CHAPTER TWENTY
Laura walked to the interview room – which was not exactly far away, given how small the precinct was. She’d even been able to watch the locals walking Mendez over to it, which was why she had no need to ask where he was. She walked in and sat down in front of the kid, who looked downright awful: sweating, pale, wide-eyed, and jumpy. He looked at her with huge brown eyes under a head of curly hair, like a puppy begging not to be kicked.
“Jonas Mendez,” Laura said, figuring it was best to jump right in. “Where were you yesterday evening?”
“At the skate park down by the beach,” Jonas said, right away. “With my friends. I didn’t do nothing. I swear I didn’t. I don’t know what this is all about – that crazy guy just tackled me!”
“Alright,” Laura said, holding up a soothing hand to interrupt his babbling. She took a piece of paper out of the file she’d carried in – the file of his own printed records – and turned it over to the blank space on the back. She pushed it across the table to him along with her pen. “Write down the names of your friends, so we can check up with them and confirm what times you were there.”
“It was all evening!” Jonas said. “I swear. I went there right after school, and we hung out until past midnight.”
“School?” Laura frowned. “Your record says you’re twenty-one.”
“I’m doing classes at the community college in the next town over,” Mendez explained. “I dropped out, but I went back.”
That made sense. Laura nodded. “Do you want to tell me about the fires?”
Mendez looked at his hands. He almost looked tearful. Like he was ashamed of what he was about to say. “I just…”
“Yes?” Laura prompted. She could see the kid wasn’t going to talk unless he was pushed.
“My mom had cancer,” he said, at last. “A few years ago. She didn’t make it. And I was just really… I just wanted to do something. I wanted to, like. I don’t know. Burn the world. But not really. I was just acting out. It wasn’t fair and I wanted to do something that wasn’t fair. And it was stupid, and I got in a lot of trouble, and I don’t do that anymore. But people around here don’t forget, and they still bring it up all the time.”
Laura studied him. It had come out in such a rush. All of that information at once, and it didn’t feel rehearsed or scripted to her. It felt like a kid who was scared and trying to express why he’d done something that people were never going to let him forget. Exactly what he said he was.
And he had an alibi.
“What about Saturday night?” Laura asked, just to be thorough.
“I work the night shift at the mall outside of town,” he said. “I was with the other guy on shift all night. We hung out in the security hut and played cards.”
That clinched it. All they had to do was verify both nights, and he was completely off the hook. He might have been able to find a friend to lie for him, or even one who was too high or drunk to remember him leaving but being at work all night was something else.
“Write down those names,” Laura said. “Your friends, and your coworker as well. Someone will be by in a minute to collect them all from you. Don’t lie or make something up, or you’ll be in a lot more trouble than you’ve ever been in, got it?”
Mendez nodded miserably, snatching the pen up quickly and starting to scratch out a list of names as though his life depended on it.
Laura walked out and back into the main area of the precinct, where she could see Agent Won sitting on the side of the desk, surrounded by a few officers like before. They were all grinning and talking, and she saw one of them slap him on the side of the arm as she approached. Congratulating him. They all thought the case was solved.
“Right,” she said, walking up to them and grabbing their attention quickly with the loud word. “You, I need you to go in there and take the list of names Mendez is writing down. You’re going to follow up with each of them and see what they say about where he was last night, make sure his alibi stacks up. And you, you’re going to release him.” She pointed at two of the cops at random – Mandy, she thought, and Frank, though she still wasn’t clear exactly on who was who.
“What?” Agent Won gaped, staring at her. “But he’s our suspect!”
“Did you not hear me say alibi?” Laura half-growled. “The poor kid is terrified, and he obviously has nothing to do with this case.”
Agent Won shot her a furious look. The two cops Laura had given instructions to quickly shuffled away, like they didn’t want to hang around to hear any more. The third shot an anxious look around and then scuttled to a nearby desk. A wise choice, Laura thought.
“Can I talk to you outside?” Agent Won asked stiffly, standing up from the desk and buttoning up his suit jacket.
Laura sighed and rolled her eyes, but she led him out of the precinct all the same. It was darkening outside, almost completely night, the last traces of the sun’s rays lingering just at the horizon. It was too late for this kind of thing. They had another death potentially on their hands tonight, and he wanted to act like a child. To sulk.
