The Best of Both Wolves, page 11
She was glad he’d offered for her to go first because she thought she might put the man more at ease before Adam had to question him, not to mention that she wanted his recollection of the man’s description as soon as possible.
“What do you remember about your assailant?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Kinney said. “It all happened so fast. I was on the road when my car got a flat tire. I pulled over on the shoulder and began changing it when a black car pulled up behind mine. I thought they were just Good Samaritans. A passenger got out of the car and said he would help me change the tire.”
“They?” she asked and glanced at Adam, surprised that there had been more people involved in this since the boss hadn’t mentioned it.
“How many were involved?” Adam asked.
“Uh…” Mr. Kinney glanced from Sierra to Adam, and she swore he looked a little panicked. Smelled like he was too, which confirmed he was suddenly highly stressed.
“There were two other men in the car,” Mr. Kinney finally said. “Uh, one driver, and one front-seat passenger at least. I couldn’t tell if there was anyone else in the car. The guy who hit me was in his midtwenties, crooked nose, looked like it had been broken across the bridge once. I’m six foot and he was a couple of inches shorter than me. His hair was a light brown, shaggy, blue eyes, chilling. He had a long chin and it had a cleft in it.”
She was visualizing how she’d seen the dead man after he wrecked the car. He could have been in his midtwenties; it was hard to tell. Crooked nose? She couldn’t make it out because his face had been so badly cut. Five ten? She didn’t know. But light-brown, shaggy hair and blue eyes? Mr. Kinney was really wrong about that.
“Are you sure about the hair and eyes?” It seemed like Mr. Kinney was describing someone entirely different. He probably wasn’t remembering it right because of his head injury. She was afraid her sketch of the body would have to do then. In reality, the carjacker had short-cropped hair, nearly black, and dark-brown eyes.
“Uh, well, yeah, but you know, I might have things a little mixed up.”
“That’s understandable. Go ahead.” She was supposed to make the eyewitness comfortable, not make him doubt himself. If his recollection wasn’t as good as her visual of the carjacker, she would just go with her own sketch.
“Uh…even so, I really thought the carjacker had left the back seat of the car to come and help me. I shook his sweaty hand and he assisted me in changing the tire, though I could have managed on my own. I thanked him and said I had no cash to pay him, but I really appreciated his help.
“Then he pulled a gun out of the back of his pants. He told me that was okay about the money. All he wanted was the car. He gave me a cold, calculated smile, and I was afraid he was going to kill me. I quickly told him he could have the car and handed him my car keys. It wasn’t worth dying over it. But he struck me with the butt of his gun, a 9mm, I think. I fell to the ground and then I saw him get into my car and he drove it off. The car behind mine took off after him. I don’t remember anything after that except telling some people who came later to help me that my car had been stolen. Then I guess I passed out before I was brought here in an ambulance. I had no idea the guy would pull out a gun and strike me with it, then leave me for dead and steal my car.”
“Okay, you’re doing great, Mr. Kinney,” Sierra said. “You said his hair was shaggy?”
“Yeah, he looked like a hoodlum. He had tattoos on his neck and arms. I can’t say what they were. I just noticed all the ink as he approached. I had felt a little uneasy, but what was I supposed to do? I was already working on changing the tire. I didn’t want to run and lock myself in the car. I didn’t know he was armed, but he could have shot me through the window anyway.”
She hadn’t seen any visible tattoos on the carjacker at all. He was wearing a hoodie with long sleeves. She hadn’t seen any tattoos on his hands or neck or face, the only skin exposed. Unless he wasn’t wearing the hoodie when he confronted Mr. Kinney.
“What was he wearing?”
“Jeans, a T-shirt. I wasn’t paying that much attention to his clothes.”
“A T-shirt? Was anything written on it?” Sierra asked.
“Oh, uh, yeah, skull and crossbones. I should have remembered that.”
“What color was the T-shirt?” Adam asked.
“Black. White skull and crossbones.”
“Were there any words on the shirt?” Sierra asked.
“Maybe. I don’t recall.”
“You could have called roadside assistance,” Adam said, sounding like a man with a badge who was thinking of safe tips to offer victims.
Sierra was sure Mr. Kinney had figured that out by now.
“But I didn’t need assistance to change out the tire, and I figured it would have taken a lot longer to get back on the road if I had to wait for someone to show up to help.”
“I understand,” Adam said. “What about the other two men?”
“I couldn’t really make them out. They were too far away to give a good description.”
“Okay, so did you smell anything about the guy who hit you?” Sierra asked.
“Beer. His face had a couple of days’ growth of beard. Thin lips. Bushy eyebrows.”
“Good, really good. When the driver got out of the car, was his hair short? Or was there a breeze whipping it about, indicating it was longer?” she asked, even though Mr. Kinney had said he hadn’t seen the other men clearly. She found if she just questioned a witness further, often important details they had missed would come back to them.
“A breeze, yeah. His hair was longer, blonder. And he was about the same height as the man who hit me.”
She showed him the sketch she was doing based on his version of his assailant.
“His eyes were smaller. Beadier.”
