They were both silent for a moment. Evan would never forget what he’d seen in her kitchen. He couldn’t imagine what Jackson must feel. Crazy didn’t come close.
Jackson slammed the trunk signalling the end of the discussion.
‘How was prison?’
The look on Jackson’s face started out as surprise, then his eyes narrowed.
‘It was like your worst nightmare, and then some. And that’s another thing. I spent two years inside. I’m an evil son of a bitch when I need to be and it nearly killed me. Carly would’ve put you inside for life. How long do you reckon you’d have lasted? And every miserable minute of it, before some gangbanger stabbed you to death in the showers, you’d have known you were innocent.’
‘You want to go back?’
Jackson’s face hardened.
‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I’d empty the cash out of those bags and leave them here if you don’t.’
Jackson’s eyes drilled into Evan’s as he digested his words.
‘There’s a tracker?’
‘Chico hid a GPS jammer somewhere in the van. As soon as you drive off they’ll be onto you.’
Jackson smiled, opened the trunk again. He pulled the two bags out, unzipped them. Shook the cash straight into the trunk.
‘Dixie was right. You’re not such a bad guy after all.’ He waved at the cash lying in the trunk. ‘Take as much as you want.’
Evan shook his head.
‘No thanks.’
‘You sure? You don’t even want to take enough to pay for the job. Seeing as your client isn’t going to be paying you?’
‘She paid in other ways.’
Jackson’s eyebrows shot up, a wolfish grin appearing on his lips.
‘No, not like that.’
Jackson waited but when Evan didn’t explain, he closed the trunk and threw the bags into the trees. He stuck his hand out. Evan took it.
‘I’m heading down to Mexico. Buy myself a place on the beach. Good luck with the search for your wife.’
Evan shrugged noncommittally. Jackson frowned.
‘I told you, Carly paid in other ways. It took all of this’—he waved his arm taking in the broken-down van, his own damaged face, the dead man’s clothes he was standing in, Jackson himself and everything else—‘to make me pull my head at least part way out of my ass, face up to what really happened. To realize how easy it is for people to jerk me around. I’ve got some difficult decisions to make soon.’
Jackson eyed him shrewdly.
‘Maybe look at what you’ve got right under your nose, you mean. I best get going before she turns up.’
Evan slapped him on the back as he climbed into the car.
‘I think you might be right.’
He stood and watched the car disappear. Jackson’s arm waved out the window as it went, like an out-take from Thelma and Louise.
He thought it would probably be the last time he ever heard the name Jackson Delacroix. If he’d known then he’d hear it one more time, he might have wanted to ask him a few questions before he let him drive away.
As soon as Jackson was out of sight he started towards the trees where he’d hidden the sniper rifle, then stopped, decided to leave it where it was for now. The police would be here soon. There was no reason to let them have it. He’d come back later.
Sitting down on the gravel, he kicked off his still-wet shoes, leaned his back against the van. Angling his face upwards, he closed his eyes and let the warm sunshine soothe his battered face. The only thing that would have made it perfect was an ice-cold beer. Or maybe two. The feel of Guillory’s head resting on his chest, the clean, fresh smell of her hair in his nose, wouldn’t have hurt either.
And just sometimes things work out as you want them to. A spray of gravel peppering his face woke him, told him she’d just turned up.
She jumped down from the cab, walked towards him. Kicked his foot.
‘Asleep on the job again, Buckley. Lucky I managed to escape on my own.’
He opened his eyes. Looked up. She saw the angry redness in them, the constant watering. Dropped to the ground next to him.
‘Hey, not so sad. I’m here now.’
‘You think he’s got an icebox in the back of that heap?’
‘I’m fine. A bit sore maybe. Thanks for asking.’
He turned to face her. Held her chin gently, turning her head from side to side. Then he put his arm around her. Held her close.
‘Touch of lipstick and you’ll be good as new.’
Chapter 88
‘KATE! YOU’RE LOOKING LOVELIER than ever,’ Elwood Crow said and ushered them in. ‘You’d never know what you’ve been through.’
‘Old Mister Silver Tongue. You’re worse than him,’ Guillory said, nodding towards Evan. She knew damn well there was still a way to go before her face was back to anything like normal.
‘Gives her face more character,’ Evan said and got an elbow in the ribs.
Crow inspected Evan’s face.
