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She hoped it didn’t backfire.
She carefully turned the knob and quietly opened the door. The scent of cheap liquor and dirty socks whacked her senses. Blinds were closed and the dim room revealed a dresser with an older model TV, a small round table with two wooden chairs by the window and two nightstands flanking a queen-size bed with a sagging mattress.
Tangled in dingy white sheets and out cold lay Wendell Atwater.
He was in black-socked feet, the suit pants from earlier today and a white undershirt. Half a bottle of Chivas was propped against his chest.
“Well, this wasn’t what I was expecting.” A slow hiss escaped John’s lips as he inched toward the bed. Wendell’s chest rose and fell. At least he was breathing. John leaned over him and gave him a light pop on the cheek with the back of his hand. “Wake up, preacher.”
“I wonder if he’ll want us to show him that mercy he preached about when we get him awake.” Surely receiving mercy wasn’t license to get sloshed. Was this a habit or something he’d given in to since Atta’s death? Whiskey and Greg’s implication was that today wasn’t a first time.
John grunted and smacked him a little harder. “Wendell,” he said sharply, “wake up. Up.”
Wendell groaned and stirred. One bloodshot eye opened then closed, and he groaned again, then his eyes sprang open. “Detective?” he slightly slurred, still smashed.
“Yeah. And Agent Rainwater. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“I’m going to find a cool washcloth and maybe a cup of coffee.” Violet walked into the hall, the scent of perfume and booze lingering. She tromped down the wooden stairs and into the back room, where Greg, Whiskey and two other men were gathered at a table with beers in hand and a pizza in the middle of the table.
“You hungry, honey?” Greg asked.
Violet detested this man. He was playing no game.
Out him. Say the words, and they’ll do the rest. You know you want to.
She did. They hovered on the edge of her tongue. He’s undercover. That was all she had to say. “How long has Wendell Atwater been passing out in room five?”
Whiskey picked a piece of pepperoni off his slice and popped it into his mouth. “A decade. But just in that room. He’s been drinkin’ since he was twelve. Takin’ after the old man. In more ways than one.”
Violence? Was Whiskey implying Wendell Atwater was the Blind Eye Killer? No. If he had definitive proof, he’d have killed him himself for choosing girls that worked for him. But maybe he needed the proof and was using Violet and John to get it in order to enforce his own brand of justice. Holler justice. And that was why he’d told them about room number five. “I need coffee to sober him up.”
“That doesn’t really work.”
“Well, I need it anyway.” She drilled her gaze into Greg’s. John might keep his secrets, but Violet had a side John couldn’t begin to dream of. “Give me a reason,” she whispered. “One reason.”
“A reason for what?” Whiskey asked.
Greg dropped his pizza and stood. “Mellie has some made. Faster we help her, the faster we get her out of here,” he said with a few choice names for Violet. She ignored them. Didn’t deny them.
Once behind the bar and alone, Greg cornered her, blocking her against the wall. “If you so much as breathe a word—”
“You’ll what?” she hissed back and straightened her spine. “If you don’t start cooperating with us, I will make sure he knows who you are and who Callie was, and then I’ll let him kill you and sleep sound all night long. Because he will kill you, and I have a hunch he’ll make it slow and torturous. Do you understand me?”
Greg studied her, searched her eyes and found the truth, then chuckled. “You should do undercover work.” He dropped his arm and poured what looked like hours-old coffee into a foam cup. “I think Whiskey made Callie. She was kinda like you. Crazy. She followed him and saw an exchange. One that could be tied to a pretty powerful politician. She called and told me what she’d seen and that she had photos. We were supposed to meet up, but she didn’t show. I knew he had her killed. I’m not just trying to bring him down for drugs. I want him for Callie. I need him for Callie.” His tone softened.
“And Bella Dawn?”
He kneaded the nape of his neck. “It’s hard to know who you are when you’ve been told for so long who you’re supposed to be. Sometimes I think I am Whiskey’s guy. That I belong here. I get... Doesn’t matter. I don’t know where Bella Dawn went. But I know who she was with when she ducked out.”
“Who?”
“Regis Owsley.”
Violet hadn’t seen him. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there.
“I don’t know who the Blind Eye Killer is. Nobody does and that’s the problem. Because we never don’t know who is up to no good around here. He’s a ghost.”
“Do you think it’s Whiskey?”
