Friction (23 page)

Conrad looked at her with new interest. “You sneaked out of your house?”

“Something I haven’t done since I was a teenager.”

Laughing, he slapped the arms of his recliner. “I’m glad to hear you got up to mischief. I was beginning to think you were too perfect.”

“Oh, no. I went through a very brief rebellious phase right after my father left, before I accepted my new role as head of the family.”

“How come you snuck out tonight?”

Before she could reply, Crawford did. “She came to see me. We can’t be seen together, so—”

“Why can’t you be seen together? You’re working the shooting case.”

“Not anymore.” Crawford gave him a condensed rundown of the day’s events.

As he finished, Conrad was shaking his head with disgust, but the first words out of his mouth were regarding Georgia. “Your little girl come through it all right?”

“Yeah. Thank God. She was unaware of what was going on. Didn’t see me whaling into her grandpa.”

“You want my opinion, Joe Gilroy had it coming just for being Joe Gilroy.”

Crawford glanced over at Holly before saying, “I’ll pay for it. It might be a while before I’m allowed to see Georgia again.”

Conrad cursed under his breath. “I can’t believe he hit you with a restraining order.”

“We’re waiting on a date for the hearing. I’ll fight it. But even if I win that battle, there’s this other.”

Conrad said, “Neal Lester is a pompous fool with lots to prove, which makes him a
dangerous
pompous fool.”

“This wild hair he has about Crawford is ridiculous,” Holly said.

“A wild hair underscored by Chuck Otterman’s lie,” Crawford added.

Conrad stroked his chin. “Why would Otterman lie to incriminate you?”

“I have no idea. Holly and I were discussing it when Smitty called to tell me that you were drunk and disorderly. What was that about? You’ve been drunk for real so many times, why the playacting?”

“Because I didn’t want anybody to guess what I was really doing there.”

“I’ll bite,” Crawford said. “What were you really doing there?”

“Spying on Chuck Otterman.”

Crawford felt like he’d been clipped behind the knees. Was Conrad the missing link to Otterman that he’d been searching for? He walked over to the sofa and sat down on the arm of it near Holly. “You were spying on Otterman? Why? Did you ever prosecute him?”

“No. At least I don’t think so.”

“Then what do you know about him?”

“Only what I’ve read.” He waited a beat. “Plus what I gathered from my personal experience with him.”

“The surprises just keep coming. I didn’t know you had any personal experience with Otterman.”

“Well, there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Apparently. Tell me something I don’t know, Conrad.”

“I applied for a job out there at the man camp.”

“When?”

“Last year. Wintertime. Don’t remember what month, but it was cold.”

“You don’t know anything about that industry.”

“I figured I could empty trash cans. They have a maintenance and sanitation crew.”

“And you have a law degree,” Crawford snapped. “Or did.”

Conrad grimaced and looked at Holly with embarrassment. “Last winter was a low point, even for me. I was out of work for months. Electric company cut me off. I needed money to get my heat back on.”

Shame unspooled inside Crawford. He hated that she was hearing this, but at least now he no longer had to dread her learning just how polluted his gene pool was.

“Did you get the job?” she asked.

“Didn’t want it. While I was in the office filling out the application form, a truck came roaring up with an injured man inside. And by
injured
, I mean bad. His arm had been mangled by a piece of machinery. It was hanging on by a thread, literally. He was in shock. Seemed to take forever for the ambulance to get there.

“Meanwhile, Otterman went on a rampage, yelling at everybody. He ordered some men to get the truck cleaned out. Blood was sloshing in the floorboard, and that’s no exaggeration.

“He told two other men to get back out to the rig where the accident had taken place and to fix whatever had malfunctioned before OSHA came calling. They were also told to pass out cash ‘bonuses’ to the crewmen who had witnessed the accident.”

Crawford said, “He bribed them to go deaf, dumb, and blind when the federal inspectors arrived.”

“Exactly. During all this ranting and raving, he didn’t show an iota of concern for the man who was in danger of bleeding out. That changed when the EMTs arrived. It was like somebody had tripped a switch inside him. He put on quite a show. Saint Chuck. Benevolent and caring. All but laid on hands and prayed over the guy he’d taken no notice of up till then.”

Conrad made a face. “Sickened me. Broke as I was and needing that job, I tore up the form, left, and never went back. I’d rather be a career drunk than work for a man that two-sided. If I was still a prosecutor, I’d be on him like white on rice.”

“Looking for what?”

