“Oh.” Sheriff Joe Bob relaxed, as if that explained everything, sitting back down and propping his boots up on the table. “Go right to it.”
“We’re leaving.” Hudson gestured for me to get up.
Uh, have you met me before?
“How did you find me?” I asked, not moving, trying to keep my voice level. Then, grudgingly, “I was planning to check in with you again shortly.”
“Well, let’s see,” he said. “You rented a car under your real name with your MasterCard. The car had a GPS device in the trunk. I have enough special abilities to charm minimum-wage rental car agents.” His voice grew more sarcastic, which I didn’t think was possible. “Oh, yeah, and Lyle called and told me where you were. My ten-year-old nephew could have found you, Tommie.”
Hudson was always good with reality checks. I’d been playing a dangerous game on this trip, fooling myself. Thinking I’d left my hunters behind.
Before I could respond, Sheriff Woolsey flipped his chair around and sat it down hard inches from me, probably one of his tried-and-true witness intimidation techniques. One move closer and I’d get poked by the toothpick getting a workout in his mouth. His breath smelled like Skoal and bitter coffee.
“She can’t leave yet. If I’m not mistaken, she recognized these boys.” He tapped the paper in front of me.
It wasn’t like I’d forgotten. Dear God.
“Do you know these men?”
With the sheet in my hand, I moved over to the light by the window, buying a little time for Hudson to calm down. In the old days, I timed him at sixteen minutes but this was a fairly egregious offense on my part. I examined the men in the picture closely, thrilled I’d found a connection but even more confused. How was Jennifer Coogan’s death tied to Jack Smith and Anthony Marchetti?
Less than twenty-four hours ago, Jack had rambled drunkenly to me about a seemingly mythical hobbit, a giant, and the lying ways of the Chicago mobster who just might be my father. Now here, in the murder file of Jennifer Coogan, in a small Oklahoma town, the Hobbit and the Giant had sprung to life.
The Hobbit stood about three feet tall. “Little person” would be the politically correct term. Because I’m rarely politically correct, he looked to me like a malevolent Sneezy, with a bulbous red nose and pockmarked cheeks. Genetics had not been kind. The Giant stood four feet taller and two feet wider, with tree trunks for arms and an enormous shaved vegetable of a head.
I imagined a gentle tap from him would send me into outer space. He wore size giant jeans that he must have special-ordered and a cutoff white Harley T-shirt that bared pumped-up arms. A cupid’s heart tattoo the size of a baseball curved around his left bicep. I couldn’t read the name that arced around the top of it.
“I don’t know these men,” I said firmly, now that I could catch my breath. That was true. “Who are they?”
“Strangers in town who got caught on a video exiting a local bar two nights before Jennifer’s body was found. Their looks made folks remember them. The bar owner had just put in a newfangled camera outside his dump to keep the drug pushers away. He watched every frame for the first month until he got bored of it. He brought this in right away.”
“Did the FBI know about these two? I didn’t read anything about these guys as suspects.”
“Nope. Don’t think so. Like I said, they treated us like a bunch of local yokels with our heads up our asses. So the sheriff kept a few clues to hisself.”
Great, I thought. Prove the FBI right by hiding information that could lead to solving Jennifer’s murder. It occurred to me that Sheriff Joe Bob knew this meager case file surprisingly well.
“How old were you when this happened?” I asked.
“Sixteen goin’ on thirty. Scared the pee out of all of us. Shut down our Saturday night make-out and beer parties for a month or so.” For a second, I felt the panic of trying to get the beer and cigarette smell out of Sadie’s favorite jeans before Granny got hold of them for Monday’s wash. I was familiar with the thrill of illicit parties that spilled into hay fields from the backs of pickup trucks, the cheap beer, the amateur groping.
“Her younger sister was a wild thing when she was growing up.” The sheriff paused. “Not pretty like Jenny, but she put out. I hear she’s finally settling down. Some psychologist fellow in Broken Bow.” My hope for Amanda took a hit. “Y’all want to see where they pulled Jennifer out of the water?”
Now he sounded like a forty-year-old going on sixteen.
There seemed to be no reason, other than morbid fascination, to say yes. Hudson gave a mute nod. His face was unreadable.
Minutes later, the three of us sat in intimate discomfort bumping along in the front cab of the sheriff’s fully loaded shiny black Eddie Bauer Ford truck, the portable flashing red cherry on the roof giving us the eighty-mile-an-hour right-of-way down the highway. I was squashed in the middle and none of us smelled very good.
The speedometer tipped up toward ninety.
“All the sudden, I’m guessin’ you’re not a reporter,” the sheriff said.
“No.” The right tires caught the rough, unpaved berm and he swung the wheel back, but his focus stayed on me, the speedometer holding steady. “But I do have a legitimate reason for being here.”
“That’s what they all say. You leaving town soon?”
“Yes. Soon. Very, very soon.”
“Then I reckon I don’t need to know about your legitimate reasons.” He gunned the motor.
This seemed to be the general approach to law enforcement in Idabel. Machismo and benign neglect.
Minutes later, the sheriff brought the pickup to a halt on the side of the road right before an old bridge that hovered over a slow-drifting, rusty river. We sidestepped broken beer bottles as we worked our way down a marshy path of trampled grass toward the water. I remembered that two boys out fishing had discovered Jennifer’s corpse.
“Can’t keep the kids out, unless I physically post somebody here. Her ghost brings ’em. Freshman football initiations, séances, first-time lovers, double-dares-you name it.”
Surely, I thought, swatting at mosquitoes, anyone idiotic enough to lose their virginity at a murder site must wind up with some pretty big hang-ups.
It took about five minutes to walk the path, five minutes for my anxiety to start thrumming again. My white T-shirt, soaked with sweat, clung to my breasts. The mud-caked leopard-print cork wedge sandals on my feet appeared to be yet another piece of my new Nordstrom wardrobe headed for a hotel trashcan. Thorns found their way up the hem of my jeans and bit my ankles.
I stepped into the clearing with a sense of dread and involuntarily grabbed Hudson’s hand. To my surprise, he didn’t pull away.
Someone had stuck a small white cross in the ground near the water’s edge. A used, cream-colored candle lay toppled on its side, wet with river muck and dripping with hard tears of wax. Candy wrappers, diet drink cans, and a couple of broken tequila bottles littered the area. I saw three used condoms and a pair of muddy purple thong panties.
Almost as soon as we got there, I asked to leave.
Hudson and I silently shared wrinkled hot dogs and soggy crinkle fries in a green plastic booth at Burger Barn, a small converted dry-cleaner shop smack in the middle of the Idabel loop. We probably should have been dissuaded by the fact that the word “Burger” on the sign had been changed to “Booger” by some spray-paint-happy teenagers. At least we were smart enough to pass on the special of the day, jalapeño tater tots.
I did venture a hesitant question.
“Did you… see Jack?”
“The Jeep was gone by the time my friend got there.” He said it curtly.
That’s all he was giving me. He knew a lot more, I was sure. He was Hudson, the legend.