Seeing Red(82)

“Yeah, well, you and him can go fuck each other.”

Glenn turned back to Trapper. “He has an attitude. Thinks he’s smarter than everybody else.”

“Maybe he is.”

“Different circumstances, y’all could be friends.”

Carson passed his overcoat to Trapper, sidestepped Glenn, and entered the room. “Are the shackles really necessary?”

Glenn only harrumphed and pulled the door closed. “Kerra?”

She stepped up to the door and looked through the wired glass window. Trapper looked in from over her shoulder. Duncan appeared to be in his early thirties, although his eyes had the mistrustful, lupine quality of one who’d already endured a lifetime of hard knocks. He didn’t look relieved or show any particular interest when Carson introduced himself. His indolent posture didn’t change, although his surly lips moved, so he’d said something.

“I’ve never seen him before,” Kerra said and was about to move away from the window.

“Give it a minute,” Glenn said. “Maybe he’ll do something that’ll jog a memory.”

Trapper held Carson’s coat in the crook of his elbow and placed his hands on Kerra’s shoulders. “He’s right. Give it a minute.”

“But—”

He gave her shoulders a slight squeeze. The private signal worked. She stayed where she was, sandwiched between him and the door. Trapper asked Glenn, “Did you locate his wife?”

“Girlfriend. If she’s visiting her mama in Ardmore, she’s gone to the cemetery.”

“He lied about his old lady?”

“Worries us, because there’s been no sign of her.”

They couldn’t hear what Carson was asking or what the suspect was saying in reply, but occasionally Duncan would emphasize a point by stabbing his forefinger into the tabletop. Other times Trapper could tell even in pantomime that he’d given a flip response.

After several minutes, Carson took sheets of paper from his briefcase, spread them out on the table where Leslie Duncan could see what they consisted of, and went over the content of each sheet with him point by point.

“What’s all that?” Glenn asked Trapper. “His rate chart?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Mercenary son of a bitch.”

Carson asked Duncan something. He hesitated then nodded. Carson beamed, gathered up the papers and replaced them in his briefcase, latched it, and shook hands with Duncan as facilely as could be done with the manacles. Kerra stood aside, and Glenn opened the door for Carson.

As he was passing through, Leslie Duncan called from the table, “How do you like being dead so far?”

Trapper, anticipating that, had stepped around Kerra in order to gauge her reaction. Her lips separated in shock over hearing the familiar words, but when she realized that Trapper was watching her, she looked up at him and shook her head. “The voice is wrong.”

Glenn’s face was mottled with fury. “Now I get it. That’s what he was about,” he said, flinging out a hand toward Carson.

Carson retrieved his overcoat from Trapper. “Excuse me. I’ve got forms to file.” Juggling coat and briefcase, he hurried down the hallway, almost running into a deputy as he stepped purposefully off the elevator.

Trapper was in a standoff with Glenn. “If I had asked nice, would you have given me access to him?”

“No,” Glenn thundered.

“All Kerra needed to hear were those few words.”

“The voice is wrong,” she repeated, addressing the statement to Glenn. “Believe me, I get goose bumps when I think back to hearing those words and realizing what they implied. I’ll never forget the voice.”

“In your statement, you said that only one of the men spoke. Duncan here could be the one who stayed silent.”

“He could. But I’m positive that’s not the voice I overheard.”

Trapper was listening to her and Glenn and following their thread, but he was also observing Leslie Duncan through the window. He was bobbing his head back and forth and playing imaginary drums on the table as though keeping time to an ear-worm.

“Sheriff?”

All of them turned to the deputy who had nearly collided with Carson at the elevator. “We got the search warrant about an hour ago,” he reported. “Found this in Duncan’s trailer. Isn’t it the one that’s been missing?”

He held up an evidence bag. Sealed inside it was Kerra’s Louis Vuitton.





Chapter 24




When they returned to the motel room, Kerra remarked, “I’m surprised housekeeping has been here already.”

“I’m surprised there’s housekeeping.”

Trapper’s statement had been spoken in an absent mutter. He was preoccupied with checking one of his various cell phones for missed calls or texts.

“Nothing from The Major?” she asked.

“No.” He tossed his coat onto the bed. “If he calls at all, it’ll probably be to notify me that he’s having me certified.”

“He thinks you’re pigheaded, not insane.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was over what he thought about me a long time ago.”

She knew that wasn’t the case at all, but she let it go. Things were already strained between Trapper and her. They’d driven back from the sheriff’s office in silence. She supposed that he was mulling over how much significance the discovery of her missing bag would have on the investigation.