“Don’t know,” he replied to Crawford. “But I think Mr. Chuck Otterman must have a moonlighting business.”

“What makes you think so?”

“When he’s in these clubs—”

“Which clubs?”

“Like Smitty’s places.”

“You’ve seen him before tonight?”

“Lots of times.” Conrad looked over at Holly and gave her a pathetic smile. “I’ve been known to patronize some of the seedier establishments around. But I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

She smiled at him. “You’re sober now?”

“Sixty-four days.”

“Excellent start. Congratulations.”

“I’m also gainfully employed.”

“Where?”

“At the sawmill.”

During their chummy exchange, Crawford had left his perch on the arm of the sofa and made a circuit of the living room. It was straighter than he’d ever seen it. He looked through the open doorway into the kitchen. The sink was clear of dirty dishes, the counter free of coagulated spills, the floor swept. On surface, it appeared as though Conrad might truly be making an earnest stab at sobriety.

But his history didn’t foreshadow success. Crawford had been disappointed too many times to believe that this new leaf would be any different from many others, so he doused his flicker of optimism and brought his mind back to Otterman.

Speaking his thought aloud, he said, “He supports local politicians and judges, but spends his evenings in strip joints.”

“Where he drinks only moderately if at all,” Conrad said. “He ignores the dancing girls. But he’s never idle. He holds meetings like the ones he held today.”

Crawford had already heard this from Smitty. “Who’d he meet with today?”

“It was a freakin’ parade,” Conrad said. “And, like anybody at a parade, I took pictures.”

He reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a cell phone, which surprised Crawford, since Conrad had never owned one.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Winn-Dixie.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Why?”

Conrad looked at him with annoyance. “You want to see these or not?”

Crawford took the phone from him and accessed the photos gallery. “Why are you just now getting around to telling me that you have pictures of Otterman?”

“I was pacing myself. Besides, you kept interrupting.”

As Crawford punched through the photos in the file, Conrad continued to talk.

“See the two guys sitting at the table nearest the booth? Bodyguards. I nicknamed them Frick and Frack, the shorter of them being Frick. But they’re no-nonsense. Armed. I saw the bulges. They came in with Otterman, left with him, were very attentive the whole time he was there, didn’t drink, weren’t distracted by the show.”

“Why would he need bodyguards?” Holly asked.

“Good question,” Crawford said. An even better question was why Smitty hadn’t mentioned Otterman being there today, knowing that Crawford would have paid him for that information. He would take that up with the slimy bastard later. Right now, Conrad had his attention.

“Men came and went,” he was saying. “Otterman talked to each separately, and their conversations ranged in length.”

“Did anything change hands?” Crawford asked.

“Not that I saw, and I was looking for things like envelopes of cash. Maybe the clubs are only used as a place to negotiate terms, and the transfers take place somewhere else.”

Conrad could be right. Also, Crawford had done enough computer-age detective work to know that bank account passwords were as good as, often better than, legal tender. “Okay, go on.”

“That’s basically it,” Conrad said. “He left with Frick and Frack. I put on my one-man show.”

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

“I was supposed to be drunk on my ass, remember? I was afraid if I tried to drive, they’d call the cops, who would either have thrown me in jail without administering a blood test, in which case I’d be stuck there, my phone confiscated. Or they’d have drawn blood, realized I was faking, and then what? Where would you be?” He grinned. “Told you I was a good snoop. You can thank me later.”

The images taken by the cell phone camera were grainy because of the dim lighting inside the club. Conrad had fiddled with the zoom periodically, causing some of the photos to be out of focus, and there were a couple of close-ups of his thumb. But Crawford had to give the old man credit for his ingenuity.

In several of the shots, he’d caught Otterman doing his trick with the coin. He recalled how Conrad had described him. “Two-sided.”

He hadn’t realized that he’d spoken the thought under his breath until Conrad called him on it. “Come again?”

“That thing he does with the coin—”

“He was doing that on the occasion I met him,” Holly said and imitated the motion.

“He’s two-sided. Can change personalities in an instant. Two sides of a coin. Is there a parallel, an inside joke he’s playing on everyone?” Crawford shrugged over his own conjecture, then, looking back at Conrad, he asked, “No one noticed you photographing him?”

“With all those bouncing tits—” He looked over at Holly. “
Girls
to look at? No one was paying any attention to a hopeless drunk getting progressively plastered, which…” He placed his hand over his heart, saying to Holly, “I regret to say, I have a reputation for doing.”

