فصل 100 - بخش 07

12

Ralph and Jeannie Anderson were getting ready to go to the meeting at Howie Gold’s office when Ralph’s cell phone rang. It was Horace Kinney. Ralph spoke to him while Jeannie put on her earrings and slipped into her shoes.

‘Thank you, Horace. I owe you one.’ He ended the call.

Jeannie was looking at him expectantly. ‘Well?’

‘Horace sent a THP trooper out to the Bolton place in Marysville. He had a cover story, but what he was really there for—’

‘I know what he was there for.’

‘Uh-huh. According to Mrs Bolton, Claude cooked them breakfast around six o’clock this morning. If you saw Bolton downstairs at four—’

‘I saw the clock when I got up to pee,’ Jeannie said. ‘It was 4:06.’

‘MapQuest says the distance between Flint City and Marysville is four hundred and thirty miles. He never could have made it from here to there in time to make breakfast at six, honey.’

‘The mother could have been lying.’ She said it without much conviction.

‘Sipe – the trooper Horace sent – said he didn’t pick that up on his radar, and thinks he would’ve.’

‘So it’s Terry all over again,’ she said. ‘A man in two places at the same time. Because he was here, Ralph. He was.’

Before he could answer, the doorbell rang. Ralph shrugged on a sportcoat to cover the Glock on his belt and went downstairs. District Attorney Bill Samuels stood on the front stoop, looking strangely unlike himself in jeans and a plain blue tee-shirt.

‘Howard called me. Said there was going to be a meeting – “an informal get-together about the Maitland business,” is how he put it – at his office, and suggested I might like to come. I thought we could go together, if that’s all right.’

‘I guess so,’ Ralph said, ‘but listen, Bill – who else have you told? Chief Geller? Sheriff Doolin?’

‘Nobody. I’m no genius, but I didn’t hit my head falling out of the dumb-tree, either.’

Jeannie joined Ralph at the door, checking her purse. ‘Hello, Bill. I’m surprised to see you here.’

Samuels’s smile was without humor. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m surprised to be here. This case is like a zombie that won’t stay dead.’

‘What does your ex think about all this?’ Ralph asked, and when Jeannie gave him a frown: ‘Just tell me if I’m stepping out of line.’

‘Oh, we’ve discussed it,’ Samuels said. ‘Except that’s not quite right. She discussed and I listened. She thinks I played a part in getting Maitland killed, and she’s not entirely wrong.’ He tried to smile and couldn’t quite make it. ‘But how were we to know, Ralph? Tell me that. It was a slam-dunk, wasn’t it? Looking back … knowing all we did … can you honestly say you would have done anything different?’

‘Yes,’ Ralph said. ‘I wouldn’t have arrested him in front of the whole fucking town, and I would have made sure he went into the courthouse by the back door. Come on, let’s go. We’re going to be late.’