'Can I walk with you?'
'Sure. What's up?'
'Jon Dupre. The Wendell Hayes killing.'
'Why are you interested in that? There's no federal crime.'
'No, not directly, but Dupre may be connected to an international drug dealer who is financing terrorism. So it's peripheral, this interest in Dupre. Just loose ends.'
'Who's the drug dealer, in case I run across something?'
'Mahmoud Hafnawi. He's a Palestinian living in Beirut. Let me know if Dupre mentions him.'
'I will.'
Hunter shook his head. 'Dupre is one weird dude.'
'Why do you say that?'
'The guy murdered his lawyer. Why do you think he did it?'
'That's a question we're all asking.'
'Did Hayes and Dupre know each other? Was there bad blood between them?'
'Hayes knew Jon through his parents, but we haven't found any other connection. Dupre didn't even hire Hayes. The presiding judge asked him to take Dupre's case as a favor.'
'I'd have thought he'd already have his own lawyer.'
'He did. A guy named Oscar Baron, but Baron wouldn't represent Dupre because Dupre couldn't pay his fee.'
'Any question about Dupre's guilt?'
'Of the Hayes murder? None. Wendell was killed in a contact visiting room up in the jail. They were locked in together. It's as clean a case as I've ever seen.'
Hunter was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head. 'Considering the trouble he's in, it sure is odd he'd off his lawyer.'
'Have you ever figured out why these people do the things they do?'
'You've got a point. Still, Hayes was one of the best, no?'
Tim nodded.
'You'd think Dupre would want a guy like Hayes running his defense, creating reasonable doubt, saving him from death row. If I was in Dupre's shoes, Wendell Hayes would be the last guy I'd kill.'
'But he did. We have an eyewitness, a jail guard. He saw the whole thing. Poor guy was shaken up so badly that he's on administrative leave.'
'I'm not surprised. Watching someone get sliced up like that and not being able to help. What did Dupre use?'
'A piece of jagged metal,' Tim answered. 'It looks like the lever they use to open and close the air vents in the jail. It had been sharpened to a point.'
'Where did he get it?'
Kerrigan shrugged. 'It's your typical jailhouse shiv, homemade. We're checking Dupre's cell and the rest of the housing unit to see if he made it himself, but Dupre could have bought it from someone.'
They arrived at the elevators. Kerrigan pushed up and Hunter pressed down. The up arrow turned green.
'You heading back to D.C.?' Kerrigan asked as the doors opened.
'In a bit.'
'Safe journey.'
'Hey, I forgot,' Hunter said. He handed Kerrigan one of his business cards. 'In case anything comes up.'
Hunter was smiling when the doors closed, like he knew some secret. Something about the agent bugged Kerrigan. He remembered feeling the same way when they'd first met at the Travis crime scene. There had been something about Hunter that had bothered him then. Suddenly he realized what it was. The cleaning people had discovered the senator's body only a few hours before Richard Curtis had called Tim and told him to go to the cabin. J. D. Hunter had told Kerrigan that he was picked to investigate Travis's case because the FBI wanted an agent from Washington involved in the murder of a senator. How had Hunter gotten to Portland so quickly? It would have taken time for Washington to learn about the senator's death. Even if Hunter flew to Portland on an FBI jet, there was no way he could have gotten to Travis's house as fast as he had.
Kerrigan was still mulling over this thought when he walked into the reception area of the district attorney's office and found Carl Rittenhouse waiting for him, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, looking worse than the last time they saw each other. Tim's first thought was that he was taking his boss's death extremely hard.
Rittenhouse stood as soon as he spotted Kerrigan. 'Tim, do you have a minute?' he asked anxiously.
'Sure, Carl.'
Kerrigan motioned Rittenhouse to follow him to his office.
'Yesterday, at the house, you were talking about Dupre,' Rittenhouse said as soon as Tim shut his office door. 'You said he ran an escort service and some woman was killed.'
