Pocketing his flashlight, he scrabbled backward out from under the house, emerging near the air-conditioning unit. He hoped to God that Kyle Allard knew something about the missing meth, because if he didn’t, that Redbone bastard Ozan would probably kill him trying to squeeze out the truth.
As Hunt straightened up, he figured he could wait two minutes to call Allard. He wanted to get away from the sheriff’s house before any neighbors saw him. If something had gone wrong, the last thing he needed was Sheriff Dennis asking what he’d been doing under his house that morning. Hunt strode around the corner, then stopped cold.
Walker Dennis stood there with another deputy, a recent hire named Wilkins, a kid fresh out of the Marines.
“What’s up, Hiram?” asked the sheriff, a strange glint in his eyes. “You lost?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“Well?”
“I was just looking for you, sir. We, ah, got an anonymous tip that there was some drugs under your house. We knew it was bullshit, of course, but we figured somebody ought to crawl under there so we could say we’d checked it out.”
“I see. Who’s ‘we,’ Hiram?”
“Uh, you know . . . Randy, I think.” Randy Frey wasn’t on the Knox payroll, but he was stupid, and the sheriff might believe the deputy was lying if he denied it.
Sheriff Dennis gave Wilkins some kind of head signal, and the new guy drew his pistol and covered Hunt with it.
“Hey now,” Hunt said nervously. “What . . . what’s going on?”
Sheriff Dennis smiled, but the look in his eyes made Hunt’s bowels shift.
“You’re going to get plenty of time to answer that question, Hiram. Yes, sir. Now, hand me your weapon.”
“Listen, Sheriff—”
“Hand it over!”
With shaking hands, Hunt drew his weapon with his thumb and forefinger and passed it butt first to the sheriff. Dennis looked down at it, then grimaced and handed the weapon to the new guy. Hunt was trying to think of something intelligent to say, but nothing came to him.
“Give me your phones,” Dennis ordered. “All of ’em.”
Hunt unclipped the departmental cell phone from his belt. Then, after some hesitation, he removed the StarTac burn phone from his trouser pocket. It had been his only safe link to Forrest Knox, and now it might just hang him.
Dennis snatched the StarTac from his hand. “Cuff him, Wilkins. Hands behind your back, Hiram.”
Hunt felt tears in his eyes. “Sheriff, please—”
Walker Dennis drove his fist into Hiram’s gut, driving every bit of air out of his lungs. He doubled over, tried to keep his feet, then collapsed on the sheriff’s lawn. He felt the new guy cuffing his wrists behind him, then Dennis’s hot breath in his ear.
“This is my home, you cocksucker. The bastards you work for killed my cousin and two fine deputies—unlike you. You think about that while you’re riding to where you’re going.”
“You taking me to jail?” Hunt asked, gasping for breath.
“Ohh, no,” said the sheriff in a strange voice. “We’re way past that now, Hiram. Yes, sir.”
WALT GARRITY WAS SCANNING the Bouchard lake house through a 10x Leupold scope when his burn phone rang. After more than a dozen attempts to reach Griffith Mackiever, the man had finally called him back. Walt set down the scope and answered the phone.
“Tell me you’ve done something with that video,” Walt said, skipping the small talk.
“I’m trying,” Mackiever said. “I’m having a hell of a time getting anybody to meet with me. Those damned kiddie porn accusations have made me toxic. No government official wants to have anything to do with me. Most won’t even take my calls.”
“You can always take it to the media yourself,” Walt suggested. “Or scare the hell out of Knox with it.”
“Hell, I haven’t even ID’d the men in it yet.”
“Have you tried?”
“I’m working on it, Walt.”
“Work faster, damn it. There’s a lot more than your reputation on the line, or the image of the state police.”
“I hear you.”
Walt was about to give his old comrade a stern dose of reality when an F-150 pickup swerved into the driveway of the Bouchard lake house and rolled toward the built-in garage.
“I’ll call you later,” Walt said, dropping the phone and picking up the scope again.
He sighted in on the driver as the Ford passed and recognized Alphonse Ozan behind the wheel. So . . . the servant had come to the master. Walt saw no passengers in the truck, but when the garage door rose and swallowed the F-150, he began to worry that Tom might be lying on the backseat, on the floor, or even wrapped in a rug in the truck bed.
He had to get closer to that house.
FORREST STOOD STIFFLY ON the lake house deck and stared down at the cell phone he used to talk to the moles he maintained in various parishes around the state. Hiram Hunt should have called back by now. Forrest needed to know what was going on. Something told him not to try to reach Hunt, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t try one of his other sources in Walker Dennis’s department. Yet Forrest continued to stare at the phone without touching it. He almost felt as though the device had been turned against him somehow, that the tool he used so often to spy on others now made him vulnerable to attack.
As Forrest stared, the cell phone began to ring.
His heartbeat skittered, then stabilized. Odds were, this was Hunt calling to report that he’d discovered the fate of the planted methamphetamine. The phone rang again. Out on the lake, another bass boat skated by with a midrange growl, but Forrest’s eyes remained locked on the cell phone.
He made no move to answer it.
CHAPTER 53
I PULL INTO the motor-pool bay of the sheriff’s department, which is located beneath the western end of the Concordia Parish courthouse. As I show my ID to a mustached deputy at the basement entrance, I notice a large number of inmates being held in fenced pens beyond the parked cruisers. The pens have a makeshift look, and most of the men inside are wearing street clothes.