“This is Art Bohanan, a criminalist with KPD.”
“What the hell is he doing in my county?”
Art spoke up calmly. “Just sightseeing. Just along for the ride.”
“Well, sightsee somewhere else. I hear there’s a big national park not far from here’s got some kickass scenery.”
“Maybe we can swing by there on our way home,” said Art amiably.
“Best get going, then.”
I slapped the desktop with a force that surprised everyone, including myself.
“Goddamnit, what’s her name, Sheriff? You know damn well who she is.”
He reddened, glowering at me. “I haven’t finished checking the old files.”
“You don’t have to check your files. Check your family bible. Last name Bonds. This skeleton is dangling from your own family tree. What happened, Sheriff—
she disgraced the family, so she had to be disposed of?”
Kitchings jumped to his feet. “Don’t you dare come in here and insult me and my family. Get the hell out of my office, the hell out of my county, and the hell out of my business.”
“The hell I will. This a murder case, and I won’t let you sweep it under the rug just because you don’t like where it’s going all of a sudden.”
The sheriff grabbed the rifle off the desk and began to swing it up. Instinctively I grabbed the barrel and wrestled for control. Suddenly the sheriff froze. I looked up to see Art Bohanan standing beside him, one hand clutching a fistful of hair, the other holding a pistol to Kitchings’s temple. “Okay, let’s everybody take a deep breath and calm down here,” said Art. “Sheriff, let go of that rifle.”
He did. “Bill, set it over there by the door.” I did. “Okay, we’re gonna just head on back to Knoxville now,” Art continued. “We see anybody in the rearview mirror, and I’ll be on the radio like a duck on a June bug to the FBI, the TBI, and a couple undercover cops that would make your worst Cooke County badass look like a mama’s boy.”
Kitchings was panting through clenched teeth. “You listen up, Doctor. I’m getting a warrant for the arrest of Jim O’Conner. I’m bringing him in on a charge of murder, and I’m sending Williams over to retrieve those remains as evidence.”
I shook my head. “I’ll turn them over to the district attorney, if he subpoenas them, but I won’t turn them over to you.”
“You’ll do whatever the man says,” came a voice behind me. I turned to see a younger, slimmer version of Tom Kitchings, wearing a deputy’s uniform and a brass bar that read “Orbin Kitchings, Chief Deputy.” He was sighting down the barrel of the sheriff’s rifle, which was pointed straight at my head. “Put your weapon down,” he said to Art. “And I do mean right now.” Art kept his pistol at the sheriff’s head. “Put it down, city boy, or I’ll by-god blow his brains out.”
The room was so still you could hear a toothpick drop. Finally Art broke the silence. “You can’t do it, Deputy.”
“The hell I can’t.”
“You can pull the trigger, but you can’t shoot him,” Art said levelly. “The chamber’s empty. Sheriff was just cleaning that rifle. Might be some rounds in the magazine, but by the time you can lever one in, I’ll have two bullets in you and one in the sheriff.” I saw the sheriff give a slight nod to his brother, which I fervently hoped was confirmation of Art’s empty-chamber theory. “Put it down, Deputy, and step over here with your hands out in front of you.”
“Go on, Orbin, do what he says,” sighed Kitchings.
Orbin complied.
Kitchings spoke, and he sounded like a different man—a much less certain and much more weary man—than the one who had tried to turn a rifle on me moments before. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Doc. You’re right, she was my cousin. Leena Bonds—Evelina, actually—was her name. She lived with our family for a few years after her folks died, and then she left town. At least, that’s what we’d always thought, right up until now. Leena dated Jim O’Conner. Hell, I think she was even engaged to him. In my book—in anybody’s book—
that makes him the prime suspect.”
“Not if he was in Vietnam when she was strangled,” I said.
“Do you know when she was strangled?”
“Not precisely. But the dog tag suggests it was sometime after he left for Vietnam.”
“So maybe he did it once he got home. Any proof it didn’t happen then?”
“Not that I know of. But I suspect a DNA test will show it wasn’t his baby she was carrying.”
The revelation burst like a bombshell in the office. I hadn’t intended to broach the subject of Leena’s pregnancy quite that way, but then again, I hadn’t expected to find myself in a Mexican standoff with two law enforcement officers, either.
Tom Kitchings sagged backward against a filing cabinet, looking as if he’d been struck. “She was pregnant?”