Chapter 10

Bryant hung up from his call to Emerald Cove and explained the situation to the rest of the group.

"So we have a Gallia County deputy interested in Shrekengost's whereabouts," Garvin summed up. "And Shrekengost and his mother are in the wind."

"Sounds about right," Bryant agreed.

"That's a hard thing to do without a lot of help," Andrews put forth from where he stood by the second vehicle the group would take south. "Think about it. You essentially have to have someone in your life willing to handle every interaction with anyone else. You can't have a job unless it pays under the table. You can't have a car. You can't have health insurance. You can't have a home or a phone or a driver's license. Most places require landlords to list their tenants with the city or county so you can't even rent a place in your own name."

"What if they aren't using their own names?" Coleman wondered. "I mean, what if they've gotten new ones."

"That is almost impossible in the computer age," Bryant said with certainty. "You essentially have to find someone who was a home birth and who died without a record of his death. To find something for a mother and son would be damn near impossible."

"I read something about 'document farms' that are being run out of Eastern Europe," Holly Garvin chimed in.

"What are those?" Coleman asked.

"The Ukrainians basically set this up in the 1990s," Holly explained. "They registered foreign births with their government and with the consulates. They used real American or British or Canadian couples as the parents. The consulates would issue a birth certificate and an ID number, Social Security for the U.S.; Health Care ID for the Brits and Canadians. The brokers went so far as to enroll the non-existent children in private schools that no longer exist. They got driving permits, immunization records. They have everything a person needs for a new identity. The article I read was a couple of years old but it said in New York City, for $25,000, a person could purchase one of these identities."

"Christ," Bryant muttered.

"The mother would have to be in her late 30s or early 40s though," Andrews pointed out. "It might work for the kid. He'd be around the right age by shaving a year or two off. But it would be difficult for the mother to get new paper."

"Plus that much money would be tough to come up with for a single mother in an Ohio River backwater," Bryant added.

"Hey!" Garvin cut in with a laugh. "That hits a little too close to home."

"Sorry," Bryant said with chagrin. "But when I looked across the river at Gallipolis, I didn't exactly think of people living the high life."

"No," Garvin agreed. "I was just kidding. West Virginia is one of the poorest states. By extension, the cities along the river on the Ohio side are more like here than Cincinnati or Columbus. They're all factory towns or coal towns from Proctorville to Youngstown. You go a little further west and places like Maysville aren't that much different from the Kentucky town across the river. Since the steel industry and the coal industry went bust, well, there's a whole lot of nothing."

"That's the impression I got," Bryant said. "I mean, Point Pleasant seemed like a nice little town. So did Williamstown."

"We weren't actually in Williamstown," Garvin pointed out. "We only made it as far as Parkersburg. That's where the state police detachment is located. Parkersburg is about the size of Huntington when you get right down to it. The only thing we have that they don't is a university. The only thing they have that we don't is pretention."

"We get the same thing with the people from Hilton Head and Savannah," Andrews offered. "They think just because 25 years ago we were barely a dot on the state road map that we should bow and scrape."

The foursome split up into separate cars and the rest of the trip down the road that traced the Ohio River was spent with Garvin pointing out things that might be of interest. She explained that there was a similar road just across the river, Ohio Route 7; it ran from Proctorville, just across the river from Huntington, to East Liverpool, which sat at the junction of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, almost 250 miles to the north.

There were few population centers along the drive. Bryant thought that it was similar to driving from Columbia to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. They entered Huntington from the east, through a rundown section of the city. It wasn't until a few blocks into the city that Bryant could see why someone would want to live there. As they approached Marshall University on Third Avenue, the residential areas turned into bars and then into college housing. Garvin pointed out the football stadium, which was part of the campus, and other points of interest. The downtown area looked almost forgotten, Bryant thought. Just as downtowns all across America had begun to look. The City Hall and police station were located on Fifth Avenue, another one-way street that ran in the opposite direction from Third Avenue.

"The avenues go east-west and the streets go north-south," Garvin explained. "When you get a few more blocks west, the avenues are named for the first five presidents. This is actually U.S. Route 60 that runs from coast to coast, Norfolk, Va., to Los Angeles. Well, it actually merges with I-10 somewhere in Arizona but you can follow it from the Atlantic to the Pacific."