The old man’s ability to charm her rankled, so Crawford focused on his task. Tapping on the next photograph, it immediately gave him pause. The man facing Otterman across the table was wearing a cowboy hat. The brim cast a shadow over his face, so nothing much was showing underneath it except for his hair. The way it was pressed flat against—

Hastily he applied his fingers to the screen to enlarge the picture so he could see the man’s features better, and when he got a good look, he recognized him instantly. “Holy shit.” He took in every detail, making certain that he was right before holding the phone down to where Holly could see it. “Look familiar?”

Without hesitation, she whispered, “That’s the gunman in the courtroom.”

“You’re sure?”

“One hundred percent. I wouldn’t know his face because of the mask, but the hair is exactly the same.”

“That’s what I noticed first. But we gotta be sure.”

“I am.”

“He’s a cop.”

She gave Crawford a swift glance, then looked again at the cell phone screen. “Yes! I’ve seen him in the courthouse. Never wearing a hat, though. I don’t know his name.”

“I do.”

C
rawford headed for the door.

Holly shot to her feet and went after him. “Where are you going?”

“To make some calls. Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

She watched him through the screen door as he leaped over the steps of the porch and landed in the yard, his cell phone already in hand.

“He’s always been like that,” Conrad said from his recliner. “Agile and quick as a whip, even as a baby. Took after his mother that way. She was a dancer, you know.”

“A dancer?” Holly looked back at him from over her shoulder. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“She had a studio out at the strip mall, taught ballet and tap dancing. Jazz. All of it. Each spring, she put on this big recital at the civic center. Everybody in town went. Quite a show. Took months for ladies to sew all the spangles on the costumes.”

Holly remembered the ballet slippers in Georgia’s bedroom and wondered if that was a deliberate or subconscious link Crawford had formed between his daughter and mother.

Conrad was staring into space, sadness weighing down his facial features.

“She was beautiful and talented, and I guess that made her feel entitled to better. To more. She talked a lot about being unfulfilled.”

Then he stirred, gathered himself, and gestured toward the yard where Crawford was pacing, his cell phone to his ear. “His mother and I were sorry excuses for parents. He turned out better than anybody had a right to expect.”

“Better than he gives himself credit for,” Holly said, speaking more to herself than to Conrad.

“You’ve come to know him well after only three days.”

“Seems longer.”

“When did you sleep together?”

She whirled around and looked at him with astonishment.

He chuckled over her guilty reaction. “Thought so.”

“Mr. Hunt, Conrad—”

He raised a hand to stop her. “No explanation necessary. But I’m guessing that the timing of it was…problematic.”

At her pained expression, he said, “Admit nothing, judge. I don’t need to know. Don’t
want
to know. I just hope it works out okay, because, as women go, he’s had it rough. His mother ran off. His wife died.” He paused, his gaze narrowing a fraction. “He loves that little girl of his. Be a damn shame if he lost her, too.”

“It won’t be up to me. I recused myself.”

“Under the circumstances, that was the ethical thing to do. But forgive me for saying, you don’t look too happy about it.”

“I feel an obligation to people who’ve put their trust in me and my career. I don’t want to let them down.”

Studying her, he frowned thoughtfully. “This thing between you and Crawford, has it made you, or would it make you, an inferior judge? Would you be less good on the bench because of it?”

“No. In fact, I’d be better. He’s made me realize and accept that gray areas do exist. I used to see only black and white.”

“Go with that, Holly, and stop beating yourself up. I happen to be an expert on disappointing people, and I can tell you from experience that the more you
worry
about doing it, the more you do it. Fear of failing someone becomes self-fulfilling.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” They exchanged a smile.

Then he looked through the door at Crawford. “I’d like to see him happy.”

“I saw him with Georgia for the first time today. While he was with her, he was happy, lit up from the inside. And why wouldn’t he be? She’s adorable.”

“Is she?” In his rheumy eyes, a flicker of joy was almost instantly replaced by sorrow. “He won’t let me see her.”

It was plain to Holly how deeply that rejection affected him. “Perhaps he’ll change his mind.”

“No, no. I don’t blame him a bit. I don’t want my granddaughter to know me like this.” He raised his hands to encompass himself and his environment. “An old alky fighting with every breath to stay sober? No. I don’t want Georgia to have that image of me any more than he wants to expose her to such.

