“Nobody comes near my mom. Not if I can help it.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you done good. Nobody’s come near her. She’s okay.”
He gave a quick nod that I read as thanks for letting him know.
“If you got something you can tell me about Pete Dupree,” I said, “I’d appreciate it.” To soothe the fear in his face, I added, “Nothing you tell me will come out at trial unless you tell me it can. His name does not have to come up. I just want to understand what’s going on.”
Another quick nod. He didn’t often tell me things, I’d noticed, right when I asked. He preferred to think them through first. I was starting to think he had more forethought than most teenage boys, and certainly more than I’d given him credit for.
As I walked to my car, I found myself thinking that Jackson’s hiding his jacket and lying about his whereabouts on the night Karl died might be encouraging signs, in a way. He may not have considered the consequences before committing arson, but even after what had to be a bad night’s sleep—a filthy bait shack could not have been restful—he’d had the sense to know he might get in trouble, so he’d done what he could to hide the evidence. Then he hid it some more by lying all summer about where he’d slept. If he’d told anyone where he’d really spent that night, the cops would’ve searched the place and found the jacket. And with no time of death for Karl, that would’ve just added an arson charge on top of the murder.
With my lawyer hat on, I had to disapprove of hiding evidence. But in my father hat, looking at a teenage boy, I at least preferred some ability to anticipate consequences over a total disregard for them. It meant he had the capacity to steer back onto the straight and narrow. If I could get him out of jail, he might be able to make himself a pretty good life.
On the way to Broad Street, my phone rang. It was a blocked number. As a prosecutor, I always took blocked calls; tipsters and witnesses sometimes liked to hide their tracks.
“Hello, Leland Munroe speaking.”
For a second, silence. Then a woman’s voice: “Mr. Munroe? This is—you saw me at the restaurant.”
Kitty. Katie. “Yes, hello!” I said. I took her cue and didn’t say her name back. “Up in Charleston! Good to hear from you.”
“I don’t want you in there again.”
“I hear you. I was never going to make a scene or do anything to get you in trouble.”
“It’s not about that. I just mean, Dunk warned me I wasn’t safe in Basking Rock, so you can forget about me coming back there, or seeing you, or ever getting up on any witness stand.”
“Okay,” I agreed. Dunk had told her to leave? That was more than interesting. To keep the flow going, I reassured her, “Most of the witnesses I talk to never set foot in court. They just help me get a step or two closer to the truth.”
“Okay.” I could hear her breathing. After a second, she said, “He wouldn’t want to see his boy spend his life in jail. And nothing I say can hurt him now. So it won’t matter to him if I tell you he was selling something—he used to say fencing, like, fencing stolen goods, but I never seen no goods. It’s not like he had TVs sitting around in boxes.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, that’s real good to know. I’m doing my best to get that boy out of jail, and that helps.”
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “He’s still in there? Don’t people get out on bail?”
“They don’t usually grant bail for murder charges.”
“But I can’t believe he even—I mean, I always thought he was a little scared of his daddy. I don’t mean in a bad way, maybe more just respectful. I mean, angry too, but that’s teenagers, ain’t it.”
“It sure is.” I sighed. “Yeah, I don’t think he did it either. That’s why I’m his lawyer.” I got to Broad Street and swung around the block instead of parking. I wasn’t about to interrupt this conversation.
“Well, I’m sure his daddy would appreciate that.”
“I hope so. Hey, can I ask you, did you ever know his daddy to do heroin?”
“Oh my goodness, no. I dated a user once. Never again.”
“What I’m trying to figure out,” I said, going around another corner, “is why there was heroin on his boat. I don’t know if you heard, but they found some.”
After a second, she said, “Well, like I said, he told me he was dealing in stolen goods. That’s what he called them, but I never saw anything, so them goods must’ve been small. Oh, and he was cocky about it, like he was getting something over on someone.”
“Uh-huh. I hear what you’re saying.”
“Oh,” she said. I heard something urgent in her voice. “I got to go,” she said, and hung up.
I swore at my phone. Then I imagined my phone telling me I was an ingrate, because she’d already told me so much.
I swung around another corner, parked, and got out. Broad Street was two blocks long and derelict. Three boarded-up stores stood in a row, with wild grass and weeds between them that reached past my knees. I went around behind, to the tumbledown shack. Most of the paint was gone, and the door was unlatched. I knew that didn’t mean I could legally go in. I also knew that I had to see the jacket myself before I could let anyone else know it existed. The last thing I needed was a pocket full of drugs, or a bloodstain, or no jacket at all, nothing to show Jackson had ever been there.
I glanced around, then stepped inside. The smell of mold hit me, and something else, a filth that made me think of rats. It was dark. I switched on my phone
