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Turk growled again, and his voice trailed off.
Michael clapped him on the shoulder and stood him up, not too roughly but not too gently either. “No handcuffs as long as you and Turk here get along. That work for you?”
He nodded, lower lip still pooched out like a child.
***
“Mr. Pratt,” Faith said patiently. “You need to understand that clamming up right now won’t help you. You’re known to talk loudly and vehemently about how much certain people deserve to die and how happy you are with the way they died. That doesn’t look good for you.”
“Speaking of which,” Michael added. “You still haven’t told us how you know Mr. Jeter’s cause of death.”
Ulysses glared between the two agents, but behind his glare, Faith could tell that he knew he was in trouble. He glanced between the two of them and said, “You have to promise me that my… source… won’t get in trouble.”
Faith and Michael shared a glance. “Actually, we don’t,” Faith replied, “and we won’t. What we will do is promise you that you will get in a lot of trouble if you don’t start talking to us right now.”
Ulysses sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t want him to get in trouble, okay? It’s not his fault.”
“Who’s fault?”
“My nephew. He’s one of the boys that found the body. He called me the night they found Patrick and told me about it. He didn’t know that I knew Patrick.”
“What’s your nephew’s name?”
“Now look,” Ulysses said, “I don’t want him to get in trouble.”
“He won’t,” Faith replied. “We need to make sure that you’re telling us the truth.”
Ulysses looked between the two of them mistrustfully, but finally sighed and said, “Gavin. He’s a good kid. He wasn’t even going to go to that storm shelter, but there’s this girl he’s sweet on. She talked him into going. Funny thing, he ended up with the other girl that went with them. Guess she was real sweet to him after he got scared by the body.”
Faith glanced at Michael. He nodded and stepped outside to follow up with Dr. Heath and confirm the boy’s identity. Ulysses glanced nervously at Turk, who sniffed around his feet, then growled irritably when he didn’t find anything. “That dog all right?”
“He’s fine,” Faith replied.
The truth was, Faith wasn’t at all confident that Turk was okay. She made a mental note to bring him by David's office when she got back to Philadelphia. Then she remembered that David was in Nevada for the foreseeable future, and her mood soured.
She pushed that thought aside. She had a suspect to interrogate.
"Ulysses," she said, leaning forward on the table, "I really want to believe you, but my partner's a really suspicious type of person."
Ulysses glanced at Michael. Michael stared stonily at the suspect, and Ulysses paled a shade.
“You need to tell us everything.” Faith said. “You need to tell us where you were on the nights of the murders so I can prove to him you weren’t there. Otherwise… well, look, Ulysses, the conversation we walked in on is pretty hard to defend.”
He sighed and hung his head. “I was at the bar,” he replied. “I’m there most nights. Hell, I’d be there every night ‘cept Sheri don’t want me in there Thursdays and Fridays no more.”
“Sheri’s the bartender?”
He nodded. “Not the one you saw tonight. That’s Carrie Ann. Sheri’s the redhead.”
Faith nodded as though that description told her everything she needed to know. She heard the door open and glanced at Michael. He nodded, and Faith suppressed a look of frustration. Gavin was indeed the hapless Ulysses’ nephew, and he had indeed called his uncle after finding the body.
“So Carrie Ann can confirm your whereabouts the nights of the murders?” she asked, “the bartender?” she added for Michael’s benefit.
Ulysses nodded, and Michael stepped outside again.
“What time did you leave the bar?”
Ulysses shrugged. “I don’t know. Some nights I stay ‘til last call. Some nights, they kick me out. Some nights, I end up passing out and wake up in the street and don't know how I got there."