She erased the eyes and drew them smaller, then showed it to him. “Like this?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
She had him endorse the back of the sketch since it was his recollection, even though it wasn’t what she thought carjacker looked like, and then she finished drawing the sketch of the driver, but Mr. Kinney didn’t have as many details on him. Once she had him sign that sketch, Adam began questioning Mr. Kinney.
“Did either of the men mention any names?” Adam asked.
“Uh, come to think of it, the other guy, the driver did. When the guy hit me the first time, the driver got out of his car and swore at him and called him Hawk. I thought it was odd, but then I wondered if his name was Hawk. I couldn’t remember that before now. Oh, and Hawk told the driver, ‘He knows me.’ I assumed he said that because he wasn’t wearing a mask. And then on top of that, his partner had identified him by name or nickname. So I was certain he was going to kill me.”
“You don’t remember having seen him from somewhere else at some other time?” Adam asked.
“No. Sorry. I work at a bank as a loan officer, and unless he came into the bank to get a loan, I wouldn’t have met him. I have a regular lawn service through a company, and we haven’t called anyone for repairs on the house or anything for over a year.”
“You haven’t had any threats to you or your family’s lives, have you?” Adam asked.
“No. I really believe his stealing the car was just a case of opportunity, me on the side of the road trying to change a tire, and it had been late so there wasn’t much traffic. You probably won’t catch those bastards, will you?”
“I’m afraid we’ve located your car and the driver had totaled it,” Adam said. “The driver of your vehicle, the one who hit you, died in the crash.”
Mr. Kinney’s jaw dropped, and his skin lost all its color. He touched his head as if it was suddenly hurting.
“Are you in pain?” Sierra asked, getting ready to call the nurse.
“Uh, a mild headache. Thanks, I’m fine.” Mr. Kinney frowned at her. “Since the guy who stole the car is dead, why did you need a description of him?” Now Mr. Kinney sounded angry, as if Sierra had tricked him into describing his attacker when they already very well knew what he looked like.
She hadn’t mentioned it because she felt it was Adam’s job. Adam was frowning at the victim.
“He was badly injured,” Sierra explained. “I wanted to make sure I had the best description I could get for your assailant. Hopefully, we can identify him and catch up to the men who were also party to the crime now that we know about them.”
Mr. Kinney let out his breath. “Well, at least the one who hit me won’t be attempting to kill anyone or doing any more carjacking in the future.”
“Yeah, exactly. We just need to catch the other guys who were involved in it. We’ll get out of your hair, but you let me know if you think of anything more that can help nail these guys.” Adam gave him his business card.
“Thanks for all your help with this,” Mr. Kinney said.
“You’re so welcome.”
Then Adam and Sierra said goodbye to him, and they left his room.
“Do you still have the sketch of the carjacker at the scene?” Adam asked Sierra.
“Yeah, I left it in the car. I was waiting to send it out once I learned Mr. Kinney might be able to give us a better description of the carjacker’s face.”
“Does Mr. Kinney’s version differ much from the one you did at the scene of the accident?”
“Yes. I took pictures of him, so I know he had short-cropped hair, not long. And it was dark, not light brown. He had brown eyes, not blue. Now, it’s possible Mr. Kinney doesn’t remember, due to the trauma he suffered. I didn’t know the carjacker’s nose had been broken before the accident, but I’m beginning to wonder if he had that right either. And his chin was so badly cut up, I hadn’t noticed the cleft in it, but again, was he only imagining that? His eyes weren’t as beady as he said they were.”
“Which was why you had made the eyes on the sketch you were doing for Mr. Kinney larger initially.”
“Right. I’ve never seen the accused before I’ve had to take a witness statement. I had this all worked out in my mind where I would draw his version and validate my sketch of the deceased. It sure didn’t work out that way. What do you think?”
“I think you’re doing great. I believe either Mr. Kinney has had some impaired memories, which is entirely possible after the head injury he had, or something isn’t quite right with his testimony.”
She stared at Adam as they walked out the door together. “He couldn’t have been in cahoots with these men.”
“As a detective, I have to consider every possibility. At first, he seemed like the perfect victim, totally innocent.”
She led Adam to where she’d parked her car. “So what are you saying? He wanted his car stolen for the insurance money? That he set it up, only the guy hit him a little too hard and then ended up accidentally killing himself while fleeing the scene?” She couldn’t believe it. She guessed she could never be a detective and believe the worst about people.
“Or that Mr. Kinney knew them and didn’t want to identify them, in case that testimony came back to bite him. Hopefully, we’ll know one way or another once we get some hits on your sketch. I wouldn’t send off the one you did of his recollection.” Adam glanced at his phone. “Hey, it’s lunchtime. Do you want to have lunch with me?”
She got a call and said, “Hold that thought… Hello, Ethan?” She figured he needed a sketch concerning a DEA job. She just hoped this one was more the usual kind of witness descriptions, unlike the last one—if Mr. Kinney hadn’t been totally honest with them.
“Hey, if Adam hasn’t asked you out to lunch yet—” Ethan said.
“Uh, he just did.” She thought Adam was cute for asking.
