but the son knew her pretty well since elementary school, and Larry doesn’t want to investigate it himself. He wants us carrying the load, because…you know, small town.”
“Any chance his kid actually did it?” Lucas asked.
“Nah,” Flowers said. “Everybody in town says he’s a good kid, and he’s actually got most of an alibi, and like I said, he wasn’t actually seeing the girl. Didn’t run with her crowd. Larry’s just trying to avoid talk. He’s got the election coming up, and they haven’t got the killer yet…if there is one.”
“Any ideas? She didn’t get on the riverbank by herself.”
The waitress came back with the Cokes, and said, with a smile, “I haven’t seen you fellas around before. You lawyers?”
“God help us,” Flowers said. When she’d gone, Flowers said, “There’s a guy name Floyd. He’s a couple years older than the girl, he’s been out of school for a while. Does seasonal work at the elevator and out at the golf course, sells a little dope. I need to push him. I think he was dealing to the girl, and I think she might have been fooling around with him.”
“Any dope on the postmortem?”
“No. She’d been down way too long. When they pulled her off the riverbank, they got most of her clothes and all of the bones except from one foot and a small leg bone, which probably got scattered off by dogs or coyotes or whatever. There’s no sign of violence on the bones. No holes, no breaks, hyoid was intact. I think she might have OD’d.”
“Can you crack the kid?”
“That’s my plan…”
THEY SAT SHOOTING the breeze, talking about cases, talking about fishing. Flowers had a side career going as an outdoor writer, and was notorious for dragging a fishing boat around the state while he was working. Lucas asked, “You go fishing last night?”
“Hour,” Flowers admitted. “Got a line wet, while I was thinking about the grand jury.”
“You’re gonna have to decide what you want to do,” Lucas said. “I don’t think you can keep writing and keep working as a cop. Not full-time, anyway.”
“I’d write, if I could,” Flowers said. “Trouble is, I made fifteen thousand dollars last year, writing. If I went full-time, I could probably make thirty. In other words, I’d starve.”
“Still…”
“I know. I think about it,” Flowers said. “All I can do is, keep juggling. You see my piece last month in Outdoor Life?”
“I did, you know?” Lucas said. “Not bad, Virgil. In fact, it was pretty damn good. Guys were passing it around the office.”
THE FIRST SESSION of the grand jury was as routine as Flowers had suggested it would be. Lucas sat in a waiting room until 1:45, got called in. The grand jury was arrayed around a long mahogany-grained table, with two assistant county attorneys managing files. The lead attorney, Susan Conoway, had Lucas sworn in by a clerk, who then left. She led him through his handling of the original tip, to the assignment of Flowers, and through the BCA’s handling procedures for evidence. After checking to make sure the signatures on the affidavits were really his, she sent him on his way.
In the hallway, Flowers said, “I’ll call you about that Jackson case,” and Lucas said, “See ya,” and he was gone.
BACK AT THE OFFICE, Sandy had gone.
“I sent her home,” Carol said, as she trailed Lucas into his office. The file was sitting squarely in front of Lucas’s chair, with a dozen blue plastic flags sticking out of it. “She was about to fall off the chair. She said you could call her there, and she’d come in…but I think you could let it go until tomorrow. She’s really beat.”
“Did she finish the file?” Lucas took off his jacket, hung it on his coatrack, and began rolling up his shirtsleeves.
“Yes. She flagged the critical points. She said she flagged them both pro and con, for and against it being the same killers.”
“She’s pretty good,” Lucas said. “I hope she doesn’t go overboard, start campaigning to free this Child guy. If his appeal got turned down, we’d be better off working it from the other end. Find the real killers.”
HE STARTED on the file, looking first at the flagged items, and going back to the original arrest, the interviews, and immediately saw how Child got himself in trouble: He hadn’t denied anything. He had, in fact, meekly agreed that he might have done it. He simply didn’t know—and he stuck to that part of the story.
There were other