‘Your family?’
The alteration in Parker was momentary but profound. The rage was gone, and only grief remained in its place.
‘Yes.’
‘Did something happen to them?’
No reply.
‘I asked you a question,’ said Griffin.
With that, the rage returned. It was bridled, but only barely.
‘I’m done answering your questions,’ said Parker. ‘Arrest me, or give me back my wallet and let me be done with your county, your town, and your dead girls.’
Griffin didn’t surrender the wallet.
‘Dead girls,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You mentioned dead girls. Patricia Hartley was just one girl.’
Parker stared at him, and Griffin stared back.
‘Officer Naylor,’ said Griffin, ‘arrest Mr Parker for obstruction of justice. And be sure to read him his rights.’
4
Griffin let Naylor take care of searching and cuffing Parker, and placing him in the back of the patrol car. Parker didn’t try to resist or make any objection to his treatment, which confirmed to Griffin that the man was familiar with the mechanics of the process. He drove Parker to the station house in silence, Naylor following in his own vehicle, and there relieved the prisoner of his belt, shoelaces, wallet, and watch before placing him in a holding cell for the night. He figured Parker had eaten, even if the size of the portions at Boyd’s had defeated him, but he did offer him a cup of coffee, which was declined. By then Kel Knight had arrived to take over the night shift, and the fourth full-time officer, Lorrie Colson, had returned from a domestic disturbance call. One of them would have to be at the station at all times while Parker remained in custody, but Naylor lived only a block away, and said he would be willing to pull on a coat and boots to provide cover if the need arose.
Griffin took Kel Knight aside once Parker was safely behind bars. Knight was a rawboned, balding man who had never been known to raise his voice above conversational levels, and had yet to fire a weapon at anything other than a range target during his eighteen years in law enforcement, first up in Clay County, then down in Cargill. He had come back to this, his hometown, to care for his ailing parents, both of whom died within months of his return, which didn’t say much for his abilities as a nurse, although admittedly they were already circling the drain, by the time Knight arrived.
He had served in Vietnam, which might have explained his reluctance to shoot at anyone again, Kel Knight having endured a superfluity of carnage in Southeast Asia, and thus exhausted his interest in the taking of lives, Asian or otherwise. Also, like many servicemen from that conflict, he retained no hostility toward his former enemies. When more than twenty-five thousand South Vietnamese men, women, and children were settled at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, Knight was among those who tore down the GOOKS GO HOME signs that began to sprout like toadstools in the vicinity of the base. He had no time for those that professed hatred toward the refugees, the ones that whispered of leprosy and venereal disease, and complained about the incomprehensibility of the newcomers’ language, the smell of their food, and the undoubted criminal aspect of their character, these Russos and Mullers and Reillys, these Nowaks and Campbells and Karlssons, each themselves only a generation or two removed from the immigrant ships, and whose parents and grandparents had been forced to endure similar slurs in this once strange land.
If Knight had a flaw, it lay in the asceticism of his mien. He didn’t drink, smoked only a pipe, and had never sworn within earshot of Griffin or, quite possibly, anyone else. He was a father to four teenage boys, which meant he must have had carnal relations with his wife at least four times, but it wasn’t clear that he’d enjoyed the experience, or was in a hurry to revisit it now that his wife’s childbearing years were behind her. He was a hard man to get to know, and a harder man to like. But Griffin had done both, and was now as close to a friend as Kel Knight possessed.
‘What did this Parker do?’ Knight asked.
‘He irritated me,’ said Griffin.
‘If that was enough to put a man behind bars, half the town would be cluttering up our jail.’
‘God preserve me from your sensitivities. If it’s more amenable to you, his actions and behavior gave me grounds for reasonable suspicion, and I decided to place him under arrest until the nature of his character could be established. Does that sound better?’
‘It sounds better. You still haven’t told me what it means.’
‘He’s been asking questions about Patricia Hartley – Kevin says he was over by her old place earlier today, trying to establish where her people might have gone – but declined to elaborate on why.’
Knight didn’t bite. He’d made clear his position on Patricia Hartley in the past, and no good could come from going over the same ground again, not with his boss in the kind of mood that had already seen him lock up one person for invoking her name.
Griffin showed him Parker’s driver’s license.
‘New York,’ said Knight. ‘Huh. You figure him for a reporter?’
‘He’s no reporter. And why would a New York reporter be interested in a dead black girl from Burdon County, Arkansas? She barely made the papers out of Little Rock.’
‘Then what is he?’
‘That remains to be seen.’
Griffin glanced back at the cells through the plexiglass screen in the door. Parker was sitting against a wall with his eyes closed. Griffin could almost sense him listening, even though there was no way their voices could have carried to him, so quietly were they speaking.
‘You’re confident that a night in the guest suite might lead to an improvement in his attitude?’ said Knight.
‘Even if it doesn’t, it’ll give us time to find out more about him.’
‘Has he asked for a lawyer?’
‘He hasn’t asked for anything at all.’ Griffin picked up his hat. ‘It’s already after ten in New York, so it’s unlikely we’ll get much joy from there until tomorrow, which gives us an excuse to let him cool his heels. You find yourself with a few free minutes, run him through the databases, but morning should suffice.’
Kel Knight wasn’t any more competent than Griffin when it came to computers, a fact he continued to do his best to conceal, even though it was common knowledge to all. Each man carefully avoided calling the other on his ignorance, and thus contributed to the smooth running of the department.
‘Morning it is, then,’ said Knight.
‘He’s not going anywhere,’ said Griffin, ‘and I’ve already put in a longer day than any sane man should.’
He left Knight and Colson to it and headed to the parking lot. Kevin Naylor was leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette. He wasn’t in uniform, so Griffin couldn’t really discipline him for it, but he’d still have preferred the boy to resist the urge. Griffin checked his watch. If he were lucky, his wife would have left his dinner in the oven. If not, she’d have fed it to the dog. Then again, if she’d made meatloaf, it was the dog that could consider itself unlucky.
Naylor watched him approach.
‘Chief.’
‘Kevin.’
He could see that Naylor was troubled, and he knew by what: the same itch that was bothering Kel Knight – and bothering Griffin, too, truth be told, although he chose to scratch it only in private.