distributed a lotta them videos. My friend, like I said, he was in the FBI, so I got some of the inside scoop on it. He said they already knew about the guy. Name was Daryl Lassiter. Caught him in California back in ninety-four trying to snatch a gal same age, same hair color, same build as your sister.”
Claire was confused. Had she been wrong about Paul’s father? Was there another murderer out there? Had Paul’s father come by the tapes as a collector?
Huckabee said, “Lassiter’s dead now, if it helps.”
No, there was the barn that had been outside, and the kill room not fifteen feet away from where they stood.
“Jury put him on death row.” Huckabee looped his thumbs back through his belt. “There was some kind of scuffle at the jail house. Lassiter got stabbed in the neck about a dozen times. He died around the same time your pa died.”
Claire tried to think of what to ask next. “Where did Daddy get the tapes?”
Huckabee shrugged. “No idea.”
“You didn’t look into it?”
‘Course I did.” Huckabee sounded offended, as if he was actually good at his job. “But your daddy was always on wild goose chases, one after another. There was no telling which one actually panned out, and he wasn’t exactly sharing his information with me.”
“You weren’t exactly encouraging him to.”
Huckabee shrugged again, more “water under the bridge” than “I’m sorry I left your father so alone that he killed himself.”
But then again, Helen had left Sam alone, too. And then she had lied to Lydia and Claire for years about everything that mattered. Was there anyone in Claire’s life who ever told her the truth? Even Lydia had lied about her daughter.
She asked, “Why would Daddy kill himself before finding out who killed Julia?”
“He left the tape playing out on the machine. He knew we’d find it. I mean, that’s what I figured he left it for, and he was right. I turned it straight over to the feds. In less than a week, they connected it to the man who killed your sister.”
Claire didn’t remind the sheriff that the Carrolls had begged him for years to go to the FBI. “And you never made it public so people would know what happened to my sister?”
“Your mom asked me not to. I guess she was worried you girls would look for the tapes.” He glanced over Claire’s shoulder into the den. “My thinking is she figured it’d be better to never know than to find out the truth.”
Claire wondered if her mother was right. Then she wondered how different her life would’ve been if she’d known that Julia was really gone. How many times had Claire quietly shut herself into her office and cried because an unidentified body had been found in the Athens area? How many missing girl cases had kept her awake at night? How many hours had she spent searching the Internet for cults and hippie compounds and any word of her missing sister?
“Well, that’s all I know.” Huckabee shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “I hope it brings you some peace.”
“Like it did my father?” She resisted the urge to tell the sheriff that Sam Carroll might still be alive if the sheriff had done his fucking job.
“Anyway,” Huckabee glanced around the kitchen again, “I told you what you wanted to know. You wanna tell me why you’re standing in the middle of all this mess with a knife in your back pocket?”
“No, I don’t.” Claire wasn’t finished questioning him. There was one more thing she had to ask, though she felt in her gut that she already knew the answer. Paul had a mentor, a man who had single-handedly ensured that Quinn + Scott jumped into the stratosphere, a man who took chartered flights and stayed in expensive hotel rooms thanks to Paul’s Centurion American Express card. Claire had always chalked up the hours of golf games together and private phone calls and afternoons at the club to Paul just doing whatever it took to keep the Congressman happy, but now she understood that the connection ran deeper.
She asked the sheriff, “Who was your friend at the FBI?”
“Why’s that matter?”
“It’s Johnny Jackson, isn’t it?” Claire knew the man’s bio. She’d sat through enough tedious introductions at countless rubber-chicken-dinner fundraisers. Congressman Johnny Jackson had been an agent with the FBI before entering politics. He had given Quinn + Scott millions, sometimes billions, of dollars’ worth of government contracts. He had sent Captain Jacob Mayhew