“I can shoot a fly off your lily-white butt from far as you can see.”
“And you stalk women who see you for the loser you are. Can’t let that go, can you?”
“Sherry Adams’s full a’ herself, prissy ass be-otch. I ain’t never laid a hand on her. Ain’t no crime wanting to change a girl’s mind. She just needs to come around and see what she’s missing.”
Brad opened the folder and tossed a picture of Sherry Adams’s ruined head onto the table so Alphonse could see it. He stared down at it and frowned, looking away. “What that is?”
“That was Sherry Adams.”
“Naw, it ain’t! You lying!”
Winter understood why Alphonse didn’t recognize her. The bullet had literally exploded her head, and the result looked like pizza topped with almost human features, torn and splattered on the bricks. Her black hair was reduced to tufts forming a border around the skin that remained.
“Somebody shot her, Alphonse. Maybe somebody that can shoot from as far away as you say you can. Where were you this morning between six and seven?”
“What?!” Alphonse looked down at the picture, lowered his head, and vomited into his lap.
Brad put the picture back into the folder and rolled his eyes at Winter.
Winter shook his head slowly.
“I ain’t do that!” Alphonse managed to yell, flecks of bile on his chin. “Lord is my witness, it wasn’t me did it. I was sleepin’ in my car up by Bugger’s place. I ain’t never capped nobody. I wouldn’t shoot that girl! I liked her.”
“I know, Alphonse,” Brad said, standing. “You wouldn’t know which end of a gun the bullet comes out of. Get out of my building before I lock you up for littering.”
Back in the office, Winter said, “Tell me about Leigh Gardner.”
“Leigh’s family’s been in the cotton-farming business here since the county was cleared from cypress swamps. Her grandfather and her father grew their land holdings into the three thousand acres you saw, probably another three in woodland, and some other scattered acreage she leases to other planters. Leigh is strictly a cotton and soybean farmer. She learned from her father, studied agriculture at Mississippi State and she knows her business. Her old man was a tough-as-nails businessman and an old-school planter. She runs the place the same way.”
“Husband?”
“Divorced. She married a jerk named Jacob Gardner whose law practice consisted of spending her money. She kicked him out five years ago. He went over to Oxford and set up a private practice, and got in trouble year after that for misappropriating his clients’ funds. Leigh paid back the stolen money to keep him out of jail for the kids’ sakes. He was disbarred anyway. He comes around periodically when he needs something and I’ve heard Leigh gives him an allowance so he doesn’t starve. He used to be able to charm the pants off a nun. Now, not so much.”
“I think you should investigate him,” Winter said.
“What for? The killer was a pro.”
“Doesn’t take a professional killer to hire one.”
“He wouldn’t have any reason to have Sherry killed.”
“Maybe Sherry wasn’t the target.”
“Who would be?” Brad asked.
“If anything happened to Leigh Gardner, who would benefit?” Winter asked.
“The kids. Leigh wouldn’t leave Jacob a ten-dollar bill.”
“Maybe not. But who do you suppose would be their guardian if Leigh Gardner was dead?”
Brad sat up. “The killer shot her babysitter. Leigh wasn’t even in the area. What are you thinking?”
“Maybe the killer didn’t know that.”
18
Alexa Keen opened her apartment door and had to put down her bag of groceries to answer the telephone. It was rare that her phone rang unless it was someone from the Bureau.
“Yes?” she said.
“Alexa?” a familiar voice asked.
“Sean,” Alexa said. “Hello.”
“How are you, Lex?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
The silence lasted too long. She put down her shoulder bag, made heavy by the Glock. “Sean, is everything all right?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Where are the kids?” she asked.
“In the next room. We’re at the Peabody. We’ve been trying to decide on places to visit, but it’s really cold and the kids are ready to go home.”
“Winter told me you were going back to North Carolina.”
“Then you’ve talked to him today?”
“He told me about Faith Ann’s deer. I guess she’s excited.”
