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“The only ranger in the office right now, the older guy, Oliver McAlister. We call him Pops because he’s been here longer than anyone else and treats us all like his kids.”
He smiled again, making her wonder if he was trying to put her at ease or whether he was one of those people who always seemed happy. Those kind of people got on her nerves and made her fingers itch for her gun. Not having its familiar weight on her hip made her feel naked and vulnerable, a feeling she didn’t like one bit.
“Please state your name and address for the video.”
“Remilyn Jordan.” She listed her street address. “Greenwood Village, Colorado.”
“Colorado? I thought you lived in Tennessee and worked out of the Knoxville field office.”
She shook her head. “I work in Denver. Johnson came over from the nearest field office, the one in Knoxville. But he’s not my regular boss. He’s my pseudoboss while I’m here under investigation.”
“Got it. Greenwood Village, Colorado. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it.”
“Outside of Denver, about an hour from Boulder, give or take.”
“I bet it’s beautiful there. Great mountain views of the Rockies.”
“It’s beautiful,” she conceded.
“But you decided to come here on vacation, to another mountain range.”
“Is that a question?”
He smiled again. “Before we go any further, I need to remind you about your rights.”
“We can skip that part. Pops Mirandized me on the way down the mountain.”
“I figured he had. But I still have to tell you your rights on camera. Like I said, for your protection and mine.”
Not seeing the point in arguing, she suffered through his recitation of the Miranda warning.
“Do you understand each of these rights as I’ve explained them to you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You have to say it,” he reminded her.
“Yes.” She sighed. “Yes, I understand my rights. Yes, I’m willing to speak to you without a lawyer. Can we just talk this out and get it over with?”
The plastic water bottle crackled between her hands. She hadn’t even realized that she’d picked it up. She set it down.
“I can’t imagine you driving all the way here from Colorado. Did you fly in? Then rent a car while you’re in town?”
“Actually, no. I drove. As you’re well aware, I brought a weapon with me. Driving was easier than going through the headaches that declaring my weapon would require on a plane.”
“Especially since you’re here off duty, on vacation.”
“Exactly.”
He opened his laptop, typed for a moment. “Where are you staying?”
“A motel a few streets back from the main drag in Gatlinburg.” She told him the name.
“You’ve been in town how long?”
“A couple of days.”
“And what have you been doing every day while you’ve been here?”
She hesitated. How much should she reveal? Cooperating was her best chance at trying to avoid any charges. But would her purpose in being here help her, or hurt her?
“Do you need me to repeat the question?” he asked.
“I’ve been hiking trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, mainly the Appalachian Trail.”
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
“Why?”
She blinked. “The same reason anyone hikes, I suppose. To see nature, the beautiful scenery. To get away from the pressures of my job. The Smokies aren’t at all like the mountains back home. I wanted to see something different.”
“It’s February. The temperatures are hovering in the twenties at night, forties and fifties during the day. And that’s in town. Up here at these elevations, it gets even colder. Not to mention the ice and snow. Want to try again? Why are you hiking in freezing temps in the middle of winter?”
“I’m not the only hiker up here at this time of year. I’ve seen several.”
“There are some, yes. Not many. What I’m interested in is why you’re here at one of the worst times of year to be outside in the park.”
She stared at him, her left hand beneath the table now, her fingers curling against her palm. “I like solitude. I like to be alone. And I don’t mind the cold.”
His silence told her he wasn’t buying her answer. He waited, probably hoping she’d feel compelled to fill the silence, divulge something she didn’t want to share. But she knew interview techniques. She wasn’t saying anything unless she was answering a specific question.
“Why did you shoot Kurt Vale?”
She sucked in a breath, thrown off-kilter by the abrupt change in the conversation. But rather than rush to defend herself, which could have led to her spilling all sorts of things, she took a moment to regain her composure. When she was sure she was in control, she said, “I was standing at a gap in the trees, admiring the scenery. I’d heard someone following me earlier, so when I heard a noise behind me, I naturally whirled around and drew my gun. To defend myself.”
“What did Vale do?”
“He drew his gun, a Glock.”
“He didn’t have a gun. I saw him standing twenty feet away from you. And I saw you, holding your SIG Sauer, pointing it at an unarmed man.”
“That’s not what happened. You saw him, then me. And as soon as you realized I had my gun out, you no longer looked at him. At that point, you deemed that I was the threat, and you charged at me. You didn’t look back at Vale and see that he’d pulled out a gun and was about to shoot me. I yelled at him to freeze. He didn’t. I had no choice but to fire my weapon.”
He leaned forward, crossing his forearms on top of the table. “Here’s the thing, Remi. The only way that story holds water is if we found a gun at the scene, this Glock you say he had. But the only gun we found was your SIG Sauer, the one that I saw you aim at Kurt Vale, the one I saw you fire.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. If your crime scene techs didn’t find Vale’s gun, they missed it. They should go back and look harder. It has to be there.”
