“Not really well, no. But you may want to check with him.” He nodded behind him, in the direction of the man who was bowing by himself.
“Who’s that?”
“His name is Dwayne Patterson. He would sometimes be with the crowds Mariah would come in with. Bashful kid. He’s here a lot, sometimes by himself, but usually sort of meanders from crowd to crowd. I have no real evidence to support this, but the way he sometimes looked at Mariah and laughed at anything she said…I think he might have fancied her a bit.”
“Thank you, Larry,” Kate said.
He gave a wink to them both as they turned and headed for the lane all the way to the left. As they approached, Dwayne Patterson rolled a ball that left him with a dreaded 7-10 split. He angled his head as if hoping to see something different and then approached the ball return machine. As he waited for his ball, he spotted DeMarco and Kate. There was no mistaking where they were headed; he knew they were coming to speak to him and it showed in his eyes. He looked like a trapped cat, cornered by two feral dogs.
“Mr. Patterson,” DeMarco said as they approached the ball machine. “Larry over there says you might be a good resource for information about Mariah Ogden.”
It was clear that Patterson had not yet decided if he should be fearful or not. He eyed them skeptically and asked: “And just who the hell are you?”
This time, DeMarco and Kate moved at the same time, showing their IDs in tandem like a well-rehearsed magic trick. “Agents DeMarco and Wise, FBI. Now, do you want to be just a bit more accommodating?”
Slowly, Patterson took a seat behind the scorekeeping machine. “Sorry. I had no idea. Um…yeah, I mean, I knew her. Not super great or anything, but I knew her.”
“How old are you, Mr. Patterson?” Kate asked.
“Nineteen.”
“Would you say you and Mariah were friends?”
“Sure. We were friends through most of school, just not best friends, you know?”
“Sure,” Kate said. “How about this past Wednesday night? Did you see her then?”
“Yeah, that was the night she died. I was here, bowling with a friend. When he and I left, I saw that Mariah and a few of her friends were hanging out in the parking lot.”
“Is that something she did a lot?”
“Not a lot, no. But from time to time. There’s not really much else to do around here, you know?”
DeMarco did know. She’d grown up in a similar town where the only thing to do after hours was hang out in convenience store parking lots, smoking cigarettes and maybe making out when the coast was clear.
“Did you go over to hang out?” DeMarco asked.
“Just for a little while. At first, I mean. I took my friend home and then swung back by just to check in.”
“Check in on what, exactly?” Kate asked.
Patterson frowned, sensing that he might be venturing into dangerous territory. Slowly, he started to do his best to explain. There were nerves in his voice, as well as something else. Regret, maybe? DeMarco wasn’t sure.
“Well, she was hanging out with some of the regulars…some friends of hers from high school and a new girl she met at the community college in Charlotte. But there was this other guy with them, some dude I’ve seen a few times and just…I don’t know…sort of avoided. I went back by later to check on Mariah to see if he was still around.”
“Why would you avoid this guy?” DeMarco asked.
“He’s sort of creepy, you know? The type that used to hang around the high school parking lot a few years after he had already graduated. He’s got to be at least twenty-five.”
“And what were the ages of the crowd you and Mariah hang out with?”
“Between nineteen and twenty-one or so. I hate to stereotype someone like that, but he’s sort of a loser. But anyway…that night, it was clear that he was drunk. Being loud and belligerent, you know?”
“What’s this guy’s name?” Kate asked.
“Does anyone need to know I was the one that told you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Jamie Griles.” There was some grit and anger in his voice as he said it. “There’s no hard proof, but a lot of people think he goes to high school parties to get girls drunk and then sleeps with them. So when I saw that he was hanging out with Mariah and those younger girls, it felt creepy.”
“And was he still here in the parking lot when you came back by?”
“No, he had already left. One of Mariah’s friends said there was a party somewhere and even joked that Jamie went because there were younger girls there.”
“Is Jamie Griles a local?” DeMarco asked.
“Yeah. Born and raised. He’ll die here, too. Loser won’t ever amount to anything.” Patterson chuckled and shook his head. “Says the nineteen-year-old mechanic bowling by himself on a Monday night.”
“Have you spoken to the police?”
“No. No one bothered talking to me. Like I said…I wasn’t best friends with her. Just…a guy that knew her.”
The way he said this made DeMarco think Larry had been right; Dwayne Patterson had feelings for Mariah Ogden. She wondered if he ever told Mariah. The way he was handling it made her think he had not—that he had kept his feelings bottled up.
“Did you not think to talk to them about Jamie Griles?” Kate asked.
