“Does he have the resources to do that?” Lucas asked.
“I dunno. When we busted him, we went after his bank accounts and got eight thousand dollars. This is a guy who was probably spending that much every month on hookers and blow. So, he wasn’t keeping his income in his aboveground bank account.”
“If it was hookers and cocaine, over any long period of time . . . those guys tend to spend everything they have. They’re both addictions.”
“Yeah. Even if he had a stash, it might not have been too much. His housekeeper never saw any money around the house and she was all over it. It’s possible that he’s broke.”
“Okay. Let me read,” Lucas said. “Preferably in a place that’s snake-free.”
“Hey. Snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them. Not many rattlers survive an encounter with a human being, but it’s a rare thing when a rattlesnake kills a human,” Tremanty said.
“Right. I needed a pro-snake lecture. I’m gonna go read,” Lucas said.
* * *
—
HE SPENT the rest of the afternoon working through the paper with a highlighter pen, taking breaks for Diet Cokes supplied by Rae, to walk in the jungle and look into the pits while avoiding snakes, and once, as the day faded into evening, to chat again with Tremanty.
“We need to go somewhere quiet and talk,” Lucas said. “Maybe when you quit for the day?”
“There’s a bar a few miles out where people go when we finish,” Tremanty said. “It’s got booths that give you a little privacy.”
“Then let’s get Bob and Rae down there and talk.”
At six o’clock, everyone in the house gathered around Deese’s wide-screen television to watch the news. The talking head immediately passed the camera off to a dark-haired woman who began by saying, in her best hard-news voice, “We have learned exclusively that the bodies being dug up at the home of Clayton Deese are showing signs of cannibalism . . .”
Everyone in the room groaned, and a neatly dressed woman in a blue dress said to Tremanty, “There goes my night.”
Rae leaned toward Lucas and muttered, “FBI spokeswoman.”
“I’m two-thirds of the way through the paper,” Lucas said. “I’m going back upstairs.”
* * *
—
SUNSET WAS about eight o’clock, but the jungle started getting dim at seven, even dimmer in the muddy pits, and the recovery crews began pulling out. Six men and a woman who were doing the excavations took turns in Deese’s shower and were gone by eight. A dozen overnight guards began patrolling the site, under perimeter lights supplemented by laser trip wires.
Lucas, Bob, and Rae followed Tremanty out at eight o’clock, seven miles to a low, rambling concrete-block bar called Remy’s. The bar was decorated with beer signs, and, on the door, a black-and-white poster that showed a man’s fist holding a revolver, with the words “We Don’t Call 911.”
A twenty-foot-square dance floor sat at one end of the building, with an elevated platform against the wall that might have accommodated a five-piece band. Everything inside was old wood, fake wood, or concrete blocks, including a digital jukebox that was a bit of all three; a Brooks & Dunn song, “Neon Moon,” was burbling out into the dim interior.
The bar was populated by wary locals, most in working clothes—jeans and T-shirts—who were gathered at the dance floor end; by a few reporters, who were jammed into the middle; and by cops and technicians from the Deese crime scene, who dominated the other end. Everybody seemed to be eating deep-fried shrimp or deep-fried catfish or deep-fried potatoes, string beans, or cauliflower buds.
As they walked past the reporters, a photographer lifted a hand-sized camera and took a picture of Lucas. Annoying, but perfectly legal, and the photographer nodded at him. Tremanty led the way to the last booth, the only one that was empty. Lucas got the impression that it was reserved for him, and a waitress hustled over as soon as the four of them slid into it.
* * *
—
THEY ORDERED DRINKS, and when the waitress had gone Tremanty looked at Lucas and asked, “What do you think?”
“I won’t be any help for you at the crime scene. Neither will Bob or Rae, except maybe as tour guides. We need to go after Deese,” Lucas said. “Starting now.”
“How would you do that?” Tremanty asked.
“I’ve had some complicated dealings with the FBI,” Lucas said. “In my experience, the FBI doesn’t always want to know how the sausage