“And did he mention the other thing?”
“What other thing?”
“The toothpick.”
“Yes, he told me about it,” Alexa said.
“The DNA results are on their way to the lab for a comparison. If it’s Styer’s, I’m not sure Winter is up to dealing with him. Lex, he’ll kill Winter without thinking.”
“Styer?” Alexa heard her voice crack. “Paulus Styer?”
“He didn’t tell you he’s comparing the DNA to the sample he has for Styer?”
“He left that part out,” Alexa said, apprehension and dread mushrooming inside her. Paulus Styer was one frightening son of a bitch, and she’d thought he was gone for good.
“Because he knew you’d go ballistic on him.”
Damned right I would have. Good Christ! “Sean, you shouldn’t worry. Winter knows what he’s doing.” Alexa hoped she sounded convinced of her words.
“I’m sorry to pour this out on you. It’s just that there’s nobody else Winter will listen to. If I told Hank Trammel, you couldn’t stop the old buzzard from going there with a tank. And he can barely walk.”
“Sean, I’m gonna go down,” Alexa said suddenly. “I have some time off coming to me, and if Styer is involved, I want to be there.”
“That isn’t why I called. I just wanted to talk to somebody who knows Winter and understands the situation. I shouldn’t have called you. You don’t need to go there.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course you should have called me. I love that old dog too.”
“I know you do.” Sean’s voice sounded uncharacteristically faint.
“I’m not in the middle of anything at the moment, except writing a procedural manual nobody is going to read. I’ll just go down there for a couple of days and watch his back. I won’t tell him I know Styer may be involved. He can tell me that when I get there.”
“I should argue with you, but I won’t. Be careful. He’ll kill you, too.”
“No, Sean, he won’t.”
After some small talk, Alexa hung up. She dialed her travel agent’s number from memory and made a reservation for the next flight to Memphis.
19
Twenty-nine-year-old Jack Beals, a security officer for the Roundtable, had tailed the kid in the yellow V-neck sweater straight to the Gold Key Motel, a few miles from the casino. The gambler’s name was David Scotoni, a single twenty-three-year-old resident of Reno, Nevada, whose ID checked out as legit. Turned out that the reason a man who lived in a town filled with casinos would fly across the country to gamble was predictable-he was known in Reno as a card counter.
Counting cards wasn’t illegal, but it gave the player an unfair advantage and was grounds for a casino to invite you to leave and put your mug in the black book system shared by casinos across the country. Scotoni had cashed out his chips to the tune of thirty-five thousand. That was about to be collected and returned to the casino.
Beals waited to call Albert White until Scotoni had gone into his room on the second level.
“Target is in a motel room on the second floor of the Gold Key,” Beals told him. “Easy access. I’ll come by tonight and deliver it.”
White said, “He cashed out for over thirty-five, and he’s won in other places. The thirty-five comes back here. The other we cut up as usual.”
“Your wish is my command,” Beals said, before
hanging up. Whatever he’s taken from the others. Not bad money for a day’s work.
He screwed the silencer on the.380. The professional from the outside who Jack had been helping to get the lay of the land, the guy whose name was or wasn’t Pablo, had given it to him. Nice fellow, some kind of top-dollar hit man always measuring the world and the people around him like a film director looking for the perfect shot. After putting on a pair of tight leather gloves, Beals climbed from his 1999 Trail Blazer and made sure nobody was watching as he moved up the stairs to Scotoni’s room. Stopping outside the door, he took out his badge case and knocked hard on the door three times. A TV set went off and a voice asked tentatively, “Who’s there?”
When the young cheater looked out through the peephole, Beals held up a gold five-star badge for the kid to see. “Sheriff’s department, Mr. Scotoni,” he said. “Open the door, please.”
“What’s the problem, Officer?” the kid asked without opening the door. Beals felt anger rise from within, his heart beating like a bass drum.
