“I told you to leave it alone and you didn’t.”
Cade came closer and Louis thought he saw a flash of silver. A knife? Louis felt his heart quicken and he tried to stand up straight and focus. It was dark, they were away from the street, no one in the other cottages would hear or see a thing.
Make a move and you’re dead. Think. . bluff.
“What?” Louis said. “You come here to put a hole in me? Like. . fuck, what’s his name, that Haitian guy?”
Cade took a step closer.
“What are you going to do, Cade? Kill me and jump bail?”
“That’s not a bad idea.”
“You gonna take Ronnie with you? What about Eric? You wanna trash his life too?”
Cade had stopped moving at least. Louis couldn’t see the knife anymore. Maybe he had imagined it.
“I found out something,” Louis said. “Something about Kitty that could help you.”
Cade didn’t move.
“There’s a lab report that’s missing.”
“So what?”
“It shouldn’t be,” Louis said. “It should be there and it isn’t.”
“You’re talking like a drunk, Louie.”
“Listen to me, Cade,” Louis said. “The report could prove you didn’t rape her, that someone else did it.”
Cade was silent. “How?” he asked finally.
Louis knew there was no way to explain it right now so Cade could understand it. “Blood, Cade,” he said. “They can tell by your blood.”
“What if it has Ronnie’s blood?”
“Fuck, Cade, what if it doesn’t?” Louis asked.
Louis couldn’t make out Cade’s face, but he had heard something change in Cade’s voice. Louis tried to see Cade’s right hand, tried to make out the glint of the knife. He wanted to be ready if Cade made a move.
“What about it, Cade?” Louis said.
“You’re asking me to put my kid’s balls up on the block and hope no one chops them off. You’re asking me to trust you.”
“I’m asking you to trust your own fucking son.”
Cade said nothing, but Louis could hear the rustle of his clothing. Suddenly, there was another glint of silver and Louis heard something hit the sand at his feet.
He looked down.
The butt of a knife was sticking out of the sand, only an inch from his foot. He looked up.
Jack Cade was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The small reception area outside Mobley’s office was crowded. Louis guessed that the young woman and the disheveled man were reporters, but he didn’t recognize the two blue-suited black men who stood solemn-faced near the Amazon’s desk. The Amazon herself was on the phone, scribbling on a pink message slip to add to the pile at her elbow. She gave Louis a harried look as he wedged himself in near her desk.
The room was stuffy. Louis massaged his temples, hoping the aspirin would kick in soon. He knew he should have just stayed in bed this morning, but the nagging voice in his head had drowned out the hangover.
Let it go, Louis.
He was tired of hearing that. Okay, maybe he was obsessed, but damn it, someone had to be. He was on his own now, fired, dismissed with a knife at his feet.
He looked at Mobley’s closed door. But he was still in need of an ally.
The Amazon hung up the phone. She looked at Louis and cocked her head toward Mobley’s door. Louis didn’t even look to see if the others were pissed that he was going in ahead of them.
He closed the door, shutting out the ringing phones.
“You’ve got two minutes, Kincaid.”
Mobley shoved aside a stack of papers and began rifling through his messages, obviously irritated.
“I need something from you, Sheriff.”
“What?”
“After Jack Cade visited Duvall threatening to sue him, Duvall asked his secretary to pull Cade’s 1967 trial file. The secretary says it was still on his desk when she left just before Duvall was shot. Your guys picked it up as part of the crime scene.”
“And you want to look at it.”
“Yeah.”
Mobley shook his head. “No way. It would raise all kinds of questions that I don’t need right now.”
“Sheriff-”
“Forget it. I don’t want to piss Sandusky off, Kincaid. Especially for you and some moldy old case.” Mobley leaned back in his chair. “Besides, I heard Outlaw fired you, that true?”
Louis ignored the question. He rubbed his brow, catching sight of the evidence box from Kitty Jagger’s homicide on Mobley’s credenza. Vince had said the old sample was either destroyed-or returned.
Louis motioned toward the white box. “Can I look through that box again?”
“Look, Kincaid. I’ve already got my ass in a sling because you’re out asking questions about Kitty. From her father, her high school friends-”
“That’s what I do-ask questions,” Louis said. “Just let me take a look, okay?”
Mobley raked a hand through his hair. “Make it quick.”
Louis put the box on Mobley’s desk and began taking out the evidence bags. When he got to the Clot Buster, he carefully set it aside.
Mobley’s phone rang and he picked it up. “I told you no calls.” He slammed it down and looked back at the Louis.
“What are you looking for?”
“A slide.”
“What, like a lab slide?”
Louis nodded. Mobley stood just as Louis pulled out a large yellow envelope with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement seal, postmarked 1977. Just as Vince had said, the samples had been returned to the police ten years after Cade’s trial. He turned it over. It had been opened once.
Mobley was reading over his shoulder as Louis pulled out a letter from the lab. The phone on his desk started to ring again, but Mobley ignored it.
TO: The Lee County Sheriff’s Office. As per our policy, we are returning the following items to you for your case file #4532, Homicide, LCSO, Florida, May, 1966, Jagger, K.
Please be advised that we will no longer be able store items for cases that have a final disposition. Please let us know if we can be of service to you in the future.
Louis emptied the envelope’s contents onto the desk: a half-dozen slides, some fingerprint cards, and a small heart-shaped locket, everything still sealed in plastic.
He glanced at the locket, thinking of Bob Ahnert, then began sorting through the slides. He stopped at the one labeled R-24, Vaginal. It had Ahnert’s initials on the seal.
“This is it,” Louis said.
“What is it?” Mobley asked.
Louis turned to him. “There were two semen samples taken from this crime. One off the panties, which the cops assumed came from Cade, and one from her body.”
Mobley looked down at the slide. “They match, right?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to see Duvall’s old case file because the report on the second one is missing from what you gave me.”
Mobley turned away, looking at his ringing phone with venom. “I gave you everything, Kincaid. I wouldn’t hold anything back.”
“You never had the report. I think someone removed it from the case file twenty years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because it didn’t match Cade’s O-positive and someone wanted to keep the prosecution’s case simple.”
“Who? The prosecutors themselves?”
“It’s missing from your files, Sheriff. I think maybe it was Dinkle. I think he did it after the trial so no one would ever ask questions again.”
The phone started again, and Mobley walked to it, knocking the receiver off its cradle.
“You sure like to sling mud on the uniform, don’t you, Kincaid?”
“No, I don’t.”
“The hell you don’t.”
Louis tightened, the pounding in his head growing stronger. He knew he didn’t owe Mobley an explanation. But he was tired of the looks from the deputies, tired of groveling for their assistance when he needed it on something as simple as tracking down a deadbeat dad. He was tired of being looked at like a leper when he walked into O’Sullivan’s, for chrissake.