“No, if ever a day comes when he wants to acquaint her with her Grandpa Conrad, I’d like him to show her a picture of me from thirty years ago when I was feared by some of the meanest sons of bitches in this state. When I was the bane of the best defense lawyers, and had the utmost respect of judges,” he said, adding a wink. “I’d like him to tell her about how I was before… Well, before.” His smile was wistful. “I’d be proud for my grandchild to know me in that light.”

Crawford looked back through the screen door and wondered what Holly and his old man were talking about with such absorption. Annoyed because he’d called the same number three times without success, he paced a tight circle as he redialed it once again.

“Come on, come on, jerk-off. I know you’re there.” This time the phone was answered with a timorous hello.

“Nugent?”

“Stop calling me. I can’t talk to you.”

“Where’s Neal? I’ve tried every number several times.”

“He checked out to go to dinner with his family.”

“I don’t care how you manage it, just find him, tell him he needs to get an arrest warrant for Pat Connor. Joseph Patrick Connor. He’s on the list of PD officers who were on duty and inside the courthouse at the time of the shooting.”

“I know. He was questioned and released.”

“Erroneously. Text me Connor’s street address. Also, tell Neal to get a search warrant for his home, car, everything. Are you getting all this? Write it down if you need to. Tell Neal to meet me at Connor’s house with those warrants. I’ll go on ahead, make sure he’s there, and keep an eye on him till Neal arrives. And—this is very important—notify the sheriff’s office that somebody needs to go out to the man camp and bring Chuck Otterman in for questioning.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Crawford shouted, “Do I sound like I’m kidding?”

“Neal’s already on the brink of firing me. If I tell him this came from you—”

“He’s not going to fire you. You’re a county commissioner’s nephew. Don’t forget to text me that address. I need it now. And if you screw this up, Neal will be the least of your worries because I’ll throttle you myself. Get your butt in gear. Time to man up, Nugent.”

Crawford disconnected, accessed Conrad’s phone, and hastily emailed himself the photo of Pat Connor in conversation with Otterman. He strode toward the porch, hurdled the steps, pulled open the screen door, and with an underhand throw, tossed Conrad his cell phone. “Guess I owe you a thanks.”

“Guess you do.”

“It was a damn crazy thing you did. Risky. But it gave me the break in the case I needed. Thanks.”

“I’m glad I could do something for you.”

Father and son held each another’s gaze for several beats, then Crawford reached for Holly’s hand. “Let’s go.”

With her in tow, he walked hurriedly to his SUV. As he steered it down the potholed drive toward the main road, he told her that he had put things into motion. “We’ll have Connor in custody within the hour. I predict he’ll give up Otterman as leverage for a life sentence, because he faces the death penalty if convicted of killing Chet.”

“You still believe Otterman was behind it?”

“Someone was. Pat Connor doesn’t have the imagination or initiative to pull off something like Monday’s attack.”

“Assuming it’s Otterman, how did he get Connor to agree to do it?”

“Otterman’s got to be holding something bad over Pat’s head. He knows where the body’s buried. A gambling debt. Something. We need to find out what it is, so we’ll have our own bargaining chip.”

With that in mind, he reached for his phone and called Harry Longbow. Crawford told him that he had identified the courthouse shooter and gave him Connor’s full name.

“Prentiss PD officer. A long-timer with low rank. Not even a beat cop any more. He provides security at the courthouse. Damn! I just remembered. He was one of the cops guarding Holly at the press conference the other day. Neal told me that all those officers had been cleared.”

“Another confidence-booster,” Harry drawled. “What’s this Connor’s beef with you?”

“I don’t think he has one. Or with Judge Spencer. He’s somebody’s puppet.”

“Otterman?”

“Top of my list. They had a one-on-one this afternoon in a strip joint.” Crawford described the meeting. “I have the photo, which proves an alliance of some sort. I’m guessing it’s unholy.”

“You want me to research that?”

“Hate to dump it in your lap, Harry.”

“You’ve got your hands full. Sessions is still working it, too. Hasn’t come up for air in hours.”

“Thanks. Start with recent deposits to Pat Connor’s bank account that don’t look like cop pay. The mother lode would be if you could trace funds of unknown origin to Otterman.”

“I’m getting hard already.”

“Rein it in. I doubt it’ll be that easy.”

“Me, too, but, you know, we can hope. Anything else?”

“Yeah. How was breakfast?”

It took Harry a moment to piece it together, then he sighed. “She told you?”

