“That can’t be right,” Jack stammered. “Did you check the travel records on the GPS? Did you pull the memory card?”
“The damn thing’s filled with water. Our IT guys said the memory card is ruined. No one’s getting any data off that thing, which I’m sure you know.”
“I don’t get it,” Jack muttered in disbelief.
“What? What was that?” Vargas laughed. This time it was real. He laughed hard. “Oh, you are priceless. I think Clark might be right. You may just be a gullible boob. The sticker’s fake.”
“There has to be another explanation.”
“Get real, Stratton. And what’s Shaw’s motive for killing his wife?”
Jack sat up. “Maybe he killed her for the money?”
“Money? If he planned to kill her for money, he did a lousy job. Do you know how much life insurance they had? None.”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “Maybe he… Maybe he just went crazy? It doesn’t make sense.”
“That I’ll agree with. Your theories are crazy. Michael Shaw was in Schenectady the whole night. You know how I know that? Facts. Michael Shaw called Stacy from Schenectady on his cell phone. There’s a record of that call, and it bounced off the cell tower in Schenectady.”
Jack sat for a moment, racking his brain. “I think I can explain that. There’s this phone app. Shaw works for the company. It can call—”
Vargas kicked the chair across the room. “Shut up, Stratton!” he roared. “I just brought a grieving widower back in here today because of you!” His lip trembled.
Jack thought it was from anger until he looked at Vargas’s face. The detective’s eyes were moist.
“And I leaned hard on him. I accused him,” Vargas continued. “Do you know what Shaw did? He cried. Real tears. Do you have any idea what that felt like for me? It tears at you. But I did it because it’s my job, and I had to re-interview him because of you and your damn fake evidence. You made that necessary. You’re trying to frame a man whose wife was murdered, you piece of garbage.”
“No,” Jack said. “The sticker’s not fake. It’s not. Shaw could have—”
“Shut up. There’s always an answer with you but not anymore.”
“Listen. Why would someone put a fake sticker on a GPS? I’m telling you—”
“You have the right to remain silent.” Vargas took out his handcuffs. “I suggest you use it, because I don’t want to hear anything else come out of your mouth.” He held the handcuffs out to the policeman at the door.
The cop took them and walked behind Jack.
As Vargas continued to read Jack his rights, he felt as if the whole world had just shifted. His head spun and his breathing was labored.
Vargas picked up the chair he’d kicked over and set it back down at the table. “I’m charging you,” he said. “You’ve impeded a police investigation.”
Jack’s breath hitched.
“You were warned to stay away from the investigation by a law enforcement official, yet you continued to impede my investigation.” He tapped his chest with his thumb. “I’m also having you charged with being in possession of stolen property.”
Were J-Dog and Two Point playing me all along?
Jack’s mouth ran faster than his spinning head. He spoke before he thought it through. “If you think I faked the GPS and the sticker, how can you charge me with stealing it? Wouldn’t it be mine?”
Vargas’s chair scraped across the floor as he shoved it into the table. “Congratulations on flushing your life down the toilet. You could have gone into the Army like you said you wanted. But no. You chose the wrong path. Now no Private Stratton. No Detective Stratton. Now you are, and forever will be… just Jack.”
The door shut with the finality of a coffin lid.
31
Consequences
His father hadn’t spoken a word since he picked Jack up at the police station. But as they drove home, Jack saw the strain in his face.
When they reached a red light, his dad finally broke the silence with a sigh. “You disobeyed me.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m really sorry. I wish I hadn’t.”
“Why? Why would you leave?” Ted tapped the steering wheel with one finger.
Jack ran down everything that had happened. The phone call from Tommy, finding the GPS, talking to Clark, getting arrested. “But I’m telling you that sticker’s not fake. It’s not, Dad. It has streaks on it from the water, too. I looked when Vargas brought it back in.”
“But the car rental place isn’t missing any GPSs. And they have no record of Michael Shaw renting a car.”