Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford Read Free Book Online Page A

served as Adam’s T-ball coach this past year.
    He’d been at work the day of Adam’s disappearance, leaving only briefly to go to the nearby Thunderbird Motel boat concession to see if he could borrow two clean sails for his upcoming shoot, but the person in charge wasn’t around, so he returned to the Golden Strand. As to who might have been responsible for Adam’s disappearance, Campbell told the detectives that he had not the slightest idea. Hoffman took it all down in the form of notes, for some reason failing to record the interview as he had all the others he had conducted during his investigation. At the end of the interview, Hoffman noted that he asked the subject to voluntarily submit to a polygraph examination, as if Matthews hadn’t already conducted one. It would be a long time before the reason for that odd statement—and Hoffman’s failure to record his interview—came to light.
    Hollywood, Florida—August 10, 1981
    O n Monday, Joe Matthews was back at Hollywood police headquarters bright and early, preparing to reexamine Jimmy Campbell. Matthews was convinced it was a waste of time, but if it might somehow put Hoffman’s suspicions concerning Campbell to rest, then he would do it.
    When the appointed hour of 10:00 a.m. came and went without Jimmy Campbell’s appearance, however, Matthews became concerned. By 11:00, he decided to walk down to Hoffman’s desk and let the detective know that Campbell was a no-show. Maybe the kid was scared, he thought. Maybe he’d overslept. But he wasn’t involved in Adam’s disappearance. That much he was sure of.
    Hoffman, however, was not at his desk. When Matthews asked the detective bureau’s secretary where Hoffman was, she told him Hoffman was in the interview room. He and his partner Ron Hickman had been grilling a suspect since seven that morning. What suspect? Matthews wondered. He hadn’t heard anything about a suspect.
    “Some guy named Campbell,” was the secretary’s answer.
    Matthews couldn’t believe it. He hurried down to the interrogation room—where the “Interview in Progress” sign had been left unlighted, he noted—and yanked open the door. Some “interview,” he was thinking. He had heard Hoffman screaming, “You lying piece of shit,” all the way down the hall. Sure enough, inside the room, he found an ashen Jimmy Campbell on the other side of a table from a livid Hoffman and Hickman.
    “What the fuck are you guys doing?” Matthews asked.
    “We’re interviewing a suspect,” Hoffman managed. His bravado seemed to have faltered. Even Hickman was avoiding Matthews’s gaze.
    “The hell you are,” Matthews replied. “He’s supposed to be with me right now. I can’t fucking believe it,” and with that he pulled Campbell from the room and back to his own desk. There wasn’t even a murmur of protest from Hoffman and Hickman.
    “Why are they treating me so rough?” Campbell asked when they were finally settled. “They seem to think I’m responsible for Adam being missing. They’re making all kinds of accusations.” Matthews did his best to get Campbell calmed down so that he could be productively examined, all the while thinking that it was just one more screwup on the part of Hoffman. No way on earth could you accuse a suspect of a crime minutes before administering a polygraph exam and expect to get anything usable out of it. Hoffman simply seemed oblivious to standard police procedures.
    After a bit of time in Matthews’s presence, Campbell finally began to breathe again. “I know I’ve got to calm down,” he told Matthews. “I’ve got to calm down and convince myself not to let the barbarians get to me.” Still, as he confided to Matthews, it was more than difficult to be accused of doing harm to a child whom he loved. “I do take it personally. It’s very upsetting.”
    To get Campbell relaxed, Matthews took him out to lunch, then brought him back to the station, where they went back over the events