He rubbed his chin with the ball of his thumb, a smile at the corner of his mouth, his eyes wandering indolently over my face.
Outside, as I got into my Avalon, I saw him crossing the courthouse lawn toward me, the sunlight through the trees freckling on his face. I closed my car door and waited. He leaned one arm on the roof, a dark loop of sweat under his armpit, and smiled down at me, his words gathering in his mouth.
'You sure know how to stick it up a fellow's snout, Billy Bob. I'll surely give you that, yessir. But at least I ain't killed my best friend and I don't know anybody else who has. Have a good day,' he said.
* * *
chapter two
Lucas's arraignment was at eleven Monday morning. At 8 a.m. I met a sheriff's deputy at the courthouse and rode with her in her cruiser to the spot on the river where Lucas and the girl from Shorty's had been found.
The deputy's name was Mary Beth Sweeney. She wore a tan uniform, with a lead-colored stripe down the side of each trouser leg, and a campaign hat that slanted over her brow. Her face was powdered with pale brown freckles and her dark brown hair hung in curls to her shoulders. She was new to the department and seemed to have little interest in either me or her assignment.
'Were you a law officer somewhere else?' I asked.
'CID in the army.'
'You didn't want to work for the feds after you got out?' I said.
She raised her eyebrows and didn't answer. We passed Shorty's, a ramshackle club built on pilings over the water, then pulled into an old picnic area that had gone to seed among a grove of pine trees. Yellow crime scene tape was stretched in the shape of a broken octagon around the tree trunks.
'You responded to the 911?' I said.
'I was the second unit to arrive.'
'I see.'
I got out of the cruiser and stepped under the yellow tape. But she didn't follow me.
'Where was the girl?' I said.
'Down there in those bushes by the water.'
'Undressed?'
'Her clothes were strewn around the ground.'
'On the ground by her?' I said.
'That's right.'
The soil in the clearing was damp and shady, and tire tracks were stenciled across the pine needles that had fallen from the trees.
'And Lucas was in his truck, passed out? About here?' I said.
'Yes, sir.'
'You don't have to call me "sir".'
I walked down to the riverbank. The water was green and deep, and cottonwood seeds swirled in eddies on top of the current.
'You know, I never heard of a rapist being arrested because he was too drunk to flee the crime
scene,' I said.
But the deputy didn't answer me. The ground among the bushes was crisscrossed with dozens of footprints. I walked back to where Lucas's truck had been parked. Mary Beth Sweeney still stood outside the crime scene tape, her hands in her back pockets. Her arms looked strong, her stomach flat under her breasts. Her black gunbelt was polished and glinted with tiny lights.
'This is quite a puzzle,' I said.