Read Online What Burns Within by Sandra Ruttan - Free Book Online

all better.
Ashlyn flipped her notebook shut. “If you think of anything else, you call me.” She fished a card from her pocket and stood. Carl’s interlocking fingers were behind his head now, his body rocking back and forth. To him, she was already gone.
She walked into the hallway. There was a telephone stand by the entrance, and she set her card down and then took a second look.
Another police officer’s card was sitting on the edge, partially tucked under the phone. Not surprising, considering the fact that Mrs. Parks had been raped. But Ashlyn had eventually been able to ask around and put a name to the constable who’d taken Carl from the scene the day before, and it wasn’t Lori Price’s card she was looking at now.
Ashlyn sucked in a breath and stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind her.
     
Tain took a sip of his water and glanced at the clock.
Alex Wilson had been waiting on the other side of the one-way window for almost thirty minutes. He hadn’t broken out in a cold sweat as the minutes ticked by, and he hadn’t started pacing the limited floor space in the small room.
He hadn’t done a bloody thing except just sit there.
It was a new one on Tain. People slept. People paced. People drummed their fingers against the table and scrutinized every inch of the bland room. Some used cell phones they’d had hidden in their pockets. Others doodled. The odd pervert who had clearly never seen a cop drama on television took the time to jerk off, but nobody just sat and stared straight ahead blankly without protesting at their time being wasted in a police station.
Tain entered the room in a hurry, sprinted to the table, dropped notepaper and his water down and hastily turned back to shut the door.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” He was halfway down in the chair before he glanced across the table, deliberately wrinkled his brow and then looked straight into the eyes of Alex Wilson. “The officer who brought you in didn’t offer you something to drink? Can I get you a Coke, a bottled water, anything?”
Alex Wilson shook his head, pushing his thick black frames up on his nose.
Tain figured ten-to-one odds Wilson was some technogeek.
“I’m sorry we had to ask you to come down here on the weekend. Did the officer who brought you in explain what this is about?”
His stringy blond hair bobbed as he nodded, though Alex’s eyes had an unusual way of staying fixed in one position, the rest of his head shifting without affecting his gaze at all. Tain glanced at the clock.
Thirty-five minutes and this guy hadn’t said one word. Tain reached for the tape recorder. He cued the tape and recorded the session information.
“Could you state your name for the record please?”
Little lines formed around Alex’s mouth, and his eyes widened just a tiny bit.
“It isn’t a problem for us to record this, is it? It just makes the paperwork easier.” Tain offered him a relaxed smile, like a schoolkid caught trying to skimp on his homework assignments.
Alex’s gaze flickered from Tain’s face to the tape recorder and then he opened his mouth. “Alex Wilson,” he squeaked.
“Could you say that again, a little louder? These old things are garbage.”
Alex repeated his name and ran a hand across his forehead.
Tain found the abrupt change in Wilson’s demeanor interesting, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Would you mind telling me, in your own words, what happened yesterday?”
“Wha-whaddya mean, what happened?”
“You were at the park near the fair…” Tain prompted.
Alex nodded.
“I need you to answer verbally, for the tape.”
“Ah, ahem, yes.”
“And you found a child.”
The dull, blue eyes popped wide open then, and he coughed.
“Mr. Wilson, can you tell me how you found Nicholas Brennen?”
“Wh-who?”
“The boy you found at the fairgrounds, the one you drove here, to this police station, in your car.” Tain stared across the table at the man, trying to look more indifferent