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

they’d discussed two nights earlier. Finally, early that evening, Matthews deemed Campbell ready, and he began the testing once again.
    They were nearing the conclusion of this second exam when the door to the room flew open and Matthews saw an obviously agitated assistant chief of police Leroy Hessler beckoning him outside. Matthews told Campbell to hold on for a moment and went to join Hessler in the hallway.
    “We just got a call,” Hessler told Matthews, grimly. “They found a severed head in a drainage ditch beside the turnpike up in Indian River County. They think it’s the boy’s.”
    He pointed at the door to the interview room where Campbell sat, oblivious. “We know he did it,” Hessler said to Matthews. “And I want a confession.”
    Matthews paid little attention to Hessler’s demands, but at the same time he was numbed by the information that Hessler had delivered. Statistics might dictate that fewer than one hundred children are kidnapped and murdered in a year, but reassuring statistics are little comfort when you’re one of the exceptions. As for Hessler’s cockeyed demands that he extract a confession from Jimmy Campbell come hell or high water, Matthews considered any number of outraged responses, most of which would have accomplished little good.
    “I’m in the middle of an examination,” he told Hessler finally, turning away. “I’ll bring my report down as soon as we’re finished in there.”
    Back inside the room, Matthews apologized to Campbell for the interruption and managed to complete his examination, which indicated once again that his subject—despite everything he had been subjected to—clearly and positively had no idea of what might have happened to Adam Walsh. Matthews thanked Campbell for his cooperation and told him to go on home. He sat alone then for a moment, wondering if it was true—that the water had claimed Adam Walsh after all, if scarcely in a way that anyone might have imagined. Tragedy didn’t come any grimmer than that, he thought. Then he went to track down Hoffman.
    He found the lead investigator in a back office where a crowd of somber-looking detectives had gathered, along with Assistant Chief Hessler. In the two hours that had passed since Hessler burst into Matthews’s examination room, the news had been confirmed. With the Walshes off in New York City to be interviewed about the search for Adam on Good Morning America , family friend John Monahan had been summoned by Indian River authorities to see if he could make an identification and confirm what dental records seemed to suggest.
    Coincidentally, the canal where the gruesome find had been made bordered an orange grove recently treated by pesticides. The runoff had so drenched the canal with chemicals that nothing was alive to disturb the flesh on the severed head, despite all the time that had passed. There was not a doubt in the witness’s mind.
    In the back office of the Hollywood PD, about a hundred miles south of where Monahan had made his identification, Hessler turned to Matthews and jabbed a finger angrily. “You don’t have the balls to call this Campbell deceptive.”
    Matthews was astonished. No way on earth had Jimmy Campbell murdered Adam Walsh, then hacked off his head and dumped it in an upstate canal. Every fiber in his cop’s body was certain of it.
    Jimmy Campbell had nothing to do with the crime and there was no way Matthews would be bullied into saying otherwise. Everyone else in the crowded room was quiet, looking at him expectantly. In other offices down the hall, phones rang, file doors creaked and slammed, voices rose and fell, all the humdrum sounds of daily cop business. In this room, Matthews thought, “ordinary” had lost its meaning, “procedure” had taken a hike.
    Finally, Matthews spoke. “I’m nobody’s whore,” he told Hessler. “I call it the way I see it.”
    Hessler regarded him for a moment, his face a mask of rage. Matthews wondered for a moment