'You want to buy some computer stock?' Jack asked, and grinned.
A door opened off to the side and Jack's wife walked out of a rest room. I rose from my chair.
'Hello, Emma, I didn't know you were here,' I said.
'Good morning, sir. Where's your camera?' she said.
'Maybe I should come back later. I didn't mean to intrude upon y'all,' I said.
'No, no, I'm delighted you came by. What's up?' Jack said.
'It's Darl.'
'Unhuh?' Jack said.
'I can't represent him.'
They looked at me quizzically.
'Can you tell me why?' Jack asked.
'I have a conflict of interest. I was retained earlier by Lucas Smothers. I think your son was at Shorty's the night Roseanne Hazlitt was attacked.'
'Probably half the kids in Deaf Smith were,' Jack said.
'Darl could end up as a witness at Lucas's trial,' I said.
I could see the connections coming together in Jack's eyes, his good looks clouding.
'No, this goes beyond that, doesn't it?' He pointed one finger, bouncing it in the air. 'You're making Darl a suspect to get Lucas off the hook.'
'Nope.'
'Well, I personally think you should be ashamed of yourself, Billy Bob,' Emma said.
'I'm sorry,' I said, rising from my chair. The room felt warm, the air astringent with the smell of chemical pellets in the hanging baskets.
Jack rose from his chair behind his desk. The balls of his fingers rested on the glass top. His lavender shirt with a white collar and rolled French cuffs and loose tie looked like a cosmetic joke on his powerful body.
'Do you want me to write a check right now, or does the bill come later for photographing my son so you can implicate him in a murder?' he asked.
'I didn't invent your son's history or his problems…' I shook my head. 'I apologize for my remark. I'd better go now,' I said.
'Jack, don't let this happen. We need to sit down and talk this out,' Emma said.
'I might have some difficulty doing that. Get out of my office, Billy Bob,' he said.
Outside, I could feel the blood stinging in my neck, my hands useless and thick at my sides.
* * *
chapter ten
The next morning, when Lucas Smothers came to work with his father, he told me of the late-night visit he had received from people with whom he had gone to high school.
The cars cut their lights before they got to Lucas's house, but through his open window he could hear music on a radio and the voices of girls. The cars, five of them, were stopped in the center of the road, their engines throbbing softly against the pavement, their hand-rubbed body surfaces glowing dully under the moon like freshly ported plastic.
Then the lead car turned into Lucas's drive, followed by the others, and fishtailed across the damp lawn, scouring grass and sod into the air, crunching the sprinkler, ripping troughs out of the flower beds.