minutes, until the time when Coleman was supposed to have shown up. Then I waited twenty more. Besides having my plans frustrated, I was annoyed at the tardiness of the rigidly efficient Coleman. I was getting ready to try calling her when Royal Hughes showed up instead.
“Royal Hughes, Floyd Lynch’s public defender,” he said, holding out his hand.
I shook it, did not bother to say my name because we had already introduced ourselves just four days ago.
“Is this a coincidence?” I asked.
“Not at all,” he said, flashing those teeth. “They had instructions to call us if you tried to see Mr. Lynch.”
I didn’t bother asking who they and us was. “I was just meeting Agent Coleman here, so it’s okay.”
“No it’s not. She’s no longer on this case.”
I tried to conceal my flabbergastedness. “Since when?”
He looked at his watch and I wasn’t sure whether he was checking the date or just getting impatient. “Since three days ago when Special Agent in Charge Roger Morrison discovered she had brought you and David Weiss to the dump site and tried to set up an insanity test. She should have known better than to do that without authorization.”
That meant that Coleman was further off the reservation than she had told me. She didn’t have the authorization to proceed with any investigation at all, let alone set up interviews with Floyd Lynch’s family or come to the jail to question him further. Why hadn’t she told me this? And where was she so I could beat her up properly for blindsiding me again?
“So that’s why she didn’t show up? Why didn’t she call and tell me?” I said it more to myself than Hughes.
Hughes gave an attractive shrug. “Maybe she’s embarrassed.”
“Now she’s embarrassed?”
“Just go away and I won’t report that she was going to meet you here.” Hughes looked at his watch again and this time I was sure it wasn’t about the date. I gripped his forearm gently before he could lower it. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Did Agent Coleman voice her doubts to you about Floyd Lynch’s confession, and did she tell you why?”
“The profile, the ears,” he intoned, not so much bored as weary. “She talked to anyone who would listen. But with our backlog, when you’ve got a voluntary confession on top of such a mass of corroborating evidence, you focus the tax dollars on the other cases.”
I thought about what Coleman was going to tell me, what she had been so excited about in her e-mail message. Whatever it was, I was convinced it was the nonsmoking gun that would exclude Lynch as the killer. I said, “You’re going to put a man in prison for life who only fucked a mummy. And you’re going to let the real serial killer off the hook.”
“The case is closed, Ms. Quinn. On top of that, you were decommissioned four years ago and the case is not yours. Now why don’t you go do something … retired.”
That made me boil and I gave him my best retort. “Maybe you’re right, it’s a different world when the agent defends the perp and the defense doesn’t.”
Not good enough. Without seeming to take sufficient offense, Hughes started to move away from me. But he turned when I tested Sigmund’s intuition with, “Whatever does she see in you?”
Hughes paused but didn’t turn around until I said, with my voice low enough so no one else could overhear, “If you and Agent Coleman are having an affair I could blow the whistle and get you both in huge trouble.”
He gave me a shocked glare and stormed out the door of the jail.
Twenty-four
It’s true, if sex between an investigating agent and the defense counsel on the same case was known, it could cause a mistrial and get both fired. But I didn’t like the thought of going there, just yet. I was still steamed about Coleman blowing me off at the jail, let alone not telling me she’d been taken off the case. Our Pure as the Driven Coleman, screwing the public defender, bringing in Sigmund without authorization, taking case files out of the office … I had my doubts about whether she could be trusted at all; she reminded me too much of me.
All that wasn’t enough for me to throw her under the bus by blowing a whistle on her and Hughes. I pictured Coleman playing some kind of secret agent game. In my defense I must stress it was for this reason