by Blake Pierce
Fortunately, Jenn spoke up.
“It’s not paranormal or anything like that. It’s just instinct. Agent Paige has got one-in-a-million instincts.”
Kuehling seemed to be getting more excited by the second.
“Wow, what an incredible gift!” she said. “I mean, it must make it amazingly easy to solve murder cases.”
Riley shook her head. “I wish that were true. It’s not an exact science. In fact, it’s not a science at all. It’s really just … well, kind of really intense guessing, I think you could say.”
Bill chuckled and added, “But Agent Paige’s guesses are better than almost anybody else’s hard-thought reasoning and deduction.”
Riley looked at Bill and said, “Yeah, well—don’t forget, I get things wrong once in a while. I might be wrong this time. I mean, for all any of us really know, Chief Crane is right and the killer really was some random drifter.”
But as she said so, she admitted to herself …
I really don’t think so.
Not now.
Her thoughts were distracted by banging and sharp voices coming from one of the houses next door to this one. She walked along the porch to that side, and saw that a pickup truck had parked in front of that house. A ladder now led up to the roof, where three workmen were replacing shingles. At the bottom of the ladder, a rotund man was yelling profanity-laced orders up to them. The men on the roof were answering him with their own cheerful insults.
Cathy Lilly came out through the screen door onto the porch. She walked over beside Riley and called out to the man on the ground …
“Hey, Amos—when are you going to make up your mind about buying this place?”
The man let out a rasping chuckle and yelled up to the men on the roof …
“Y’hear that, boys? The little lady here wants to know when I’m gonna make a decision.”
The men laughed as if they were in on some sort of joke.
Cathy snapped at the man on the ground, “Don’t go holding your breath for me to bring the price down.”
All of the men laughed again.
“We’ll see about that, sweetheart,” the obese man said.
Cathy muttered under her breath, “I’m not your sweetheart, you redneck jerk.”
Then the man turned back to his workman and yelled …
“What’s the matter with you lazy bastards? Get moving, why don’t you?”
One of the men yelled back, “Get moving yourself, Crites!”
“Why don’t you come up here and give us a hand?” another said.
The third said to his companions, “Crites could never get his fat ass up here. He’d bust the ladder to pieces if he tried.”
The man on the ground snarled at the insult and yelled …
“Don’t forget who signs your checks, you good-for-nothing peckerwoods. I’ve got half a mind to replace you with some Mexicans. They’ll work a whole lot cheaper—and not a whole lot worse, I don’t reckon.”
The man watched as his team resumed their work.
Riley said to Cathy, “I take it that’s the man you mentioned—the one who owns the houses on both sides of this one.”
Cathy nodded and said, “Yep, that’s Amos Crites. In a town full of jerks, he must be just about the nastiest. Well, that’s enough of him for a while. I’d better get back inside, make sure things are going OK with the movers.”
Riley thanked Cathy for her cooperation and gave her a card with her contact information. When Cathy went back into the house, Riley said to her colleagues and the two cops, “It’s time we started doing some interviews. We might as well start with this Amos Crites guy.”
Samantha Kuehling was beaming with delight now. Riley sensed that she was excited to be part of a real investigation. But her partner, Dominic Wolfe, still looked puzzled. He seemed to be having a hard time grasping what was going on.
They all walked down the stairs and over to the next house. As they approached Amos Crites, Riley, Bill, and Jenn produced their badges and introduced themselves.
Crites chuckled snidely.
“Feds, huh?” he said.
He looked directly at Jenn as if in disbelief, then laughed caustically.
Riley immediately understood his unspoken racism. The idea of an African-American working in Federal-level law enforcement clearly amused him, and he wanted everybody to know it.
Riley could see Jenn clench her fists as she struggled to keep quiet.
The man’s laughter died down and he said, “Well, I guess Gareth Ogden’s daughter told you all about me.”
“Not really,” Riley said.
She held her tongue not to add …
Except to say you’re a jerk.
Which anyone can see at a glance.
Crites said, “Cathy Lilly knows right well I won’t buy the Ogden house for the price she’s got in mind. She’ll bring it down soon, and she’ll bring it down a lot. She don’t know no better.”
Bill asked, “What do you mean?”
Crites took off his baseball hat and fanned himself with it.
He said, “The damn fool folks in this town are suckers for this ‘global warming’ crap. They think property values here are down for good. A lot of them are desperate to sell and get the hell out. All I gotta do is wait—they’ll sell for peanuts sooner or later. I’m sure you city folks know better. Hell, you’re probably in on the whole damn hoax.”
Crites was sweating heavily from the heat, and his face was bright red.
He added, “Sure, it’s been hot here these last few years. It’s been a nasty spell. But it ain’t gonna to keep getting worse like those so-called climatologists keep saying, and it won’t go on being this hot forever. It’s all cyclical-like, you see.”
Crites sighed and looked upward, as if basking in dreams of better times to come.
“You mark my words,” he said, “we’re due for some really fine weather here in Rushville. It’ll be here to stay for a good long time. Tourism will come back and property values will go through the roof. And I’ll come out on top, and everybody else here’ll look like the ignorant crackers they really are.”
