of I-70. The dumpster by your house – that’s where that goes.’
Jonathan looked at Everett as if he had just crawled from a dumpster himself.
Everett took out a red Sharpie and drew a large box on the photo. ‘This area here,’ he said, ‘is three acres square. The garbage runs twenty feet deep if we’re to go back almost a month to when Hope went missing …’
Jonathan recoiled. ‘What the hell are you showing me this for? What do you mean “go back almost a month”?’
Don’t look at me for answers. That’s not how this goes.
‘To search this area, we’re calling in all the favors we can,’ said Everett. ‘Law enforcement across a lot of different agencies, along with volunteer civilians. That’s the effect Hope has had on people. They’re coming from all over to offer to search a stinking hellhole for her, to suit up and go right in there to look for your missing fiancée. If we can in any way limit all that searching … or if we knew, for example, that we were wasting our time, or anyone else’s time … or if there’s somewhere else we should be looking …’
As Everett spoke, Ren was studying Jonathan Briar. You are a dull-eyed dope-smoking moron. I have little time for dope-smoking morons.
‘Is there anything you’d like to tell us?’ said Ren.
‘No!’ said Jonathan. ‘No. Except that you are wasting your time: thinking I did this!’ There was no anger, just a whining, pleading exhaustion.
‘Everyone in your position tells us we’re wasting our time,’ said Ren, ‘but, as you know, a lot of the time we’re not. The odds are not in your favor. Before we go in here,’ she pointed to the landfill photo, ‘before we bring people into this wonderland, we’d like to know the truth.’
‘I’ve told you the truth!’ said Jonathan. ‘I’ve told you a million times. I’m innocent! Last time I saw Hope she was alive and well. What more can I tell you? That’s my story.’
‘Story?’ said Ren.
‘You know what I mean,’ said Jonathan. ‘I didn’t mean it that way.’
‘Were you and Hope happy?’ said Ren.
‘Yes!’ said Jonathan. ‘Fucking leave me alone with the happiness bullshit! I don’t think I can take this any more! I feel like I’m losing my mind, here. All you people looking at me! It’s fucking driving me insane!’
Snap. Snap. Show your hand.
‘Jonathan, we found traces of Hope’s blood in the living room,’ said Ren. ‘Do you know how that got there?’
‘She cut her finger, I don’t know. Were they drops, smears, spatters?’
Go, CSI.
‘If they were drops or smears,’ he said, ‘then she cut her finger a while back. If they were spatters, then, I guess, someone might have killed her at home, right? Is that your point?’
How Not to Talk to Law Enforcement 101.
Ren looked at Everett.
Jonathan started to cry. ‘I love Hope. I always have. From when I was nine years old. I wouldn’t lay a finger on her. All I ever want to do is protect her.’ He cried harder. ‘What if you find her and she’s dead?’
Wow. Have you really only thought about that now?
He kept talking. ‘What if she’s there in all that garbage and she’s dead? Then what happens? Then do you just, like, assume it’s me? What evidence is going to be on that body at that stage? I’m terrified of what’s going to go down. I want Hope found, but I also don’t want her to be just pulled out of some garbage. I mean, I know what you’re thinking, it’s disgusting anyway, it’s a murder, who gives a shit, but I do.’ He went quiet. ‘I do, because Hope would. She wouldn’t want anyone seeing her that way.’
‘What way?’ said Ren, keeping her tone neutral.
Jonathan leapt from his seat. ‘Dead on a garbage heap! What do you think I mean? Why do you people always think I mean something I don’t mean?’
Because you say weird shit. Because your answers are weird. Your phraseology. Your language. Your focus.
‘Sit the fuck down,’ said Ren.
Jonathan sat down, but kept talking, the words speedy and tumbling. ‘Dead after weeks, rotting away and all that other shit. Jesus! Who would ever want anyone to see them that way? I know I never would. But what happens then? I say nothing to you today because I know nothing and then you arrest me? Like, will I look suspicious to you because of that? I mean, I’ll say anything not to come across as someone shady. I wasn’t there that night at the time you’re talking about. I was working! I’m not thinking about how Hope looks because I killed her in some horrible way. I’m thinking about what a fucked-up mess dead bodies are after all that time.’
Ren closed the door behind her and walked with Everett into the bullpen – the open-plan office the task force worked out of. Their boss, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Dettling, had his own office. The admin team had theirs. There were two interview rooms, two conference rooms, an A/V room, two cells, rest rooms, a creaky elevator, a haunted basement – everything brought together under the roof of one of Denver’s oldest buildings, The Livestock Exchange Building – an icon of cowboy heritage.
‘Well?’ said Gary, looking up, hands on his hips. He was a fit and handsome man of few words.
I am tiring of you, Gary. The look that says ‘impress me’, ‘prove yourself to me’ every time. Your smart-ass bullshit. Everything.
‘Early morning landfill search it is!’ said Ren.
Gary’s face said it all.
Ren looked at Everett. ‘I don’t know about you, but is Briar just a dumb asshole?’
‘That’s in no doubt,’ said Everett.
‘I get that he doesn’t have a face for TV,’ said Ren, ‘and that indefinably weird shit falls out of his mouth, but …’ She shrugged. ‘Does he say things that raise my suspicion because he is guilty or because he is just dumb, dumb, dumb? Because he has no filter? Because he cannot understand that in an interview with a Fed, you might want to not say some of the shit your low-flying brain fires out? I mean, even if you just imagine the physical distance between your brain and your mouth – that’s time to pause, isn’t it? Pause while it’s at your nostrils or something. God, do you ever feel like the world is just populated with a lot of really dumb people? His face! I want to slap it.’
She drew breath.
You are all looking at me funny. Am I talking too fast again? Keep up, bitches. Jesus.
‘So, here’s what
