I decided this might be a good time to make our exit. I looked at Art, and he seemed to agree, as he cocked his head toward the door. “Sheriff,” I said, backing out of the office, “I’ll be on the lookout for that subpoena. Orbin, good to meet you. Y’all have a nice day.”
“Remember,” said Art, “we’ll have one eye on the rearview mirror and one hand on the radio.”
As we dashed out the front door of the courthouse, Art said, “Go get the truck and swing around back and pick me up.” I started to ask him why, but he cut me off. “Just do it. I’ll tell you later.”
The tires squealed as I backed out of my parking space. They squealed again when I slammed the gearshift into forward, and again when I slung the truck around the corner to the rear parking lot. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the two old-timers had ceased whittling and were staring at me, slack-jawed and mostly toothless.
As I pulled into the lot, I saw Art at the door of the helicopter. As I skidded to a stop beside him, he pocketed a small bottle, then leapt into the truck. “What were you doing?”
“Oh, nothing,” he said. “Just buying us a little time.” He pulled the bottle back out of his pocket, and I recognized its shape: superglue.
“You superglued their door locks?” He grinned proudly. “The cars? The helicopter?” He nodded happily. “They are gonna be furious.”
“More furious than when they tried to shoot us?” He had a point there.
Despite Art’s stratagem, I wasted no time getting out of town. Careening along the river road, I glanced in the mirror as often as I could without running off the embankment or making myself carsick. “Better get that radio out, just in case,” I told Art.
“What radio?”
“The radio you’re going to call for help on.” I looked at him; he shook his head and held out his empty hands, palms up. “So what was that big line you were feeding them about radioing the FBI and the TBI if they came after us?”
“That, my friend, is called a bluff. A successful bluff, to be precise.” I was not nearly as pleased with Art’s gamesmanship as he was. “Hey, what was I supposed to say—‘Oh, please don’t come after us, because if you do, we’re screwed’? I’m glad you weren’t doing the talking at that moment.” Chalk up another point for Art.
We rode in nervous silence awhile, until we turned onto I-40 and the mileposts began flashing past at a hundred miles an hour. For once in my life, I was hoping I’d get pulled over by a state trooper. “Art, I’m in unknown territory here,” I said. “I’ve never had a case where I couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad guys.”
He nodded. “I remember the first time that happened to me. I was still pretty new in homicide when this cocaine dealer gets shot in the projects in East Knoxville. Shot by a rival dealer, the vice cops tell me. But little things about it start to bother me. No other dealer moves in on the territory. The missing coke — supposedly some hot new stuff — never hits the streets in Knoxville. Instead, pretty soon it starts showing up in Memphis. Turns out one of the vice cops ambushed him, sold the cocaine to a dealer he knew in Memphis. Scary when you realize you can’t always trust the guys on your own team.”
Scary indeed. “So what should I do?”
“Depends. What do you want to happen?”
“I want to find out who killed that girl. I want to do right by her, if it’s possible.”
He nodded. “Wouldn’t have expected anything less. So just do what you always do: speak for the victim, tell the truth, and use your brain. Oh, yeah — watch your back from now on, too.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me, Supercop?”
“Hey, it’s all I’ve got for me, too. Seems to be working okay. So far.”
“Such a comfort. No wonder I wanted you with me.”
“Damn right. But wait, there’s more. I’m not just a comfort and a lifesaver; I’m also a primo evidence gatherer.” Art reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded handkerchief, which he handed to me.
“This hanky is primo evidence?”
“Shit, no, Sherlock. Look inside.”
I unfolded it. Tucked in the folds was a hank of human hair.
“Whose is it?”
“Fresh from the scalp of Sheriff Thomas Kitchings. Remember when I saved your skin back there? I had a pretty good grip on his curly locks while I was holding my gun to his head. Seemed like long as I was there, might as well bring a few strands home as a souvenir. You still got that former student working up at the Pentagon’s forensic lab?”
“Bob Gonzales? Yeah, but why?”
“Might be interesting to see if there’s any links with your cavewoman or the baby.”
“I say again, why? The sheriff just admitted he’s her cousin. And you already convinced me that he was too young to have fathered the baby.”
“Bill, this is Cooke County. Never say never. You never know what might turn up.”
“Whatever you say. You’re the primo criminalist. Thanks, by the way, for saving my skin back there.”
“Anytime. Except probably not for the next day or two. I’m still working that child abduction.”
“Any luck?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. We’re three weeks out without a trace, and we’ve been tailing the bastard for two-point-nine. Unless we’ve badly misjudged this slimebag, the kid’s been dead since the night he nabbed her. We’ve got the cadaver dogs searching for a body.”
I could think of nothing heartening to say.
The sky had clouded as the day wore on, but suddenly — just as we crossed the big bridge over the French Broad River — spokes of sunlight shot from behind a tower of cumulus. Against a purplish-black storm front to the west, the nearer clouds and the forested river banks glowed with such luminescence my heart tightened in my chest. “God’s light,” my mother had always called such displays.
I wasn’t at all sure I believed in God anymore. But I believed this: despite its pockets of darkness, the world can be a beautiful place.
CHAPTER 14
I’d been avoiding the calendar for weeks, but I couldn’t suppress the memory of the day that had finally crept up on me: September 27, the two-year anniversary of the day Kathleen had died. I’d ushered in the day promptly at midnight, during the first of many hours of fitful tossing. By daybreak I was nursing a screaming headache, and my hand shook as I poured my coffee. When the telephone shattered the silence of the kitchen, I jumped so much I sloshed out half the cup.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Dad, it’s Jeff.”
Jeff lived fifteen miles and a world away from the tree-lined sanctuary of Sequoyah Hills. He and his wife had just bought a sprawling new house in Farragut, a booming suburb far to the west on Kingston Pike. Having an anthropologist and a social scientist as parents had given him enough ivory tower experiences to last a lifetime, I suppose, for Jeff had majored in accounting at UT, quickly earned his CPA certification, and built a lucrative practice in less than a decade. His two boys, ages five and seven, were already enrolled in a soccer league, and Jeff’s wife, Jenny, meshed well with the other affluent soccer moms in Farragut. At thirty-two, my son was successful and happy. And I could hardly bear talking with him.
“Hi, Jeff. I need to keep it short — I’m about to be late for class.”
“It’s Saturday, Dad. Is UT scheduling classes on Saturday now?”
“I didn’t mean class. I meant an exhumation. I have to go exhume a body.”
“You okay? You sound…strange.”
“I’m okay.”
“Listen, I just wanted to let you know I’m thinking about you today.” I wished he hadn’t said that. “How you feeling — really? Don’t just say ‘fine,’ because you don’t sound so hot.”