“Son of a bitch,” I say.
“Don’t act so surprised. You used to do the same thing.”
“If I did, I didn’t do it intentionally.”
We sit for a moment while I ponder this latest possibility. Stinnett probably took a phone call from someone and relayed a message to Ramirez. Maybe Stinnett didn’t even know what the message meant; at least that’s what I’d like to think. Then again…
I ask Bates what he’s learned thus far.
“A little,” he says. “Whoever drove her car last was a man or a damned tall woman. When I asked you to look at the driver’s seat, I was trying to get you to notice that it was pushed all the way back. Hannah’s a short gal. And I noticed something else. She got her oil changed Friday afternoon. It was on the little sticker in the windshield, along with the mileage. When I looked at the odometer, more than a hundred miles had been put on that car since the oil change, so either she took a quick trip before she disappeared or somebody hauled her away in her own car, dumped the body, and then brought the car back.”
“You were right,” I say. “It’s a good thing I’m not a cop.”
“The key to her car had been wiped clean-not a print on it, not even hers. The inside of the car had been wiped down, too, but we lifted a partial from the exterior of the door. There was quite a bit of clay on the floor around the gas pedal, along with something else. My guys say they’re not sure yet, but they think it might be lime. Same stuff in the carpet on the passenger side. We lifted some hair and fiber from the car, and we’re still going through the house. There might be something in there, too.”
“Damn, Leon, you don’t mess around, do you?”
“Trail gets cold in a hurry. I’m gonna stay on this one until I find out what happened to her or we fall flat. The sheriff’s department doesn’t get that many murders, you know. It’s kinda fun.”
Fun. Alternate flashes of Hannah run through my mind. Flashes of her beautiful smile. The pain behind her eyes. The way her hair flipped when she turned her head. Her battered body dumped somewhere, slowly decomposing, covered by insects. I let out a long sigh.
“Sorry, brother,” Bates says. “You knew her better than I did. I guess this ain’t exactly your idea of fun, is it?”
“Not exactly. So what do you think about Ramirez? Should I make some kind of deal with him?”
“That’d be between you and your boss, wouldn’t it?”
“My boss tried to get me to dismiss the murder case against him this morning.”
Bates is silent for several seconds. He begins scratching his head, which I know is his way of manifesting confusion.
“Why would he want you to do that?”
“He said it’s a weak case, and he doesn’t want the office to be embarrassed if I lose at trial.”
“How strong is your case?”
“It’s not the strongest I’ve ever had, but I think it’s enough.”
Bates shoots me a sideways glance and raises his eyebrows. “Anything else you need to tell me?”
“Nah, it’s probably just a coincidence. There’s just something about Mooney that bothers me. Something isn’t right with him.”
“You just now figuring that out? He sure does like the ladies. You think he was chasing Hannah?”
“Nah. Hannah doesn’t seem to be too interested in men. So what about Ramirez?”
“Give me a little more time. Let me find Hannah’s family and friends, talk to them, see if I can find out who might have wanted to hurt her. If we don’t come up with something in forty-eight hours or so, maybe you should pay Ramirez another visit.”
Bates’s cell phone begins to chirp the melody of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” He looks down at the phone, then back at me.
“One of my forensics boys,” he says. “Better take it.”
Bates speaks quietly on the phone for a few minutes. Finally, he says, “Well, I’ll be,” and closes the phone.
“You say you know this gal pretty well?” he says.
“Yeah. We’re friends.”
“My boys went through her garbage and found something interesting. Did she mention anything to you about being pregnant?”
27
I call Caroline and ask her to meet me at the Peerless in Johnson City for dinner. The restaurant is known primarily for great steaks and Greek salads, but I’m more interested in taking advantage of one of the private rooms they offer. Caroline doesn’t mention anything about Hannah’s disappearance over the phone, so I assume she doesn’t know. The news will upset her terribly, so I decide to tell her later at home. I have something else I want to talk about at the restaurant.
I’m greeted at the door by the owner, an elderly Greek gentleman named Stenopoulos who’s owned the restaurant for forty years and still goes to work every day. He leads me down a hallway to a small, private dining room. I order two beers. Caroline shows up less than five minutes later. She’s wearing a red jacket over a black turtleneck and a short black skirt that shows off her incredible legs. She sits down across the table from me without saying hello and takes a long pull off the beer. No glass for Caroline when she’s drinking a beer; I’ve always liked that.
A waitress walks in and we order dinner. I’m not hungry-my stomach has been in knots all day-but I order a steak anyway. If I don’t eat it, I’ll take it to Rio.
“You’re angry,” I say as soon as the waitress leaves the room. No point in fencing. We might as well get down to it.
“I’m not angry. I’m scared for Tommy,” she replies.
“What did you say to Toni?”
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
“I changed my mind. What did you say to her?”
Caroline takes another drink from the beer bottle and reaches for a basket of crackers. She’s avoiding eye contact, a sure sign she’s upset.
“I told her that TBI agents were probably coming,” Caroline says. “I told her to get Tommy out of there.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. He’s gone back to school.”
“Did they show up?”
“Two of them. A black woman and a huge white guy.”
White and Norcross.
“What did she tell them?”
“Nothing. She told them to go away. She was married to a lawyer, too, you know. I didn’t have to tell her what to do.”
“Did they ask about Tommy?”
“Of course they asked about Tommy.”
Her tone is edgy, impatient. I find myself wishing we were simply having a pleasant dinner, a civil conversation. But the events of the past twenty-four hours have swept us up. All I can do now is hope no one else gets hurt.
“Caroline, I need to ask you a few questions, and I’d appreciate it if you’d be honest with me.”
“I’m always honest with you.”
She’s right. It was a stupid thing to say.
“Did you see Tommy this morning?”
She nods her head.
“Talk to him?”
“He said he needed to go home. I made him an egg sandwich.”
“How did he look?”
“You already went through this with Jack this morning, and I don’t appreciate your asking me to come out to dinner and trying to interrogate me. You said you didn’t want to know anything about my involvement. Why don’t we just keep it that way?”
“Fine, then let’s try the old lawyer’s cat and mouse game. Let’s talk hypotheticals.”
“Hypotheticals? What do you mean?”
“I’ll make a supposition and then ask you a question. It’s sort of like make-believe.”
“I know what a hypothetical is, Joe. I just don’t understand what you want from me.”
“Let’s suppose Tommy went to somebody else’s house last night, okay? Another friend’s house. And let’s say that friend’s mother just happened to see Tommy this morning. And maybe she heard him say something about where he went last night, what he did, that kind of thing. Hypothetically speaking, what do you think he might have said to her?”
I see the slightest upturn at the edge of her lips. She’s willing to play.
“Hypothetically?” she says.