“Of course,” Hume said.
“I think a little hashing out is healthy, okay, but we’re into total speculation. We’ve got enough probable cause to pull Rentz over whenever he pops up, search his car, and bring him in. Pritchard is in jail on the assault charge; we can monitor him, see if there’s someone he’s talking to or meeting with – or if his lawyer gets bail reduced, we follow him and see where he goes.” Her gaze flitted to Mike. “In the meantime, what we need to do is keep going through these cases. We started with eight cases that looked promising, and we’ve eliminated half of them due to deaths, imprisonment, and relocations, leaving us Dodd Caruthers, Charles Morrissey, Scott Earnshaw, and Susan Gann.”
Hume was silent, then, “You’ve got a woman in there, huh?”
“We’ve got four people for whom it could be said their lives were irrevocably impacted by the intervention of Pierce County Child Protective Services, all who have violent criminal histories. And Lavoie and Fogarty were involved with each of them. So, we need to knock on some doors and see where we’re at in twenty-four hours. Okay? But we’re going to start with Dodd Caruthers, who once left his kid in a hot car, and might have called the complainant and harassed him. He’s the right age, he’s the right size, he lives in Lake Haven.”
“What’s his motive other than general antipathy toward society?” Hume asked.
Overton answered, reading from the file on her lap. “That his older son Thomas was accidentally injured while a child in foster care.”
“Accidentally injured?”
“He was playing, got burned by the woodstove, there’s some permanent scarring.”
Another pause from Hume, then, “That’s good enough for me.”
* * *
“I was in ’Nam,” Bill Caruthers said. “I was eighteen when I got sent to Da Nang.”
Mike sat beside Lena on a couch that looked Vietnam era – orange-and red-striped. Caruthers’ small, modular home was gloomy, its walls paneled with fake wood, a flat-screen TV in the corner playing silently with closed captioning on the screen. A dog, the source of the musty smell in the air, had barely budged when they’d come in, and looked older than old Bill, who was at least seventy.
“Thank you for your sacrifice,” Mike said. “How are you doing, sir?”
“China Beach,” Bill Caruthers said. “March 8, 1965. Me and 3,500 US Marines, Operation Rolling Thunder. Three weeks later, a car bomb exploded outside the Embassy in Saigon. How am I doing? How do I look?” He wore a ragged bandage on his nose to cover the skin cancer, a tube beneath his nostrils snaking down to the oxygen tank beside the recliner, a cane resting nearby. “It’s a shit world for an old man,” he said.
“Do you expect your son home soon?” Lena asked.
“Oh… Dodd. Yeah, I s’pose. He was gettin’ my meds from the Kinney Drug. Sometimes he goes, you know… he goes around. Does whatever boys do.”
Dodd Caruthers was in his forties; Mike supposed kids never really grew up in their parents’ eyes.
“And he’s been working?” Lena asked. “Since he got out?”
“Yeah, well, he does a bit of this and that.” Bill’s gaze sharpened. “What did you say you was here for again?”
“We have some questions to ask your son regarding an ongoing investigation,” Lena said.
“Does he need a lawyer?”
“Well, let’s hope not. Just a couple questions, and we’ll see.”
“Maybe he ought to have a lawyer,” Bill said, and grunted as he tried to get out of the easy chair.
Mike spoke up. “Mr. Caruthers, there are no allegations here, just questions for us to gather information. Your son is…” He stopped as a rumbling truck turned in the driveway. Old Bill slumped back in the chair, defeated, while both Mike and Lena rose to their feet. The old dog lifted its head; its tail slowly flopped from one side to the other.
Mike watched through the window as Dodd Caruthers got out of the truck, took a hard look at the Impala parked in the driveway, and walked toward the house with his brow furrowed. He pushed in through the squeaky screen door holding a plastic shopping bag. He stared at Mike and Lena as he crossed to his father and handed him the bag. “There you go. She said the antibiotic was strong, that you needed to take it for the full ten days.”
Bill flapped a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Did you get my cigarettes?” He pawed around in the bag, pulled out a pack of USA Golds, and grimaced.
Dodd turned to the investigators. He was tall, his blond hair going gray, eyes bright blue. He wore a patchy beard, part of which didn’t quite grow around a scar from his left ear to his chin. “What’re you here for?”
Lena spoke first, introduced them, and asked if he wanted to sit down.
“I’m fine standing. What do you want?”
Lena glanced at Mike, indicating he had the floor. Mike asked, “Are you Dodd A. Caruthers?”
“Yeah…”
“We’re investigating the murder of Harriet Fogarty.”
“Okay. And?”
“Your children were placed in foster care when you went to SCI Cold Brook for drug charges and your wife wasn’t able to care for them. You did thirteen years, out now for just over a year. Is that all correct?”
Dodd’s gaze shifted from Mike to Lena and he looked her up and down before connecting with Mike again. “Yeah.”
“Can you tell me where you were one week ago, the night of July 12th?”
A quick look at his father, who was slapping the cigarette pack against his palm and seemed to have forgotten about everyone else in the room. “I was here,” Dodd said. “I was at home with my dad.”
“Mr. Caruthers,” Mike said to the older man, “can you confirm that your son was with you last Thursday?”
Bill unwrapped the plastic from the cigarettes and opened the top. He looked up, “Uh?”
Dodd said, “They’re asking where I was last Thursday, Dad. I told them I was here with you.”
“Yuh. Right. You was here with me.”
“Mr. Caruthers,” Mike said to Bill, who fumbled to extract a cigarette. “That’s not what you told us before Dodd arrived. You said you thought he was bowling.”
The younger Caruthers got red in the face, his jaw starting to twitch. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Thursday is league night. I was thinking before that, and after that, I was here. Maybe you ought to be more specific with your time.”
“Between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.,” Mike said.
“So then, yeah. I was at the league game. You can ask any of them.”
“When’s that league game go from?”
“From six until about nine or so.”
“And you were here at home right up until you left for the game… Where’s that at, Silver Lanes?”
“Uh-huh.” Dodd gave Lena another look-over. Mike thought he was being pretty obvious about it, too.
Mike said, “Alright. We’ll check in with the league. Meantime, I’d like to talk about your older son, Thomas.”
“What about him?”
Bill lit up a cigarette at last, took a long drag, coughed, and squinted against the smoke. “They talking about Tommy?”
“Don’t worry about it, Dad. What do you want to know about my kid?” Dodd wore jeans, despite the heat, and a black T-shirt with an AR-15 on the front and From My Cold Dead Hands written beneath it in lettering that was colored red, white, and blue. Heavy work boots on his feet.
“While he was in temporary placement,” Mike said, “your son, Tommy, sustained burns. From a woodstove. Is that right?”
Dodd let out a long breath, whistling through his nostrils. Mike wondered how many weapons were stored up in the home Dodd shared with his father. Maybe some nice hunting knives among the collection.
“You got something you want to ask me?”
“Sure,” said Mike, “I’ll ask. Have you harbored anger toward the Pierce County Child Protective Services for what happened to your son?”
“Have I what?”