Whoa. Did you discipline him too much? Did it go too far?
‘Look, I didn’t do anything to my son,’ said John. ‘I know you look at parents very closely in these situations, but I swear to God, I did not harm my son. It’s the last thing in the world I would do. And my wife … she’s an angel.’
Fuck, that seemed genuine.
Ren looked through Caleb Veir’s cell phone records.
‘John,’ she said, ‘there was a call made from Caleb’s cell phone to your sister, Alice, at seven thirty a.m. yesterday. Did you know about that?’
John shook his head. ‘No, I did not.’
Those giant pupils. Sign of deception …
‘Do you know why Caleb would have called your sister?’ said Ren. ‘And so early in the morning?’
‘I have no idea,’ said John.
‘Are they close?’ said Ren.
‘They get along,’ said John. ‘They don’t see each other a lot, but when they do, yeah, absolutely, they’re close.’
‘I have cell phone records here going back three months and this was the first time he had ever called her,’ said Ren.
‘From his cell phone, maybe,’ said John, ‘but he has spoken to her on the home phone when I’ve called her.’
‘What would they talk about?’ said Ren. ‘Was your sister someone Caleb would open up to?’
‘Honestly, I didn’t pay attention to what they talked about,’ said John. ‘I was just glad they were talking.’
‘Monday’s call was ten minutes long,’ said Ren.
‘Honestly, I don’t know what that would have been about.’
‘The call was deleted from the call list on his phone,’ said Ren. ‘Why would Caleb have wanted to hide that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said John. ‘Maybe he was planning a surprise for me or his mom and didn’t want us to know he’d called Alice?’ He paused. ‘Oh, hold on … I forgot about this – Alice is working on a wrongful conviction case that’s getting a lot of attention. Caleb had mentioned her coming in to talk to his class on one of her visits here. Knowing Caleb, he was probably supposed to have someone organized for Monday, and he ended up calling Alice at the last minute.’
‘Did Caleb have a particular interest in the law?’ said Ren. ‘Or was there something about this case?’
‘It might just have been that Alice had been on television,’ said John. ‘You know kids …’
Ren nodded. Hold on a second … ‘Haven’t you talked to her yet? Told her that Caleb’s missing?’
‘No, no,’ said John. ‘I didn’t want to bother her with it. She would worry. And she might drive down here for no reason. If he showed up after all that, it would be pretty embarrassing. She’s very busy.’
Embarrassing? Busy? What the what now? ‘Well, it’s been a while at this stage,’ said Ren, ‘so we’d like to talk to her about this phone call from Caleb, at the very least.’
Eye-dart. ‘Sure, I can call her.’
‘Let me take care of that,’ said Ren. ‘We’ve got her number here.’
John waited for the next question. Ren held eye contact long enough for his jaw to twitch, long enough that he was the first to avert his eyes.
What’s going on here?
‘Have you taken a look around the house, noticed anything missing that belonged to Caleb?’ said Ren.
He shook his head. ‘No. Not that I can think of.’
‘I’d like to talk to you about the escaped inmate, Franklin J. Merrifield,’ said Gary.
‘What?’ said John. ‘Why? I wasn’t even there when that happened.’
‘Did you know Merrifield?’ said Gary.
‘Yes, I knew him, but not well,’ said John. ‘I’ve never had any trouble with him – nothing.’
‘When you heard Merrifield had escaped, were you surprised?’ said Gary.
‘Absolutely,’ said John. ‘It’s the first time anything like that has happened since I’ve been working at BRCI.’
‘Do you think he had help on the inside?’
‘It’s not about what I think,’ said John. ‘I don’t know is the answer.’
‘Tell me what you know about Seth Fuller,’ said Ren.
‘Seth Fuller?’ said John. He shrugged. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘He was also an inmate at BRCI, and we’ve had reports he showed a particular interest in Caleb.’
‘That’s the first I’ve heard of that,’ said John. ‘Who said that?’
‘I can’t say,’ said Ren, ‘but we know that he paid for some comics for Caleb if he was short of cash, bought him sodas at the store, that kind of thing.’
‘Well, I know nothing about that,’ said John, ‘but Seth’s a good kid. I’m not worried about him. I would have written his name down on that list if I was.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’ said Ren.
‘Can anyone ever be sure of anything?’ said John.
Yes, actually, but … ‘So you didn’t know anything about Seth and Caleb …’
‘No,’ said John, irritated. ‘There was no “Seth and Caleb”. So he bought him a couple of things – I’d like to think that was just a nice gesture.’
‘So your dealings with Seth Fuller in BRCI …’
John shrugged. ‘I didn’t have any. I mean – no one-on-one dealings with him.’
Ren stood up. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘That’s all for now. Thank you.’
Ren and Gary walked down the hallway toward the office.
‘Did you hear the amount of times he did the question-as-reply thing?’ said Ren. And “Honestly …”’
Gary nodded.
‘We need to break his ass down,’ said Ren. ‘And what is the deal with his sister? Why the hell wouldn’t he tell her that her nephew had gone missing? Bizarre.’ She paused. ‘And that fucking stare …’
Black and eerie.
Ren went to her desk and typed Alice Veir’s name into Google.
Alice. Alice. Who the fuck is Alice?
The client whose case had put Alice Veir in the spotlight six months earlier was a man called Anthony Boyd Lorden. He had been jailed for life for the murder of Kevin Dunne, a sixteen-year-old hitch-hiker who disappeared in 1991 and whose skeletal remains were found a year later. Alice Veir lay the blame with the detectives working the case, saying that Lorden, who was only seventeen at the time of his arrest, had been coerced into signing a confession.
This will be fun … talking to a woman who rails against the interrogation techniques of law enforcement.
Ren dialed Alice’s number.
‘Ms