Prodigal

Chapter 27

27

The Sheriff was not looking one hundred percent when he walked into the Command Center. In fact, Luther wasn’t sure he had the math skills to describe the man’s harried appearance.

“Where’d you run off to?” Luther asked.

Grant waved a hand through the air, as if he couldn’t muster the coherent thought to answer.

Fine. Be that way. Luther had more important things on his mind. He led Grant the long way around the warren of rooms where most of the agents and volunteers were gathered, until he found a secluded corner. “I checked with Otto’s boss,” Luther said. “He didn’t go in to work yesterday at all. Had the whole day off.”

“Shit.”

Luther raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Sorry,” Grant said, as if he wasn’t used to hearing worse out of Luther’s mouth eight hours a day, five days a week. “There’s a lot coming at me today. You tell anybody else yet?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ll talk to the agent in charge, see how he wants to handle it, but my inclination is to keep everyone else in the dark as long as possible. We’ve got too many civilians in here with nothing better to do but talk.”

“Got it,” Luther said.

“Is Otto here now?”

“Yep. Wandering around, looking lost.”

Grant ran a hand through his hair, then looked at his hand, as if he’d just realized he wasn’t wearing his hat. “I know the feeling. You want to meet me at the interrogation room upstairs—the bigger one—in say, fifteen minutes?”

“Will do.”

They decided to keep it locals only, to use people Otto trusted to get him to commit to his answers first. Federal agents would monitor the interview from the next room and be available for any follow-up.

Grant asked Luther to join him for the interview. They sat next to each other, with Otto across from them, on matching metal, folding chairs that read WAR MEML BLDG in stenciled black letters across the back. Grant nodded at the recording setup next to the wall (which also allowed the real-time monitoring), and explained to Otto that they were going to tape the interview, that they were taping all of their interviews.

Luther had brought coffee for each of them and sipped at his mug. He found it hard to look at the man across the table. Either Otto had done something to his own daughter, in which case Luther would like to rip his lungs out his throat, or he was just a scared dad, in which case Luther felt like a total s**t for suspecting the man of such a horrible thing.

Grant made the identifications for the recording and then began, calm and at ease. “Otto, I want to start by letting you know that you’re not under arrest. You’re free to leave at any time. But we do need to ask you some more questions. And in light of the fact that you weren’t truthful with us before, I feel like I need to advise you of your Miranda rights.” He read aloud from a small, well-worn card. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?”

“Yes,” Otto said.

“With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?” Grant asked.

“Of course I do, Sheriff. I want you to find my daughter.”

“Then why did you lie to us, Otto? We know you didn’t go to work at all Friday. Where were you?”

Otto glared at the recording system and pushed his hair back where it brushed the tops of his shoulders. “Does this have to be taped?”

“Yes, Otto. If you want us to find your daughter—and be able to successfully prosecute whoever took her—it does have to be recorded. Where were you yesterday?”

Otto generally struck Luther as a pretty cool customer. Even when he’d beaten the crap out of Adam Rutledge this morning, he’d done it with an icy anger, whereas Luther’s own temper was all heat. But now, Otto was looking rattled. Luther had never seen that before, and he’d once witnessed Dorothy throwing a lit firecracker at the man’s head. Otto clasped his enormous hands on the table in front of him and watched them closely, as if he was afraid they’d get away from each other.

“I took off work because I had to meet someone,” Otto said.

“All day?” Grant’s voice was interested, but not sarcastic. Luther didn’t know how the man did it.

“I drove to Harrisburg to meet them,” Otto said.

“That’s an awful long way. Why Harrisburg?”

Otto rubbed his clenched hands back and forth on the table. “Because it’s right on the interstate—easy to get to—and it was about halfway between us.”

“Who were you meeting, Otto?” Grant asked.

He didn’t answer, and Grant leaned forward, tilting his head so Otto had to look at him. It seemed to Luther that, in that position, Otto could raise either or both fists like a hammer right into the side of Grant’s head and lay him out.

Some day, Grant’s gonna trust the wrong person.

“Otto, are you having an affair?”

