Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

Griffin made contact with the Little Rock PD to call in a favor, resulting in a detective named Tommy Robinett agreeing to meet Knight at Franke’s Cafeteria on North Rodney Parham, and keep him company while he went looking for Dix. After Knight headed off, Griffin tried to touch base with the rest of his officers. Giddons and Petrie, the two most reliable part-timers – now essentially full-timers because of the killings – were continuing the door-to-door interviews. Colson’s cell phone was out of range, and she wasn’t answering her radio; Griffin guessed that she was probably dealing with someone out in the boondocks. Naylor did respond from his car, though. He sounded out of breath.

‘You climbing a hill, son?’ asked Griffin.

‘Silverbell Lane,’ said Naylor. Silverbell Lane snaked up into the Ouachita, and the rains had made some of the private roads that led to its houses virtually unnavigable for now. If Naylor had wanted to talk to anyone up there, he’d have been forced to make his way partly on foot.

‘If you fall,’ said Griffin, ‘you’re paying your own laundry bill, so best stay vertical.’

‘I just spoke to Bill Tindle,’ said Naylor.

‘I know Bill.’ Tindle had been a trainer of racehorses before old age rendered him unfit for duty. He lived near the top of Silverbell Lane with his daughter Min, a spinster who had a depth of feeling for Kel Knight, and wouldn’t have allowed his marital status to get in the way should he have been of a mind to reciprocate. Kel Knight avoided Silverbell Lane like the plague itself.

‘Well, he says Min was driving him into town last week, along Bloodroot, and he saw a girl matching Donna Lee Kernigan’s description picking up her schoolbooks from the ground. Her hair was all messed up, he said, and she looked like she might have been crying. A truck had just pulled away from where she was. Mr Tindle told Min to stop and make sure the girl was okay, but she took a cut into the woods before they could speak with her. He thought he knew the truck, though.’

‘Tilon Ward?’

‘No, Denny Rhinehart. Mr Tindle said he recognized it because Denny has all those German stickers on his rear fender.’

Denny Rhinehart was third-generation German-American, but persisted in collecting flag decals relating to his ancestral homeland, although he eschewed swastikas and twin lightning bolts on grounds of taste. Griffin had never had any trouble with Rhinehart beyond the occasional disturbance in his parking lot on weekends. Nevertheless, he knew Tilon Ward was a regular at the Rhine Heart, along with assorted men and women whom Griffin strongly suspected of being minor dealers, and only the lack of probable cause had so far prevented him from attempting to prove this suspicion right. It meant that Denny Rhinehart was willing to turn a blind eye to illegality, if not actively engage in it.

‘You talk to Min about this?’ said Griffin.

‘Mr Tindle let me use his phone to call her at work. She says he’s remembering right, and it was definitely last Thursday, although she wouldn’t swear that Denny’s truck was actually pulling away when they saw it, and she didn’t get a good look at the girl. Mr Tindle is sure it was Donna Lee, though, on account of how tall she was. I took down everything he told me, read it back to him, then had him sign it. You know, just in case.’

Just in case Tindle’s condition suddenly deteriorated, leaving no proof of what he’d seen or said. Naylor was smart. It was only a matter of time before he moved over to the state police.

‘You did good,’ said Griffin. ‘Better than good.’

He told Naylor to return to town, replaced the handset, and walked to the nearest window. He could see the Rhine Heart from where he stood. The parking lot was empty, but he knew Denny usually parked his truck around back. He’d probably be in his office by now.

If Bill Tindle wasn’t mistaken, he’d witnessed the fallout from an altercation between Denny Rhinehart and Donna Lee Kernigan. It might have been something as simple as the girl crossing the road at the wrong time, but Griffin had heard from a cop in the Little Rock Vice Squad – a brother of Tommy Robinett, the detective who’d agreed to assist Kel Knight with the Dix inquiry – that Rhinehart had been questioned by police after being spotted emerging from an apartment block in Geyer Springs, a building suspected of housing a brothel on its top floor. Rhinehart had claimed to be visiting a friend, but declined to name the acquaintance in question, and the police had no reason to detain him. When the brothel was raided the following night, it was found to contain only black women, most of them in their late teens and early twenties. Rhinehart might just have been experimenting, or was guilty of being in the wrong place for entirely legal reasons; but he might also have enjoyed a predilection for young girls of color, and Sallie Kernigan had formerly worked at the Rhine Heart, and still frequented it as a customer. On the other hand, Mina Dobbs claimed to have witnessed Donna Lee Kernigan climbing into a newish red truck, while Rhinehart drove an old blue Jeep Comanche that wouldn’t have been worth the effort required to set it on fire.

And there remained the fact that the only print retrieved from Donna Lee’s remains had come not from Denny Rhinehart but from Hollis Ward. Rhinehart would have known Hollis from around town, but they weren’t close, or even on good terms; one of the reasons that Tilon Ward had always liked the Rhine Heart was because his father didn’t frequent the place, so he wasn’t likely to bump into his papa while he was drinking. Then Hollis Ward had gone missing for years, only to return to leave his mark on a mutilated girl …

So Evan Griffin now had a man long believed to be dead as the main suspect in the Kernigan killing and, by default, the murder of Patricia Hartley as well. Meanwhile, that same man’s son might well have been the last person to see Donna Lee alive, but he was currently nowhere to be found, and was apparently keeping company with a known felon linked to Randall Butcher: strip club owner, would-be property tycoon, and a probable purveyor of narcotics. Finally, one of the friendly local bar owners, previously best known for serving warm beer and cold food, and possibly for frequenting a brothel specializing in younger black women, had seemingly been glimpsed driving away from a distressed Donna Lee Kernigan just days before her murder.

Griffin tried calling Parker. The detective had a New York cell phone, which would have crucified him with charges, so the Cargill PD had ponied up for a local phone on condition that Parker didn’t go crossing state lines, or even range much farther than the adjacent counties. Parker picked up on the third ring.

‘Where are you?’ said Griffin.

‘Driving to a meeting with Nealus Cade. He appeared anxious to talk, and I thought it couldn’t hurt.’

Griffin briefly brought Parker up to speed on developments.

‘They’re sure it’s Hollis Ward’s print?’ said Parker.

‘Yes. Why?’

Parker explained to Griffin about the statement from Ward that was missing from the file on Estella Jackson’s murder.

‘Did Jurel have anything to say about it?’ said Griffin.

‘Only that anyone could have removed that document from the file, which is probably true. The sheriff’s office is pretty lax on procedure and we’re already familiar with how it handles evidence.’

‘Nothing goes on there that Jurel doesn’t know about. If he didn’t purge that file, he knows who did.’

‘I don’t think I can go back and ask him again. Our working relationship shows few signs of improvement. He did say something interesting, though. He thinks we’re looking for two killers: one for Jackson, and the other for Donna Lee Kernigan, and therefore also Patricia Hartley.’