‘If that’s the case, your face could fill a book.’ He took hold of Evan’s chin, lifted his head to get a better look at his neck. Grinned a wrinkly old grin. ‘I won’t ask what you young people get up to. We didn’t used to do that sort of thing in my day.’
‘More like I ran into a protégé of yours.’
Crow gave him a disapproving look, flicked his eyes sideways at Guillory while she wasn’t looking. When Evan first met him, Crow had indirectly admitted that in his younger days he had garrotted a degenerate and vicious man in the aftermath of one of his investigations. And the world had become a better place for it. That killing had never been officially solved.
‘It’s okay, Elwood,’ Guillory said, ‘I’ve heard the avenging angel rumors.’
She put a lot of emphasis on the rumors.
Crow smiled his acknowledgement of her blind eye, showed her into the back room. Evan stuck his head into the kitchen.
‘What are you doing, Evan?’ Crow said. He sounded as if he’d come home unexpectedly and caught him painting the house pink.
‘Looking for my sister. I know she’s here somewhere.’
Crow winked at him to let him know he was more than capable of matchmaking Evan and Guillory without Charlotte’s help. He grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him into the back room.
‘You could do a whole lot worse,’ he whispered with a nod towards Guillory who was trying to get Crow’s pet bird to hop onto her hand.
‘That’s a dress Kate’s wearing if you were wondering,’ Evan said. ‘I almost didn’t recognize it myself. And the red stuff is lipstick.’
‘I hear you’re back on the job,’ Crow said to Guillory, ignoring him.
She gave up trying with the bird and nodded, explained how the hasty withdrawal of Robert Garfield’s complaint along with the sudden disappearance of Garfield himself immediately afterwards, when added to the extenuating circumstances, had combined to bring about her reinstatement.
She didn’t explain what the mitigating factors were but a shadow passed across her face just the same. Evan hadn’t said anything to Crow about her niece, Sofia.
Nor had he said anything to him about what she’d told him in confidence the previous day. After she called in the sighting of Garfield with a little girl to Ryder, a patrol car had picked Garfield up within the hour. There was no little girl in the car with him. Nor was there any evidence that there had been, or that the car had been recently valeted. The consensus was that she had imagined it. The close resemblance her description of the girl bore to Sofia only reinforced that view. Everybody was very sympathetic, said it was understandable given the stress she was under because of Sofia. Being suspended didn’t help any either. A speedy return to active duty along with a few sessions with the police psychiatrist was called for. Give her something to take her mind off her personal problems.
Evan was yet to see any evidence of it working.
‘What—’ Crow started.
‘Tell us about the fingerprints,’ Evan said.
Crow caught the look Evan sent across.
‘Yes, of course. How about a drink first? The good stuff, Evan.’
Evan was impressed by the seamless way the question had segued into a command. He jumped up and poured them all a couple of fingers of Pappy Van Winkle’s. As always, there was a reason behind anything Crow did.
‘There’s your answer,’ Crow said. ‘In your hand.’
Evan looked at the glass he was holding. He swapped hands, held it right at the bottom. Halfway up he could see his fingerprints from where he’d just been holding it.
‘It’s actually very simple,’ Crow said. ‘You dust the original print—’
‘Carly ordered me a glass of water in the diner,’ Evan interrupted. ‘I thought it was totally out of character at the time.’
Crow smiled at him.
‘I shall remind you of that next time you accuse me of being overly paranoid. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.’
Evan obliged with a suitably vacuous expression.
‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ Guillory chipped in, which got her an approving dip of the head from Crow. ‘What were you doing at school, Evan, instead of paying attention?’
Evan let them enjoy their smug smiles, almost suggested they’d be a better match for each other.
‘So,’ Crow continued, ‘you scan the print into your computer. Blow it up and print it onto acetate. The edges will be jagged, so carefully go over the lines with a marker pen before reducing it back down to the original size. Then make an etch from the print.
‘The etch is the critical step. Once you've got that you’ve got a couple of choices. If you want to be really clever, you make a latex copy of the etch and glue it onto your finger. Voila, you've got somebody else's fingerprint on the end of your finger.’
‘As easy as that?’ Evan said.
‘Uh-huh. You can even find videos on the internet showing you how to do it. The one I watched showed them opening a fingerprint-controlled door access system. But the possibilities are endless. Getting into fingerprint-protected computer files—’
‘Or framing someone for murder.’
Crow rocked his hand from side to side.
‘I doubt it would stand up under forensic scrutiny. I’d guess it would be easy to see that it had been doctored if you blew the print up again. But good enough to have the police giving you a hard time until they did.’