Luther braced himself to pick the Sheriff up off the floor, but it didn’t happen.

“No, I am not having an affair.”

“Otto,” Grant said, pressing until the man met his eyes, “I believe you, but you need to tell us what you were up to, so we can figure out if it had something to do with Rachel’s kidnapping. Maybe you set something in motion you don’t even know about.”

Otto unclenched his hands and wiped them on his pants. “It’s not like that,” he said.

“Then what is it like?” Grant asked.

When Otto dropped his eyes again, Grant yelled, “Hey!” with all the authority of a drill sergeant. “Stop jerking me around so I can do my job and find your daughter. In one piece.”

Instead of getting angry, Otto’s eyes glistened. “God help us.” He took a deep breath. “I went to meet my mother-in-law.”

Luther was supposed to sit silently, but he was so shocked, he blurted out, “Dorothy’s mom?”

“No, not Dorothy’s mom. My first wife’s mom. I was married to someone before I met Dorothy. In New York.”

“I thought you were from Kentucky,” Luther said.

“No, somebody said that once, and I just never bothered to correct him.”

“You’re not a bigamist, are you?” Luther asked. Grant gave him a pointed look, and he sat back against his chair and vowed to keep his mouth shut.

“No, we’re not married anymore. She—” Otto coughed, and then cleared his throat. “We married right out of high school. And one day—we’d only been married about eighteen months—she just disappeared. Her mom and I reported it right away, but they never found her. You didn’t need a passport to go to Canada back then, so some people thought that’s where she went. But her mom never heard from her. Neither did I. Nobody did.”

“Were you a suspect?” Grant asked.

Otto sighed. “I’m sure I was, like I am right now. Which is why I didn’t want to say anything. But I was never a serious suspect.”

“So why were you meeting her mother?”

“Because she asked me to. She does that from time to time. Not because she’s heard anything. I guess just because she wants to talk to someone else who understands.” Otto wiped an eye with his thumb before continuing. “When I left Friday morning, I thought I understood what she felt. But now…”

He couldn’t finish.

“We’ll need her name and her contact information,” Grant said. “Does she know you’ve remarried?”

“Yes. There were some legal things that had to be settled before I could remarry, and she helped me with that.” Otto became agitated, reaching for Grant’s hand. “You can’t tell Dorothy! Please, Sheriff. She doesn’t know anything about Marie. And she doesn’t deal with that kind of stuff well.”

Luther wasn’t sure what else would fall into the category of “that kind of stuff” when it included “I have a missing wife who is presumed dead,” but he knew what the man meant. Dorothy looked delicate and vulnerable, but she also had a touch of crazy. Maybe more than a touch.

“I’ll do my best,” Grant said, “but Otto, you know it’s gonna come out. It’s just a matter of time. You’re better off telling her yourself. Does anyone else know?”

“No. When I finally gave up hope, I moved as far away as my gas money would take me, and I left everything behind. I never told anyone.”

Grant slid a notebook and pen across the table to Otto. “All right. Contact information. Also anywhere you stopped for gas or food or anything else and how you paid. If you’ve got receipts, that’d be helpful, too.” He shook his head and headed for the door, motioning for Luther to follow. “I just wish you’d told us this from the beginning.”

Out in the hall, Luther waited for a volunteer to pass by, then asked, “Well, what do you think?”

Grant shrugged. “We’ll see what the Feds have on the first wife, their relationship. Probably used cash to visit the mother-in-law, so I hope he kept his receipts. Even if the trip checks out, we still gotta do the math. Doesn’t mean he didn’t take Rachel somewhere when he got back. It’ll be hard to rule him out.”

Luther shook his head. “I know we gotta be objective, but it’s hard to imagine the man harming his own daughter.”

“You know the statistics. Kids are most commonly taken by family members.” Grant glanced down the hallway and lowered his voice. “And the man’s wife disappears, he starts a new life, and his child disappears. What are the odds?”

Luther couldn’t argue with that. Either Otto was guilty of something, or he was just about the unluckiest sonuvabitch he’d ever met.