“Why would he?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“Or you’re not telling me.”
Crawford came back angrily, “I’ll tell you this much. From the courtroom shooting forward, this has been about me. Otterman and me. But it started with him, because I’d never laid eyes on the man until he sauntered in that day. He sought me out, not the other way around. And even though you poo-poo it because you don’t want to believe it, I think there’s a lot more to him than his hale-fellow-well-met bullshit act.
“And if you hadn’t wasted so much goddamn time wanting to believe that I was the perp, we’d know what he’s about, we’d know what he had on Pat Connor that cost him his life, and we’d have this son of a bitch behind bars.
“Your past mistakes are history, Neal, but what holds for your future is that if any harm comes to my little girl or to Holly Spencer, I’ll ruin your lofty career plans by telling everybody how bad you fucked up because of the juvenile grudge you bear me. Then I’ll rip your head off your shoulders. If I’m dead, ‘my buddies in Houston’ will likely do it for me.”
Neal didn’t say anything, but Crawford sensed him fuming.
He pressed on. “Georgia’s out of Otterman’s reach, but keep people on Holly. In sight of her at all times. And just so everything’s neat and tidy when I catch up to Otterman, get that goddamn warrant.”
“While you’re doing what?”
“While I go fishing.”
He clicked off and tossed the cell phone into the passenger seat of Smitty’s car, in which also lay Smitty’s nine-millimeter. Crawford was grateful for the additional handgun, but it and Joe’s revolver were all he had. Depending on what he found when he reached his destination, that might prove to be insufficient firepower. Otterman had at least two of his heavies with him. I was afraid they were going to feed me to the alligators, Smitty had said. They. Probably Frick and Frack.
Fortified with a couple more shots of gin, and threatened with being taped to a chair, Smitty had drawn Crawford a crude map. “After three or four miles on that state road, you’ll come to a sign advertising taxidermy. It’s got an armadillo on it. Hook a left. If you miss that sign, you’re good and screwed, because you’ll never see the turnoff without it. Past that point, if the roads have names or numbers, I don’t know them.”
Once he got the map, he’d taped Smitty to the chair anyway, knowing that sooner or later someone would come looking to question him about Pat Connor’s being in Tinkled Pink hours before he was murdered.
Crawford was lucky to have gotten away before they’d arrived, and wished it had taken a little longer for Smitty to be found. The best he could hope for now was that Smitty would hold out on the deputies who were questioning him. This time, his whining and bargaining could buy Crawford valuable time.
Smitty had warned that he was sending him into the boondocks, and at least about that he wasn’t lying. Crawford had gone five miles on the state road before he spotted the landmark taxidermy sign marking the turnoff. It led to seemingly nowhere.
A swampy wilderness stretched endlessly from both sides of the narrow road. The terrain was waterlogged, overgrown with vines, forested by trees struggling against suffocation from the Spanish moss that hung from their branches in large clumps. Cypresses were rooted into the marsh by knobby knees that poked up out of the viscous surface.
The winding road barely qualified as such, and intersected with dozens of others that looked similarly difficult to drive on. Without the map, Crawford could have driven for days, going in circles, having to backtrack. Either Smitty deserved credit for his powers of recall, or he deserved to die for sending Crawford on a wild goose chase.
He’d soon know which.
Calculating that he was about a mile away from the spot marked with a large dot on Smitty’s map, he pulled the car off the road, far enough for the wild shrubbery to provide some concealment, but not so far that it would get stuck in the spongy ground. He might have to leave in a hurry.
He put Smitty’s pistol in the holster at his back but kept Joe’s in hand as he set out on foot.
Smitty had said the place was inside the state line. Crawford hadn’t seen any indication that he’d crossed over into the neighboring state. If this ended with an exchange of gunfire, it would be a lot more convenient if his badge made him official.
But, as this point, even an important detail like jurisdiction wasn’t going to stop him. He was determined to reach his self-proclaimed enemy ahead of everyone else because this was a personal fight, instigated by Otterman. Crawford feared learning what had inspired the man’s hatred, but he had to be the first to know.