“We’ll be calling you with updates, okay?” the agent promised.

Philip nodded his head. “Thank you.”

What was left for the Bates family to do now? Especially because in their hearts they knew, deep down, that Alan and Terra were dead. This new dose of anxiety came in the form of an explanation as to what had happened, who had killed them.

Kevin and Robert went into autopilot, comfort mode, without even thinking about it. Stay busy. Do things. Make calls. Get Terra’s family involved. Get family members over to the house so they could begin to put a support system in place for what they knew were going to be the roughest days of their lives ahead. Someone would have to tell the kids. Someone would have to sit them down and explain that their father and stepmother were gone. In fact, as Robert and Kevin and Philip thought about it, where were the kids?

9

Kimberly Williams and Sheron Vance made it to the PPD by 2:00 P.M. Of course, they had gained an hour as they passed over the invisible line of the Central time zone.

They waited around. Had some coffee. Explained the situation. “We talked to the chief and a couple [Pelham] investigators about Mr. McCord,” Williams told me.

Through that, one thing became clear: Jeff McCord was not your typical cop. He had never been part of the blue crowd.

“They told us he was a loner. Strange person. Kept to himself.” Not your traditional blue blood. Jeff was that guy who didn’t say a lot but always seemed to have something heavy on his mind. We all know someone like this.

By 2:45 P.M., Jeff McCord arrived to clock in for his shift.

“His superiors told him to come in and talk to Miss Williams,” someone close to the case later said. “There’s a . . . question about whether or not it was voluntary.”

Primarily, Williams and Vance wanted to create some sort of timeline for Alan and Terra, and find out what piece of the puzzle Jeff McCord could bring to the table. Simple stuff. Common questions Jeff had probably asked suspects himself as a police officer. There wasn’t going to be any dark room, a chair in the middle of the floor, lights in his face. Just three cops talking. Getting to the truth.

At least for the time being.

Immediately Jeff came across as standoffish and aloof. He had an attitude about him that said, You got a lot of nerve questioning me! Kind of odd for a fellow cop to be so cagey and unhelpful. Then again, Williams understood, she didn’t know the guy. She had nothing to base her judgment on. Maybe this was Jeff’s general demeanor? The way he acted around everyone.

“You always want to try and build a rapport first with a witness,” Williams explained in her clear Southern accent. “This way you can tell how he answers questions.”

With Jeff, that was not going to be easy; he did not want to talk.

Jeff was concerned about speaking with two investigators from another state regarding a case that they did not want to divulge any information about. Jeff asked Williams why she needed the information, and Williams danced around that issue. She wasn’t about to show her cards. Both Williams and Vance weren’t saying much more than how they were looking for Alan and Terra Bates. On top of that, Jeff had been up most of the night with his wife. He was playing on a short fuse. He’d slept for a few hours that afternoon, but for the most part, he hadn’t slept in the past two days.

Jeff’s chief pulled him aside, according to what Williams later said. “You’re under no obligation to talk to these investigators,” the chief told his officer. Yet, there was something in the chief’s voice, a look, letting Jeff know in not so many words that it might be in his best interest to tell them what they needed to know.

“I understand,” Jeff said.

As the interview went forward, the tone remained informal. Very brief, too. Williams asked Jeff where the kids spent the previous night.

“The kids, oh,” Jeff said as though he’d had a memory lapse, “I supervised them packing for the weekend. They were supposed to be picked up by Alan at six. When Alan failed to show up, we dropped them off at their grandparents [Dian and Albert Bailey, Jessica’s mother and stepfather], somewhere near six forty-five.” Dian and Albert lived on Whiting Road in Hoover, Jeff explained, about a half mile from the McCords’ house on Myrtlewood. The drive took minutes.

Williams nodded and wrote that down. 6:45.

They stood inside the same interview room the Pelham police used to interrogate suspects and witnesses. Jeff sat. He had his uniform on. His weapon holstered. He kept looking at his watch. He needed to get ready for his shift.

Williams asked where Jessica was at the moment.

“Her mother’s house.”

“What was supposed to happen yesterday?” Williams wanted to know. She asked Jeff for the day’s schedule. What was the McCord plan and how had they carried it out?

Jeff shrugged. Didn’t want to respond to that.

“Did the Bateses show up for the depositions?”

“Yeah,” Jeff answered freely. “They did.” But Jeff wasn’t there. He said he was at home with the kids.

“Did you personally have any contact with them afterward?”

“Nope.”

Jeff wasn’t going to say much more than yes or no. He was either obviously hiding something or this was the way he reacted to questions from anyone. Williams and Vance had nothing to compare his reactions to. They had just met him. And the guy was easy not to like right from the start, Williams said. “We wanted to know about these depositions—what happened before, after, and so on,” she explained later. “What he knew about them being in Alabama. What he knew about where they went, and what the plan was for them to pick up the children.”

But Jeff McCord kept “talking in circles,” Williams said.

“Just tell us, then,” Williams stated at one point during the interview, now a bit frustrated and impatient with this fellow cop, “what you did, Officer McCord? What did you do yesterday since the time you got up? Talk us through your day until right now.”

For Vance and Williams, they got the idea Jeff was being uncooperative. “We had no idea if this was the way he was or [if] he was actually hiding something. We had no idea how he processed things, or how to gauge when to be alerted about something. He was just very . . . very quiet.”

Jeff’s posture told another story—and this was something Williams studied furtively, intuitively. It stood out after a time. Jeff appeared defensive in his movements, especially the way he reacted to questions—which is something else entirely. A suspect cannot camouflage how his body reacts to questions put in front of him, no matter how hard he tries. It’s instinct. All people do certain things with their hands, legs, maybe a crinkle of the brow, an eyebrow lift, a rub of the nose. Makes no difference how hard a suspect might try to conceal his actions and movements. His ticks. Cops just need to figure these out and they can give a lie detector test on the spot without a person even realizing it’s going on.

“It was like pulling teeth,” Williams said, “getting information”—even basic stuff—“out of him, and then when he decided to talk, he ran us in circles.”

Did Jeff know this trick, too?

As the interview carried forth, Jeff rattled on and on and seemed to be talking about nothing. So Williams interrupted him. “What point is it that you’re trying to make, Officer McCord?”

Jeff lifted his shoulders and dropped them back down. Did he even know?

What is going on with this guy? Williams thought at that moment. “It was beginning to concern us, just because he was so matter-of-fact at times and jabbering at others.”

Up and down.

This turned out to be another red flag. The fact that the guy was all over the place was cause for concern. He was apparently hiding something.