Smitty swallowed and bobbed his head in complete understanding.
Otterman sat back and calmly resumed rolling the coin across the backs of his fingers. “Let’s try to have an honest conversation. I’ll go first. After I left your club tonight, Crawford Hunt was seen there. In your company, Smitty. He also had a woman with him. They carried somebody out.”
“His old man. Who’s a sorry drunk. If you were from around here, you’d know the history. Anyway, tonight, he was worse off than usual. I had to call Crawford to come get him and cover his tab.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You have no other dealings with Crawford Hunt?”
“Shit, no. I hate his guts. A few years back, he busted me for pubic lewdness. A guy can’t get a blowjob in his own car?”
“Who was the woman?”
“Can’t remember her name, but she could shrink-wrap your dick.”
“The woman with Hunt, you idiot.”
“Oh. The judge.”
“Holly Spencer?”
“She doesn’t look like any judge I ever faced. Firm tits, smokin’ ass.”
Otterman didn’t react for several seconds, then he cracked a smile that sent chills down Smitty’s spine. “You’re the expert on that.”
He forced himself to chuckle. “Well, I reckon everybody’s gotta be good at something.”
Otterman’s smile relaxed until it was no more. “The boys will see you out.”
With no more notice than that, “the boys” jerked him to his feet with such force his teeth clicked together. He was supported between them as they dragged him toward the door.
It occurred to Smitty in a moment of blinding, terrifying clarity that he’d forgotten the money pouch, and that, this time, he wasn’t leaving the fishing shack under his own power.
Crawford’s plea to his father-in-law had left the four of them in a bizarre freeze-frame. He was the first to move. He turned his head and looked at Holly. In a gruff voice, he asked, “Are you hurt?”
Astounded by the sudden turnabout, she looked at him with bafflement. “Hurt?”
“You lost your balance on the step.”
“Oh. No, I’m…I’m okay.”
Still holding her gaze, he said, “You understand now why I wanted you here, to see this, hear it.”
“I believe so.”
“I still want custody of Georgia. This doesn’t change that.” Turning back to his father-in-law, he said, “We’ll continue our fight, Joe. Once all this is over, we’ll pick up where you threw that last punch if that’s how you want it. But you’ve got to get Georgia away from here tonight. Right now.”
He lowered his knee so that it was no longer wedged between Joe’s thighs and withdrew his hand from the man’s chest. Having seen for herself the ferocity of Joe Gilroy’s hatred for Crawford, Holly halfway expected him to launch another physical attack. He didn’t, but his facial features remained granite hard, his eyes piercing.
He said, “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about. What’s happened?”
Rain had plastered Crawford’s hair to his forehead, but he seemed impervious to it and his wet clothes. “I know who the courtroom shooter was. So does Holly.”
Joe’s eyes cut to her. “It’s true,” she said. “I identified a Prentiss police officer as the gunman.”
“How’d you figure it out?”
“Too long to go into,” Crawford said. “But an hour or less after we made this discovery, he turned up dead. Murdered inside his house. And it wasn’t pretty.”
Grace made a mournful sound. “Let’s all sit down. I’ll make coffee.”
“There’s no time for coffee, Grace,” Crawford said. “Start gathering up only what you’ll absolutely need to take with you.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. A few days, maybe.”
“Hold on, Grace,” Joe said when it appeared that she would do as Crawford asked. “I haven’t heard anything that compels me to pack up my family and sneak out of town in the middle of the night like a band of gypsies.”
“Can’t you for once just do something without having to be the fucking commander?”
Holly took a handful of Crawford’s shirt and pulled him backward, then stepped between him and his father-in-law. “Mr. Gilroy, Mrs. Gilroy,” she said, turning her head to include Grace, “we’ve concluded that I wasn’t the intended target in the courtroom. Crawford was.”
Joe glanced beyond her toward Crawford. “That doesn’t surprise me. But why, specifically?”
“Do you know a man named Chuck Otterman?” Crawford asked.
“I’ve heard of him, sure. Runs the drilling outfit? What’s he got to do with it?”
As concisely as possible, Holly explained the situation. “Crawford has Texas Rangers in the Houston office trying to determine what the connection is and why Otterman would conspire to have him killed.”
Crawford took over for her. “In the meantime, he called me.”