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Jo glanced from the flow of traffic to examine his clenched jaw—she needed to pull him out of his head. “What else do you know about him? Where else could he be headed on a Monday night?”
Arnett’s mouth narrowed into a tight line. “No idea. Maybe somebody who worked with him longer’ll know.” He tapped into the phone.
Jo braked and turned into The Wooden Leg’s parking lot. Before the car came to a full stop, Arnett had his seat belt off and the door open.
The dim light inside the pub was far less noticeable after the dark of night, and Jo’s eyes adjusted almost immediately. They both scanned the room but didn’t see Murphy.
“I’ll check the men’s room,” Arnett said.
Jo crossed to the bar, still scanning occupants as she went. The bartender, in the middle of pulling a beer, noticed her immediately. “Weren’t you two here earlier?”
She shifted her blazer to reveal her badge. “We were. You remember the guy we were talking to?”
His eyes bounced back up, face tight. “Murphy. Comes in once or twice a week. He’s a cop, too, isn’t he? Or was?”
She nodded. “He still around?”
“Nope.” Worry sprung onto his face. “Why?”
“When did he leave?” she asked.
He shot a quick glance at the two regulars avidly pretending not to listen, and lowered his voice. “Not too long after you left. Said he had some errands to run and he’d catch me later.”
She also lowered her voice. “Is that usual?”
He wagged his head. “Depends. Sometime he has a couple of beers, more often he sticks around for four or five. Always seems to know when I’m about to cut him off, though.”
“Does he come in his own car?”
The man’s posture tensed—he wasn’t interested in being held responsible for letting a patron drive drunk. He swept a hand around the perimeter of the room. “How exactly would I know? We got one window and it’s painted black.”
“No external cameras, then?”
He pointed to a small camera pointing down from the corner. “I got one pointed right at the register, and I say a prayer of thanks on the days it doesn’t go on the fritz.”
She gave a sympathetic half-smile. “Right. Got it. I don’t suppose you know where he goes when he leaves here?”
He looked like he was about to shut her down, but after another furtive glance around lowered his voice again. “You want my opinion? I’ve listened to a lot of bullshit, and people start to fall into types. The way he relives the glory days like he’s still in the middle of ’em, I’d bet my signed Cal Ripken Jr. rookie card he has exactly nothing going on in his life. My guess is he goes somewhere else to drink where they don’t know how much he’s already had, either home or to another bar.”
Arnett materialized from the dark hall. “Not in there.”
Jo thanked the bartender, then, once outside, recapped for Arnett. “My guess is he’s at some other watering hole. We need to check as many as we can as quickly as we can.”
“Go. I’ll pull up what kind of car he drives.”
CHAPTERFORTY-THREE
After ensuring the police surveillance was gone, I was able to turn my full attention to the most serious work of the day.
Steve Murphy was different from the rest of them. One of the most guilty, for a start—I didn’t know exactly what they’d done to tamper with the blood evidence, but it didn’t take a genius to know the detectives were the ones most directly able to manipulate it. But the real difference was the way he’d utterly failed to find a salve for his guilt. The others found ways to embrace life, to capture moments of peace, to put foundations under themselves that rooted them and gave them balance they had no right to have. But for Murphy, peace was non-existent. Like me, even if for different reasons, it was the Holy Grail he searched constantly for, the shining beacon he could never quite grasp. And because of that, I understood his struggle in a visceral way.
Also because of that, as I’d followed all of them over the past months, my time with him was most fascinating. No—that’s not the right word. Compelling? That’s nearer to capturing it. I had to watch the rest mostly from longer distances—strategically placed cameras, public parks I could navigate with relative ease. But with Murphy, I had to get up-close and personal, because there are only two things he did to pass his miserable days: shoot, and drink. Since shooting ranges are extremely careful about security, I had zero chance of observing him there. That left drinking. Copious amounts of drinking.
He had several haunts he frequented, which confused the issue at first. But after a few days of observation, I realized the variety was a blessing for remaining unnoticed, and that it signaled something important about him. When you drink constantly but, like Steve Murphy, retired detective and superhuman protector of Oakhurst County, have pride and a reputation to protect, you couldn’t be seen sitting in the same lurid hole night after night, drinking yourself to oblivion. So he rotated his appearances in establishments both in Oakhurst and in neighboring towns; sometimes at The Wooden Leg, sometimes at O’Connor’s, sometimes at The Rusty Nail, sometimes at The Tap Club. Sometimes he went to more than one of them in a day. All dank, depressing places without windows because the people who came to them didn’t want to see or be seen; they wanted to hide in a corner, unidentified and unbothered and unjudged. Where nobody knew their sins, and they could pretend to themselves they were something better than they truly were.
So my next task was to identify which of those dens of despair he’d burrowed himself into, sucking down his liquid Prozac, blissfully unaware of what was coming for him.
CHAPTERFORTY-FOUR
