It appeared I’d overstepped. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Not necessary, Doctor. We understand your frustration — we share it, in fact — and we do appreciate your help. Please keep your eyes and ears open; tell us about any illegal or suspicious activities you observe. As I say, our hands might be tied on the homicide case, but you never know — we might learn something that would give us some leverage with another witness, somebody who could corroborate federal offenses.” I nodded.
Price glanced at her watch. “Anything else?” I shook my head. “Well, we don’t need to take up any more of your time, Dr. Brockton; I’m sure you’re busy.” I was, but not too busy to notice that I was being dismissed. “Do let us know if something else crops up.”
“Sure,” I said. “Although I can’t imagine what more could crop up at this point.”
“You’d be surprised,” she said, and gave a quick nod to Steve Morgan.
“I’ll run you back downstairs,” said Steve, hastily rising from his seat at the Round Table.
On the way back down, we made awkward small talk: Ashley, his oldest, was starting ballet lessons; Justin, the middle child, played T-ball last summer and was a solid hitter but not much of a fielder; Christian, the toddler, fell off the porch and blackened both eyes, earning Steve and his wife suspicious stares from strangers for a couple of weeks, until the shiners faded. We shook hands in the lobby and I said good-bye to the security guard, who gave me a reluctant tip of the head. As I reached the main door, I consulted my watch, then turned back to check the time on the wall clock above the elevator. Both read five minutes to ten. And, as I’d suspected, Steve Morgan had not moved from the spot where I’d left him.
I fiddled with my watch briefly, waved good-bye to Steve, and walked out into the crisp fall air. I went as far as the next corner — out of the line of Steve’s sight — then crossed the street and ducked into the old Supreme Court parking lot, which was bordered by a hedgerow sparse enough for me to see through without being seen from the entrance of the federal building.
At one minute to ten, a man sauntered up to the granite cube, and Steve Morgan stepped out to greet him. Agent Price’s last words had been prophetic: I was surprised; shocked, even. The man who went inside the federal building with Steve was a Cooke County deputy sheriff: my old pal Leon Williams.
CHAPTER 21
“What, now I’m supposed to be psychic? I don’t know what it means,” said Art, taking a sip of sweet tea between bites of his sandwich. He had answered my panic-stricken call from outside the federal building and agreed to meet me for lunch at Calhoun’s On the River, which boasted the best barbecue in town.
“Even if you don’t know, you can at least help me think through the possibilities,” I insisted.
“Okay, you tell me what you think the possibilities are,” he said,
“and I’ll give you my considered opinion.”
“Scenario A,” I began.
He interrupted. “We’ve moved from possibilities to scenarios already?”
I glowered. “Scenario A: Williams contacted the feds because he knows the sheriff is protecting the cockfights and the gambling and the drug trafficking, like Price said.” Art chewed his pulled pork thoughtfully. “B: Williams contacted them because he thinks the sheriff’s hiding something or protecting someone in the murder case.” Art ruminated some more. “C: The feds hauled Williams in because they think he’s involved in something illegal, and they’re leaning on him to cooperate.” Art stroked his chin slowly. I tried to wait him out, but couldn’t. “So which is it?”
“Could you run those scenarios past me one more time?” He took another bite.
“Come on, Art, this is worrying me.”
“Well, I’m not sure I buy A or B,” he said, his mouth still full. “The fact that Williams may have helped Waylon shanghai you that day makes me wonder who the deputy is really working for. C is possible, I suppose, though I’m not sure the feds would risk hauling a cooperating witness all the way to Knoxville — how’s he gonna explain being gone half a day? There’s also D and E to consider, too.”
“D and E? What are those?” I asked.
“D: Williams thinks you’re obstructing justice, and he’s there to squeal on you.”
“Me? How could I possibly be obstructing justice?”
“By protecting Jim O’Conner.”
“What? I’m not protecting Jim O’Conner. I’m just pointing out some things that suggest his innocence. Things they don’t want to see, maybe because they’ve got a grudge against him, or because he’s just a handy scapegoat. Protecting O’Conner? I can’t believe you’d say that.”
“Hey, don’t get your drawers in a wad,” Art said. “I’m not the one ratting you out.”
“You really think that’s what Williams is telling them?”
“No, not really. Just trying not to overlook any possibilities.”
“Great. Thanks a heap. And E? I can’t wait to hear E.”
“E is ‘none of the above.’ Maybe Williams is working some angle of his own that we haven’t even thought of yet. Maybe he wants to be sheriff himself, figures he’d have a lot easier time getting elected with Kitchings behind bars. All I’m really saying is, we have absolutely no way to know what he’s telling them, or why. So you need to keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing: learn all you can, tell the truth, watch your back. And trust no one.”
“Including you?”
“Especially me.” He dropped his chin toward his chest, pulled out his shirt front, and spoke loudly, as if to make sure his words were picked up by a cheap microphone strapped to his sternum. “That’s right, Dr. Bill Brockton, especially me.”
CHAPTER 22
It had taken hours of thrashing, but I’d finally gotten to sleep, and deeply, too. I could tell because it felt like I was swimming up from the bottom of an ocean of molasses toward a distant sound that turned out to be my bedside telephone.
“Huh-llo,” I mumbled.
“Doc?” The voice on the other end of the line was thick and slurred. “ ’S me.”
“Me,” as best I could tell, was a drunken Tom Kitchings. “Sheriff? What time is it?”
“Dunno. Pretty late. Probly real late. Sorry ’bout that.”
“You got some emergency, Sheriff?” I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. The blue-green numbers read 3:17.
“Not ezactly.”
“Have you been drinking, Sheriff?”
“Have been. Still am. Went looking for some peace of mind. Found me some Southern Comfort instead. Get it, Doc?”
I did. I wasn’t a drinker myself — intoxication was too much like vertigo to appeal to me — but I’d spent enough time around students to know that Southern Comfort was a sweet, cheap liqueur, notorious for brutal hangovers. “What’s keeping you up and driving you to drink, Sheriff?”
“I just can’t hardly figger out this case, Doc. ’S a damn mystery, you know?”
“Well, that’s how most cases start out,” I said. “That’s why we need sheriffs and detectives and forensic scientists.”
“Aw, hell, that ain’t what I mean. I’m talkin’ ’bout the misery of hisery. I mean, mystery of history. Family history. I b’lieved for thirty years that Leena run off. Been told that for thirty years. Somewheres; nobody knew where. We didn’t talk about it — it was one of them things you just knew you wasn’t s’posed to talk about.” He paused, and I heard a swish and a swallow. “You got family, Doc?”