Kelly said, “What in the hell was that?”
Jodie, frowning said, “I don’t know. That is one weird dude.”
Kelly said, “Did he forget we were sitting here? I mean, he just left us!”
Jodie didn’t answer. The interview with Greg had been one of the weirdest experiences she ever had in a career littered with weirdness. He shook, laughed at strange times, winked at her for no reason she could fathom and sweated more than a fat man in a sauna doing pushups. And he lied about the hotel. She had given him multiple opportunities to change his story. She couldn’t remember how many times she asked him if he was sure they were all at the hotel. Could he have gotten the week wrong? Was it possible they went to a different hotel? Yes, no and no. All lies. And she could tell looking at him that he knew she knew he was lying. Had someone tipped him off? Ray? Neil? But how would they know? Who had he been on the phone with when they surprised him? None of this made sense. She had never seen a more guilty witness. This wasn’t a guy who was afraid his wife would find out he’s been fooling around. This was a guy who saw in his future a small cell with bars. He knew something or he had done something. They needed surveillance up here immediately. She called Bryce. She told him she had two more targets to be watched. He swore, said he’d call her back and hung up. He phoned back five minutes later and said the team wouldn’t be up there until tomorrow morning at the earliest because, with three targets, he’d need three teams to manage the job. She thanked him and hung up the phone. She rubbed her eyes with her palms.
Jodie said, “Okay. Can you call your boss and have someone pull everything they can on Neil, Ray, and Greg? I want to know everything they can find out? Do they own other property? Do their wives, or in Ray’s case, his mother own any other property? Do they have vehicles we don’t know about? I want a complete work-up going back to their elementary school days. Maybe we can get enough to get a warrant to listen in on their phones. Cancel the interview with Neil and Jamie. I want more information before I talk to them again. Especially Neil. I want to know where he is at in all this.”
Kelly said, “Because if he is a suspect in your mind, you have to caution him and all that, right? With a witness, you don’t have to.”
“Right. Also, see if the uniform officer has gotten a hold of Ray. I really don’t like that no one has talked to him yet. I mean, he’s sure as shit not at the hotel is he?”
Kelly said, “You think they have something to do with all this?”
Jodie said, “Don’t you?”
Looking at the door that Greg had disappeared back inside to, he said, “Maybe. That was some strange shit Greg just did. Only, I can’t see Neil or Greg doing anything to Lynda. I really can’t. You should see the way Neil doted on her. That shit wasn’t fake. And since Greg uses Neil’s brain to think, he couldn’t hurt Lynda either. It could be Greg is protecting some other secret. Maybe they all are.”
Jodie stared out of the window. The lie about the hotel, the interview with Greg, his walking out the door and the frozen deer expression on his face when he noticed them still sitting there, remembering all that, Jodie said, “Fuck that. They know something. And one way or another, they are going to tell me.”