“I’d prefer not to discuss it from out here, sir. We’ve had a complaint.” Beals looked both ways and down at the parking lot. The lot was graveyard still.
When the kid cracked open the door, Beals shouldered it, propelling Scotoni deep into the room. From the floor, a naked Scotoni looked up at the silenced weapon. The towel he’d been wrapped in was beneath him, and when Scotoni reached to gather it back up, Beals put a boot on it. He heard the sound of water running in the bathtub and he had an idea. He’d been thinking the kid would commit suicide by cutting his wrists, but this was even better. Motioning to the bathroom with the gun’s barrel, he said, “Dave. You need to take that bath.”
20
After following Jack Beals from the casino to a motel where Beals seemed to have some business with the man he himself was following, Paulus Styer turned to look into the rear of the van at the tarp under which lay the bound and drugged Gardner girl.
He turned his attention to the Gold Key-one of several old motels that had been hastily thrown up on a stretch of highway near the original casinos. When larger and finer casinos were built miles away, with newer and fancier motels to accompany them, the Gold Key and its neighbors had been abandoned by the better-heeled clientele, and now subsisted on dregs and scraps from their poorer replacements.
The Gold Key was a long two-story box, whose rooms faced a parking lot on either side. To access the second and third floors, patrons took one of several stairways or the elevator that was located behind the lobby. Time and lack of maintenance had turned the Gold Key into a place where the clientele, even on days when it wasn’t bone-chillingly cold, wouldn’t pay close attention to the comings and goings of strangers. And most of the clients would be sleeping in after a long night of losing money or turning tricks.
Styer waited until Jack had sneaked up the stairs and shouldered his way inside a room on the second floor. Then he spoke.
“Cynthia dear?”
She was still out.
Styer pocketed his lock-picking tools and patted the survival knife at his side. Then, after checking for witnesses, he climbed from the van, locked it, and walked swiftly but casually toward the stairs.
21
When Leigh Gardner walked into Brad Barnett’s office, the sheriff had just returned from making arrangements for a deputy to deliver the toothpick evidence to the ProCell facility in Nashville via a chartered twin-engine airplane.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s so all-fired important?”
“Sit down, Leigh,” Brad said.
She sat, arms crossed.
“We don’t think Sherry was the target,” he told her.
“Oh, really. So you believe it was a hunting accident now? I shouldn’t be surprised you’ve changed your mind already. Keeping your crime numbers stacked for a reelection bid?”
“No, it definitely wasn’t an accident. I’ll let Winter explain the thinking behind it.”
Leigh turned in her chair to face Winter. “Okay, Mr. Massey, if Sherry wasn’t the intended victim, who the hell was?” she asked.
“I think you were,” Winter told her.
“Why would anybody want to shoot at me?”
Winter began, “It makes less sense that anyone who could make that shot would target a babysitter out in the middle of nowhere.”
“So you’re not pursuing Alphonse Jefferson?”
“We’ve ruled him out,” Brad told her.
Leigh frowned at Brad. “How do you imagine anybody could confuse me-a forty-year-old blonde-with a nineteen-year-old black girl?”
Winter said, “I was looking at the crime-scene pictures and something hit me. At a thousand yards in that early light, a dark-skinned babysitter wearing a hooded car coat and gloves, moving from the house to the garage, would look like a white woman doing the same thing. You’re a farmer and I suspect you keep farming hours. If the shooter didn’t know you were out of town, and was there to kill you, he might easily assume a woman close to your build heading out to the garage at daybreak would be you.”
“Why me?”
“Financial gain, so whoever gains if you were killed is a suspect. Since your kids didn’t have it done, we can move to the next most-likely suspect.”
“Like who?” she asked. “Nobody would gain anything by my death,” Leigh said. Her eyes flickered with some inner thought, some recognition perhaps, but passed quickly. She shrugged. “No. Despite the size of my operation, I am not a wealthy woman. Maybe you should look at the agricultural conglomerates. They’re the only people who’d profit from my death, since my children would have to sell the place to pay the inheritance taxes.”
