Black Water Rising

“Just tell me what they told you.”

“Why?”

“No questions, remember?”

“A re you representing the girl?”

He assumes she means the woman from the boat.

“I need her name,” he says. He wants to know who he’s deal­ ing with.

“Why?” She sounds worried now, or just plain confused.

“I can’t answer that question.”

“Well, I can’t give you this report, Jay. It’s sensitive informa­ tion.”

“Not asking you to give it to me. Just tell me what’s in it.” She lets out a sigh. “I can’t do that.”

“No one will hear a word from me about it. I won’t tell a soul we talked.”

“It’s an ongoing investigation. The police let me in on it just as a courtesy. This is not my information to share. Not even the press have this—”

“I’m asking you for a favor, Cynthia. This is between me and you.” He plays the one card he’s got. “I think you know you can trust me.”

For a moment, he hears nothing on the other end.

When Cynthia’s voice returns, it’s cold and flat.

“Her name is Elise Linsey.”

Jay reaches for a slip of paper on his desk. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know anything but her name.”

“You have an address?” he asks.

“No.”

“Date of birth?”

“No.”

“They arrest her?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “But I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Evidence was light.”

“What’d they have?”

“A body,” she says. “And fingerprints in his car. That’s it.”

“Her fingerprints?” Jay asks.

“That’s what it says.”

“What about the body, the dead guy? You got a name for him?”

“They’re not releasing it, not even to me.”

“So that’s all you have?”

“White male, shot twice,” she says bluntly. “They found two bullets, one outside the car, the other in his skull, both twentytwo caliber.”

“Let me guess,” he says. “They haven’t found a gun.”

“No.”

The murder weapon is a .22, just like his missing gun.

“Oh, God.”

“Jay,” Cynthia says. “Do I want to know what this is about?”

He has a moment’s thought of telling her about Jimmy’s cousin and the car accident that killed him, what Jay now knows was probably murder. She could take the information to the police, start an investigation for the man’s family. But he’s afraid of what leaking the information would do to him or his wife, so he keeps it to himself. He underlines the name elise linsey on the paper in front of him, pressing so hard that the pencil lead snaps. “I appreciate this, Cynthia.”

“Jay?”

He hangs up the phone.

There’s an E. Liddie in the phone book.

An E. Linney.

An E. Linnwood.

And at the bottom of the page, his finger practically pressed

on top of it, there’s an E. Linsey: 14475 Oakwood Glen, phone number not listed. Jay writes the address on