Mac looked over at Rogenet. The color had drained from his face.
‘Three years, minimum security facility,’ Wainwright said.
Mac stood up. ‘Not a chance, you hack,’ he said, and walked out.
He waited at the door to the parking garage. Rogenet shuffled up fifteen minutes later. His pallor was gone. Now he was red-faced, but still out of breath.
‘You all right, Jim?’
‘I’m sure glad you were there,’ the lawyer said, trying to smile.
‘I disguised my residency for a few bucks in expenses? I was straight up with everyone. This is all such crap.’
‘The law is technical and usually precise. This may be one of those times when we don’t want precision. I want you to consider the deal.’
‘Three years in prison?’
‘Less than two, most likely.’
‘Never.’
‘It beats fourteen.’
‘Not a day; not a deal. We go to court, for their case and for my countersuit.’
‘Wainwright’s motivation will be hard to impugn. It’s his job to enforce the laws of Linder County.’
‘We go to court.’
‘And you go to jail?’
Mac caught his breath.
‘You better think fast, Mac. We’re in court tomorrow morning at ten. I want you there, in the hall and on time. It’s a status hearing, and Wainwright will push for an expedited trial date. We could be at trial within a month, and the trial itself might only take half a day, unless…’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless he needs more time to build a bigger case. Maybe you really did see him in Grand Point that Sunday morning. Maybe he was having breakfast with Roy Powell and perhaps other good citizens of Grand Point, friends of the man you defeated for mayor or those you’ve simply pissed off over this Betty Jo Dean business. They might all want to lie their asses off, testifying that you spent all kinds of nights in their fair, crooked little town while you were still on the Linder County Board.’
‘Shit.’
‘Shit, most absolutely, yes. That coupled with the distance itself…’
Rogenet didn’t have to finish. The miles between Grand Point and Mac’s farm in Linder County were irrefutable; Mac’s new restaurant was far enough away to make anyone question whether he’d returned home every night. Coupling that with testimony from people who’d swear Mac spent many nights in Grand Point would make for a slam-dunk conviction.
‘Fourteen years?’ Mac asked.
‘Maybe less.’ Rogenet took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘Go back to Grand Point. Think about your priorities.’
Mac didn’t bother to hand him the narrative he’d written. There was no point.
FIFTY-SIX
Rogenet’s words reverberated as he walked to his truck: Prison. Fourteen years.
Other voices jumbled in, but they spoke no words. They merely laughed, as they’d laughed in the banquet room at the Willow Tree, only now they were laughing at something new: Mac Bassett was going away.
His hand shook as he called April. ‘Wainwright needs vengeance.’
‘Oh, Mac.’
‘Take the restaurant tonight,’ he said.
‘You’re going to plan strategy with Rogenet?’
‘He told me to think. I need to drive, clear my head.’
He wondered if prison might bring relief from murdered girls. He wondered if he were going mad.
He drove without paying attention to where he was headed. But once he crossed into Wisconsin, he realized it was where he’d been headed from the moment he left Linder County.
God help him.
The primer-splotched yellow Volkswagen rested right where it had been. The bicycle pump still lay on the ground next to the flat front tire.
Ridl sat outside, on a lawn chair. He’d set up another on the other side of the cooler.
His face looked even more drawn, the cheeks beneath his thinning beard more gaunt and hollow. Whatever cancer was eating him had grown more voracious.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ Ridl said, gesturing through a curl of cigarette smoke at the second lawn chair.
Mac sat down. ‘Really?’
‘Your face had the look I used to see in the mirror. Commitment or lunacy, I never was sure. Care for a beer?’ He reached into the cooler between them, gave Mac a Point and a wicked grin. ‘I can vouch for the fact that these don’t seem to be fattening.’
‘I got her exhumed.’
Ridl sat motionless, as though summoning strength, then raised his beer in salute. ‘What did she show you?’
‘They cut off her head.’ He described the autopsy. ‘I yelled out that it wasn’t her skull.’
‘Because there was no flesh?’
‘It was unthinking, but now I think it was because Randy White had already made a point of saying there was a mad panic to get the bullet.’
‘Squirrelly little guy, used to be Doc Farmont’s assistant?’
Mac nodded. ‘White was fast with an explanation once Betty Jo was exhumed. He said Doc Farmont had to remove Betty Jo’s head, then soak away all the flesh and tissue before the bullet fell out.’
‘Like shaking a coin bank to get at a penny?’ Ridl laughed a laugh that quickly convulsed into a deep cough. ‘Randall White is covering his ass.’
‘He’s trying to cover a bunch of asses.’
‘What does the good doctor say?’
‘He took off in a hurry before the exhumation.’
‘Your sheriff saw nothing unusual in that?’
‘He said he’d talk to him when he returned.’
‘Your sheriff is in on the cover-up.’
‘It gets worse. There’s an official report from the state lab. It boils down to three sentences. The first said, “One individual is represented across the skeletal remains.”’
‘Understandable, if they were simply being sloppy. What was the second?’
‘“No usable material was extracted from the body.” She hadn’t been embalmed, and her fingers were resting in liquefied matter.’
‘Unfortunate, but it makes sense. The third finding?’
‘“The bullet entered the left nostril, angled downward, and came to rest at the base of the skull.”’
Ridl set his beer down on the grass like it weighed ten pounds, and took a long time to light a cigarette. ‘And that’s why you found your way back here?’
‘Yes. I need to be sure.’
‘No way in hell.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Everyone spoke of her being shot from behind, through the base of the skull. Even the lone discovery site photo supports that. She was found on her belly, pitched forward from the impact.’
‘Shot by someone who might have loved her enough to protect her head with leaves and fold her slacks neatly on top of her?’
‘So I always thought,’ Ridl said.
‘Now there’s something new along that line.’ He told Ridl about the dress wrapped carefully in newspaper, tucked between the casket and the wall of the vault.
‘That places your killer at the funeral home,’ Ridl said, ‘narrowing your list of suspects.’
‘Not by much. All sorts of people could have been in and out of Wiley’s.’
‘Did you check out who owned those cabins south of Poor Farm Road?’
‘Again, too many people. The largest of the cabins was owned blind, by something called the Country Club Partners. It was used by a bunch of prominent locals.’
‘Damn it.’
‘It burned down, right after the murders.’
‘To destroy evidence showing Betty Jo had been kept there,’ Ridl said.
‘Obliterated forever,’ Mac said.
‘Have you caught up with Clamp Reems?’
‘I haven’t tried further. Jen Jessup interviewed him about the case a few years back. He gave her lip service, nothing more than what had been in the papers back in the day.’
Ridl’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘What has she said about her sister?’
‘I threw her a hint that I knew they were related, but she didn’t respond.’
Ridl coughed – a low gurgle that quickly built into a loud hacking that shook his worn body. When it was over, he leaned back, and sucked air for a moment.