“Jackson,” I said, gently, “why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Pete’s still out there,” he said. “And he’s got friends in here. In jail, I mean.”
I asked, “That how your jaw got broken?”
He nodded. Then he looked at me and said, “Mr. Munroe, I got no evidence of this, but I think Pete killed my dad. But I would rather take the fall and stay in jail for thirty years than give him any cause to hurt my mom.”
34
Tuesday, December 17, Afternoon
After they took Jackson back to jail, I drove to my office. I needed a quiet place to think. Roy was golfing, and Laura never intruded.
Jackson had made it clear he didn’t want me to put in one word of evidence that Karl was a dealer. Even if I named no other names and never mentioned any cartel, it still got too close to Pete. And if I had any doubt left that Jackson was a smart kid, he erased it when he said, “Anybody can come watch the trial, right? You said it’s public. If one day they hear you saying my dad was dealing heroin, how do they know that tomorrow you’re not going to start talking about Pete?”
I went over what Garrett had told me, or allowed me to understand. If Blount was being blackmailed, that explained a lot, but there wasn’t much I could do with it. It was impossible to call up the lead detective in my current murder trial and tell him, “Hey, if it so happens you committed a crime that some cartel is blackmailing you about, I got a friend willing to offer immunity, but please call him before you testify any more against my client.” If he didn’t embrace that offer with open arms, I’d get kicked off the case for witness tampering. Jackson would be shunted off to some public defender with a hundred other clients, while I tried to convince the ethics board not to revoke my law license.
Garrett had suggested that more than one person connected to my case might be interested in his immunity deal. And he’d paused on one word I said: infiltrated.
I got on my computer and started searching the Blue Seas files. In twenty minutes I pulled up over a hundred contracts. Carpet cleaning, silverware, laundry. No waste contract.
I had pictured Dupree going after that contract in order to use Blue Seas as a cover. But if I was reading Garrett’s hint right, Blue Seas wasn’t tricked. They were in on it.
I remembered Henry at the shrimp fest, standing there and taking all the ridicule Dunk was dishing out. If Dunk was our local blackmailer, that made sense. On the other hand, Dunk’s remark about Henry’s wife—what was it? “My strip club is the least of her worries”? That sounded more like what Dunk had on him was adultery. I had no trouble seeing Henry as a cheating husband. That was far more likely than him being involved in some drug cartel.
But small-town adultery was of zero interest to Garrett. That was not what he’d been talking about.
I picked up my phone.
“Leland!” Henry said. “You win your murder case already? I wasn’t expecting you to call in the middle of the day.”
I laughed. Henry was a nice guy. Or he had social skills. I wasn’t sure which.
“Not quite there yet,” I said. “We got a recess, though. And I dropped by the office because a Blue Seas issue was nagging at me. It’s a little delicate. I was thinking maybe you could come in for a quick chat?”
“Oh my. Uh, today is a mess—any chance you could come here?”
“This is actually something we might want to insulate,” I said. “Make sure nobody overhears.”
“My goodness.” He thought for a second. “And I’m in Charleston tomorrow. But I could stop in on my way. Maybe seven a.m.? Before court?”
“See you then.”
Terri texted to say she had something on the snitch. I asked if she could come to the office. Then I went to the door, leaned out, and let Laura know if she wanted, she could leave early, do some Christmas shopping or whatever. She said thanks, grabbed her purse, and headed out.
When Terri got there, she looked serious. Her normal big smile was just a flicker when I said hello.
“You got bad news?”
She looked around the office. “You by yourself?”
“Yeah, I sent Laura home.”
“Okay. I got… kind of scary news.”
She walked past me into my office, sat where a client would, and set her laptop on the desk. I got us both coffees while she was starting it up.
When I came back, she had a document on her screen that started with a mug shot. It was a kid, maybe twenty years old. “This is our snitch,” she said. “He’s awaiting trial for vandalism.”
“He’s been in the county jail for two-plus months on vandalism charges?”
“He was pro se,” she said, meaning he didn’t have a lawyer at his arraignment, “and he couldn’t make bail.”
I set her coffee down. “What’s the scary part?”
“His license and all the papers for this case have a local address,” she said. “But when I searched for previous addresses, look what came up.”
I peered at her screen. “Holy shit. Isn’t that Pete Dupree’s old house? Who is this kid?”
“Well, his name’s not Dupree. But that’s where his driver’s license said he lived before he came here. And he only came here this summer.” She was