Bryant pondered the geography lesson briefly. He had never paid attention to which roads ran where. He knew how to get from place to place but he wasn't sure he could give anyone directions to get from anywhere to anywhere else. He recalled Steve Curtis putting Lorna on the phone to direct Bryant to their house on his second day in Emerald Cove.

A smile came to him unbidden. He suddenly realized that he had smiled more in the past few weeks than he had in the past few years.

Jody Zimmerman sat down across from Holly Garvin and Bryant Hawkins. It was obvious from her demeanor that she would prefer to be anywhere else.

"I don't know of anything I can add to my statement, Detective," Jody Zimmerman said almost instantly. Her eyes went everywhere but to the two people across from her. She looked like a wild animal that suddenly found itself in a cage. Jim Andrews and Adele Coleman were watching from behind a two-way mirror in the observation room.

"Ricky Currence," Holly said.

The young woman's face went pale and Bryant knew his theory had been correct.

"Jonathan Mayfield, Ricky Currence, Joey Straight, Trevor Adams and Mark Shrekengost," Bryant recited. "The Gallia Crew. They're from just across the river from your hometown. They attacked you in high school and Ricky Currence attacked you again last summer."

"No," Jody said. It wasn't a denial. It was almost as though she was refusing to believe that these two detectives knew her secrets.

"Trevor Adams raped a young woman from Marietta College named Meredith Delaney," Bryant continued, his gaze still boring into the young woman across from him. Holly just let him go. "He tried to rape her again last week. He broke into the wrong house and someone killed him."

"Killed him?" Jody squeaked. Bryant continued unabated.

"Jonathan Mayfield attacked a young woman from Gallipolis," he said. "He tracked her down to South Carolina. He raped her again but this time he killed her."

Jody's face dropped in shock.

"Who did Joey Straight go after?" Holly asked in a voice that much gentler than Bryant's. "We know she went to Ohio State but we haven't found her name yet."

"I don't know," Jody said in a small voice.

"And Ricky Currence followed you down here," Bryant cut in. "He attacked you again and you're willing to let him get away with it. Well, I'm not. They took his DNA from you at the hospital here. We got a cup with his DNA so we can run a comparison. Detective Garvin and I are going to put his ass in prison with or without your help."

"He'll kill me if I talk," Jody said.

"He'll eventually kill you even if you don't," Bryant told her. "That's how it works, you know. They're spoiled little kids. Eventually they grow tired of their toys and they break them. That's what happened with Mary Beth Brockleman. Did you know her?"

Jody had tears on her cheeks but she shook her head.

"They fucked up," Bryant added. "They might be the biggest turds in Podunk, Ohio, but they're nothing in Huntington, West Virginia, and Emerald Cove, South Carolina. That's where I'm from – South Carolina. The Mayfield boy killed a girl on my turf and I'm going to take him back to face the music. Detective Garvin here is going to make sure Ricky Currence spends the next 15 years being on the other end of a rape."

"When he gets to Mount Olive, Gallia County will seem like a warm memory," Holly said.

"I don't even know where the prisons are in South Carolina," Bryant said with a grim chuckle. "But I'll figure it out. Hell, given my history, I hope that Mayfield makes a move. I killed four perps in Chicago and I'm not going to lose sleep if Mayfield or Currence or Straight becomes the fifth.

"Jody, you know the Shrekengost boy disappeared? I figure he's dead, too. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is the one time in your life when you have people with you who will go to the wall for you. If you don't stand up beside us – beside Detective Garvin and me, beside Detective Andrews and Sergeant Coleman behind the glass there – you will never have another chance. And eventually, he will kill you."

"Tell us what happened, Jody," Holly said in a pleading voice. "Let us help you. Let us put Ricky Currence in prison where he belongs."

She pushed a tissue box across the table to the young woman. Jody Zimmerman took one and wiped her eyes. Bryant could see the strain the girl was under. Not only had she been brutally attacked twice but she had been forced to suffer in silence.

"You can trust us," Bryant said in a much softer voice than he had used before. The young woman sat silently for a moment before she spoke.

