“System’s broken, Liz. You know it same as me.”
Elizabeth leaned against the wall and watched the man beside her, how light touched his face, the cigarette, the knotted fingers. “How old are they now? Your daughters?”
“Susan’s twenty-three. Charlotte’s twenty-seven.”
“They’re both in town?”
“By the grace of God.”
They smoked in silence for a moment, the lean woman, the hump-shouldered man. She thought of justice and the law and the sound his neck made when he cracked it. “Did Adrian have enemies?”
“All cops have enemies.”
“I mean inside the system. Other cops? Lawyers? Maybe someone from the DA’s office?”
“Back in the day? Maybe. For a while you couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Adrian’s face on the screen beside one pretty reporter or another. A lot of cops resented that. You should really ask Dyer.”
“About Adrian?”
“Adrian, yeah.” James stubbed out the cigarette. “Francis always hated that guy.”
*
When Randolph went back inside, Elizabeth finished her cigarette, thinking. Thirteen years ago, did Adrian have enemies? Who knew? Elizabeth had been so young at the time. After the quarry, she’d managed her final year of high school and two years at the University of North Carolina before dropping out to become a cop. That made her twenty on her first day out of training, twenty and fired up and scared half to death. She wouldn’t have known the hatreds or politics; she couldn’t have.
But, she was thinking about it, now.
Following the sidewalk to the corner, she skirted a clump of pedestrians, then turned left and stepped into the street. Her car was parked a half block up on the other side. She thought about enemies; thought she was out clean.
That lasted another dozen steps.
Beckett was sitting on the hood of her car.
“What are you doing, Charlie?” She slowed in the street.
His tie hung loosely, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. “I could ask you the same thing.” He watched her cross the last bit of dark pavement. She gauged his face; it was inscrutable.
“I just stopped by,” she said. “You know. Checking on the case.”
“Uh-huh.”
Elizabeth stopped at the car. “Have you identified the victim?”
“Ramona Morgan. Twenty-seven years old. Local. We think she disappeared yesterday.”
“What else?”
“Pretty but shy. No serious boyfriend. A waitress she worked with thinks she might have had plans on Sunday evening. We’re trying to pin that down.”
“Time of death?”
“After Adrian got out.”
He dropped that on her like a rock; watched to see if she could handle it. “I want to talk to the medical examiner.”
“That’s not going to happen, and you know it.”
“Because of Dyer?”
“He wants you isolated from anything to do with Adrian Wall.”
“He thinks I’ll jeopardize the case?”
“Or yourself. Hamilton and Marsh are still in town.”
Elizabeth studied Beckett’s face, most of it lost in shadow. Even then, she could see the emotion below the surface. Aversion? Disappointment? She wasn’t sure. “Does Dyer hate him?”
He understood the question. She saw it. “I don’t think Francis hates anybody.”
“What about thirteen years ago? Did he hate anyone then?”
A bitter smile cut Beckett’s face. “Did James Randolph tell you that?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe you should consider the source.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning James Randolph was everything Adrian was not. Plodding. Narrow-minded. He’s been divorced three times, for God’s sake. If anyone hated Adrian, it was Randolph.”
Elizabeth tried to work that piece into the puzzle.
Beckett slid off the car and thumped the fender, changing the subject. “I didn’t know you were still driving this rust bucket.”
“Sometimes.”
“What year is it again?”
She watched his face, trying to catch the angles. Something was happening, and it wasn’t about the car. “’Sixty-seven,” she said. “I paid for it working summer jobs. It was pretty much the first real thing I ever bought by myself.”
“You were eighteen, right?”
“Seventeen.”
“That’s right. Seventeen. Preacher’s daughter.” He whistled. “Lightning in a bottle.”