Finally he said, “I don’t think it was Dupree. All I ever heard about him was trucks and garbage. Not cars.”
“Pete Dupree? The trucker?” I kept my voice calm, but my mind was in overdrive. I’d heard that name somewhere before.
“Uh-huh. Well, not a trucker like you’re thinking of. He drove, but mainly he owned a little waste-hauling company, from what I recall. And I don’t remember Karl ever mentioning him when he talked about that car.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well, I guess we can cross his name off.”
After another ten minutes of chatting about Karl’s poker buddies and how to find the car, I said I’d keep him posted if I found it and took my leave.
On my way out of the trailer park, I gave Terri a call. She wasn’t familiar with the name Dupree but said she’d check with some of the women he’d victimized to see if it rang a bell with them.
If she didn’t know the name, then clearly I hadn’t heard it from her. But I’d heard it, and although I couldn’t recall where, my brain had filed it under “work.” It filed most things under work—one of the arguments Elise and I used to have was whether my being a workaholic was responsible for her drinking problem—but that still seemed like a good clue. I decided to head back to the office.
At my desk, I fired up my computer and then stopped. I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling. If Pete Dupree was mentioned somewhere in Roy’s client files, or if, God forbid, he or his waste-haulage company was a client, the state ethics board might have some thoughts about my actions right now. Those thoughts would not be positive.
Then again, I wouldn’t know if there was a conflict until I figured out who Pete Dupree was. For all I knew, he’d been one of the protesters Roy had mentioned harassing Blue Seas a while back. That particular scenario seemed unlikely for a waste-haulage guy, but it was entirely possible his name had come up on the opposing side of some problem one of our clients had had. In that case, there wouldn’t be any ethical issue at all.
I ran some searches. It didn’t take long, because Roy, who preferred almost any leisure activity to actually working, had invested in some very solid practice management software. It warned us of all upcoming deadlines, kept everything organized, and applied various other bells and whistles with the end goal of leaving Roy free to golf.
And there, highlighted in blue on my screen, it showed me the name Pete Dupree.
He wasn’t a client, thank God. He worked, or had worked—this file was from two years earlier—in waste haulage for Blue Seas.
I kept searching. A little over a year ago, I learned, Dupree, Karl, and a Blue Seas shipboard worker called Luis Garza had been arrested for trespassing at a salvage yard up in Charleston. Henry Carrell had vouched for them personally, and Roy helped get them off. The arrest report showed a Charleston address for Dupree, in a nicer neighborhood than my old one. I wondered if it was waste-haulage money or drug money that had allowed that.
I picked up the phone to call Terri, then put it back down to think. Blue Seas was Roy’s client, which in terms of ethics rules meant mine too, since I worked for Roy. But employees or contractors of Blue Seas were not our clients. If their interests were in conflict with Blue Seas—and any drug dealing by Dupree would sure as hell fall in that category—then I had zero obligation to protect them.
I called Terri, got voicemail, and left her a message with the information I’d found. Within ten minutes, she texted back that Dupree had sold his Charleston house and moved on to parts unknown.
I sighed and shut my eyes. This case had been an obstacle course from the start, and it seemed like every new lead presented a new problem along with it. My brain just wanted to power down and forget it all. I got up and took a little walk around the office. As I passed Laura’s empty desk, I wished I’d thought to start up the coffee maker when I arrived.
It crossed my mind that if Pete did have some connection to Karl’s murder, Henry Carrell would be pretty pissed off if cops showed up at his place of business without his lawyers warning him. And if I gave him a call, maybe he’d tell me more about Pete.
I headed back to my desk.
He picked right up. We shot the breeze, and then I got to the point: “I just wanted to give you a heads-up, an old contractor of yours might have some information about Karl’s murder. I didn’t want cops showing up at your door out of the blue—”
“Good Lord,” he said. “Are you serious? Who?”
“Your waste-hauler guy. Name of Pete Dupree.”
“Damn. He gave us enough trouble already. This past spring he flaked out on his contract, right before high season. You ever tried to get a reliable company to haul half a ton of waste per week, on three days’ notice?”
I laughed. “That seems mighty ungrateful of him, after you and Roy helped get him out of those trespassing charges.”
“The what, now?”
“Oh, that thing up in Charleston. He got himself arrested along with Karl and another Blue Seas guy by the name of Luis Garza, and Roy got the charges dropped after you vouched for them. Speaking of which, they might want to talk with Garza too. Any idea where to find either of them?”
He didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking or had gotten distracted. Then he said, “Oh, yeah. I tell you what, so much shit hits the fan here sometimes, I have trouble recalling each specific turd. But that does ring
