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His lips twitched and he crossed his arms. I’d bet a million dollars I knew what he was thinking. Something about how he’d never throw a buddy under the bus.
Then his eyes flicked to his roommate, and he relaxed his stance again. “Listen, I honestly don’t know who would have stolen his uniforms. But it would have to be someone who’d fit in them without alterations, right? So maybe that will help narrow it down.”
“Yeah, of course. Well, if you can think of anything that could help, please call us, okay?”
“I will.”
He got back onto his bed just as Tremont came over. We told them we’d be in touch and left, heading back down the stairs. “Did the roommate tell you anything?”
“He told me what times they were both out of the room, so it’s a start. Two hours last night and one hour this morning.”
“Plenty of time. All right, let’s go talk to the guy on duty right now and then hit up whoever was here last night. Hopefully they have security footage from the hallways.”
“Sounds good.”
Ten minutes later, we’d finished speaking with the guys who were on duty and were watching the security footage. We saw the roommates coming and going at the times they’d told us, and also noted Max had done a laundry run, which explained his empty hamper.
“Hang on a minute,” I said, scratching my neck. “We saw the dude take his laundry down, but we never saw him bring it back up.”
Tremont frowned, rewinding the video to make sure. “Hmm. Yeah. Maybe it wasn’t laundry.”
“Maybe we should contact his command and find out if he had a uniform inspection coming up.”
“How much you wanna bet he does?”
I thought back to the way Devereux had reacted when I’d asked who had a uniform inspection coming up. Clearly, he knew his roommate did. But with the guy standing right there filing a report with my partner, it made sense that he wouldn’t want to say that in front of him. It wasn’t exactly obstruction of justice, though, because his answer had hinted toward his roommate as much as possible without throwing him under the bus completely.
Tremont called up the guy’s command and confirmed our suspicion, so we headed back upstairs. It only took five minutes for him to crack under our good cop, bad cop routine. He’d been hitting the drive-thrus harder than the gym lately, and his uniforms didn’t fit anymore. But since he spent so much money on crappy food, he couldn’t afford to buy new ones.
He’d confessed to stashing them in a friend’s trunk because he didn’t want to get in trouble, so we cited him for filing a false police report. His command would dole out their own punishment on top of that, but our job was done.
When we stepped outside, Devereux followed us out. “Hey, wait up.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“I just wanted to tell you I didn’t know what he did when you guys were here earlier. His story sounded a little fishy considering we had an inspection coming up, but I really didn’t think he’d do something that crazy.”
“You’re not getting cited, Devereux,” I said.
“I know, I just didn’t want you to think I was intentionally covering for him. I was hoping I was overthinking it. I’m not a rat, but I’m also not the kind of guy who’d cover for someone if I knew they were lying to PMO.”
I looked over at Tremont and he sighed, jerking his chin toward their door. “It’s all good, man. Keep your roomie out of trouble. He’s clearly not the brightest crayon in the box.”
Devereux chuckled, backing up toward the door. “He’s a good kid. But yeah, I will.”