Laura was going to have to nip this in the bud, once and for all.
“Why did you do that?” Agent Won hissed, now that they were alone, outside in front of the precinct with the parking lot ahead of them. “Why did you have to show me up in front of them?”
“Show you up?” Laura scoffed. “This isn’t high school, and I’m not your mother. You were wrong. This kid has an alibi – and if you’d taken more than a moment to talk to him rather than sitting around congratulating yourself, you’d have known that.”
“I know it’s not high school!” Agent Won blew up, his hair falling out of its neat style as he shook his head angrily. “You undermined me in front of them! We’re supposed to be leading this investigation, and you made me look like some stupid kid!”
Laura pointed a finger towards his chest, getting closer to him than she needed to. The frustration, the anger at having to give up her plans, at having to find another body, at not solving what should have been a simpler case than this was getting under her skin. And Agent Won, who was not Nate and never would be Nate, was already right in the firing line. Getting in her face had been a mistake. Now, she was going to get in his.
“I am supposed to be leading this investigation,” Laura snapped. “You are supposed to be following my lead and doing as you’re told. You have no experience with this kind of case, you have no gut instinct, no investigative skills to speak of. You’re supposed to be learning from me, and you’re trying to take over as though you know exactly what you’re doing. Well, you don’t!”
“I have investigative skills!” Agent Won retorted, screwing his face up in anger. “I found that lead and brought him in! And I’ve been helping this whole time – you just don’t ever want to listen to me!”
“You brought in a suspect who was in a public place at the time of the last murder with a group of his friends,” Laura told him. “You want people to listen to you? That’s called respect, and you have to earn it. You shut up, you pay attention, and you listen to the people who actually know what they’re doing. You’re eager, and that’s good – but you let your head and your excitement get away from you, and that’s when you screw up!”
“So, I brought in a guy who turned out not to be the one – so what?” Agent Won said, folding his arms over his chest. “At least I’m doing something!”
“So, we just both wasted a hell of a lot of time looking in the wrong direction,” Laura told him. “So, all the local cops were just standing around talk to you and patting you on the back instead of continuing to work the case. So, our killer is out there right now probably taking his next victim – and we needed all of that time you just wasted to catch him and stop him. That’s so what!”
Agent Won blanched, shaking his head. “You can’t blame me for the killer striking again,” he said.
“Then who do I blame, Special Agent Won?” Laura asked, using his full title for effect. “We are here because the local police needed help. Because the people of this town needed help. It is our job to make sure that this killer gets caught and put away behind bars before he does any more damage. So, yes, I am going to blame you. And I am going to blame myself. Because no one else is going to solve this if we don’t – do you understand that?”
“But,” Agent Won said – but he couldn’t seem to think of anything else to follow up the word, and his voice was faltering, dropping in volume and ire.
“Stop being so overzealous about every single lead we come across, or no one’s ever going to take you seriously,” Laura snapped. “Listen to your superiors and learn a few things before you start acting like you’re God’s gift to the FBI. And for God’s sake, get off your high horse. You screwed up. Own it. And then get back to goddamn work, or you’re going to be responsible for the death of another young woman!”
Agent Won seemed to struggle for words for a moment – and then he spat one out, seemingly at random. “Whatever,” he said, like he was still a teenager, and then he pushed past Laura and stalked off back into the precinct.
Laura looked up into the sky, took a very deep breath, and counted to ten.
She rubbed her forehead, trying to calm down. This kid – he was a mess. Nowhere near ready for this kind of field work. What the hell had Chief Rondelle been thinking, assigning him with her? Was he just hoping to distract and irritate her enough that she would stop calling him about Nate? Because if so, the tactic wasn’t working. All this was doing was making her see just how good she’d had it over the past few years, to be assigned with a partner whose skill and demeanor matched hers beautifully.
There wasn’t enough time left in the day to worry about Agent Won and his little hissy fit. She had to leave him behind. He’d chosen not to stick around and hear what the next step in the investigation was, and she was done holding his hand. She had to get moving and keep going until she brought the killer down.
What she’d said hadn’t been a lie. Even right now, the killer could be out there, preparing to strike. Laura walked to the rental car in the parking lot, getting inside and firing up the GPS. It was time to go look into the local churches – and see if anyone there could shed any light on an unhealthy obsession with memorials or the use of candles for the dead.