Deadline

It took the better part of two hours for the prosecutor to wade through all the scientific rigmarole and get to the crucial point: bits and pieces of Darlene Strong had been found in the digestive tracts of three of Willard Strong’s pack of illegal fighting dogs, which had been put down in order to search for evidence.

The second person to testify, the county medical examiner, had confirmed that those bits and pieces corresponded with the ones missing from what had been left of the victim’s cadaver, which police had discovered locked inside the dogs’ pen.

Darlene hadn’t been killed by the dogs, but the state was asking for the death penalty, so Lemuel Jackson, a shrewd and meticulous prosecutor with a double-digit number of convictions, had wanted to impress upon the jury how heinous the crime had been. He’d wanted it on the record that her body had been fed to Willard’s dogs, and since the animals were half-starved in order to make them fiercer competitors in the fighting rings…

The implication had made many of the jurors go a little green.

Blood samples taken from the ground inside the caged area, as well as a piece of scalp with hair attached found inside one dog’s intestines, suggested that Jeremy Wesson had met the same fate.

By the time the defense attorney, Mike Gleason, had stumbled through an ineffectual cross-examination of the ME, it was almost twelve o’clock. The judge called for a lunch recess until one thirty, although Dawson thought it doubtful that anyone in the courtroom would have much of an appetite. Certainly not one that would require an hour and a half to appease.

But now they were back, and the third witness of the day had been summoned into the courtroom.

For background, Dawson had read news articles about the crime. He supposed he’d glanced at the photographs of the ex Mrs. Wesson that had accompanied some of those write-ups, but he really hadn’t paid attention.

Suddenly he was.

The woman walking up the short center aisle wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He’d seen Flora Stimel’s Wanted posters and had imagined that Jeremy Wesson’s ex-wife would be of a type similar to that of his mother. He’d expected her to be coarse, tough, and hard-looking.

But from her delicate bone structure to the pale right hand she raised to be sworn in, this woman was the polar opposite. She outclassed everyone in the courtroom, Dawson included. Dawson especially.

She was dressed in an ivory-colored form-fitting skirt, with a blouse of the same color but of softer material, topped by a sapphire-blue jacket. Her auburn hair was pulled into a low ponytail, but not so tightly as to prevent a few loose strands from framing her face. Her only visible jewelry were a pair of diamond stud earrings and a wristwatch. She struck the perfect note for a courtroom appearance, being neither too feminine and fussy nor too structured and severe.

As a journalist, he would have been interested in Jeremy Wesson’s ex no matter what. There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, if not for his own elucidation, then certainly for Headly’s.

But the woman about to testify awakened a different kind of curiosity in him, and he resented it, because he didn’t need an additional complication, the worst possible one being the loss of his professional objectivity, on which he prided himself.

He cursed Headly again for dragging him into this. He hadn’t wanted to come, but knew he had to. After receiving the taunting text from Headly, he’d packed his duffel bag. The following morning, rather than using the ticket to Idaho that had been foisted on him, he’d boarded a flight to Savannah.

While waiting in the rental-car line, he’d called Harriet.

“Are you already in Boise?”

“I took a detour.”

He envisioned her seated behind her desk, smoke coming out her ears. “I assigned you a story, Dawson.”

“I’ve got a better one.”

“What is it?”

“For now, it’s a secret.”

“Where is it?”

“I’m hot on its trail.”

“Dammit, Dawson!”

“I’ll be in touch.” And he clicked off before the people around him could hear the obscene invectives being shouted through his phone.

For the time being, he was covering his own expenses, so he’d booked a room in a midpriced downtown hotel. After taking a cold shower, he’d raided the minibar, turned on ESPN, and settled down on the bed with a room-service cheeseburger and his laptop.

He’d searched out websites that contained material pertaining to the crime for which Willard Strong was being tried. On every level, it was a disturbing case, and by the time Dawson had finished researching it, he’d developed a tightness in his chest that he wanted to attribute to the Tabasco with which he’d doused his cheeseburger. But he knew that wasn’t the cause of the constriction.

He asked himself for the hundredth time why he’d let Headly rope him into becoming involved. But when he had stripped away all the plausible explanations for his capitulation, the truth stood alone, and it had nothing to do with Headly, but everything to do with himself.

Truth be known, he’d practically dared himself to come, as a kind of therapy.