‘If they bothered at all.’
Guillory was concentrating hard on looking out the window when Evan glanced at her.
‘I can see your smile in the reflection,’ he said to the back of her head.
While she was looking the other way, Crow mouthed Sarah at him with a questioning look on his face.
‘Yeah. Kate’s okay with us talking about looking for Sarah,’ Evan said.
She turned to look at them both.
‘Apart from the fact that I don’t agree with cruelty to dumb animals.’
‘Kate thinks everybody’s jerking me around,’ Evan said.
‘Particularly Jack Adamson,’ she added.
Crow looked a little uncomfortable momentarily.
It wasn’t the increasing anxiety he felt about the news article corroborating Adamson’s story being taken down—a sense of having bitten off more than you can chew, of starting down a road with no idea where it leads beyond the knowledge that it isn’t anywhere you want to go—because he’d already decided not to burden Evan with those fears for the time being.
It was a bad decision for Crow, not normally known for his poor judgement, and the price for it would be paid by Evan further down the road.
His current concern was more immediate. He needed to tell Evan what Adamson had asked him to pass along—the information he’d forgotten to tell him the last time he came over with Kate. It wasn’t that he was worried the delay would be a problem, more a question of personal pride. He didn’t want to admit he was becoming forgetful.
‘That’s very prescient of you, Kate. Because Adamson telephoned me.’
Crow was surprised to see Evan’s face fall. He didn’t know that as far as Evan was concerned the longer the decision was put off, the better. Evan hadn’t been lying when he told Jackson he has some difficult decisions to make. He glanced quickly at Guillory. She was busy picking at a fingernail.
‘He’s getting tired of waiting for a decision,’ Crow said. ‘I think maybe he’s worried you don’t believe he has any information—’
There was a sharp bark of laughter from Guillory. Crow gave her a look, the sort normally reserved for Evan.
‘Sorry. It just slipped out.’
‘So he wanted to give you some more information—’
‘String you along some more.’
That was Guillory again.
‘A gesture of goodwill, he called it.’
It was at that point that Evan sensed a presence in the air. Something hateful that was coming for him, that existed for the sole purpose of tormenting him.
‘Something else you or I can check out to satisfy you that his information is genuine.’
Evan could feel the presence stronger now. It was as if Crow’s pet bird had lifted off from its perch, was hovering above him, its black wings like a shroud casting him into the shadows, never to be seen or heard of again.
‘He gave me another name.’
No.
Evan refused to listen.
Guillory looked as if she’d been turned to stone.
‘I’m sorry.’
No.
‘I should have told you last time I saw you.’
No. No. No. No. No.
‘Jackson Delacroix.’
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BOOKS BY JAMES HARPER
The Evan Buckley Thrillers
BAD TO THE BONES
WHEN EVAN BUCKLEY’S latest client ends up swinging on a rope, he’s ready to call it a day. But he’s an awkward cuss with a soft spot for a sad story and he takes on one last job—a child and husband who disappeared ten years ago. It’s a long-dead investigation that everybody wants to stay that way, but he vows to uncover the truth—and in the process, kick into touch the demons who come to torment him every night.
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KENTUCKY VICE
MAVERICK PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR Evan Buckley is no stranger to self-induced mayhem—but even he’s mystified by the jam college buddy Jesse Springer has got himself into. When Jesse shows up with a wad of explicit photographs that arrived in the mail, Evan finds himself caught up in the most bizarre case of blackmail he’s ever encountered—Jesse swears blind he can’t remember a thing about it.
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SINS OF THE FATHER
FIFTY YEARS AGO, Frank Hanna made a mistake. He’s never forgiven himself. Nor has anybody else for that matter. Now the time has come to atone for his sins, and he hires maverick PI Evan Buckley to peel back fifty years of lies and deceit to uncover the tragic story hidden underneath. Trouble is, not everybody likes a happy ending and some very nasty people are out to make sure he doesn’t succeed.
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NO REST FOR THE WICKED
WHEN AN ARMED GANG on the run from a botched robbery that left a man dead invade an exclusive luxury hotel buried in the mountains of upstate New York, maverick P.I. Evan Buckley has got his work cut out. He just won a trip for two and was hoping for a well-earned rest. But when the gang takes Evan’s partner Gina hostage along with the other guests and their spirited seven-year-old daughter, he can forget any kind of rest.
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Hunting Dixie Page 34