Injustice for all

26

I wanted to check on what was happening with my son and Tommy Miller, but after my meeting with Ramirez, my first phone call is to Sheriff Bates.

“We need to meet,” I say. “Someplace private.”

“Where are you?”

“Just leaving the jail.”

“You know Highland Church?”

“Yeah.”

“Parking lot. Ten minutes.”

He’s waiting when I pull in. I get out of my truck and climb into the BMW. I tell him about the meeting with Ramirez.

“He said it was a girl who works in our office,” I say. “He knew how long she’d been missing. Before I left, he said somebody wants her dead. He said he might know who it is.”

Bates considers the information silently for a minute.

“I reckon the first question we gotta ask ourselves is how,” he says. “How does Ramirez know? It ain’t like it’s been in the papers. Hell, we just found out about it a few hours ago. So since he knows she’s gone, and he says he knows where she is, he has to be involved somehow, right?”

“I’m thinking maybe he had some of his guys kidnap her and he’s holding her for ransom. We let him out; he lets her go. That’s the deal he wants.”

“Is that what he said? Did he say he’d let her go?”

“No. He said he’d tell me what he knows. But he did say, ‘Ticktock,’ which makes me think she’s still alive.”

“Wishful thinking, Brother Dillard.”

“Do you really think she’s dead? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”

“It ain’t good.”

“How do you think Ramirez is getting his information? He’d have to get it either over the phone or through a visitor. I don’t think Ramirez would take a chance on them listening to his phone conversations at the jail, and it’d be risky to talk to a visitor about something like this.”

“For a smart hombre, you sure can be naive sometimes,” Bates says. “Open your eyes.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Who’s the only person he can he talk to without having to worry about anybody listening?”

It hits me. Stinnett. His lawyer. Stinnett is his information courier. That’s why he was acting so strangely.

“Son of a bitch,” I say.

“Don’t act so surprised. You used to do the same thing.”

“If I did, I didn’t do it intentionally.”

We sit for a moment while I ponder this latest possibility. Stinnett probably took a phone call from someone and relayed a message to Ramirez. Maybe Stinnett didn’t even know what the message meant; at least that’s what I’d like to think. Then again…

I ask Bates what he’s learned thus far.

“A little,” he says. “Whoever drove her car last was a man or a damned tall woman. When I asked you to look at the driver’s seat, I was trying to get you to notice that it was pushed all the way back. Hannah’s a short gal. And I noticed something else. She got her oil changed Friday afternoon. It was on the little sticker in the windshield, along with the mileage. When I looked at the odometer, more than a hundred miles had been put on that car since the oil change, so either she took a quick trip before she disappeared or somebody hauled her away in her own car, dumped the body, and then brought the car back.”

“You were right,” I say. “It’s a good thing I’m not a cop.”

“The key to her car had been wiped clean-not a print on it, not even hers. The inside of the car had been wiped down, too, but we lifted a partial from the exterior of the door. There was quite a bit of clay on the floor around the gas pedal, along with something else. My guys say they’re not sure yet, but they think it might be lime. Same stuff in the carpet on the passenger side. We lifted some hair and fiber from the car, and we’re still going through the house. There might be something in there, too.”

“Damn, Leon, you don’t mess around, do you?”

“Trail gets cold in a hurry. I’m gonna stay on this one until I find out what happened to her or we fall flat. The sheriff’s department doesn’t get that many murders, you know. It’s kinda fun.”

Fun. Alternate flashes of Hannah run through my mind. Flashes of her beautiful smile. The pain behind her eyes. The way her hair flipped when she turned her head. Her battered body dumped somewhere, slowly decomposing, covered by insects. I let out a long sigh.

“Sorry, brother,” Bates says. “You knew her better than I did. I guess this ain’t exactly your idea of fun, is it?”

“Not exactly. So what do you think about Ramirez? Should I make some kind of deal with him?”

“That’d be between you and your boss, wouldn’t it?”

“My boss tried to get me to dismiss the murder case against him this morning.”

Bates is silent for several seconds. He begins scratching his head, which I know is his way of manifesting confusion.

“Why would he want you to do that?”

“He said it’s a weak case, and he doesn’t want the office to be embarrassed if I lose at trial.”

“How strong is your case?”

“It’s not the strongest I’ve ever had, but I think it’s enough.”

Bates shoots me a sideways glance and raises his eyebrows. “Anything else you need to tell me?”

“Nah, it’s probably just a coincidence. There’s just something about Mooney that bothers me. Something isn’t right with him.”

“You just now figuring that out? He sure does like the ladies. You think he was chasing Hannah?”

“Nah. Hannah doesn’t seem to be too interested in men. So what about Ramirez?”

“Give me a little more time. Let me find Hannah’s family and friends, talk to them, see if I can find out who might have wanted to hurt her. If we don’t come up with something in forty-eight hours or so, maybe you should pay Ramirez another visit.”

Bates’s cell phone begins to chirp the melody of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” He looks down at the phone, then back at me.

“One of my forensics boys,” he says. “Better take it.”

Bates speaks quietly on the phone for a few minutes. Finally, he says, “Well, I’ll be,” and closes the phone.

“You say you know this gal pretty well?” he says.

“Yeah. We’re friends.”

“My boys went through her garbage and found something interesting. Did she mention anything to you about being pregnant?”