“Got some good news for you, Agent Malone. Patrol found Stuart Crowell.”
Sean straightened in his chair.
“Apparently, he ran after spotting them. Had burglary tools on him too. They got him, though. Should be pulling into the sally port about now.” Montgomery hitched a thumb toward the hall. “Detective Lynch is already heading to booking. He asked me to tell you to meet him there.”
That got Sean moving.
As he got to his feet, Montgomery held out a flat plastic card. “The sheriff told me to give you this. It’ll unlock most of the department doors, so you don’t have to keep asking one of us. He said you can lock this door, too, if you want. The system will record any entries.”
Sean slipped the electronic passkey into his pocket. “Appreciate it. How do I get to booking?”
“End of the hall, down the stairs, then right and a quick left. You’ll see the sign.”
Before leaving, Sean locked his laptop after making sure the database search kept running in the background. It felt excessive inside a sheriff’s department, but caution had become second nature. Until they found the source of the leak, trust only went so far. He gave the conference room one last glance—the victim files spread across the table, timelines scrawled on the whiteboard, and photographs pinned in orderly rows—then locked the door behind him.
The murmur of voices and ringing phones followed him downstairs. By the time he reached booking, the air carried the stale scent of old coffee and faint body odor drifting from the holding cells. He’d spent enough time in police stations to know that smell never disappeared, no matter how often the place was cleaned.
Brad and a booking sergeant stood waiting near the processing counter when the heavy sally port door rumbled open. Moments later, two mud-splattered patrol deputies marched in with their prisoner between them.
Stuart Crowell was exactly the kind of small-time troublemaker Sean had expected—thin, pale, clothes hanging off him in damp, filthy folds. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and mud caked him from boots to hairline.
The deputies escorting him were in even worse shape.
The sergeant took one glance at the trio and barked out a laugh. “I can’t wait to hear this one. What the hell happened?”
Neither deputy answered until they’d shoved Crowell into a holding cage and removed the handcuffs. They stepped out and let the metal door clang shut behind them.
The older of the two jerked his chin toward the prisoner. “We spotted this genius coming out of an alley off King Street. As soon as he saw us, he bolted toward the high school. We caught him on the football field, which, thanks to a busted sprinkler line, was one giant mud pit.” He looked down at his ruined uniform pants, then at his partner’s. “So now Crowell’s getting resisting added to the list.”
The other deputy snorted at his partner. “Johnson, man, I know you’re not big on cursing—which in this line of work makes you a rare breed—but at a time like this, feel free to go off on the guy.”
Everyone laughed except Crowell, who glared through the bars, muddy snot dripping from the end of his nose as if everyone else was somehow to blame for how his morning had gone to hell.
Still grinning, the sergeant said, “You two go get cleaned up and into fresh uniforms before you do anything else. The detectives want to talk to him first anyway.”
Crowell spoke for the first time since entering the station. “Hey, what about me? Don’t I get to clean up too? I’m freezing. This is false arrest. I know my rights!”
The two arresting deputies and the sergeant barked in unison, “Shut up!”
Johnson handed the sergeant a plastic bag containing a wallet, a pack of cigarettes, and a few other items. “Here’s his personal property. The burglary tools we found on him will be logged as evidence.”
“Hey, that’s my stuff,” Crowell whined. “You can’t take my stuff. I have rights, you know.”
Sean had dealt with enough petty criminals to know that complaining was always part of the routine. Sure enough, everyone in the booking area snapped, “Shut up!”
Their suspect muttered under his breath but had enough sense to keep quiet after that.
Chapter Eight
Sean stood beside Brad in the interrogation room and studied Stuart Crowell across the scarred metal table.
The man had been given a chance to clean up, but it hadn’t done much good. Dried mud still clung to his hairline and flaked from his clothes onto the chair, tabletop, and floor with every twitch. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, he looked less like a murder suspect and more like something dragged out of a drainage ditch.
Sean had to bite back a laugh as Crowell scraped at the dirt packed beneath his fingernails. It was a hopeless effort. Short of a pressure washer, nothing was getting that mess off him.
The room stayed silent.
The sharp scent of disinfectant lingered in the stale air, and through the small glass pane in the metal door came the muted ring of a phone from somewhere beyond the interrogation room.