"He said it was my punishment," Jody said in a halting voice. "When you said I was a toy, you were right. He said that I was his and that no one could touch him. He said that every time he ever saw me with another guy, he was going to come for me. He said the next time would be worse. He said he would slice my face up. He said he would do that if I told the police anything. I can't hide from him. I tried that down here. Last year I never left my dorm room unless it was to go to class. I didn't go home last summer. I went home for a day at Christmas. He drove past my house a dozen times on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So I packed up and came back down here. I was in an apartment over the summer. I thought he went home. I thought he was gone. So I went out one night. I wasn't even with a guy. I went to a concert and sat beside someone I didn't even know. I talked to him during the intermission. That night, Ricky broke in the apartment."

She started to sob.

"He tied me up," she said through her tears. "I was never sure who attacked me the first time. I couldn't go to the police there. They wouldn't do anything and, even if they did, it would take forever for them to get him across the river. But he made certain I knew exactly who it was this time. He kept me tied up all night and most of the next day. When he wasn't on top of me he was beating me. I finally started to bleed ... down there ... so he rolled me over and did me the other way. He spent a whole day kicking me or hitting me or fucking me. I finally passed out ... from the pain I think. I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch the next day. When I didn't show up, she came looking for me. She saw the broken door and came inside. She found me and called an ambulance and you guys. When I woke up, I was in hospital. I remember him telling me that he'd kill me if I told anyone. He had a hunting knife that he kept pressed to my throat. He kept pushing it under my eye, threatening to take my eyes out."

The girl broke down in sobs and Holly Garvin went around to comfort her. Bryant got up and quietly left the room. His hands were shaking in anger. He knew he would have to be outside of Huntington before Ricky Currence was apprehended. Maybe he should get into a bar fight or something to get locked up. He knew how the jail guards treated rape suspects. They were always put in a cell with the biggest, baddest motherfucker on the block. Bryant was pretty certain he could make sure that Ricky Currence wound up in the same cell with him. He had no interest in sex with another man. He wouldn't rape the boy. But he'd beat him to death with his bare hands if he got the chance.

He was standing outside the observation room door when a woman he didn't know came out. She stopped in front of him and looked up at his face.

"You're another one from South Carolina, aren't you?" she asked.

Bryant was too angry to speak so he nodded.

"I'm Cameron Hayes from the District Attorney's office," she said. "I'm on my way to draw up the arrest warrant for Ricky Currence. I'm also going to authorize a protective detail from my department for Ms. Zimmerman. You did a fine job of putting this together. Those two officers in the room there said you're the best cop they've ever met. They said you just got into town six weeks ago and you've already put the clues together to find a murderer in your jurisdiction and a rapist in ours. If you ever get tired of Emerald Cove and feel like coming to Huntington, you let me know. I'll write a letter of recommendation that would get you appointed head of the FBI."

Bryant offered a tired smile. The woman returned it and then bustled off to draw up a warrant for the arrest of Richard Allen Currence for first-degree sexual assault, kidnapping, forced sodomy, terrorist threats, witness intimidation and any other criminal act she could reasonably put on paper.

Holly Garvin looked every day of her 37 years when she came out of the interrogation room, her arm around Jody Zimmerman. They stopped in front of Bryant, who towered over both of the women.

"You promise to protect me?" Jody asked hopefully.

"Yes," Bryant said simply. His voice was deep and steely. "Cameron Hayes said she was putting a protection detail together for you. I will stay with you until they're in place."

"You can't," Jody said. "I'm in a women's dorm."

"Then Sergeant Coleman and I will stay with you," Holly said. "And I'm sure Detective Andrews and Chief Hawkins here will be willing to stay outside your dormitory."

Bryant nodded. He needed to get to Cincinnati – to get a DNA sample from Jonathan Mayfield. He would get that sample no matter what it took, Bryant decided. If Mayfield wanted to fight extradition, Bryant decided he would stuff the stupid fucker into the trunk of a car and drive him to South Carolina. Hell, he might tie the bastard behind his car and drag him there. He closed his eyes to stem the fury before he scared Jody Zimmerman even more.

"Detective Garvin, I'll drive Sergeant Coleman and Ms. Zimmerman to her dorm," Bryant offered. "I'm sure that you'll want to lead the team that makes the arrest."

Holly Garvin looked up at Bryant gratefully. She understood why his people followed him devotedly. Her chief of detectives wouldn't consider something that simple. He certainly wouldn't offer to babysit a witness so she could finish the job.

"I'll call you when we got him," Holly promised. "I'm sure you will have some questions for him."

Bryant again nodded. He could think of a hundred off the top of his head.