W et amp; Wonderful was a slab of concrete filled with water-themed attractions and concession stands. We shouldered our way through a sea of kids in wet bathing suits, and soon were wet as well. Cheeks was breathing heavily by the time we reached the trailer.
“You really should start exercising,” I said.
“Shut up,” Cheeks said.
Cheeks clipped his silver detective’s badge to his lapel and rapped loudly on the trailer door. A voice from within told us to enter.
“Remember to go slow,” I said.
“Right,” Cheeks said.
The trailer’s interior was dark and chilly, the walls lined with high-definition digital monitors showing the action outside. Lonnie Lowman sat at a desk with his back to the monitors, talking to the GM on a walkie-talkie. He said, “Let me call you back,” and hung up, his eyes frozen on Cheeks’s badge.
“Lonnie Lowman?” Cheeks asked.
Lowman nodded stiffly. He’d done a makeover since his mug shot, and now sported a short, conservative haircut, drugstore reading glasses, and a cosmetically altered nose. What hadn’t changed were his eyes; green and almost pretty, they darted back and forth between us like a caged animal’s. The hunter had become the hunted.
“We’d like to talk to you,” I said.
“Am I under arrest?” Lowman asked.
“No,” Cheeks said. “Your name came up during an investigation, that’s all.”
Cheeks leaned against the wall, while I stood across from Lowman’s chair. When I was a cop, I’d carried a pack of gum to break the ice during interrogations. It was a tradition I’d continued, and I offered Lowman a stick. He declined, and I stuck one into my mouth while staring at the monitors. There were twelve in all, displayed in a matrix. Six monitored the deep end of the swimming pool, where a giant slide deposited screaming kids into the water. On one of the monitors a girl came down the slide, and hit the swimming pool. The force of the water pulled the top of her bikini off. She came out of the water laughing, and with her mother’s help, got redressed. It was as innocent as eating a hot dog, but not meant to be seen by the eyes of a predator.
“My boss knows about this, doesn’t she?” Lowman asked.
“Afraid so,” I said, trying to control my temper. “If you cooperate, we’ll tell her you’re square, and there will be no harm done.”
I felt Lowman sizing me up. It was like being watched by an un-trustworthy dog. I continued to work my gum.
“All right, ask your questions,” Lowman said.
“Do you go by the name Teen Angel on the Internet?” Cheeks began.
Lowman’s face turned so red it looked like he had hives. “Who told you that?”
“Vonell Cook,” Cheeks said.
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s into molesting underage girls. You talk to him on a chat room called the Conspiracy Club,” Cheeks said.
Lowman stared at Cheeks, and said nothing.
“We had a chat with Vonell this morning at police department headquarters,” Cheeks went on. “Vonell shared with us your insights into the Sampson Grimes kidnapping. They were so interesting, we decided we wanted to meet you.”
Lowman twisted uncomfortably in his chair. “I had nothing to do with that. I’ll take a polygraph if you want me to. I didn’t steal that little boy.”
“Any idea who did?” I asked.
Lowman violently shook his head.
“You didn’t talk to him, and give him tips?” I said.
“No!”
“You don’t expect us to believe that, do you?”
“Look. I did a bad thing a few years ago in Seattle,” Lowman said. “But I did my time and paid my debt to society. I’ve changed. What I told Vonell and the other members of the Conspiracy Club were idle ramblings, nothing more.”
Sexual predators didn’t change. They could be scared straight or sent into hiding, but you couldn’t change them. Lowman was lying.
“You called Sampson’s abduction a game,” I said. “What did you mean by that?”
Lowman took off his glasses and shoved them into his shirt pocket. It was a bad move, for it showed how scared he was. “The boy was persuaded to leave his bedroom during the night, and to climb through a slit screen. He wasn’t taken. He was removed.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“Sampson was playing a game with his abductor,” Lowman said.
“Do you think it might have been one of Sampson’s parents?” I asked.
“No. Parents enforce the law. This game was an act of defiance. That was where the cut in the screen came in.”
I glanced at Cheeks out of the corner of my eye. He had gone white.
“But it was someone who knew Sampson,” I said.
“Knew him well,” Lowman said.
“You told Vonell that Milk Duds were involved in Sampson’s abduction,” I said. “How did you know that?”
Lowman looked furtively at the floor. I heard the uptick in his breathing, the air moving rapidly through his nostrils and pouring from his mouth. He almost sounded like he was running.
“I just guessed,” he said.
I grabbed the arms of his chair and shook it. Lowman’s head snapped up.
“Quit lying,” I said.
“I’m not lying,” he protested.
“Yes, you are. Keep it up, and Detective Cheeks will arrest you.”
Many criminals scoff at being arrested. Sexual predators do not. Going to jail is often the equivalent of a death sentence, and they will do anything to avoid it.
“Milk Duds are a favorite enticement among child abductors,” he said quietly. “Children like them, and they’re larger than most candy.”
“So?”
“A child can’t yell for help with a Milk Dud in his mouth. He has to spit it out first. That gives the abductor time to clamp his hand around the child’s mouth, and subdue him. It’s an old trick.”
“Did you tell Sampson Grimes’s abductor that?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t know who abducted the Grimes boy.”
“How about Ray Hicks?”
Lowman jerked up in his chair.
“You know Ray?” he squeaked.
“We met yesterday,” I said.
The blood drained from Lowman’s face. Before my eyes, a metamorphosis took place, and the respectable citizen that Lowman was pretending to be disappeared, while the monster lurking below surfaced. His pretty eyes shrunk into slits, and his nostrils flared. A guttural sound came out of his throat that reminded me of a dog choking on a bone. He shoved me, and spun around in his chair.
A laptop computer sat next to the console. Lowman began to type a command into the laptop’s keyboard, his fingers a blur.
“No, you don’t,” I said.
I came around Lowman’s chair, and tried to pin his arms to his sides. He wrestled with me while cursing under his breath. I looked to Cheeks for help.
“You want to participate?” I asked.
Cheeks was moving in slow motion, looking like he was going to be sick. I thought I knew what was wrong. His theory about the Grimes abduction had just gone up in flames, and he didn’t know what to do.
“Come on,” I urged him.
Cheeks drew his gun from his shoulder harness, and pointed it at Lowman.
“You’re under arrest,” he said.
Lowman’s fingers continued to pound the keyboard. I dragged him out of his chair, and shoved him into the wall.
“Calm down,” I said.
Finally, Lowman settled down. I made him put his hands against the wall, and frisked him. He was clean, and I looked at Cheeks.
“I want to see what’s on his computer,” I said. “You need to watch him.”
“Okay,” Cheeks said.
I sat in Lowman’s chair. His laptop computer was plugged into the console, and I clicked the mouse and accessed his e-mail. He’d sent over a hundred e-mails out today. I clicked on one, expecting the worst.
A film of a young girl losing her bathing suit in the swimming pool appeared on the laptop’s screen. It was set to raunchy music, the film slowing down as her suit came off. Lowman was editing surveillance tapes, then e-mailing them to other perverts. The children he was supposed to be protecting, he was instead exploiting.
I stood. “There’s enough evidence on this computer to put you in jail for the rest of your life. Do you want that?”
Slumped against the console, Lowman shook his head.
“Then help us find Sampson Grimes,” I said.
“What will I get in return?”
“We’ll tell the judge you cooperated.”
“Like you did with Vonell Cook this morning?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard.
“Who told you about Vonell?” I asked.
“His lawyer.”
I looked at Cheeks and saw him shake his head. Lowman seized the moment, and stuck his hand beneath the console. There was a loud ripping sound. His hand reappeared clutching a dark object.
“Gun!” I shouted.