He seemed so lost in his cynical mood that I felt I should join him there. I nodded and said, “Ain’t that the truth.” It seemed wise to get on his wavelength if I wanted him to keep talking frankly with me.
“It’s just a game of whack-a-mole,” he said. “You catch one guy bringing it in, a week later some other guy replaces him.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “I know the feeling. You guys catch anybody lately?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. His voice told me it didn’t hardly matter to him at all. “You see that bust-up outside Charleston? Third-biggest in South Carolina history?”
“Yeah, I saw that on the news. I used to work with that guy.”
“Oh yeah? Well, anyway, we helped with some intel on that.” He shrugged. “So they whacked a mole, and now another one’ll pop right back up.”
It didn’t sound like I was going to get any specifics from him. He knew where the lines were, in terms of what he could say to anyone outside the office, and he wasn’t going to cross them. Ruiz had never been a line-crosser.
In his current mood, I thought, he might be receptive to my own suspicions. It couldn’t hurt to drop some ideas on him and see where they landed.
“You ever think,” I said, “that maybe Karl got caught up in any of that? And maybe that’s what got him killed?”
From his frown and the tilt of his eyebrows, I could see he thought that was entirely possible.
“Of course, that ain’t where the evidence is pointing.” He looked me in the eye and said, “I can’t try a case on evidence I don’t have.”
It might have been hope or desperation making me read more into it than he meant, but I got the impression that what he’d said was code. It seemed to mean that he wasn’t going to dig into this, but if I did, if I could walk into his office and throw evidence on his desk that said the prosecution’s theory was wrong, he would listen. He would do what he could.
He was an honest man, and a fair one. He always had been.
Which was probably why he didn’t get along with his boss.
25
Friday, September 27, Evening
I parked around a corner two blocks from the beach, trying to find a compromise between avoiding shrimp-fest traffic and walking farther than Noah could comfortably manage. He insisted a few blocks was fine, and while I wasn’t sure I believed him, I knew telling him so would spoil the good mood that the prospect of the event had put us in. We’d driven there with our windows down, since it was still nearly seventy degrees, and before we could even see the beach—before we saw the crowd and the lights of a Ferris wheel twinkling against the dark sky—we could smell frying shrimp. His deep breath and relaxed smile reminded me that he had inherited my tastes in that regard: the aroma gave both of us an immediate sense of well-being.
As we headed down the sidewalk, I said, “I’m sure glad Basking Rock’s got this tradition now.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Oh, you weren’t even in kindergarten yet, I don’t think, when Henry Carrell came up with the idea. Everyone in town pretty much had their own family shrimp fest for white shrimp season, but he’s the one who got the ear of someone at the county tourism office to get something bigger started. I’m sure he thought it’d be good for his boat business—and he was right. And, to be fair, also good for the local economy.”
“That’s so weird,” he said. “I mean, this is a tradition, you know? It feels like we’ve been coming to this my whole life.”
“Well, you pretty much have.” We walked a few yards in silence before I added, “Even though your mom didn’t like shrimp.”
“What?” He laughed in disbelief. “How is that possible?”
“I know,” I said. “But I married her anyway.”
He laughed. “I guess you got to be open-minded,” he said. “People can have other qualities even if their taste buds just don’t work.”
I chuckled and felt a flash of pride that my kid had a sense of humor.
“If I leave you nothing else,” I said, “as my legacy, at least you love shrimp and you know how to crack a joke.”
“It don’t look like you’re going to leave me much else,” he said. “I mean, judging by that plastic-and-duct-tape window you put on the only car you actually own.”
I laughed so hard I had to stop walking for a second. It wasn’t just because my kid was damn funny. It was because joking around like this made me think that someday, when he was older, when we’d gotten through the fallout of Elise’s death and his injury, we might be able to settle into something like friendship.
At the beach we stood in line, saying hi to familiar faces as they passed, and then walked around a while munching on mixed baskets of shrimp that had been fried in a half dozen different kinds of batter. The nightly breeze had started blowing toward the water, and in its coolness I could feel the first hint of fall. From the side of the beach where fairground rides and booths had been set up, kids screamed happily on a whirling teacup ride, and I saw Detective Blount trying to shoot rubber ducks to win a stuffed animal for his youngest boy.
He failed.
Instead of being a good sport, Blount rammed the butt of the toy rifle into the sand and taught his boy five or six swear words. I remembered what Terri had said about him being an angry person, or having anger problems, or however she’d put it.
I told Noah, “That’s Detective Blount, there. Who we were talking about last week or whenever.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s… yeah, nobody likes him.”
“Well, I share that sentiment. And by the way, anything you find out about