Crites took a cigar out of his shirt pocket and lit it. Its cheap smell wafted disagreeably in the suffocating air.
He said, “But I don’t guess you Feds want to talk to me about real estate. No, I reckon you’re here to discuss what happened to Gareth Ogden. Poor bastard, it’s a real shame.”
Bill asked, “Do you have any ideas about who might have wanted to kill him?”
Crites blew a smoke ring and said, “Hell, it’s hard to say. Folks here in Rushville ain’t exactly the friendliest people in Mississippi. Lots of ’em would probably like to kill each other if they got the chance, especially in this kind of heat.”
Crites shuffled his feet and took another puff on his cigar.
“Sad, though, about Gareth,” he added. “Not the nicest fellow in the world—but I guess that’s kind of a pot-and-kettle thing for a guy like me to say. But somebody’d have to hate him especially bad to do him in that way—with a hammer, or so they tell me.”
Riley asked, “How well did you know him?”
Crites said, “Oh, we were pals, Gareth and me. I used to stop by at nights around his house about the time he was killed for some beer and a chat. I guess I should’ve been there that night. For sure, I’d have stopped whoever the killer was.”
Jenn let out a sarcastic chuckle.
“And how would you have done that?” she asked.
Crites scowled, apparently peeved that she had the nerve to ask him anything at all.
He said, “With my gun, gal. With my gun. I never leave home nights without my Smith & Wesson 627. I carry it in my shoulder holster, where anyone who wants to mess with me can see it. It’s perfectly legal, in case you’re wondering.”
He huffed himself up and added …
“We got proper respect for the Second Amendment here in Mississippi, let me tell you. The law here is open
carry, no license required. ’Course, I guess you Feds have got different ideas of what the law should be. Don’t start preaching to me about it—that’s an argument you’re sure to lose.”
He let out a grunt of contempt.
“What happened to Gareth is all the proof I need. If you go taking away everybody’s guns, folks will use whatever’s at hand. A hammer will do as good as anything. So what are you gonna do, start banning hammers? Don’t make me laugh.”
Riley had heard all this before. Unlike a hammer, a handgun was a tool with only one use, and that was to kill people. But she wasn’t interested in opening up what could be a complicated discussion about all that, or about who should wield such tools.
Instead she asked, “Did you try to talk Gareth Ogden into selling his house?”
Crites smiled widely, as if Riley had finally gotten around to asking him something really interesting.
He said, “As a matter of fact, I did. When I’d come over to see him nights, we’d always get around to discussing it sooner or later. And to tell the truth, sometimes we’d get a little het up about it. But he was stubborn about the price, just like his daughter. Said he had to get enough out of it to get well away from here.”
With a note of contempt in her voice, Jenn said …
“It sounds like you wanted it really badly. Beachfront property like this has a real future.”
Crites looked at the young African-American agent with a sneer.
“I surely did, at that,” he said. “And I guess you think that makes me a suspect. Clever girl, aren’t you? Takes real intelligence to come to that conclusion. I wouldn’t have guessed it from you.”
Riley could see that Jenn was quietly seething.
Riley figured she’d better take over asking questions before Jenn lost her temper.
She said, “Mr. Crites, would you mind telling us where you were when Gareth Ogden was killed”
Crites took a leisurely puff on his cigar and blew the smoke toward Riley and her companions.
He said, “Would you care to remind me exactly when that was?”
Riley stated the date and time of the murder.
Still smiling, Crites said, “Hmm, well. That’s kind of hard to say. Maybe I was out playing poker with some of the boys. Maybe I was home watching TV. Or maybe I was drinking whiskey at the bar. Maybe I was with some local hooker—and we’ve got some nice ones in this town, you’d be surprised.”
He grinned and looked at Riley and the others.
“Truth is, you don’t know, do you?” he said. “Now the question is—how bad do you suspect me, exactly? Enough to arrest me? Should I be giving my lawyer a ring? If that’s the way things are, I guess I could think up a pretty good alibi in a pinch.”
Then his sneer turned sinister.
“But things ain’t to that point, are they?” he said with a growl. “At least not yet. So I’ve got no reason to say another word to you Feds. And I’ll thank you for hauling your Yankee asses off my property.”
He turned back toward his house and started yelling at his workers again.
Jenn took a threatening step toward him, but Riley stopped her.
Riley said to her, “Hey—what do you think you’re doing?”
Through clenched teeth, Jenn said, “It’s him. He’s the killer.”
Touching Jenn on the shoulder, Riley said, “Jenn, listen to me. We can’t do anything about him now. Let’s go talk over what we need to do next.”
As Riley and her FBI colleagues and the two local cops walked away from the house, she thought …
Jenn could just be right.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Riley could see that Jenn was still angry when the three agents and the two local cops gathered beside their parked cars.
The young agent snapped, “Crites knows we’re on to him. He’s liable to flee town and disappear if we don’t arrest him right now.”
Bill said, “We can’t arrest him. We don’t have anything to bring him in on.”
