“I’m liking this asshole less and less,” Harry said.
“Me too.”
“Keep your head down.”
Crawford gave him the number of his burner phone, then used it to make another call and impatiently counted the rings until Smitty’s nasal twang instructed him to leave a message.
Crawford said only, “You know who this is. Call me back, or your shriveled pair are history.”
He clicked off, checked the time, then pulled up the collar of his windbreaker and plunged into the rain.
Chapter 28
When you told him to get out of your car, he didn’t put up an argument?”
“At first,” Holly admitted in reply to Neal’s question. “But I told him I would take him absolutely no farther. He got out. I drove home.”
When she’d arrived, Neal Lester and Matt Nugent were sitting in an unmarked sedan at the end of her driveway. She drove around back and entered her house through the kitchen door, then met them at the front.
As she ushered them inside, she said, “I spoke to Marilyn. She told me to expect you.”
She’d offered to make coffee, which they declined. They’d taken seats in the living room and for the past twenty minutes she had been recounting everything that had happened since getting the call from Crawford.
“He didn’t tell you what he was going to do?”
“‘Stay alive.’ Those were his words. For his daughter’s sake, he wants very much to live. Having seen her safely away, he was much calmer than he’d been an hour earlier. When he called and asked for my help, he sounded desperate.”
Neal said, “He was. He had just escaped from police custody.”
“He told me that he drove himself to the courthouse and was willing to cooperate. He hadn’t been handcuffed. He hadn’t been arrested or read his rights.” She paused and looked at the detectives expectantly. “Unless he was lying to me.”
“He wasn’t. We didn’t do any of that,” Nugent supplied and, when Neal shot him a withering look, he added, “Which is why I figured he could be left alone to talk to his lawyer.”
Neal said, “If all he wanted to do was get his daughter out of harm’s way, why did he fool Nugent and abandon his car? Why didn’t he tell me about this phone call that caused him to take such drastic measures?”
“He was afraid you wouldn’t believe him. I think he was probably right.” She paused to let that sink in. “He was afraid that every minute spent on sorting things out was another minute that his daughter’s life was in danger.”
Defensively, Neal said, “Nobody else heard this mysterious phone call, did they?”
“I was with him when it came in,” Nugent said.
“But he told you it was the lawyer.”
“Have you spoken with the attorney?” Holly asked.
Ready with the answer, Nugent said, “Crawford had asked for a referral. Ben Knotts called him and got his voice mail. That call came in minutes after the one from the unknown.”
She looked at Neal. “He asked for an attorney. Doesn’t that indicate that he had every intention of going through the questioning process, and would have if not for that threatening call from Chuck Otterman?”
“No one has ascertained that it was Otterman,” Neal argued. “The call from the unknown could have been a solicitation. He used it to trick Nugent.”
Holly said, “If the call was a trick and the threat a fabrication, why would he have implored his in-laws to immediately leave town with his daughter? They will corroborate that’s what happened.”
“Mr. Gilroy already has.”
Nugent’s statement left Neal no choice except to elaborate, although he did so grudgingly. “After dispatching a patrol car to their house and having it reported that nobody was at home, I called Joe Gilroy’s cell number. I had it from interviewing him after the shooting.”
“He confirmed what I’ve told you?”
“To the letter. There’s still no love lost between him and Crawford, but Crawford convinced him that the girl needed to be moved without delay.”
“I was similarly convinced,” she said. “Unlike you, I believe Mr. Otterman is culpable.”
“That video seals it,” Nugent agreed.
“Shut up, Matt,” Neal snapped. “It doesn’t seal anything.”
Holly didn’t reveal that she knew the origin and content of the video to which Nugent had referred, but she looked at Neal and raised her eyebrows inquisitively. Stiff-lipped with resignation, he said, “Crawford has a video of Pat Connor in conversation with Chuck Otterman. He claims it was shot at a local bar early this evening.”
“That’s why Crawford left his cell phone behind,” Nugent said. “So we’d have that video.”
“He left his cell phone so we couldn’t use it to track him,” Neal said with asperity.
Holly asked, “Does Mr. Otterman have an explanation for this conversation with the murder victim?”
“He’s out of town. We’re trying to locate him.”