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“What the hell is that?”
“Stick around,” Clete said.
“Amidee fooled me real good, didn’t he?” Bobby Joe said.
“I wouldn’t think of it like that,” I said.
“He doesn’t ask people for money,” he replied. “That means somebody else is paying his freight. Any fool would see that, I guess.”
Clete and I looked at each other.
CLETE CALLED MY office at 8:05 the next morning. “Somebody got past my alarm and punched my safe and tore up my office,” he said.
“When?”
“The alarm went off-line at two-seventeen this morning. The safe was done by a pro. The windows were taped over with black vinyl garbage bags. All my file cabinets and desk drawers were dumped, my swivel chair split open, and the top of the toilet tank pulled off and dropped in the bowl. Want to hear some more?”
“Who was on those videos with Varina?”
“I already told you. A few shysters and oil guys who wanted to get laid. They’re not skells.”
“No, you said there were some you didn’t recognize. What do you remember about them?”
“They had bare asses.”
“What else?”
“One guy had a British accent.”
“Why didn’t you mention that before?”
“Who cares about his accent?”
My mind was racing. “You didn’t save any of this on your hard drive? You don’t have an automatic backup system of some kind?”
“No, I told you, I burned the memory cards and opened up the windows in my office to get the smell out. I should have taken your advice and never looked at it.”
“I’m going to send some guys from the crime lab to your office. Leave everything just as it is.”
“I’ll need a copy of the report for my insurance claim, but forget about prints. The guys who did this are good.”
“Did Varina ever mention a Brit to you?”
“News flash, Dave: When you’re with Varina, the only person she talks about is you, all the time staring straight into your eyes. It takes about ten seconds before your flagpole wakes up and decides it’s time to fly the red, white, and blue.”
“You’ve still got the hots for her.”
“Wrong. Since I met her, I feel like I’ve been living inside a snare drum. We’ve got to take these guys down, Dave. This started with Alexis Dupree and Bix Golightly. We need to go back to the source and put some hurt on that old man. You hearing me on this? The guy is probably a war criminal and a mass murderer. Why are we letting him do this kind of stuff to us?”
“I’m sending the guys from the crime lab now,” I said.
“I won’t be here. Gretchen can show them around.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure. Did you run Lamont Woolsey yet?”
“No, I haven’t had time.”
