Pat Connor nodded a greeting to another police officer as he walked past carrying a Whataburger sack. Once the cop was out of earshot, he whispered into the burner phone. “The judge and Crawford Hunt. They had a closed-door session in her chambers for over half an hour. He came out looking like he could either fuck or kill somebody. Not necessarily in that order.”
He’d thought that was a rather clever turn of phrase, but there wasn’t so much as a snicker on the other end of the call.
“When was this?”
“Just now. He took the atrium stairs down. Fast. Practically at a run. He left the building. I followed him out and watched him drive away.”
“Where’s the judge?”
“Still in her office.”
“They might have been discussing the investigation.”
“Alone? Neal Lester’s here. So’s Nugent. Why wouldn’t they have been in on the meeting? And something else.”
“Well?”
“This morning after the press conference, he dragged her off for a whispered conversation.” Pat related everything he’d seen and overheard, leaving out the part about how he nearly messed himself when Crawford Hunt had singled him out. “Told me not to let anybody interrupt them. But Neal Lester showed up with her boyfriend, and that put a stop to it.”
Several moments lapsed, then Pat was asked, “Did he see you see him?”
“Tonight, you mean? Yeah, as he blew out of the judge’s office. We made eye contact. He bobbed his head, like ‘how you doin’?’ but he didn’t say anything.” Pat waited and when nothing was forthcoming, he asked, “What do you want me to do now?”
“See to it that Neal Lester knows about their meeting. Mention it to him in passing. Casually. But stress that Hunt was angry when he left her.”
“I don’t know,” Pat whined. “I don’t want to stick my neck out too far on this thing.”
The man’s chuckle was sinister. “Too late to be worried about that.”
Chapter 19
Crawford didn’t keep liquor in the house. After Beth died, he’d started drinking to dull the pain. It had no effect, so he drank more. Getting the DUI had been a wake-up call. He’d seen how close he was to becoming like Conrad, and he was not going to be like him. Not in any respect. Now, when he drank at all, he limited himself to one and went out for it.
He sat at the bar of a popular watering hole, slowly sipping the straight bourbon while ignoring the clamor around him—half a dozen TVs all tuned in to the same baseball game, the clack of billiard balls, the drone of conversation, the wailing lament of a country song being piped through the sound system.
If his cell phone hadn’t been on vibrate, he would have missed the call. He checked the caller’s name and hesitated, but only for half a second before deciding in favor of answering. Keeping his tone bland, he said, “Hey, Neal. What’s up?”
“You bastard.”
“Excuse me?”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Something wrong? You sound plumb overwrought.”
“You leaked his name to the media, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“Whose name?”
“It’s on the ten o’clock news. I’m watching it. A ‘new person of interest’ in the courthouse shooting. Chuck Otterman.”
Crawford couldn’t help but smile over Neal’s distress. He signaled the barkeeper to switch one of the TVs over to a Tyler station. On the screen was a reporter doing a live standup in front of the Prentiss County Courthouse. The audio was muted, but Crawford could guess what he was saying, because he’d practically spoon-fed it to the guy.
Neal’s lame approach to the investigation and his kowtowing to Otterman had left Crawford feeling that a shake-up was in order. A Houston station would have had ten times the viewers, but Tyler was closer, and its audience more homegrown. Therefore interest was greater about the goings-on in rural Prentiss. Using the burner phone he kept handy in the glove compartment of his SUV, he’d placed an anonymous call to the station’s news hotline and asked to speak to a reporter.
Sticking to the facts, Crawford told him about Otterman’s coming forward and admitting to leaving the crime scene, about his being asked by the “team of investigators” to view the body of the man erroneously suspected of the shooting. He hadn’t answered any of the questions put to him by the reporter, who was hyperventilating by then. He’d been purposefully evasive and made himself sound nervous about leaking information, hoping the tactic would whet the reporter’s appetite and ensure a deeper probe. His pot-stirring obviously had worked.
Neal was still ranting. “You were his ‘unnamed source,’ weren’t you? You tipped them. I know it.”
“They wouldn’t broadcast an anonymous tip without having it corroborated.”
“The reporter called me to substantiate it two minutes before air time. Two minutes!”
“Then what are you yelling at me for, when it was you who confirmed Otterman’s involvement?”
“All I confirmed was that he’d done his—”
“Civic duty. He’s a model citizen, all right.”
“In fact, he is.”
“Then he’s got nothing to worry about, does he?”
“No, but you do. I’m going to have your ass over this. I’m going to have it mounted on the wall of my den.”