“Well, I didn’t even pause to think he might have been the one to kill her. Yeah, the guy is a creep and a loser, but I don’t know that I’d put murder within his reach.”
“You said he was loud and belligerent,” DeMarco said. “Do you know if there was anyone in particular he was upset with?”
“No clue.”
DeMarco looked around the bowling alley, as if searching for more questions to ask. When it was clear that they were done, she handed out yet another one of her business cards. “Please don’t hesitate to call if you think of anything else or even hear about anything that might be about Mariah’s murder.”
“I will,” Patterson said, pocketing the card. “Thanks.”
The thanks seemed a little odd, but DeMarco could tell by the resigned look on the young man’s face that he was happy to have helped, even if only in the slightest of ways. He was already picking up his ball to try managing that 7-10 split when DeMarco and Kate turned and walked away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You think it’s too late to make a house call?” DeMarco asked.
Kate laughed as she buckled her seatbelt. As soon as Dwayne Patterson had given them Jamie Griles’s name, she knew they would be making at least one more stop before calling it a day. She envied the drive and energy DeMarco had and could clearly see why she was so quickly making a name for herself in the bureau.
“Not for someone with the lifestyle that Jamie Griles seems to lead,” Kate said. “I assume that’s the stop you’d like to make?”
“Figured it might be worth a shot. It’s not even seven o’clock yet.”
“I’ll call Gates and see if he can pull up an address.”
Kate placed the call to Gates, only to find that he wasn’t at the precinct. He patched her through to Smith’s desk. The officer seemed happy enough to help, coming up with an address within twenty seconds.
Just as Kate plugged the address into the map app on her phone, her hand started to buzz as Gates called her back.
“Can I ask what you’re looking into Griles for?” Gates asked.
“We got word that he was hanging out with Mariah Ogden’s group of friends on the night she was killed. He was apparently loud and possibly intoxicated.”
“I should warn you that he’s a creep of the highest degree. But I honestly don’t see him as the sort to kill anyone.”
“That’s what we’re hearing. Now, can you define creep?”
“I’ve arrested him at last three times in the past few years. Small stuff, mostly. He’s got a DUI on his record, as well as a charge for disturbing the peace when he decided to start a little bar brawl at Esther’s Place. And, as I’m sure you may have already heard, he has something of a habit of trying to impress younger girls…often by purchasing alcohol for them. We haven’t been able to bust him for that yet, but it’s pretty much common knowledge.”
“Yeah, we’re hearing all of that, too.”
“Let me know if you need a hand.”
Kate ended the call, starting to wonder if Griles might be more of a lead than she had originally thought. She checked the address in her GPS and saw that it was only sixteen minutes away from the Larry’s Lanes and Arcade.
“You thinking the killer might be some sort of jilted or rejected ex-boyfriend or something?” Demarco asked as she guided them to the address.
“In a small town like this, it’s where my mind automatically goes at first,” Kate said. “But until we can accurately look at any links between the two girls, that’s going to be hard to nail down. It’s the one reason I really wish the mother was still here.”
“Maybe we can call her tomorrow,” DeMarco said. It was more of a question, though—a veiled way to ask: Would we be total monsters if we bothered the grieving mother tomorrow?
“If nothing pans out tonight, we may have to,” Kate said.
“The thing that’s hanging me up is where Kayla Peterson was killed. Right there on her front porch. I mean, she even got the key in the door. Makes me think she had the guy with her.”
“Maybe trying to sneak him into her house?” Kate asked.
“Maybe.”
“There’s another possibility, too. Maybe he was there, waiting for her.”
DeMarco nodded gravely. “Neither one of those scenarios is particularly pleasant.”
As DeMarco drove to the address they had been given, Kate looked over the notes on the iPad DeMarco had been uploading all of the case files to. So far there wasn’t much to look at, but there were small things to pick up on here and there.
“Both victims went to the same high school,” Kate noted as she read through the notes. “Although in a town this small that’s really not too much of a surprise.”
“Different colleges,” DeMarco pointed out. “Kayla Peterson went way off to Florida for college. Mariah Ogden went to Western View Community College, just outside of Charlotte.”
“I would be curious to know if Jamie Griles knew Kayla. If so, that would basically be the only link between them.”
“And that wouldn’t be good news for Griles,” DeMarco said, thinking it over.
It was the last thing either of them said, though Kate was pretty sure DeMarco was feeling the same stirrings of excitement she was. They were on their way to question their first concrete lead and that was always am exciting moment. Kate allowed herself to enjoy it, though as they drove through the night she could not ignore just how badly she was starting to miss Michael.
