Harry said, “That being?”
“Tire impressions where it had been driven back into the trees, fifty, sixty feet off the road. There was another set where it backed out. The tread picked up dirt, got faint where the vehicle pulled onto the road, but still discernible. Then the tracks stopped dead.”
“Vanished?” Harry said, narrowing an eye.
“Like the car pulled onto the asphalt and disappeared. Never figured it out. Sucked into a Martian spaceship?”
He chuckled at the example, but I could see it still bugged him.
“Your take on the whole scene?” I asked.
Pettigrew put his arms on the table and leaned forward. He spoke near a whisper.
“You guys are the PSIT down in Mobile, right? The guys that get the crazies?”
“It’s a part-time gig,” I said. “Like twice a year.”
“Ever do any conjectures that get a bit out of the box?”
I nodded. “Even when we’re wrong it’s the right way to think. Everything’s a possibility.”
Pettigrew lowered his voice. “My conjecture: The perp brought the victim to the shack, made his kill. He wandered from the scene to the tower-tired? High on something and disoriented? I’ll never know. But someone else showed up. More than one someone, I’m thinking.”
“Keep going.”
“I think someone else caught up with the killer at the base of the tower.”
“Who?” Harry asked.
Pettigrew grunted, slapped the table. “No idea. None. Not a damn one.”
“What about the car?”
“Two choices: Either it belonged to the perp, or his pursuers. I’d think the perp, since it was hidden.”
I’d been tumbling a thought through the back of my mind since Pettigrew mentioned the lost tire tracks.
“If the car got hauled away instead of driven away, it might explain the missing tracks.”
“I like that,” Pettigrew said, narrowing an eye, like he was squinting across four years. “I like it a lot. Wish I’d considered it then.”
“What did Cade Barlow think?” Harry asked out of the blue.
Pettigrew’s nose wrinkled like someone had opened a garbage can under it. “What do you know about Barlow?”
“That he ain’t much interested in a murder that took place in his jurisdiction four years back.”
I’d seen how Ben Pettigrew looked when he was uncertain. Now I got to see what he looked like angry.
“Barlow should have been trying to get out ahead of me on the case, steal my thunder. It’s how he was, a scene-stealer and credit-grabber. I didn’t mind, the competition kept me sharp. But on the Holtkamp murder, he threw roadblocks in my way, ridiculed my ideas. I floated my thoughts on the trails in the grass, Barlow rolling his eyes, comparing it to crop circles, asking if I thought extraterrestrials killed the woman. He had higher-ups laughing at my ideas.”
“Think he had something to do with the missing case materials?” I asked.
Pettigrew instinctively glanced through the meeting-room window into the squad room, making sure we weren’t being eavesdropped on.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
I had a sudden thought, one of those errant connections. “You ever see Barlow talking to a guy, square-built, hard-looking, six one or two, blond curly hair? Looks kinda like Jerry Lee Lewis if he pumped iron instead of playing piano.”
Pettigrew pursed his lips, thought. “Got a photo?”
“I can fax you one.”
“Do that, may spark something.”
We stood, shook hands, thanked Pettigrew for his time.
“That case sits hard in my craw,” he said. “It was tough to leave in the middle.”
Harry said, “Arn mentioned you got hired by the Montgomery force. Recruited.”
“They needed patrol personnel, had a grant for adding cops, got my name somewhere. Hired me the day of my interview. Got the gold two years later.”
“They came looking for you?” Harry said. “Big compliment. I’m impressed.”
Pettigrew reddened; for a split second I saw a shy country boy.
“Aw hell, they were just beating the bushes for small-town cops looking for the big-city experience, guys that wouldn’t need a lot of training.” He shrugged. “I hated leaving cases hanging, but the Montgomery department needed me fast. It was basically jump right then or spend my days dealing with Cade Barlow. I jumped.”
CHAPTER 27
We were fifteen minutes above Mobile on I-65. I was lying in the back, trying to make sense of the last two weeks. I felt someone had set a basketball-size tangle of thread before me and said, “Untangle it, but don’t use your hands.”
The phone rang in my jacket. I spoke, hung up, looked at the back of Harry’s head.
“It’s your favorite lawyer. Walls wants to talk.”
Harry wrinkled his nose. “The scumbucket say what he wants in return? He always wants something.”
Walls met us at the door, pointed us to his office. Harry pulled his bandana handkerchief and dusted off the chair before he sat. Walls pretended not to notice.
“Something came to me,” Walls said, sitting behind his desk and pinching lint from his shiny silk suit. “The picture of the blond guy. See, I was in my office late last night, working on a client’s case, guy named Tony Binker, Tony the Bee…”
“Oh shit,” Harry moaned.
“Tony’s not a bad guy, just a kid who got trapped in the wrong crowd…”
Harry said, “Tony the Bee runs a drug gang, Walls. He makes wrong crowds.”
“When it occurred you guys were the investigating officers on Tony’s little event. While I was trying to place the guy in the picture, it also occurred to me that you guys could make a positive recommendation to the Prosecutor’s Office about Tony. Lighten things up if he goes down.”
Harry smoldered. Walls licked his forefinger, scratched something from the lapel of his suit. He rolled whatever it was into a ball and flicked it away.
“In many ways I’m like a social worker, y’know? Giving my life to disadvantaged human beings who take a wrong road. Folk needing a modicum of rehabilitation, probably not half as much as the state deems necessary…”
I shot a look at Harry. Disgust blanketed his face. Still, he nodded his head, Do it.
I said, “All right, Walls. We’ll do what we can with the prosecution side. No promises.”
“Harry?” Walls said. “Is that your thinking?”
Harry’s lips twitched with the words he wanted to say, finally coming out as, “Yeah, Walls. I’ll back it up. See if they can shave a bit. It’s the least I can do for such a fine social worker.”
Walls beamed. “You boys are aces.” He reached out to shake hands on the agreement.
“Your turn,” I said, ignoring his hand and holding up the photo. Walls blocked it with his fingers, like he didn’t want it in his field of vision.
“First off, Harry, Carson, you never heard any of this from me.”
Harry grunted. “We don’t take ads out in the Register saying where we get our information.”
“I’m in deep water here, guys. I don’t need to look up and see a shark coming my way.”
“This guy’s a shark?”
Walls went to his door, looked into the lobby like he was expecting an eavesdropper under the carpet. He closed the door, snapped the lock, sat back down.
“He’s a king-hell shark. A shark for sharks. Name he usually goes by is Crandell. He’s a fix-it man, problem-solver. But this shark doesn’t swim at the bottom of the barrel. He swims way up high. Unions, though maybe not lately. Oil companies. Brokerage houses. Big shiny places like Enron.”
Harry was dubious. “He kills for them?”
“If it came to that, sure, he’d probably love it, be happy for the chance. But at Crandell’s level, killing is a last resort. Too messy, and someone in the hierarchy has to point a finger and say go. I imagine Mr. Crandell spends most of his time returning lost items to where they belong. Missing art. Misappropriated stocks. Wayward spouses.”
“How do I know you’re not making this up?” Harry said. “A crock to knock a couple years off your boy’s drop.”