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Nyles’s humiliation was at an all-time high as they walked him out of the building in handcuffs, but it was nothing to the tightening knot in his gut. He was in big trouble.
As soon as Nyles was put into a holding cell, Sosa made a call to Sheriff Woodley’s private cell phone.
“Hello. This is Woodley,” Rance said.
“Sheriff Woodley, this is Detective Sosa. We picked up a man named Nyles Fairchild and brought him in for further questioning.”
“What do you think?” Woodley asked.
“He’s changed the color of his hair and cut off the beard and ponytail, but his DMV photo and his old ID card looks like the man in the footage. He has all of the same mannerisms of the man, including dragging one foot as he walks and a slight tilt down to one shoulder. And his story is full of holes. He has all kinds of answers for what I asked, but we’re about to dig into the background of his finances. We took his prints and DNA. The prints matched. We’ll have to wait on DNA results. But when I asked about a recent purchase of a metal detector, he admitted it and said he was using it locally down around the Potomac River. When I asked him about purchasing camping equipment, he said he’d planned to camp, but plans fell through.”
“So, his prints did match! That should confirm identity. What does he do? Where does he work?” Woodley asked.
“He’s a cataloger at the Library of Congress here in DC. His job is to log in and label all of the new acquisitions to the library, which as you know is immense.”
Woodley gasped. “The journal we found with the fingerprints came from the Library of Congress.”
“Yes, I know…but we didn’t tell him that, and yet when I mentioned his prints were on the journal, heimmediately said that because of his job, his prints are likely on thousands of books here. He gave himself away before we barely began.”
“Shit,” Woodley said. “Listen, I’m going to send you the file of everything we have on the case. You need to be as informed as possible before you question him further.”
“Yes. Are you emailing it, too?” Sosa asked.
“Yes,” Woodley said. “But keep in mind, he can’t lie his way out of a DNA match. What we collected is in the system, and when you get your test results back, see if they match. That will be the nail in his coffin. And if he starts to argue that, tell him we have eyewitnesses.”
“I was given to understand that the kid who was shot provided the composite, but you just said witnesses,” Sosa said.
“Yes. We have another one who came forward long before the kid ever regained consciousness. But that’s need-to-know only. We promised the witness anonymity.”
“Understood,” Sosa said. “I can hold him for up to ninety-six hours since it’s an attempted murder case. I’ve ordered a rush on the DNA. Hopefully, we’ll know something one way or the other before I have to turn him loose.”
“Keep me posted,” Woodley said. “I’m at the point where I don’t care who gets credit for the collar as long as I get Charlie Raines’s shooter behind bars.”
“Will do,” Sosa said, and went back to his desk,letting Fairchild stew in the holding cell while they waited for a public defender to show up.
While he was waiting for Woodley’s file to come through, his partner, Detective King, began going through Fairchild’s financial records, trying to make connections to Nyles Fairchild and Jubilee, Kentucky.
Nyles was in a panic. His worst fears about this fuck-up were coming true. He should have disappeared after it happened instead of coming back.
But he hadn’t, and here he was. He had an explanation for the prints. He had excused the purchases he made. What else did they know? Or more to the point, if they kept digging, what else would they find out?
Chapter 15
The file from Woodley finally came through, and when it did, Detective Sosa printed all of it out and began to read through it, while his partner was still searching Fairchild’s financials.
Two hours later, King was at his desk on a call, and Sosa was going through the files Sheriff Woodley had sent. They were both still waiting for Fairchild’s public defender to show when King hung up the phone.
“Hey, Sosa.”
Sosa looked up. “Yeah?”
“I think we’ve finally got something to connect Fairchild to Jubilee, Kentucky,” King said.
“Like what?” Sosa asked.
“Over a week before the shooting, Fairchild added another person’s name to his personal checking account, giving him access to withdraw funds, and ordered a debit card for him as well.”
“Yeah, so what was his name?” Sosa asked.
