Conover’s speechless, but I maintain my calm. It takes a lot to make me flinch. Conover will get the same tolerance after a few years. My gut is shouting at me, though. “Officer Lopez, please calm down. We didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Stu Moore was my best friend,” Lopez snarls. “I’ve known him for ten years. I got him his job here. I’m godfather to his youngest. Don’t you dare do anything to insult his memory. He died a hero, and I won’t let anyone say otherwise.”
“Yes,” I say. “He did. I’m sorry if we offended you.” I stand up, extending my hand to the still steaming man. “Thank you again for meeting with us. If you could send Officer Leon here when you get back to the block, I’d appreciate it.” Lopez forcefully shakes my hand, glares at Conover, and stalks out. With a sigh I sit back down. “I thought he was about to punch you.”
“Me too,” a still shaken Conover says. “What was that about?”
“Could be grief, could be something else. My guess is a little of both. Not that he’d ever tell us. At least not today.” I shut the Lopez file, and pull out the file on C.O. Garrett Leon. “So, what have we learned so far Officer Conover?”
Ever the eager student, Conover’s face lights up at the chance to show his stuff. “Not much. Just background about the guards, right?”
I cluck my tongue. “You disappoint me, Officer Conover.”
His face falls. “Why?”
“There’s an old saying my Uncle Ray told me. It’s KISS: keep it simple, shithead. We just narrowed the suspect pool down to six.”
He considers this. “It had to be one of the guards. There’s no one else.”
“Correct. But why?”
He thinks for a moment. “Because…the more people who know, the more chance of one of them screwing up.”
“We’ll make a detective out of you yet,” I say with a proud smile. “Three cardinal rules in the detective racket: easiest solution is usually right, follow the money, and the spouse always did it.” I pull out my pad to write everything down. “We need to look at this in the most logical way, chronologically. He convinces one of the guards to start sending out his letters, either through charm or more likely through cold hard cash. We never found all of his bank accounts, so he’s probably got millions stashed away God knows where. So Ryder bribes him to not only act as go-between, but to switch out his medicine. The same guard probably messed with the security system too.”
“So we’re not ruling out Moore or Dodd?”
“No, if anything they just became our prime targets. Maybe Ryder faked a seizure, or maybe he was simply let out and messed with the security system himself.”
“But why kill Moore if he was helping him?”
“Loose end.”
An obese man with a huge belly and balding red hair steps in dressed in a guard uniform. Officer Leon, I presume. He sits without a word, and I begin questioning with Conover occasionally interjecting. He has nothing new to add.
“You just had a baby, right?” I ask.
“Yeah. Our forth,” Leon answers.
“Wow. Four. That must be hard on a guard’s salary.”
“That’s why I’m in Hardcore. Better pay.”
“Still,” Conover adds.
“My wife’s family helps when they can.”
By now he should be acting defensive, or at least glaring at us, but he’s not. He’s too calm, which either means he knows he’s caught or is too dumb to know what we’re hinting at. From the rest of the interview, I glean it’s the latter. Did Ryder take advantage of that? Would he trust his escape to this man? The famous gut says no.
“Did James Ryder pay you to help him escape?” Conover asks.
The guard’s face twists into a look of disgust. “No, sir. That guy scares me. I didn’t even like looking in his cell. He has acid for blood or something.”
I believe him. We’ll double check, but he’s not our accomplice. “Did any of the other guards like him?”
“I don’t think so,” the giant answers.
The door swings open, and the Warden pokes his made up face in. Make-up on men is unnatural somehow. “I need you for the press conference,” he says.
Great. “On my way.”
The warden glances at the guard, lips pursed in annoyance for whatever reason, before walking out again. I wonder if the guy ever smiles. Probably only when he’s ripping into people. I’ve encountered his type way too many times not to know the signs. If he did ever smile, he won’t be doing it again for quite awhile.