?Were these stashed with the dope??
?No.? Logan can?t suppress a small smirk. ?Folded inside
?
?Have you ID?d the woman? She looks vaguely familiar.?
?Linda Church. Hostess at the Devil?s Punchbowl, one of the bars on the
Born right here in Natchez.?
I raise my eyebrows. ?Who ID?d her??
?One of the patrolmen recognized her. I did too, when I saw the
pictures. She grew up out in Morgantown, like me. She wasn'?t that far behind me in school. I'm eight years younger than you, remember, even if I'm losing my hair faster.?
I smile and nod.
?You never saw Linda on the boat?? he asks.
?I don'?t gamble.?
?Me either. But I go down there and eat with the wife sometimes. Food?s good, and not too expensive.?
?What do you know about her??
?She stripped in Vegas. A lot of people don'?t know that. She went to a juco in Oklahoma, married a guy there. That lasted about ten years. No kids. He left her. She got short of money, started stripping in Oklahoma City, then moved on to Vegas. Not sure why she left, but she came back here and started working the boats. I do remember her from school, though. They called her Butterface.?
?Butterface??
?You know, everything about her was hot but her face.?
I lean forward and examine the pictures more closely. Aside from her high, full breasts and tight bottom, Linda Church has large eyes and good bone structure. ?She looks pretty enough in these pictures.?
?Yeah. It was acne. She had it bad in high school. She?s scarred more than these pictures show. But Linda?s like a lot of country girls, a ten-plus when you see them from behind, a five from the front.?
?So based on these pictures, you think Tim was having an affair with her.?
?Sure looks that way.?
?Jessup?s not in any of the pictures.?
?Would you be, if you were going to keep these around your house??
?I wouldn'?t keep them around my house. And neither would Tim. Julia would castrate him if she found them.?
?No offense, but Jessup has a history of self-destructive behavior.?
?Have you questioned this woman yet??
Logan sighs heavily. ?We can?t find her.?
The moment he says this, I suspect that Linda Church may never be found alive. ?Was she supposed to report for work today??
?Not for another hour yet. We already questioned her coworkers, though. One said she?s positive Jessup and Linda were hooking up on the sly. They kept it secret because of workplace rules.?
If Tim was having an affair with her?or if she was helping him with his plan to steal evidence?why didn't he tell me about her? As soon as I ask myself, I know the answer: Tim didn't want me to judge him for cheating on Julia, if in fact he was doing so.
?Jessup never told you about this girl?? Logan asks.
?Me? We weren?t that close, Don. Not since we were nine years old.?
?Right. But you?re positive he wasn'?t doing drugs.?
Frustrated by the need to conceal my relationship with Tim, I say, ?I'm just telling you what I think.?
?Well, here?s what
think. To an objective investigator, it looks like an old dopehead slid back to his old ways. He was banging a waitress at work and selling meth to keep up his two women.?
?That'?s what it?s supposed to look like. Did you find any meth precursors in Jessup?s house? Any cooking equipment??
Logan shakes his head.
?It?s bullshit, Don. Staged. Every bit of it.?
Logan leans back in his chair and cradles his hands behind his head, his eyes regarding me coolly. ?Were you and Jessup working on something together??
I thought I was ready for this kind of question, but the directness of it takes me by surprise. ?I'm the mayor. He was a blackjack dealer. What could we be working on??
Logan?s eyes remain steady. ?You?re also a novelist. And a lawyer. A former prosecutor.?
?And??
?And a couple of nights ago, one of my patrolmen saw your car out at the cemetery. After midnight. That'?s not far from where Jessup worked. And his shift ended at twelve a.m. this week.?
I shrug as casually as I can. ?I was feeling down, Don. I went out to visit my wife?s grave. I do that sometimes.?
Logan looks as if he?s trying to give me the benefit of the doubt?and failing. ?That'?s what my man said you said. I can respect that. But if anything else happened while you were out there, I?d sure like to know about it.?
I shake my head slowly. ?Nothing. Me and the ghosts, that?s it.?
Logan watches me awhile longer, then says, ?There?s a couple of other things you should know. One, Jessup?s wife is missing.?
?Meaning what? Someone filed a missing persons? report? Or you just can?t find her??
?We can?t find her or her son.?
I shrug again. ?I don'?t know where she is, if that?s what you?re asking. Do you have Tim?s car??
?That'?s the other thing. It?s missing too. Thing is, I?'ve got Linda Church?s cell phone records, and she received a pretty disturbing text message last night shortly before midnight.?
?What did it say??
Logan reaches back into the manila envelope, takes out a small piece of paper, and slides it across his desk. Written on it in pencil are the letters:
?What do you make of this?? Logan asks.
?Tim sent this??
?It was sent from the cell phone of a man whose phone was stolen while he was on the
last night. I think Jessup?s been doing a lot of that lately.?
Logan?s inquisitive eyes probe mine, but I say nothing. At length he says, ?In my experience, strippers have been exposed to pretty much everything. Getting mixed up in a murder for hire wouldn'?t be that big a step for some of them. An objective investigator might look at that text message and see an order to kill Jessup?s wife and child.?
I can?t believe the chief is serious. ?Tim was planning to murder his wife? The woman who saved his life? That'?s ridiculous. You know it is.?
?Brother, two years ago I?d have said it was ridiculous if you told me Dr. Drew Elliot was porking a high school girl. If this job has taught me anything, it?s that you have no idea what people are capable of, not even the people you think you know best.?
?Fair enough. But I'm telling you, Julia Stanton was Tim Jessup?s salvation.?
Logan taps one of the photos on his desk, his finger coming to rest on Linda Church?s shapely derriere. ?Maybe Tim thought
