It took Dez a while to reply to that, and Trout watched various emotions struggle to present themselves on her face, but the wooden cop face won out.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why do you think?” Trout forced a smile despite the hurt he was feeling. “Look … just because we have some issues—”
“‘Issues,’” she echoed softly.
“—doesn’t mean that I don’t care about what happens to you. ”
Dez glanced down at the drying blood on her clothes and then looked up into Trout’s eyes for a long three count.
“I’m not injured,” she said, her tone and selection of words coldly formal.
Trout felt his stomach begin to unclench. “Then what happened?”
“Just go away, Billy,” she said as she turned and began walking away.
Trout ground his teeth. Ah … fuck it, he thought, and then called after her, “Is this about Homer Gibbon?”
That stopped Dez in her tracks. Trout knew that she was too good a cop to do something as lame as whirl around in shock, but the sudden tension was there in every line of her body. She turned and walked back to Trout.
“Would you repeat that, please?” she said.
Trout licked his lips. “Does that mean that this is related to the Homer Gibbon case?”
“What do you know about that, Billy?”
Not “sir. ” Not “fuckhead. ” She used his actual name.
“I know that he’s here,” said Trout, nodding toward the mortuary.
Dez said nothing.
“Did something happen?” Trout asked. “There were some threats during the trial and before the execution. Did someone break in to desecrate the body?”
Nothing. Dez’s eyes might as well have been made from cold blue stones.
“Did someone steal the body? There were threats about that, too. ”
There was a flicker in Dez’s eyes that told Trout that he’d scored a point. Holy rat shit, he thought. Someone actually did steal Gibbon’s body. If the execution was the third act, this is a solid gold epilogue.
He kept the triumphant smile off his face. “Any theories on who stole it?” he asked.
“I never said a goddamn thing about—” Dez began and then stopped as JT Hammond crossed the road and stood next to her. Goat followed silently in his wake.
“Do you have information to share with us, Billy?” asked JT, his voice as cool as Dez’s.
“No, but I’d like to get some information from—”
“Then please get into your car, turn around, and go back to the road,” said JT.
“You can’t throw me out. This is news and—”
JT stepped close. Trout was tall at six feet, but JT was two inches taller and a great deal tougher. “This is a private road, Billy,” said JT. “It’s mortuary property all the way down to Doll Factory. You can wait down at the crossroads or up the road at the diner, but you cannot park here. ”
“Since when did you join the gestapo, JT?” Billy asked in a disappointed tone.
The skin around JT’s eyes tightened. When he wanted to, JT’s face could transform from the genial nerd Samuel Jackson from Jurassic Park to the far more predatory Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction. This was the first time the transformation was done for Trout’s benefit. “You didn’t have many friends when you arrived here, Billy … and you have fewer of them now. Now get in your car and drive out of here. I won’t ask again. ”