one door over to your right. Help yourself, Detective.”

I got up and stretched, waking the muscles in my legs and back. It was almost 11:00 a.m. already, and I had been here two hours going over accounts that were already told, rehashed, typed up, and recorded. Still, having to piss, I walked out of the room to go find the “shitter,” as Dorrick had eloquently called it.

The bureau's restroom was as clean as the interrogation room. Everything was new and shiny. The whole organization was so dull I could shit, and I was in the right room for it.

I washed my hands and looked at my cleanly shaven face in the mirror. I moved in for a closer look to see just how bloodshot my eyes were. Upon seeing the red veins around my green eyes, I actually thought of Christmas.

I made full use of my time by stretching, bending at the waist, and twisting my back, so my vertebrae cracked like dry branches. I needed to start working out again.

Ron came to mind and how peculiar it was that he would accept an early retirement package when he loved this job—and then to quit right in the middle of a case? Something was wrong. And now Agent Wayne was gone, and Zachary, a young, inexperienced agent, was taking his place. I felt like Jim Garrison in
JFK.

Putting my suspicions into a little box in my head to be opened again later, I arrived back at the interrogation room, and my ass welcomed the cold seat, ready for the second round.

Agent Zachary looked as if he had never moved, except to get a new cup of coffee. I figured his training at Quantico kept him from playing drums on the table with his fingers or tapping his foot on the floor.

Dorrick came back in, closed the door, and sat down with a fresh cup of coffee that was still steaming. He appeared to be ready for a card game. I imagined, like Ron, that caffeine no longer had an effect on him. He clasped his hands and rested them on the table again. “Tell us about the second double homicide.”