“Hell, he practically confessed!” Jenn retorted.
“He did nothing of the kind,” Riley said. “He was definitely taunting us, but we don’t know why. It might just be because he doesn’t like Feds.”
Bill asked Officers Kuehling and Wolfe, “What do the two of you know about Amos Crites? Do you think he’s capable of murder?”
Officer Wolfe shrugged and said, “He’s always been one mean son-of-a-bitch.”
Officer Kuehling added, “Everyone in town knows it. His wife left him years ago because of his abuse. He used to get into fights a lot, especially in bars, and he got arrested for assault a few times. Age has slowed him down. He doesn’t fight that much anymore, but he’s still mean.”
Kuehling paused, then added, “Murder? I don’t know about that. But I guess it’s hard to say what Amos Crites could be capable of if he got mad enough.”
Riley looked back toward the house, where Crites was exchanging banter with his workmen again. He was waving an arm toward Riley and her companions, and his workmen were laughing at whatever he was saying.
Riley thought …
I guess he thought he pulled a pretty good joke at our expense.
But was Crites really a killer, or …
Is he just an asshole?
She reminded herself that the two possibilities weren’t mutually exclusive.
He might be both an asshole and a killer, for all she knew.
But right now, her instincts weren’t telling her much of anything.
Bill said, “Maybe Crites would be more willing to talk to Chief Crane. Maybe we should ask Crane to come by and—”
Kuehling gently interrupted.
“Not a chance. The chief would never make waves with Amos Crites. He owns too much property in town.”
Riley nodded as she remembered how angry Crane had been, especially with Riley …
I definitely made an enemy there.
He’d offered them no support at all—just the assistance of these two cops, whom he seemed to hold in low regard.
“I’ll give you Feds a chance to see what you can do,” he’d said.
“I’ll be pretty damned surprised if you find anything.”
Riley suppressed a sigh as she thought …
Crane would love to see us fail.
It was apparently up to her, Bill, Jenn, and the two local cops to solve this case on their own, without any help from Crane or anybody else on his force.
Riley thought for a moment, then said to Kuehling and Wolfe …
“Do you know where the paperboy lives? The one who found Ogden’s body?”
Kuehling nodded and said, “You can follow us there.”
Kuehling and Wolfe got into their police car. When Riley and Bill opened the doors of their FBI vehicle, Jenn just stood sullenly with her arms crossed.
Riley asked, “Jenn, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m staying here to keep an eye on Crites,” Jenn said. “If nobody else is going to do it, it’s up to me. I’ll follow him around all day if I have to.”
Riley said, “He’s not a flight risk, Jenn, and you know it. He’s got too much property here to make a run for it. And he doesn’t think he has anything to fear from us. He’ll stay in town.”
Although she didn’t say so, Riley was also worried that Jenn might wind up in a physical altercation with the guy. Riley was sure Crites would be delighted to bring a charge of harassment against them. That was the last thing they all needed right now.
When Jenn continued to balk at getting into the car, Bill barked impatiently …
“Roston, let’s go. That’s a goddamn order.”
With a low growl of complaint, Jenn gave in and climbed into the back seat. Riley and Bill also got in, and Bill started up the car to follow the cops’ car.
Jenn muttered to Riley, “I suppose this is where you accuse me of not being objective.”
Riley felt her own anger rising now.
She k
new perfectly well that Jenn was reacting to Crites’s unconcealed racism. Riley had felt a similar fury at misogynistic jerks who didn’t think women should be FBI agents. And Jenn had to deal with both of those problems. But an agent had to keep those personal resentments under control.
And now Jenn was not only unloading her frustrations on her partners, she was getting dangerously close to accusing Riley herself of harboring racist feelings.
Riley and Jenn hadn’t been working together for very long, and although they’ve had some conflicts early on, nothing like this had ever come up between them before.
Riley fought down a rash urge to call Jenn out about her hinted assumption, to have it out with her and clear the air, but …
Don’t do it, she thought.
For one thing, a guy like Crites would be thrilled to know he was having a toxic effect on their relationship.
Instead she said …
“Jenn, stop thinking like that. We’ll get to the bottom of this. And if Crites is our man, we’ll bring him in.”
They all fell silent as Bill continued to drive them through the little town.
Riley found herself remembering what Crites had said a few minutes ago about the people here in Rushville …
“Lots of ’em would probably like to kill each other if they got the chance, especially in this kind of heat.”
Whatever else Crites may have been lying about, he could be telling the truth about that. Rushville seemed to bring out something mean in people, and she didn’t think it was just because of the weather.
It occurred to Riley that she, Bill, and Jenn had to be careful. This oppressive, suffocating, and disagreeable atmosphere could get to them too.
We might turn mean ourselves before we know it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
During the short drive to the house where the paperboy lived, Riley was feeling apprehensive. She always dreaded talking to traumatized witnesses, especially children.
They followed a narrow street into a neighborhood quite a few blocks away from the beach. The area was desolate and rundown—no sidewalks, patchy grass in the sandy soil, and rows of beat-up ranch houses badly in need of paint.
