“Mmmm, I like that idea. I think I might take it up as a hobby… helping Harry Doyle recover from very bad days.”
Harry lightly ran the tips of his fingers along her back. “That could take up a lot of your time.”
She ran her own fingers through the hair on his chest. “I have the time,” she said simply.
They lay quietly for several minutes before Jeanie spoke again. “Harry, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But what upset you… Was it something at work… or something closer to home?”
“Work is always the same. They throw a murder at you and it’s either clear cut, or it’s a big puzzle. This one’s a puzzle, and right now I don’t like the way it’s going. Darlene has stopped talking to me. But that’s not surprising. Victims always do. They only know so much. And I can only hear them for a short time after their deaths. But in this case I’m afraid there are going to be more victims.”
“Will they talk to you?”
“I hope so.”
“Don’t the victims always talk to you?”
“No. They only talk to me when they have to; when they have something to say. Sometimes their deaths were just a terrible surprise and there’s nothing they can tell me.” He paused, thinking about how he could explain without sounding as if he had a loose screw. “With Darlene… everything I felt from her shouted out religion right from the start. But after that it stopped; there wasn’t anything else.” He paused. “Maybe she just didn’t know anything more.”
“So now you think there will be more victims and they might tell you more?”
“Yes. But that’s part of the problem. There’ll be more victims because I haven’t caught the killer with what I already know.”
“And that’s what’s bothering you?”
“That’s most of it, yes.”
Harry let another minute pass. Finally, he sighed and blurted the rest of it out. “A letter was waiting when I got home. It was from the parole board. My mother’s hearing is at nine a.m. next Tuesday.”
“Are you still planning to go?”
“Yes.”
Jeanie pulled herself closer. So you have two monsters to deal with, she thought. A woman who sexually abused children, who you hope will whisper secrets to you about her killer, and that other monster who killed you and your brother all those years ago, and who hasn’t stopped whispering to you since. She squeezed him lightly. Oh, Harry, you poor, sweet man. What an emotional nightmare you’ve been dealt in this life.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bobby Joe Waldo started to sweat before Harry finished his first sentence. By the third sentence his floral Tommy Bahama shirt was clinging to his back.
“Look, you got this all wrong.” Bobby Joe stood up from his desk, went to a wall-mounted thermostat, and lowered the air-conditioning by several more degrees. It was a beautiful Florida morning, warm and sultry with cloudless blue skies overhead. None of it found its way into Bobby Joe’s box of an office. The room was already cold; soon it would be freezing.
“Alright, so why don’t you just tell me how wrong I’ve got it,” Harry said.
Returning to his chair, Bobby Joe propped his elbows on his desk, formed a steeple with his fingers, and began speaking through it. “I don’t care what those women say, detective. They were just plain mistaken. I wasn’t in that bar and I sure wasn’t in there with Darlene Beckett.” He gave his head a solemn shake to emphasize the point. “For God’s sake, I’m a minister in a respected church.”
The self-righteous pose forced Harry to fight back a smile. “You don’t look like you slept very well,” he said, smoothly changing tact. “Are you having problems here at the church?”
Bobby Joe gave him as hard a stare as he could manage. “I slept fine. And I don’t have any problems at the church.”
Harry lowered his voice, making the conversation more intimate. “Look, Bobby Joe. We know somebody from the church was at that bar. We can prove that one of your cars was in a minor accident in the parking lot. We can also prove that you resolved that problem for the church. Now, that doesn’t mean you were the person involved in the accident, but it’s sure a possibility.”
“My daddy told you how that probably happened… somebody from the congregation complaining that her husband was going to that bar, and an assistant minister going out to see what he could do to help a sinner.”
Harry smiled. “Yeah, I know what your daddy said, Bobby Joe. The funny thing is that you’re the one guy who keeps popping up. First it’s you paying off the accident in the parking lot-and paying off without telling anybody here at the church what you were doing-and now again with these dancers telling me they saw you in the bar, and not only in the bar, but in the bar with Darlene Beckett. And they’re also telling me that you’re sitting there with her and that she’s coming on to you pretty strong. How did they put it?” Harry stared off as if trying to recall the dancer’s exact words. “Oh, yeah, that she was ‘usin’ all her best moves’ on you.” Now Harry shook his head and put an extra good-ol’-boy twang to his words. “My Lord, Bobby Joe, a woman who looked like Darlene did, who had a reputation like Darlene did, and she’s just sittin’ there in that titty bar, puttin’ her best moves on the guy sittin’ next to her. Now that surely would be a temptation, wouldn’t it, Bobby Joe?” He dropped the twang and let his eyes harden. “And all that’s a big contradiction from what you’re telling me, Bobby Joe. And it makes it real hard for me to believe you.”
The door to Bobby Joe’s office swung open and his father wielded his great bulk through the door. A step behind him was a tall, slender, balding man with a solemn expression spread across his face. He was dressed like someone who had just been dragged off a golf course.
The Reverend Waldo stretched his lips in a closed-mouth smile. “Sorry to interrupt you, detective, but you seem to keep comin’ back to visit us, so I thought it was time to bring in the church’s lawyer. This here’s Walter Middlebrooks. From here on he’s gonna sit in and advise anyone you need to question.”
Harry glanced at Bobby Joe. He seemed confused, his eyes showing relief, then fear, and then relief again. Harry decided it was time to wipe away that sense of relief. He looked up at the older minister and slowly nodded. “Then I guess we’ll have to change our procedures a bit.” He turned his gaze to Middlebrooks. “I was trying to keep everything informal for now, but that seems not to be working for you folks. So I’m going to make a call for some deputies to take Bobby Joe down to headquarters and we’ll continue down there.”
“Are you charging him?” Middlebrooks snapped.
“Not for now. Right now he’s a material witness. We have other witnesses-please note the plural there, counselor-who have placed Bobby Joe at a certain topless bar in Tampa in the company of our murder victim, shortly before her death.”
Middlebrooks ground his teeth. “And I suppose this will involve flashing red lights, handcuffs, and perhaps a leaked story to the media,” he snapped.
Harry inclined his head to one side. “Well, as you know, counselor, cruisers have to leave their red lights flashing when they enter a building on a call, and handcuffs, are department procedure when transporting a suspect. For a material witness, it’s kind of up to the deputies doing the transporting.” He ended the line with a false smile. “As far as leaks to the media go, that is definitely not department procedure. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t happen.” Harry closed it off with a faint smile.
Reverend Waldo swelled up like an angry toad. “What does all this mean, Walter?”
Middlebrooks put a calming hand on his arm. “It means that if we want a lawyer present during questioning, he intends to name Bobby Joe as a material witness and take him in for formal questioning, rather than do it quietly here. It also means that other deputies will arrive here at the church with the red lights on their cars flashing, and they’ll put Bobby Joe in handcuffs and take him away with them. Informally, it’s known as a perp walk, a form of embarrassment the police like to inflict on people.” He turned toward Harry. “Does that sum it up, detective?”