There was only one explanation.
Natasha had been in my house.
Sunday, November 2
I called Fraley, who came over immediately. While I was waiting for him, I searched every nook and cranny of the house. Outside of the message in the bathroom, there was no sign of Natasha. Fraley dusted the vanity and the mirror for prints but found nothing, took a few photographs, and then the two of us searched the house again. When we were finished, we stood in the driveway beneath the bright sun.
“What are you going to do?” Fraley said.
“I don’t know. At least the dog will be back tomorrow. No way she gets in the house if Rio’s here.”
“She’s just trying to scare you.”
“Yeah? Well, she’s doing a pretty good job of it. I don’t know why in the hell I got back into this business. I should have gotten a nice, safe teaching job somewhere.”
“And miss all this fun?” Fraley said. “Relax. We get through the hearing, you go see Boyer and make your deal, and then we’ll get her psychotic ass off the streets for good.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime? Sit up every night with a shotgun?”
“You’ve got some options. Your daughter’s going back to school, right? You and your wife can move in with her mother until things calm down, or maybe you could ask the sheriff to put some guys out here until we can get her picked up.”
“I’m not going to my mother-in-law’s,” I said. “I’ll call Bates.”
I called the sheriff, who had become my biggest admirer since the court hearing with Judge Glass. He agreed to post two deputies, in two cruisers, at my house until Natasha was arrested. I was still scared, but at least I breathed a little easier.
Monday, November 3
First thing Monday morning, I waited for Alexander Dunn in the parking lot in back of the courthouse. It was chilly, the sky fast moving and slate gray. He got out of his black 700-series BMW wearing a navy blue suit covered by a tan, calf-length trench coat. His hair was slicked back, as always. His gloved right hand held an expensive black leather briefcase.
“You’ve got diarrhea of the mouth,” I said as soon as he shut the door. “Do you have any idea how much damage you’ve caused? How could you be so fucking stupid?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dunn said as he pushed past me and started towards the courthouse.
“I’m talking about running your mouth to the media. I’m talking about interfering with a murder investigation. I’m talking about obstruction of justice.”
He stopped and turned, a smug look on his face.
“Are you referring to the story in the paper yesterday morning about your proposed deal with a murderer?”
“What do you get in exchange for doing something like that? Brownie points? Will she make you look good somewhere down the road? Do a feature on you? Will she turn her back if you make a mistake? Tell me, Alexander, what’s the trade?”
“You obviously said something to someone you shouldn’t have,” Dunn said.
“I didn’t say a word to anybody. The only people who knew what was going on were you, Lee, Jim Beaumont, and me.”
“Then Beaumont said something to someone, or he leaked it himself.”
“It wasn’t Beaumont.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Beaumont’s a decent human being, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for you.”
“Fuck you, Dillard.” Dunn turned and started walking away.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said, catching up to him and leaning against him with my shoulder. “What’s the price for betrayal? Did she give you thirty pieces of silver? A blow job? I swear, if you weren’t Lee’s nephew, I’d kick your ass all over this parking lot.”
“Speaking of kicking ass, Lee got a call from the Crossville district attorney’s office late Friday,” Dunn said as he continued to walk. “Have you been to Crossville recently, by any chance?”
He caught me totally off guard. After a long silence, I said, “What I do outside the office is none of your business.”
“It seems that one of the probation officers down there-I believe he’s dating your sister-got beaten up pretty badly. He had to be hospitalized overnight.”
“Is that a fact?” I said stupidly, unable to think of anything else.
“Yeah, it’s a fact. You know what else is a fact? He told them you did it. He doesn’t want to press charges for some reason, but why would he tell them something like that?”
“I guess he doesn’t like me.”
“Imagine that. Lee isn’t very happy about it. And who can blame him? A member of his office, an assistant district attorney, going into another district and committing a crime. It’s embarrassing. It’s disgusting. It’s… it’s downright shameful, is what it is.”
We reached the door to go upstairs to the office, and I broke away from him and headed for the front of the courthouse. He was having entirely too much fun at my expense; I didn’t want to listen to any more of it.
“He also said you had someone else with you,” Alexander called as I walked away. “My guess is it was your buddy Fraley.”
I ignored him and walked up the sidewalk to the corner and turned left towards the front steps. As I walked through the front door of the courthouse, I saw Sarge Hurley, the seventy-something security officer who’d saved my life a year and a half earlier. I’d stopped by to talk to Sarge a couple of times since I started working for the district attorney’s office. He hadn’t changed a bit. Still tall and lean with thinning silver hair, liver spots, and hands as big as country hams. Still had the youthful sparkle in his eye. Still carried his can of pepper spray, and he was still a living, breathing oracle of courthouse gossip. He started smiling as soon as he saw me.
“Well, I’ll be damned, if it ain’t Mike Tyson,” he said. “Or since your first name’s Joe, maybe I should call you Joe Louis.”
I was horrified. How could he possibly know? Had Alexander Dunn broadcast news of my trip to Crossville over some private law enforcement network?
“What are you talking about?”
He was frisking a skinny teenager. “I hear you got a right hand like a jackhammer and you’re mean as a goddamned badger.”
“Who told you that?”
“Little birdie in a tree. No, that’s a damned lie. It was a fat birdie; ain’t no way he could sit in a tree. You didn’t think you could do something like that and the news not get out, did you?”
Fat birdie. Fraley. It had to be Fraley.
“I have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about, Sarge.”
He released the teenager and walked over and put his arm around my shoulders as I headed for the steps.
“Hell, son, I’m proud of you,” he said. “Any man that would beat on a woman deserves exactly what you gave him. I wish I coulda been there to help you, though the way I hear it, you didn’t need help.”
“Do me a favor, will you? Don’t spread it around.”
He let out a rich laugh. “Too late for that, counselor. Word’s already spread like jelly on a biscuit.”
On the way up the stairs I dialed Fraley’s number.
“Thanks a lot,” I said when he answered.
“For what?”
“How many people have you told about what happened the other night?”
There was a long silence. “Just a couple.”
“Great. In case you didn’t know it, what I did was against the law. It’s called battery.”
“What you did was karma,” he said. “What goes around comes around. Eye for an eye, all that shit. It was justice. And you did it with such conviction. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would’ve never believed it.”
“You need to tone it down. Mooney already knows about it. He’ll probably fire me as soon as I walk in the door.”
“Shit, I didn’t mean to cause you any-”
“Not your fault,” I said. “Somebody from the Crossville DA’s office called him.”
“Are they going to prosecute you?”
“I don’t think so. Just let it die down, okay? No more stories.”