Dead to Rights by Jack Patterson (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

Kelly agreed, and they drove the short distance to the Pickett County Sheriff’s Department.

Once they entered the office, Cal figured he might only be going to get one more shot at Sloan. When conducting an interview of a particularly accusatory nature, Cal understood how to negotiate the conversation in a way so he could emerge with good quotes for his story before he got cursed out. For him, this skill required patience and taking advantage of any goodwill he’d acquired. In this instance, Cal had no goodwill, but Sloan had plenty of ill will for the government—and Cal knew how to leverage it.

“Betty, is Sheriff Sloan around?” Cal asked.

Betty rolled her eyes and huffed. Cal could tell she was tired of seeing them, though he wasn’t sure if it had more to do with how Sloan acted after they left or how she held a general disdain for reporters snooping around. However, she clearly wasn’t in a fighting mood. Betty opened the door to the office area and gestured for Cal and Kelly to enter—all while never uttering a word.

Cal and Kelly wove through a handful of desks until they reached the back of the room where Sloan was. He was muttering something to himself and pounding away on his keyboard with his index fingers. Cal guessed Sloan was likely writing a letter to some federal agent’s superior about how the sheriff was mistreated. Or perhaps it was an email complaining about his loss of jurisdiction in the case. Regardless of whoever was on the receiving end of Sloan’s wrath, Cal figured they would likely ignore the note and file it in the trash. Cal would’ve preferred to encounter Sloan when he wasn’t in such an angry disposition, but Cal recognized that the silver lining was that the sheriff’s ire was directed at someone else. And at the moment, it was as good as Cal could hope to get.

Cal knocked on the door jamb of Sloan’s office. Sloan didn’t look up.

“What is it?” he groused.

“Sheriff, mind if we have a quick word with you?” Cal asked.

Sloan stopped typing and turned around in his chair to face Cal and Kelly. “Didn’t I give you what you wanted at the lake?”

He spun back around in his chair and continued typing.

“We have a few more questions for you, if you don’t mind,” Cal said.

“Well, I do mind. I’m very busy right now.”

“What? Typing a letter that someone is going to throw away seconds after reading it?”

Sloan slammed both his fists on his desk at the same time before letting out an exasperated growl. “You’re probably right … for once,” Sloan said, slowly turning back around to face his visitors. “What do you want to know?”

Cal looked down at his notepad. “Was there a weapon found at the crime scene for Jordan Hayward?”

Sloan shook his head. “The murder was likely committed somewhere else, which is why I’m pretty pissed about the feds sweeping in and taking the body.”

“Was it a gunshot wound? A knife wound? What killed him?”

“Obviously I don’t have a coroner’s report, but based on the bruising around his neck and the lack of any other type of visible wound, I would guess cause of death will be asphyxiation.”

Cal took a deep breath before launching into his next question. “Could this murder have been committed by the same person who killed your daughter?”

Sloan scowled. “What the hell kind of question is that? You know Isaiah Drake is still in jail and may that bastard rot there. So to answer your asinine question, no.”

Cal flipped through a few pages in his notes. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular but was mentally preparing himself for the best way to ask his next question, the kind of question that would turn the conversation from tense to a full-fledged storm of wrath and fury. “Sheriff, one last question before we leave and get out of your hair for good.”

“Thank God,” Sloan said. “I’ll answer anything to get rid of you two.”

“So, the night that Susannah was murdered, where did you go when you left the office?”

A wry grin spread across Sloan’s face. “I thought we already went through this. I was here all night.”

“The records you let us go through when we got here—we saw where you logged out between 9:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. Where did you go?”

“These logs?” Sloan said as he pointed at a log book on his desk.

Cal nodded. “That’s the one.”

“This log?” Sloan asked again, his tone almost mocking Cal.

“Would you mind turning to the page with the date of May 7, 2004?”

Sloan opened the book and began turning the pages. When he arrived at the page, he stopped and smiled. “Well, would you look at that? I didn’t log out that night. Y’all must’ve been lookin’ at the wrong book.”

“Let me see that,” Cal said as both he and Kelly leaned down close to study the log book after Sloan held it out to them.

Sloan stood up. “Do you see it now? You must’ve made a mistake when you first reviewed it. Mistakes happen. All is forgiven, especially if you get the hell out of my town now and never come back.”

Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Good thing I took a picture of the log book before you doctored it.”

“Doctored it?” Sloan said. “You think I doctored something? Well, good luck with that one. You say I doctored it; I say you are full of it. Nobody’s gonna believe your photoshopped picture of my log anyway.”

Cal backed away from the desk, holding his recorder out so that it would capture more clearly anything Sloan said.

“Maybe not,” Cal said, “but I’ll bet they’ll believe a witness who told me that she saw you at your daughter’s house around the time of Susannah’s death.”

“I hope you’re not insinuating what I think you are,” Sloan said. He then pointed to the door. “Out now! And don’t come back!”

CHAPTER 26

CAL GRABBED THE BELL before it clanked against