She felt the old stings of feeling like a bad mother, of leaving her family behind. It was more than the guilt of any mother who went back to work after maternity leave, though. No, these were stings from the past, stings she had suffered through and thought she had managed to put behind her.
But these stings…these were fresh. And they seemed to be reiterating the same cries of her heart. Maybe this was her last hoorah.
Maybe she shouldn’t even be here at all.
***
They covered the rest of the trip to Jamie Griles’s residence in silence. When they arrived, they found themselves pulling into a small gravel parking lot in front of what appeared to be a four-plex. It looked like one large house, divided into four different living spaces or apartments. Each apartment had its own mailbox at the mouth of the parking lot. Kate noted that the one marked 3 held the name J. GRILES.
DeMarco parked beside a beaten-up old GMC pickup, parked slightly crooked in front of the third apartment. As they got out, Kate heard the rumbling of a stereo coming from one of the apartments. She was rather proud to find she knew the song as “Battery” by Metallica. Melissa had gone through a Metallica phase in her youth and had been both surprised and humiliated to find that her mother hadn’t outright hated the music.
As they approached the door with a bronze 3 in its center, she realized the music was not coming from inside. However, someone was home: a soft light filled the window, mostly blocked by lopsided blinds. As Kate stepped onto the stoop, DeMarco knocked.
“Yeah!” was the response from inside. “One minute!”
There was some brief commotion from inside and then, about twenty seconds after knocking, the door was opened. Jamie Griles was an average-sized man. His black hair was held up in a style that nearly reminded Kate of Elvis, held in place by stiff-looking product. He had small eyes and a chiseled jaw that was covered in five o’clock shadow. He wasn’t handsome, but he was far from unattractive as well. It didn’t take much effort for Kate to imagine impressionable young girls to give him some attention in exchange for beer or other things.
He smiled at the two women and said: “Can I help you ladies?”
DeMarco apparently took offense to the way he was looking at them. When she took out her ID and badge, she basically thrust them at him. “Agents DeMarco and Wise, FBI. Are you Jamie Griles?”
“I am,” he said. The smile was gone, replaced by what appeared to be genuine confusion. “But…FBI? What for?”
“We’re investigating a case here in Harper Hills and would like a word with you.”
He looked back and forth between them, maybe trying to figure out if this was some sort of prank. When it was clear that he had no intention of inviting them in, Kate took a single step forward. “Mr. Griles, can we come inside?”
“I mean…yeah, sure, but…what for?”
Kate noticed that DeMarco took him up on the invitation before explaining the purpose of the visit. It was a good move, as Griles would have surely become protective and defensive if he knew they were going to ask him about two recent murders in the area.
Kate followed DeMarco into a small and messy living room. The television against the far wall was tuned to a baseball game. There was a bottle of cheap whiskey on the coffee table and a still-burning cigarette in an ashtray next to it.
DeMarco started right away, before Griles even had time to close his door. “Mr. Griles, do you have any idea why we might be here?”
“No,” he said. He was clearly scared, but there was a growing irritation beneath it. He did not enjoy being questioned—to be made to feel as though he was less than. “And I don’t think you should make me guess.”
It was interesting for Kate to watch the back and forth, the cat and mouse. DeMarco had set a trap, and Griles had sidestepped it. Kate would have tried the exact same thing, though. The vague question from DeMarco had given Griles the opportunity to confess to buying alcohol for minors—which was a very serious charge in the state of North Carolina. But Griles had dodged it and put the ball right back into DeMarco’s court.
“Mr. Griles, it’s a small town,” DeMarco said. “Can I assume you’ve heard about the recent murders in the area?”
“I have. Word does get around.”
“You know their names?” Kate asked.
“Yes,” he said. He was being careful with the way he spoke. It was clear that this was not the first time he had been questioned by someone in authority. She could picture Griles and Sheriff Gates having this same sort of back and forth quite easily.
“Tell me, please,” DeMarco said.
“Why? Are you here because you think I had something to do with it?”
“I said no such thing,” DeMarco said. “But in investigating the murders, we discovered today that you were included in a small group of people who last saw one of the victims.”
Griles nodded at this and actually seemed a little relieved. “You mean Mariah?”
“Yes. Mariah Ogden. We have a witness that saw you with her and a group of other underage kids outside of Larry’s Lanes on the night she died. What do you say to that?”
“I say there are some nosy-ass people in this town.”
“You make a habit of hanging out with younger girls, Mr. Griles?” Kate asked.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But anything I do is consensual. I’m not one of those rapist assholes.”