“After I knocked you to the ground to keep you from shooting an unarmed man a second time, I rendered first aid to the victim. He was shot in the side and was losing a lot of blood. He was in no condition to run off somewhere and hide his alleged gun, then run back and lie down, all in the span of the few seconds it took me to knock you down and then go to him. The only items he had with him were his wallet, his car keys and his cell phone. I contend that the cell phone is what you saw in his hand, not a pistol.”
“You’re wrong.”
He held his hands up. “I want to believe you. I want to be wrong. Convince me.”
She tapped her fingers against her leg. “I agree that Vale didn’t have the opportunity to go hide his gun somewhere. After I shot him, and he fell to the ground, it must have come loose. The momentum of his fall could have knocked the gun into the woods. That’s exactly what happened when you knocked me down. My pistol flew into the bushes.”
“True. It did. But only a few yards away. And I ran at you, trying to reach you before you pulled the trigger. I’m a big guy. The force of me hitting you and falling to the ground with you is more force than if Vale simply dropped where he stood after being injured. Don’t you agree?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “Agreed.”
“And yet your gun only flew about six feet away. Wouldn’t you expect Vale’s gun, if he had one, to have gone only a few feet, given that set of parameters? Therefore easily found by either me or the crime scene tech team later?”
She didn’t answer. What could she say?
“After taking your gun, I was with Vale the rest of the time. I was there with the medical team. I escorted them down the mountain to the waiting ambulance. At no time did I ever see a gun.”
He waited. Again she said nothing.
“This might be a good time to tell the truth,” he said.
She was starting to regret apologizing for punching him.
“I am telling the truth.”
He sat back in his chair. “So the gun just, what, walked away on its own?”
“Maybe Vale threw it.”
“Sure. Okay. When he was lying on the ground bleeding out?”
“At any time when he was on the ground when you were on top of me. He could have tossed it away.”
“The crime scene techs would have found it.”
“Not if they didn’t know to look for it. You never spoke to me after the shooting. You didn’t ask me why I shot Vale. You didn’t know he had a gun, so you wouldn’t have told the techs to look for one.”
“Valid point. Rangers McAlister and Grady took you into custody before I went down the mountain with the medical team. Did you mention at any time to either of them that you thought Vale had a gun?”
Once again, he found the hole in her argument. She clenched her jaw in frustration. Of course she’d told them that Vale had a gun. She didn’t want someone to think that she’d just arbitrarily shot an unarmed man.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he continued. “I’ll be sure to verify that with the rangers. But I imagine it will be in McAlister’s report. He’s the one who would have sent the crime scene guys up there, too. And I’m sure he would have told them to perform a thorough search for a second gun. Again, I’ll happily verify that when I read their reports. Just to be extra certain, I’ll ask them, too. But we both know what they’ll say. They looked for a gun. They didn’t find one. Again, this would be a really good time to come clean, to dig yourself out of the hole you’re getting into.”
She shook her head.
“Let’s start again with why you’re here.”
“I told you. I’m hiking.”
“In the winter.”
“In the winter,” she snapped.
His brows rose. “Okay. So you like the cold. You like treacherous, slippery trails with snow and ice. Not my thing. But I can see the appeal for some people. The mountains are definitely beautiful with their snowcaps.”
He was going somewhere with this. She decided not to help him by rising to the bait. She sat back and waited.
“So you’re out hiking, enjoying the frigid weather. You heard someone else on the trail, behind you, so you—a trained FBI agent—whirled around and shot him. Do I have that right?”
“I told him to freeze. He didn’t.”
“Right. Left that part out. You heard someone behind you, whirled around, yelled for him to freeze, then you pulled the trigger.”
“After he pulled a gun out of his pocket, yes.”
“Because you thought he was walking on the same trail as you? You assumed he was following you?”
“Yes. No.” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s more complicated than that.”
He rested his forearms on the table again. “I’m all ears.”
She really, really wanted to punch him. “He wasn’t simply following me. He was stalking me through the woods, for quite some time. At least half an hour.”
His brows rose. “Stalking you?”
“Hunting me. Matching me stride for stride. When I took a step, he’d take a step, echoing me so that it was difficult to be sure if someone else was out there, following me.”
“Following you.”
“Would you quit repeating everything I say?”
He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “How long have you known Kurt Vale?”
“Known him? I’ve never met him.”
“But he’s been stalking you. I think you used the word hunting.”
“Yes. Exactly. He was hunting me. That’s how it seemed. I could hear footsteps—”
“Echoing yours.”
“You’re being condescending.”
“My apologies.”
He wasn’t sincere and they both knew it. He was tripping her up, making what had happened seem...trivial. She tried again to explain. “I was scared, okay? I believed he was after me.”
“Why would he be after you if he didn’t know you?”
