Pat Connor’s hand was shaking as he used the burner phone he’d been given expressly for this purpose—to impart bad news, should any arise. His call was answered after two rings. “What?”
The gruff voice alone was enough to make Pat cringe. “I thought you should know. Starting first thing tomorrow, everybody evacuated from the courthouse yesterday will be questioned again.”
“How do you know?”
“Grapevine. Came from the chief of police about an hour ago. There’s a lot of bellyaching in the rank and file. They’re gonna question all law enforcement personnel. Judges. City officials. Everybody. The real kicker? They’re bringing in outside officers to conduct the interviews.”
There was a sustained silence on the other end and, when Pat couldn’t stand the strain any longer, he said, “I figure there’s only one reason they’d be going to all that trouble and pissing people off.”
“They know they got the wrong man.”
Pat saw the wisdom of keeping his trap shut. He’d done what he had been ordered to do, which had been to keep his eyes and ears open for any further developments. Maybe delivering this heads-up would get the man off his back.
That hope was dashed when he was told, “Keep yourself easy to find.”
Chapter 14
Crawford rolled to a stop alongside a dark-colored SUV similar to his own. The driver lowered the tinted window, and a face like that on a Native American nickel appeared. “Hey, Crawford.”
“Thanks for coming.”
“They killed the wrong guy? That’s a pisser.”
“Tell me.”
“Her judgeship inside?”
“And alone for the time being, so don’t blink.”
In addition to his harsh features, Harry Longbow’s name attested to his heritage. He traced his lineage to the Comanche, the fierce horsemen tribe of the Texas plains, whose raids on settlers had kept them at odds with early Texas Rangers. The Rangers had endured. Harry joked that he wouldn’t hold that against the agency, if the agency wouldn’t hold his gene pool against him. He’d been one of Crawford’s hand-chosen few in Halcon.
“Is that Sessions?” Crawford nodded at the other vehicle parked at the far end of the street.
“He was itching to come along. Wife’s redecorating and has him looking at wallpaper and carpet samples.”
Wayne Sessions was just as seasoned an officer as Harry, with whom he often partnered, but he was also a whiz on the computer, and was never without his laptop. Both were good men to have at your back.
Crawford alerted Harry to Marilyn Vidal’s imminent arrival and gave him the make of her car. “Any other vehicles, consider suspicious. Nobody lives on this lane except Judge Spencer and an elderly lady in the main house. Oh, she’s got three cats. Pass that along to Sessions. Don’t mistake a prowling feline for our perp.”
“Last thing you need, us blowing away an old lady’s cats.”
Crawford saluted him as he drove off. The streets of Holly’s neighborhood were empty, nothing appeared even remotely threatening, but the farther he got from her house, the more powerful his urge to turn around and go back. As reliable as the other Rangers were, he wanted to be the one watching over her, protecting her.
“Professional objectivity, my ass,” he muttered. Not since Beth had he kissed a woman like that. Not since Beth had he wanted to. Which was exhilarating and troubling in equal measure.
For the past four years he’d been paying self-imposed penance for the role he’d played in the fatal accident that took Beth’s life. When he got lonely, he figured he deserved to be. But what he knew now that he hadn’t known twenty-four hours ago was that self-denial was easy only if you were indifferent to what you denied yourself. Denying yourself something you wanted like hell was torture.
After he’d stopped the excessive drinking and getting into bar fights, well-meaning friends began encouraging him to date and offering to set him up with suitable women, saying things like, “Beth wouldn’t want you to live the rest of your life alone.”
To which he usually responded, “How the hell do you know what Beth would want?”
Although it was a quarrelsome comeback to a banality, it was also a valid but unanswerable question. No one, not even he, knew what Beth would want for his future without her. But whatever, self-denial seemed key to his atonement.