“Call me the second you have something.” Crawford disconnected and glanced over at Holly. “What did you and Conrad talk about?”

“How much he cares for you.”

He made a scoffing sound. “That’s a laugh.”

“He didn’t profess it in so many words, but the message came through loud and clear.”

“Funny, I never got that message.”

“Maybe you weren’t listening.”

He shot her an angry look. “And maybe he saw a gullible audience for his sob stories. Did he tell you he wasn’t invited to my wedding?”

“No.”

“Huh. That’s one of his favorites. Beth urged me to include him. I refused. I told her that if he was sent an invitation, the
groom
would be a no-show.”

Seeing the reproach in Holly’s expression, he said sourly, “Before you go tearing up for poor Conrad, you should know why I was so dead set against having him as a wedding guest.

“See, over my objections, my aunt asked him to go with her to my high school graduation. He came, but he didn’t see me walk across the stage and get my diploma. Before they got to the H’s, he puked his guts up in the aisle of the auditorium. He was ejected by men he was cursing at the top of his lungs and trying to fight off. He created the biggest spectacle in commencement history, and that dubious record still stands.”

“I’m sorry, Crawford.”

“Doesn’t matter.” His flippancy only underscored that it did matter—a lot. She probably picked up on that. Feeling defensive, he said, “I’m telling you this crap for just one reason, and that’s so you won’t be taken in by Conrad’s charm. Believe me, it never lasts long.”

Since leaving Conrad’s house, he’d had the mag-mount on the roof of his SUV and lights flashing behind the grille. But once he left the highway and neared her neighborhood, he turned them off. “No one needs to know where you’ve been tonight. Can you sneak back in?”

“I sneaked out. Drop me on the street to the south of the main house.”

Taking the last corner with his headlights off, he rolled to a stop at the side of the narrow lane. Through the trees, he could barely make out the roofline of her cottage. He disliked the darkness and all the good hiding places in the surrounding shrubbery. “I should see you in, check your house.”

“There’s no need. There never was. I wasn’t the one in danger.”

“We could be wrong.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Neither do I, but I won’t breathe easy until Pat Connor and Otterman are in custody.”

She placed her hand on his arm and squeezed it gently. “Be careful.”

“I always am.”

“You
never
are.”

She said it with a teasing lilt, but he remained unsmiling as he removed his arm from her hand. “Save that for the hearing. You can swear to it under oath.”

“Crawford—”

“I gotta go.”

“Would you rather have been arrested in front of Georgia?”

“Now’s not the time to talk about this.”

“Then why’d you’d make that snide remark?”

“Why’d you make that deal with Joe?”

“Because he gave me two options, and both were crummy. I had to make a snap decision and act on it. You, of all people,” she said, jabbing the air between them with her index finger, “should relate to that.”

Giving him no time to respond, she shoved open the passenger door, dropped to the ground, then slammed the door closed. She jogged toward the azalea hedge and disappeared into the foliage.

Dammit, he wanted to go after her, finish the fight, then get her naked and watch her boil over for a different reason entirely.

Swearing, he put the SUV into reverse and backed all the way to the corner.

Holly’s cell phone rang just as she was unobtrusively letting herself in through the back door. She halfway expected it to be Crawford, calling to apologize, or to continue their argument. But the number in her LED wasn’t his.

“Hello?”

“Judge Spencer, Greg Sanders.”

The very sound of his voice made her shiver. “How did you get my cell number?”

“I have resources.”

“Your client base.”

Ignoring the droll remark, he said, “A lot’s happened since our conversation at the elevator the other day. You’ve had a harrowing week. Did you get my roses?”

“A thank-you note is in the mail.”

“You liked them, then?”

“They were thorny.”

He snorted a laughed.

She wanted to hang up on him, but she wondered what was behind the unprecedented call. “We’ve exhausted the topic of the roses.”

“You want to know why I called.” She didn’t reply. He went on. “I was summoned to lockup tonight to confer with a client. The place was hopping. Guess what the rumor mill is churning out tonight?”

“I’m sure you can’t wait to enlighten me.”

“Ranger Crawford Hunt, whose praises you sang the other day on TV, has been booted—pun intended—”

“Clever.”

“—off Neal Lester’s investigation. Furthermore, Lester was overheard suggesting that the next time he and Hunt talk, Hunt will probably want to have a lawyer present.”

“I hope you’re not calling me to ask for a reference.”

He laughed, and she envisioned the large teeth and Mrs. Briggs’s grandpa’s mule.