“What about Jacob?” Brad asked.
She laughed. “Please. If I died, he’d starve to death. He lives with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment in Memphis.”
“Brad has to take a serious look at your ex-husband,” Winter said.
Leigh stared at Winter for a few long seconds, her expression impossible to read. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Alphonse Jefferson is your killer. If that’s all?”
“I don’t think-” Brad started.
“That’s the trouble, you don’t think. Anybody wants to shoot me, I’ll be the one working my ass off. Good-bye, boys. Six Oaks won’t run itself.”
Leigh strode out the door without looking back.
“If she was the target, she probably still is,” Winter said. “When the shooter finds out he missed her, he might try again. She needs protection.”
“Forget it,” Brad said. “She’s in denial and as stubborn as a mule. But I’ll put a car out at the place, double the patrols on the roads out that way.”
Winter said, “I think she already suspected Sherry wasn’t the target before she came in here. I think she isn’t completely certain that her ex isn’t responsible.”
Brad said, “I can tell you from long experience with Leigh that she isn’t going to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”
“How long ago was it that you two dated?” Winter asked.
Brad’s startled look confirmed what Winter had suspected since he first saw Brad and Leigh Gardner interact at Six Oaks.
Bettye stuck her head into the office. “Sheriff, just got a call. There’s been a homicide at the Gold Key.”
22
The parking lot at the Gold Key motel was alive with flashing blue lights and several deputies stood on the balcony outside a room with the door open. Traffic on the highway was backed up as people rubbernecked to see what the excitement was about. Here and there, guests gathered in tight clumps.
Winter and Brad took the wide stairs two at a time. The deputies parted to allow Brad and Winter to enter the room. A man’s body was sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood under his head, his throat laid open. A second man wearing a V-neck sweater and khakis sat on the edge of the bed, his hands resting in his lap. A deputy in his fifties stood passively with his back to the bureau as Brad and Winter entered.
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br /> “What happened here, Roy?” Brad asked the deputy, who handed him a Nevada driver’s license with a picture of the young man who sat watching them silently.
“Roy Bishop, this is Winter Massey. He’s giving me a hand with the Adams homicide. Roy here is my chief deputy.” The chief deputy looked at Winter for a second and nodded.
“Beals?” Brad asked, moving to look at the dead man’s familiar features.
“Sure is. Mr. Scotoni here says somebody else came in and killed Beals, who happened to be in the process of drowning him in the tub. Scotoni called nine-one-one, we didn’t touch anything.”
Scotoni’s hair had dried into a grand mess, and his hands were shaking.
Winter looked down at the corpse wearing a flight jacket and winced as he spotted a red toothpick tucked behind the dead man’s ear. Brad’s eyes followed his.
“Okay, Mr. Scotoni, I need to know exactly what happened,” Brad said, sitting on the chair so their eyes were even.
“I was running a hot bath. That guy there came to the door, said he was a deputy sheriff, and showed me his badge. When I opened the door he knocked me down. He had a gun with a silencer on it. He said he was going to take the money I’d won from the casinos.”
“He was alone when he came in?”
“Yeah. He was enjoying himself. He was definitely going to kill me. He made me get into the tub and hit me on the back of my head and started holding me underwater. I couldn’t really fight back and I was…I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“I didn’t see a gun,” the deputy said. “I looked under the bed and everywhere else I could without touching anything.”
“The other guy must have taken it,” Scotoni said. “The one who saved my ass.”
“What did this other guy look like?” Brad asked.
“I didn’t actually see him. Like I said, that dead guy hit me in the back of my head,” he said, turning and pointing at the back of his head. “He had me underwater and I saw the shape of a man in dark clothes come in. He pulled that guy in here and by the time I got out of the tub and came in, the guy that killed him was already gone, so I called nine-one-one.”
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