“No, he’s junior to me. Or was junior.”
“His family rich?”
“I don’t think so. His oldest is a couple years younger than Noah. They were at the same high school.”
“It just seems weird that he’d be friends with somebody rich enough to back a yacht charter. If he was in private practice, I could see it, but a prosecutor? How’d they even meet?”
“I don’t know. I wondered the same things myself.”
Tony congratulated local DEA agents on their successful investigation. It made me wonder what an old friend of mine was up to, a law school buddy who’d become a federal prosecutor specializing in drug crimes. Most of what I knew about the DEA came from him. We’d hung out sometimes in Charleston, and I’d sent him an email with my new address when I moved back to Basking Rock. The thought of what he must know about the local drug scene made me wish I’d kept in touch.
I asked Terri, “Speaking of investigating, any luck on Kitty Ives?”
“Not much. I did trace her stuff to a storage unit north of Charleston, not too far from her mom’s house. But no sign of her or the car, and she went dark on social media right around the time she disappeared.”
I thought about that a second. “You think she’s okay?”
“You mean alive?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged and said, “I got no reason to think otherwise. I mean, if she’d disappeared without moving her stuff into storage first, then I’d wonder.”
“That makes sense.”
“Yeah, and from what I can tell, she was real close to her mom—she posted tons of pictures of them together before she went dark. I think they must still be in touch. Her mom hasn’t filed a missing persons report or even said anything on her own social media about Kitty being gone.”
“Well, that’s good.” I thought for a second. “I guess us reaching out to her mom would just scare her off more.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Maybe give her time to relax instead. She’ll get less cautious, and I’ll have a better chance of finding her.”
“I guess that’s the one good thing,” I said, “about the wheels of justice turning slowly. We got a little time.”
She nodded. “In the meantime, I’d like to track down that trucker,” she said. “Last year I heard from a few different women about a trucker who went by Pete, and a couple of times by other names. I wonder if it’s your guy. He was some sleaze who came through town a few times and traded drugs for sex, mostly with married women. I know of at least two women who switched from oxy to heroin through him. Soccer-mom types who were so ashamed about it all that he must’ve known they wouldn’t report him.”
I said, “You ever feel like there’s way too many bottom-feeders in this world?”
“All the time.”
“I guess that’s why we have jobs.”
“I guess it is.”
“Well,” I said, “that particular bottom-feeder may or may not be my guy. Karl’s brother Pat knows him—my guy, I mean—and he drinks, or at least used to drink, at the Broke Spoke when he was in town. So I think the Broke Spoke is where we got to look for him. But I’m wondering if maybe you could step in for me on that. Apart from this one friendly waitress who’s desperate for tips, I get a real strong sense of not being welcome there. They’re getting tired of me. Maybe it’s time to change it up.”
She gave me a look. I wasn’t sure why.
I sensed from her voice that I was about to be schooled.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“How often do you think a woman walks into the Broke Spoke by herself to have a drink? And what sort of attention do you suppose she’d get if she did?”
“Oh, of course,” I said. “Sorry, my brain must have left the room for a moment.”
“Now, beyond that. Think back on whenever you’ve been there. Okay? You picturing it in your mind?”
“Yep.”
“When you were there, did you see one Black face?”
“Oh,” I said. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“Not even a dancer, right?”
“Uh, nope. I don’t think so. Not that I recall.”
She was nodding. “And just so you know,” she said, “at least one of Dunk’s bartenders is a Proud Boy. Swastika tattoos and everything. The little bald guy.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “They’re bad news. Five or six years ago I prosecuted a couple of them for a hate crime up in Charleston.”
She gave one last nod. Her case was closed.
“So,” she said, “there’s things I can do that you can’t. Places I can go, people I can talk to, just because of who I am. Okay? But then there’s also places I can’t go, and people I can’t talk to.”
“Understood,” I said. “I’m sorry. And look, I appreciate the bluntness. If I do anything like that again—I mean, if I’m asking you to do something that don’t make sense or makes you uncomfortable, please just smack me upside the head.”
She said, like it was a promise, “Oh, I will.”
I chuckled. Even back in high school, I’d always liked the sense she gave me that I knew exactly where I stood with her. She had some sort of force field around her that made lies and BS just wither and die.
Then I sighed and leaned back in my armchair, closing my eyes, resigning myself to my fate. “I guess I got to go see Dunk again,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. I sensed an undercurrent, something serious, in her silence. I looked at her.
After a second, she said, “Don’t talk to him. I just—to say the least, I don’t think it’d be helpful. I understand you’ve got to find this Pete guy. But stay away from Dunk, if you can.”
23
Monday, September 9, Afternoon
Sitting in my office at Benton & Hearst, I had the
