He strutted into Joe’s office, announcing, “I was at lunch and caught the noon news. Looks like Shaw Kinnard is at it again.”
Joe Wiley, feeling downright hostile toward the ADA for declining to indict Kinnard when he was in custody, offered nothing by way of a greeting.
Hick was only slightly more cordial. “Funny how that works, Dupaw. You let killers go, they kill somebody else.”
Dupaw took umbrage. “My hands were tied. The police had nothing on him.”
“They were still digging.”
“Meanwhile an innocent man was languishing in jail.”
“He wasn’t—”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” the prosecutor said. “Ring a bell?”
Joe wanted to ring his bell, all right. The prosecutor shied away from a case if there was the remotest possibility of losing it.
“Do you have any solid leads on the Bolden murder and the Bennett woman’s disappearance?”
Hick glanced at Joe, who remained silent and sullen. Speaking for both of them, Hick said, “We have a crime scene unit assisting, but the Terrebone Parish SO is investigating Bolden’s murder.”
Dupaw frowned. “Do the personnel out there have the chops for it?”
“As murders go, it was straightforward,” Hick said. “Kinnard came up behind Bolden and shot him in the back of the head.”
“Yes, but the victim’s association with Billy Panella make it bigger than a straightforward murder. Do a bunch of country bumpkins have the know-how to—”
“The country bumpkins have balls,” said Joe, who had kept his cool for as long as he could. “When they catch Kinnard they’ll charge him for murder and won’t give a fuck how long he languishes in jail.”
Xavier Dupaw puffed himself up with righteous indignation and stalked out.
Joe stood, pushing back so hard off his rolling chair that it hit the wall behind his desk. Each minute that ticked by without something happening was making him crazy, because every minute that ticked by reduced the odds of Jordie Bennett being found alive.
If she didn’t make it, Joe would forever blame himself for not notifying her of her brother’s escape from the safe house as soon as they’d discovered him gone. Joe had mistrusted her just enough to withhold the information, then watch her to see if Josh would seek her out for help and, if he did, to see what action she would take: Shelter him, or surrender him to the authorities.
He might never know, and that was gnawing at him.
He and Hick had reviewed witness statements taken in the bar until they could recite them from memory. Deputy Morrow’s only lead—a woman who called the sheriff’s office and swore she saw Jordie Bennett being fed into a tree shredder—turned out to be the fabrication of a schizophrenic who’d gone off her meds. Her family apologized profusely, but investigators couldn’t recover the time it had taken to ascertain that it was a false alarm from a head case.
Now, feeling claustrophobic, Joe headed for the door. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Call Tennessee again. See if they’ve turned up something.”
Hick looked prepared to argue, but he reached for the desk phone. When Joe returned, Hick was hanging up in apparent disgust.
“Five minutes of conversation boiled down to two words: still nothing.”
Joe hadn’t expected there to be a breakthrough, but he shared Hick’s disappointment and chagrin. Josh Bennett had been missing for four days, and the only traces of him discovered so far were the ankle monitor and a set of sneaker prints leading from the safe house through a greenbelt about two miles deep that eventually fronted the access ramp of the east–west interstate, where it was assumed he had hitched a ride.
Frustrated, Joe returned to his desk chair and pinched the bridge of his nose till it hurt. “Where is that sniveling little shit?”
“He’s littler than when we last saw him.”
Joe lowered his hand from his face and shook his head in bewilderment. “What gets me is that nobody became suspicious when Bennett began making these cosmetic changes.”
“The dry eye was diagnosed by an ophthalmologist,” Hick reminded him. “He was even prescribed drops for it.”
“All right, but the drastic weight loss? I shed twenty pounds, Marsha might or might not notice if I’m standing in front of her buck naked. On Bennett’s frame you’d notice that kind of drop.”
“Not if he dropped it over a six-month time period.”