Clay took the stairs down. He got to the parking lot just in time to watch his car drive away. A second later, Harry pulled out of the Dairy Queen, squashed into Lanie’s Nissan Juke, and merged in a couple of cars back.
It would be fine. Harry knew how to tail a car as well as Clay did. He’d worked for the sheriff’s department for five years before he’d been “managed out.”
Clay got into Harry’s SUV. He reached for his cigarettes and had one in his fingers before he remembered his good intentions.
Shit.
He fiddled with a slim white cylinder absently as he put in a call to Deputy Jones on his burner and slid the car into drive. The phone rang twice before Jones finally picked up.
His voice muttered something tinny and crackle-filled. Clay leaned over, one hand still on the wheel, and put him on speaker.
“… owe me,” Jones said. “I had to call in favors for this one.”
Clay rolled his eyes but kept his voice low and easy. “And I appreciate it,” he said. Jones had a wife and went to a very evangelical church. He definitely wouldn’t identify as anywhere on the spectrum of liking men, but he got flustered when Clay went slow and let the Louisiana thicken in his voice. It could be useful. “You never let us down, Jones. Now, speaking of, have you got anything for me?”
“The full license plate and registration.” Jones preened audibly. “It’s registered to Raymond Guthrie, whose last residence was in the State Penitentiary. I’ve got an official BOLO out on it with the boys. I told them it was some guy who’d been hassling my daughter, and I wanted to have words. If the sheriff finds out about this, I could get an official reprimand. So you owe me.”
“I know,” Clay said. “You want anything, you just ask, and we can work something out.”
Jones grunted in satisfaction, as if Clay had promised him something concrete instead of fuck all.
“I’ll let you know if we get a hit,” he said.
“Good,” Clay said. “It should be on the road sometime in the next thirty minutes. Oh, and one more thing… remember I asked you to pull up the file on that ex-con we hired? Hadley Short. There was no criminal background there, right? He just threw the wrong punch at the wrong time.”
“Yeah,” Jones said. “That’s what it looked like. Why?”
“Just making sure,” Clay said.
He hung up.
So Hadley had gone into prison a chump with a good right hook, but he’d come out a kidnapper and murderer—in three years. People did what they had to survive in prison, but if Hadley had gotten in with that crowd, then Guthrie wouldn’t have buddied up to him. Clay’s old sergeant had plans for life after parole. Plans that would probably land him back in jail, knowing him, but he wasn’t going to risk them hanging out with amateurs. And he’d given Clay the heads-up on what sort of jobs the guy was looking for.
It didn’t make sense.
Clay absently snapped the smoke he’d been fiddling with in half. He huffed in annoyance and lowered the window to toss the two bits into the undergrowth. People didn’t always make sense; that was just the way the world worked.
He was behaving like Grade, obsessed over who stole Buchanan’s shoes.
Yes, his brain went,now we’re getting it.
Clay waited for more, but he got nothing, just the dopamine dump of a solved puzzle. Except hehadn’tsolved it. He wasn’t even sure what the puzzle was. Apparently, that didn’t matter. Something in his head thought he’d gotten it, and that was good enough for it.
He rolled his head from one side to the other and reached for the pills in the door. They usually helped him chivvy his brain cells into something like an orderly line. Except it wasn’t his car,andhe’d run out.
Great. Clay grimaced to himself as he took a left onto Grade’s street. The Dodge was still parked outside, ripe grape purple in the sun, and there was a deputy’s car parked in front of it. Habit made Clay straighten up and focus forward, like a man with nothing to hide. Even though, for once, it was true.
His phone rang suddenly. Clay checked his mirror to make sure there was no one behind the wheel of the patrol car and grabbed the phone.
“You got me,” he said. “What you want?”
“Spotted the pickup,” Jones said. “You know the Gallagher’s hunting plot off the Wildcat?”
“No,” Clay said. “I don’t hunt, and I don’t do trees as landmarks. So with that in mind, what am I looking for?”
Jones blew air out between his lips as if this was a tough question.
“OK, it’s an old mining road off the Wildcat,” Jones said. “It’s after that rock the kids painted blue last year and before the road cuts over the river. If you turn and about ten minutes up, you see an old gray stone building with no roof, you’re on the right road. It’s the old Hall Company Store.”
