Page 93 of Left Behind

“What did you do?” Sonny asked.

“What anybody would do in such a situation. He asked me if I lived in the same place. I said yes, and ten minutes later, he’s at my door. Ten minutes. How far up was it from Jubilee where the girl was shot?”

The hair on the back of Sonny’s neck crawled. “About fifteen minutes or so.”

“That’s about right,” Lilah said. “I think he thought he’d drive home on his own, but he was in pretty bad shape when he got here, so I guess he changed his mind and that’s why he called me.”

“Was he shot?” Sonny asked.

“Oh no! Nothing like that or I would have suspected something. He just had a deep gash in his knee and some severe bruising. Like he’d fallen on something sharp.”

Sonny nodded. “Chasing down a woman on the mountain in the dark, in a rainstorm, will do that to you.”

Lilah moaned and covered her face with her hands.

“I didn’t know. I had no idea. I would have said something sooner!” she said.

“Of course, you wouldn’t know. All the details of that incident were going through the sheriff’s department. But this is valuable information they’ll need to know when they interrogate him, especially if he tries to deny being in the vicinity. I’ll need to take your statement. Are you okay with this?”

She frowned. “Of course, I’m okay with it. I’m just thanking my lucky stars he didn’t consider me a witness he needed to remove.”

Sonny nodded. “Yancy, would you help Lilah up and walk her to an interview room so we can get that statement? And Lilah, don’t open that pop you just bought. It’ll spew all over. I’ll bring you another one when I come, okay?”

Lilah nodded. “Yes, Chief, and thank you.”

Sonny gave her arm a quick squeeze. “No, ma’am. Thank you.”

Yancy helped Lilah up and walked her out of the break room, while Sonny hurried back to his office. He made a quick call to the sheriff’s office, and as soon as Rance Woodley answered, he unloaded the latest news.

“I’ll get a copy of her statement to you as soon as it’s typed up and signed. You can let Bowling Green PD know. It might help with their interrogation.”

“Will do,” Woodley said. “I’ll tell you one thing. This is the most convoluted case I’ve worked on in a while, and this just added another knot.”

They disconnected, and while Sonny headed to the interview room with a fresh can of soda from the dispenser, Woodley made a quick call to Detective Gardner to fill him in.

***

Lonny Pryor was kicked back in the Miami jail cell, going over and over the story he intended to spin. He was confident to the point of cocky. And after a discussion with a jailhouse lawyer, he opted not to fight extradition. There was no purpose in it. His DNA had tied him to a murder.

Two days later, two U.S. Marshals arrived to transport him back to Bowling Green, Kentucky. They walked him out of the PD in leg irons and handcuffs, put him in the back of a government van, and handcuffed him to the inner wall.

“Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Pryor. This is a fifteen-hour drive,” the marshal said, then climbed out of the back of the van and shut and locked the doors.

“Well, hell,” Lonny said. The bench he was on was hard and narrow, and it was going to get a lot harder and narrower before this ride was over.

***

Detective Gardner walked into the Bowling Green PD the next morning, ready for Pryor’s interrogation. He knew Pryor had been booked into their jail sometime after midnight, and a lawyer had been contacted. They were just waiting for word that the lawyer was on-site, and it came just before 11:00 a.m.

Gardner took his partner, Detective Rainey, to the interview room with him and entered to find Pryor handcuffed to the table, his lawyer sitting at his side, and a guard in the room with them. Both Pryor and his lawyer looked up as the detectives entered.

Gardner and Rainey sat. Gardner opened his file, sifted through a couple of papers, then nodded to his partner, who turned on the recorder.

“For the record, Detective Gardner, and Detective Rainey, in the interview room, beginning interview at 11:12 a.m. with Lonny Joe Pryor, and his lawyer, Ellis George. Mr. Pryor, for the record, please state your name, age, and occupation.”

Lonny was ready. He wanted this over with, and hedging would only delay the inevitable.

“Lonny Joe Pryor. Fifty-seven years old. Self-employed.”

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