e, it’s barely eight. How do you know all this?”
“Got here early this morning. Bart had the kids, and I thought I could get something done here when it was a little quieter, y’know, just before the shift change, but that didn’t work out. The department’s gearing up for a press conference sometime tomorrow. Abbey Marlow’s already all over it, talking with everyone, getting her ducks in a row. I talked to her already, but she might want to double-check with you.”
“Fine.”
“She won’t be the only one talking to the press. I’m pretty sure Jada Hill will hold her own chat with the media, with or without Blondell. That woman loves the cameras.”
“Comes with the territory,” he said, glancing around the room. Most of the musty, twenty-year-old evidence had been sorted through and organized, important pieces clipped together or added to the corkboards outlining the crime. Though Reed wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that Blondell O’Henry was the shooter, he’d been working on that assumption.
“Someone tried to warn Nikki off yesterday with snakes up at the cabin,” he said.
“I heard.” Morrisette glanced at the suspect board and stared at the woman in its center. “But not Blondell. She’s still locked up for another day.” Running a hand through her short, choppy locks, she walked toward the board. “Who the hell left the snake in the car? If she hadn’t just seen a copperhead in the cabin itself, I’d have maybe thought it was a coincidence.”
“No coincidence,” Reed said grimly. And if there was a chance Blondell was innocent, the perpetrator could very well be Amity O’Henry’s killer.
“She’s getting out?” Nikki said, dumbfounded. Her wireless connection was weak for some reason, and she was having trouble hearing Reed over the road noise.
“That’s what it looks like. Probably . . . tomor . . .” Reed’s voice was cutting out. “There will be . . . pr . . . ference . . . I’ll know more . . . afternoon.”
“Look, if you can hear me, I’m on the road,” she yelled in frustration into her Bluetooth as she passed a gasoline truck. “I’ll call you when I’ve stopped and you can fill me in.” Hanging up, she mentally kicked herself from one end of the state to the other. If she’d had any idea that Blondell was going to be released, she would have postponed this trip. As it was, though, she had plenty of time to talk to Thompson and return to Savannah to both meet with Holt Beauregard and attend the press conference tomorrow.
If she stepped on it.
Which she did.
With the aid of the GPS on her phone and a heavy foot on the accelerator, she made it to the garage outside of Charleston in record time. Located in an industrial area far from the heart of the city, Ace Auto Repair had seen better days. The garage of six bays was built of metal and concrete, all six doors wide open, four mechanics working on vehicles, two hoisted off the floor, rolling boards with mechanics lying on them protruding from their sides, three more with their hoods up. Some kind of rock music played over the din of the noise of the shop.
Larry Thompson was standing at a tall metal cabinet near a side wall where tools and parts were kept. She probably wouldn’t have recognized him except that she knew he worked this shift and the badge on his gray jumpsuit read: THOMPSON.
“Lawrence Thompson,” she said, and he visibly stiffened before warily turning to face her.
“I’m Nikki—”
“I know who you are.” He sounded angry and his features were set. Hard. Almost defiant. “I knew someone would show up with all that’s going on with Blondell. I guess I should have expected you.”
“I just want to ask you some questions.”
He glanced around to the other stations where the mechanics, after watching Nikki approach him, had turned back to their work. “I could use a break.” With a hitch of his chin toward an exterior side door, he said, “This way,” and led her through the door as if to avoid questions from any of the others who’d looked up as she’d zeroed in on him. She had walked straight into an open bay without bothering to stop at the front counter and deal with whatever roadblocks might have been set in her path.
“I can’t tell you anything that hasn’t already been printed a dozen times over,” he said, wiping his hands on a faded red rag as they walked out of the garage.
“Just humor me.”
“I don’t see why.”
“Because Blondell O’Henry is news again, Larry, and come on, you were in the biz, you know how these things go. Talk to me, and then you can tell the next reporter to take a hike, that you’ve already talked to me. Or answer their questions too, but you may as well get it over with.”
He made a disparaging sound but nodded, seeming to accept the inevitable.
He’d aged since the last photograph Nikki had seen of him, taken more than fifteen years earlier. His face had grown jowly, his eyes guarded by lightly shaded glasses, a short, graying beard covering his once-strong jaw. His sandy hair had been thick and long, brushing his collar, but now it was only a silvery stubble, at least what she could see of it from beneath a Braves baseball cap.
They walked down a worn path to a concrete slab that had been fitted with two folding chairs that looked to be at least fifty years old and a picnic table from the same era. The sky was blue, with only a few clouds skimming across the vast expanse. On the chain-link fence that separated the back of the shop from a parking lot filled with shells of cars, a couple of crows flapped noisily away, their black wings shining, their cries piercing.
This industrial area outside of Charleston was in stark contrast to the beautiful city of elegant Southern mansions—clapboard siding, tall windows, and white pillars, bordered by palm trees—on the harbor.
“I just want to forget all that,” Thompson said in a low tone, as if anyone inside the shop could hear over the hiss of air hoses, the whir of electric lug nut removal, and the general clang of metal parts being refitted.
“Is that why you changed professions?”