“Damn. Okay, I’ll have to take a rain check then.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Ethan. Talk to you later.” She didn’t say she would give him a rain check though. She walked out of the hospital with Adam. “You timed having lunch with me just right.”
“Don’t tell me that was Ethan, trying to get a date with you already.”
“Just lunch.”
Smiling, Adam shook his head. “Where do you want to go?”
* * *
Adam should have figured Ethan would try to get a date with Sierra as soon as she called it quits with Richard. Adam was just glad he had asked her before Ethan did.
Regarding work, now he had a new concern though. He really hadn’t thought that the situation with Mr. Kinney was anything but on the up-and-up, but with the way he seemed so nervous—why would he be?—and then was angry with Sierra for having asked him to give a description of his assailant, Adam was seriously reconsidering his “victim’s” role in all this. The only reason he could come up with was that Mr. Kinney knew damn well he had lied to them about what the men looked like.
They picked a Chinese restaurant they both enjoyed and had ordered their meals and taken a seat when he got a call from Tori. “Yeah, Tori, Sierra and I are grabbing a bite to eat if you would like to join us.”
“No thanks. I already have something to eat. How did things go with Kinney?”
Adam told her what they’d learned. “We can’t use his sketch, and I’ll tell you the rest later. We’ll get the sketch Sierra did of the dead man scanned in and disseminated as soon as we have lunch. What did you learn about the boat?”
“The guy didn’t have a bill of sale, the price was way cheaper than what it should have sold for, and the boat had recently been painted. We’ve confiscated it, but we need Sierra to talk to him about the seller’s description. I took notes, but we need her to do a sketch.”
“I’ll tell her. If we don’t have anything more pressing for me to attend to right away, I’ll go with her and then return to the office after that.” He would have put it on speaker so Sierra could listen in, but he couldn’t in the restaurant. “What did you think of the boat buyer? Gut instinct?” He always listened to his partners’ gut instincts. As wolves, they could discern a lot more about the humans involved in their cases than humans could. Just as he smelled Mr. Kinney’s nervousness when he learned his assailant had died in the car crash. Adam realized he wasn’t as upset about the car as he was about not being told the man was dead before he gave his description to Sierra.
“No need for gut feelings in this case. He was sweating up a storm when I asked the man to produce the title for the boat. He smelled of fear and sweat. He made the motion of looking for the title in an old cabinet in the garage, but before he touched it, the cabinet was covered in dust, not a fingerprint on it. When he closed it, the cabinet drawers and doors had fingerprints all over them.”
“You think he knows the guys who sold the boat to him?”
“Yep. I don’t believe it was a random sale. He was nervous when he gave me the description of the seller. I mean, maybe he knew the price of the boat was too good to be true. And so he figured it was stolen but had been telling himself no one would ever learn the truth.”
The food was delivered to the table, and Adam said, “Hey, food’s here, Tori. We’ll head over there and talk to him after we eat. See you later.”
“Talk later.”
Adam pocketed his phone.
Sierra eyed his plate. “Hmm, your sweet and sour shrimp looks good.”
“Would you like some?”
“Only if you want to have some of my pork and hot pepper sauce.”
“Yeah, sure, that would be great. Sorry about the call.” He moved some of his sweet and sour shrimp to Sierra’s plate, and she gave him some of the pork and hot pepper sauce.
“Don’t be. You have an important job to do, and I get to help with it.”
“That’s for sure.” He took a bite of her pork. “Hmm, this is good.”
She ate one of his shrimp. “Oh, I love this.”
“So the deal is the guy might know the man who sold him the boat. In that case, he can either give them up, which I suspect he won’t if he’s afraid they will retaliate, or he’s just as guilty as them in that he’s been working with them for a while. Or he’ll give you a false description to use to draw the sketch.” Adam took a bite of one of his shrimp.
“Okay, so it could be a waste of time for me to do this. Just like the one for Mr. Kinney was.”
“No. If they’ve lied and we can catch them at it, they can be charged with aiding and abetting. Sometimes, they’ll subconsciously give us features that do match up with the perp. Sometimes the opposite, so he might say the guy is tall when he’s short, has red hair when he’s really a blond.”
“Oh, that reminds me… With Mr. Kinney’s description, how tall was the carjacker?”
“Taller than Kinney, six foot one.”
“So he was taller by an inch, not two inches shorter. That really doesn’t sound like he was telling us the truth.”
Adam drank some of his water. “I know. But it’s still possible he was just confused after the injury. It’s one thing to have a traumatized witness who is trying their hardest to give you the real story. Another to deal with someone who is party to the crime in some way and doesn’t want you to find the perp.”
“Gotcha.” She sipped some of her water. “So why did you go into this business?”
“Both my parents were police officers, and they talked about the cases they’d had to deal with while we were eating our meals. I wanted to be one in the worst way. Once I joined the bureau, my dad and mom retired from the force. I was a policeman for a few years, and then I wanted to do something that I felt would really help in solving some of these crimes. So I became a detective.” Adam got another call and he let out his breath and answered it. “Holmes.”
“We have a kidnapping in process. We have an Amber Alert out now,” the officer told Adam and gave him the location and description of the car.
“That’s only a quarter of a mile from where I am. I’m on it.”
