“Anything else?”
“Your father publicly threatened Clancy outside a restaurant in Cantrell two days before Clancy was killed. Several people heard it. Your father said he knew what Clancy had done and he was going to make him pay.” Blue Man paused. “So even if your father isn’t the murderer, you can understand why the police arrested him.”
“I can,” conceded Robie. “Anything on Janet Chisum?”
“Not much more than you probably know. Gunshot to the head killed her. Body thrown in the river. Fished out downriver the next day. Clancy was tried for the crime because of their, well, their relationship, but he was acquitted.”
“Principally because my stepmother provided him with an ironclad alibi.”
“The same alibi that may have provided the motive for your father to kill him. And the cause and effect didn’t take long. Five days after he was acquitted and released from jail, Sherman Clancy was dead.”
“So if Clancy didn’t kill Janet Chisum, who did?”
“Why are you concerned about that? It has nothing to do with your father.”
“We don’t know that. There might be a connection.”
“And there might actually be a Loch Ness monster, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it. Anything else?”
“Jessica?”
“Still out. Listen, Robie, I understand why you’re down there doing what you’re doing. And I know that I was the one who suggested that you resolve past issues. But you are a highly valuable asset of your government. We have spent a lot of time and money training you. The last thing any of us want is you getting killed down there over a matter best left to others.”
“I think you should know by now that I can take care of myself.”
“And life is highly unpredictable. And small rural towns hold dangers sometimes that the worst hot spots in the world couldn’t match. You remember that.”
Blue Man clicked off.
Robie put his phone away and concluded that Blue Man was a very wise person indeed.
He stood there lost in thought for a few moments. He was putting together a to-do list and there were now many items piling up on it.
He assembled them in some order, then climbed into his car and left in pursuit of the first one.
The eyewitnesses.
Chapter
28
Tuck Carson’s house was on the Pearl River, befitting a man who made his living from pulling fish out of its depths and taking those who wanted to do the same on guided tours. It was more a shack than a house. There was a pressure-treated wood pier out back at which two boats were docked. One was a sleek bass boat, low to the water with a Yamaha engine on the stern and a bow trickle thruster when it came time to fish. The other boat was a twenty-two-foot, center-console hardtop with twin engines on the back and fishing poles resting in holders up and down the sides of the watercraft.
The smell of fish guts was strong as Robie got out of his car and walked up the gravel path to the house.
Before he got to the porch the door opened and out stepped a short, stocky man around forty with thick forearms and greasy hair that sprawled out from under an oil-stained Briggs & Stratton ball cap. He had on a dirty work shirt that revealed his top-most chest hair. He wore cutoff shorts that showed bandy legs that were deeply tanned and muscled.
In his right hand he held a gutting knife. In his other was an unopened can of Michelob.
“What can I do you for?” said the man. “We go out at five in the mornin’, back at ten. Full up for the next two days. Talk to the wife ’bout schedulin’ somethin’.”
“I’m not here to fish,” said Robie.
The man gripped his knife more tightly. “What then?”
“I’m Will Robie.”
The man’s eyes widened, as Robie knew they would.
“Are you Tuck Carson?”
Carson stuck the point of his knife into the porch railing, popped his can of beer, and took a long swig. “I done said all I had to say to the police.”
“I’m sure. But you’ll have to testify when the time comes, that you saw my father where and when you did.”
“Don’t think you should be here, bein’ his son and all.”
“I just want you to tell me what you saw.”
The screen door opened and a boy about thirteen came out. He was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a white T-shirt badly in need of laundering. His hair was a tumble of brown and blond strands. He wore round glasses, and in his fist was clutched a can of Pepsi.
“What’s up, Pop?”
“Are you Ash?” asked Robie.
The boy continued to look at his father. “What’s he want?”
Carson took another drink from the can and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Man wants to know what we saw that night.”
“Why’s he care?”
“He’s the judge’s son. That’s why.”
Ash took a step back from Robie and took a swig of his Pepsi. “Saw him clear as day. He was drivin’ that Range Rover’a his. Ain’t nobody got one’a them here but him.”
“No, Sherman Clancy has one, too,” countered Robie.
The boy shot his father another glance.
“It was the judge’s truck,” said Carson. “’Sides, Clancy was in his old Bentley at the time. Dead!”
“Okay, you saw the truck. But did you see my father driving it?”
“’Course we did,” growled Carson. “Like the boy done said.”
“Can you tell me where exactly? Please?” added Robie.
“You know where they found Clancy’s body?” said Carson.
“Yes.”
“You hang a left outta there onto the road and go a quarter mile north. That’s where we saw him. We was comin’ back from catchin’ bait for the mornin’ run. We go to four or five spots and that’s always one of ’em. Good bait there.”
“Wait a minute. If you were catching bait, why were you in a car? Why not your boat?”
“One of the places is in a little cove. Can’t really get to it by boat. So’s we drive over and park near the bank. Catch ’em real good from there with our nets.”
“Okay, what happened next?”
“Well, he comes tearin’ up that road, like to hit us. Dust swirlin’ all over. I banged my horn but he just kept’a goin’. Could’a give a shit he near killed us.”
“But it was dark out, and headlights were coming at you. And it happened fast, presumably. How did you get a look at him?”
“I was as close to him as my boy is to me right now. Couldn’t miss that, could I?”
Robie looked at him curiously and then glanced at Ash. “And did you see him too?”
“Boy was in the passenger seat of the truck.”
“But I seen him too,” said Ash. “Clear as day.”
“But it wasn’t day, it was night,” pointed out Robie. “And were you wearing your glasses?”
Ash suddenly looked uncertain and again glanced at his father.
Robie looked at Carson, and next his beer. “And I take it you hadn’t been drinking?”
Carson finished off his beer, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down with each swallow. Then he crushed the can against the porch railing and tossed it into a plastic bin at his feet that was filled with flattened beer cans. Carson pulled his knife from the railing, took a step toward Robie, and said, “You best be movin’ on. And don’t come back here ’less you want trouble or you got fish you wanna catch.”
“Thanks for talking to me,” said Robie.
He drove off thinking that these two eyewitnesses were anything but.
Later, he pulled up in front of the Cantrell Jail armed with the retainer agreement that his father needed to sign. He should have gone right from Moses’s office to his father next door, but his courage had failed.