Discombobulate

Chapter Forty-One

"I hate coming here," Detective Mullen grumbled. He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Would you calm down? We haven't been here for ten minutes yet," Sheriff Winston responded.

"It's going to take them an hour to get him out here. The last time I was here, it took them over an hour. I spent an hour and thirteen minutes waiting to talk to a murder suspect."

Winston put his hands on top of the table. They sat in a small rectangular room. A desk sat in the middle of a ceramic floor. A correctional officer had placed three wooden chairs in the room.

Winston and Mullen sat on one side. An empty chair sat on the other side. Mullen couldn't sit still. His leg bounced underneath the table. Every so often, he cracked his knuckles.

Winston brought along the case file from the Houghton case. Jennifer's journal sat on top of the cream-colored file. His hands folded beside them. This was only his second time at the Brimington County Jail.

The old brick building sat in the heart of Lexing. It was built sometime in the early 1900s. It housed around eight hundred inmates between three floors. Correctional officers and supporting staff dotted the floors.

Winston and Mullen were in a visitation room on the first floor. Grant had been in custody for two hours. He was still completing the process to be booked into jail.

It was understandable now. Sheriff Winston didn't understand why Lindsay Bowers had been crying at the fire station. She was with her kids and, after all, it was a party. Grant must have used his one-phone-call privilege to call Greg Sullivan.

It explained why Sullivan flew into a frenzy and ran out of the building. It explained everything and yet it explained nothing. Why was he gunning it for Denise? There had to be a bigger explanation.

The door to the room swung open. Grant Bowers stood in silence. A correctional officer stood behind him. "Go on and take a seat. Sheriff Winston, feel free to take all the time you need."

Winston made eye contact with Grant. The door to the room started to close. Grant's hands were cuffed in front of him, but that didn't stop him. He swung around and grabbed the metal door handle.

"Wait, I don't think I should do this. I'm not feeling very well."

The correctional officer popped his head around the door. "That's why you were cracking jokes on the way down here. Good try. Let go of the door and sit down."

Grant's shoulders slumped beneath a bright orange jumpsuit. He sighed before turning to Winston and Mullen. "What do you want?"

"That's not a nice way to greet the sheriff and homicide detective." Mullen kicked underneath the table. The empty chair jutted forward. "Go ahead and sit down, make yourself comfortable."

Winston's jaw clenched as he looked at the man. Grant Bowers had to be the guy that hit Simon's pizza man. He looked the same under fluorescent lights as he did under Denise's front porch light.

The bright red pizza shirt and baseball cap had been replaced with a worn prison jumpsuit. The back of the suit had the word inmate stamped in blackened block letters.

"I don't want to speak to you without a lawyer present." Grant sat down in the chair.

"Did you happen to catch any catfish on your fishing trip?" Detective Mullen asked.

Winston raised an eyebrow.

"Grant went fishing with Sullivan a few days ago. They drove to Ohio to catch catfish. We had a run-in at the grocery store," Mullen filled him in.