Evangeline reached over and adjusted the air conditioner vent so that it would blow directly on her face. Mitchell took the hint and rolled up his window.
He shot her a quick glance. “So what do you think?”
“I’m not sure I buy the whole Zeta thing, but I guess I wouldn’t put much of anything past Betts.”
“Exactly. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’ve been thinking about those two men Meredith Courtland saw in her husband’s study that night. From the way she described that meeting, it sounds like they were putting the screws to Courtland. She heard arguing and she could tell her husband was angry. The trial was over, he’d done his part…yada, yada, yada. If those guys were federal agents, isn’t it possible Courtland was playing both ends against the middle?”
“Working for the feds, you mean?”
“Let’s say, cooperating with the feds.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something? It was Courtland who got Betts off.”
“So?”
“If Courtland was ‘cooperating’ with the feds—” Mitchell put the word in finger quotes “—why would he work so damn hard to get Betts acquitted?”
“Maybe they had bigger fish to fry. The middleman, for instance, between Betts and the cartel. What better way of finding out who his supplier was than by putting someone inside his operation that he trusted? His lawyer, no less.”
“So Betts’s acquittal, according to your theory, was all some master plan by the men in black?” Mitchell thought about that for a moment. “What about Courtland’s brother? Where does his death fit into this whole grand scheme of yours?”
“His death was a warning. Or an insurance policy. Betts didn’t go to trial until the fall, but Courtland would have already been prepping the case in the summer when his brother was killed. Betts ordered the hit, then threatened the rest of Courtland’s family if things didn’t go in his favor. That could be when Courtland started cooperating with the feds.”
“And the snakes?”
Evangeline suppressed a shudder as she turned to stare out the window. The gardens along St. Charles flashed by the window in a colorful blur. “Maybe they wanted to make it look like an accident to anyone but Paul Courtland.”
“Or maybe, like I said, Betts wanted to impress the head honchos.”
“Yeah, maybe so.”
Mitchell was still frowning at the road, deepening the creases in his forehead and around his eyes. He never wore sunglasses and probably didn’t even own a bottle of sunscreen. The skin on his face and arms was like old leather. “So a few days after Meredith Courtland overhears the conversation in the study, her husband moves out and tells her the marriage is over. What do you make of that?”
“It sounds to me like Paul Courtland was trying to put some distance between himself and his family.”
“Yep. That’s what it sounds like to me, too. Or maybe, like she said, she just missed the signals. The trouble between them could have been brewing for a long time. Meredith Courtland wouldn’t be the first person to lie to herself about the condition of her marriage.”
They fell silent for a few minutes while Mitchell negotiated the heavy traffic in the Quarter. As they drove by the liquor stores and souvenir shops on the lower end of Decatur, Evangeline could tell something was on his mind. He was still watching her out of the corner of his eye.
“Okay, spit it out,” she said.
He suddenly looked uneasy. “How long are we going to ignore the elephant in the backseat?”
She pretended not to know what he meant. “What elephant?”
“‘I don’t want to end up like that dead cop.’ That’s what she said her husband told those guys that night, right?”
“I guess.”
Mitchell turned and dropped his chin, as if he were peering at her over the top of invisible glasses. “You guess?”
“All right, yeah, that’s supposedly what Courtland said.”
“So let’s talk about it,” Mitchell said impatiently. “Because I know damn well you’re thinking about it.”
Evangeline closed her eyes as she let her head fall against the back of the seat. It was a relief to finally say it. “What if he was talking about Johnny?”
“You know that’s a long shot, right?”
“Why?”
“Why?” He ticked off the reasons on one hand.
“One, Johnny’s not the only cop who’s been killed in this city. Two, we don’t even know that he was talking about an NOPD cop. Three, there’s not a shred of evidence that connects Johnny to Sonny Betts or Paul Courtland.”
“That we know of.”
“Four… four, ” he insisted when she tried to talk over him. “Johnny’s death was a random act of violence. Tragic and senseless, but that’s all it was. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I know you don’t, but it happens, Evie. New Orleans is a dangerous place. We don’t call tourists ‘walking ATM machines’ for nothing.”
He eased his way around a stalled car, and from Evangeline’s perspective, they seemed to squeeze by with only a hair to spare.
“George Mason was the lead on Johnny’s case. He’s a determined guy. If there was something to find, he would have found it.”
“Not if the crime scene was swept before he got there,” she said.
“Well, hell. Why didn’t I think of that?”
She responded with an irritated glower.
Mitchell sighed. “Okay, humor me, here. Swept by who? Elvis?” He shook his head. “Do you hear what you’re saying? Do you know how you sound?”
She knew exactly how she sounded, but she wasn’t backing down. This had been eating at her for months. “You were the one who brought it up.”
“I was hoping if we talked it through, you’d get how ridiculous this all sounds. If you keep going on like this…” His mouth tightened.
“What?”
He hesitated. “Okay, I didn’t want to get into this, but maybe it needs to be said. You want to know why some of the other cops have a hard time looking you in the eye these days? Why they’re not so crazy to work with you anymore?”
“Uh, because they’re a bunch of macho asstards?”
He ignored that. “It’s because ever since the shooting, you’ve made it clear you think something about the investigation wasn’t kosher. You’ve been letting some none-too-subtle insinuations slip out about a cover-up. Hell, for all I know, you think I’m in on it, too. Whatever it is.”
“You know I don’t think that.”
“The God’s honest truth? I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t have the slightest idea where your head is these days. Kathy said you’d called the house at least a dozen times last week looking for Nathan.”
“That’s an exaggeration. I called twice.”
Nathan Mallet had worked cases with Johnny in the year before his death. They weren’t officially partners, but Nathan would know better than anyone if Johnny had been involved in something dangerous.
But the shooting had shaken him up. He’d been a mess at the funeral and afterward he wouldn’t return Evangeline’s phone calls. Now it seemed he’d dropped off the face of the earth. His wife, Kathy, claimed she hadn’t seen him in weeks.
“I just don’t understand why he won’t talk to me,” Evangeline said.
“No big mystery there. From what I hear, he’s down in New Iberia working on one of his old man’s shrimp boats. I talked to his sister not too long ago, and she said the last time she saw him, he looked terrible. She thinks he may be on dope. Crystal meth, most likely. That shit is everywhere these days.”
“And you don’t find that kind of behavior at all suspect? He hasn’t been the same since Johnny died, and you know it.”