Trish desperately needed to talk to someone and let off steam. But she couldn’t phone Sue Ann and say, “Oh, you’ll never guess the latest news about Holt Douglas. We spent the afternoon together, and he told me he’s guilty of a vehicular homicide that he’s covered up for ten years. And this is the real shocker: He has the remorse of a rock. It’s all water over the dam to him or something like that. I’m sure he expects me to keep it a secret so he won’t get embarrassed or lose his law license or go to jail or who knows what else since I’m only a lowly deputy, and he’s a big-shot lawyer.”

  Her mother wasn’t an option, either. It would be double cruelty to force Marge to revisit her own devastating loss. And Keith. Daydreaming with him about building a house on Cockburn Road didn’t make him an intimate confidant about something like this. Trish ground her teeth. She’d never slapped a boy or man in her life, but if Holt appeared in front of her at that moment, she knew she would slap him as hard as she could. And it would be for his own good. Someone needed to knock some sense into him.

  Trish went to the break room for a drink of water. She stood by the sink and drank a full glass in a few gulps. In addition to quenching her thirst, Trish hoped the water would cleanse her from the defilement she felt caused by the revelation of Holt’s past. She returned to her cubicle.

  Still agitated, she forced herself to write an account of her attempt to locate and arrest Ricky. In writing the report she had to mention Holt, which caused the rage inside to flare up again. Even his brave action in leaving the car to confront the shotgun-wielding Jenkins now seemed like a self-exalting attempt at false penance.

  Trish stopped in the middle of writing the report and put her head in her hands. Holt was making her miserable without being in the room.

  “Deputy Carmichael,” a male voice interrupted her. “Are you okay?”

  Trish looked up. It was Butch Clovis.

  “Uh, yes, sir.”

  “When you get a break, I need to see you in my office.”

  “I can come now—”

  “No, make it about thirty minutes. I just wanted to make sure you were on duty.”

  The thought of meeting with Clovis doubled Trish’s level of stress. She struggled to complete the report. When she did, she printed out a hard copy and saved one on the computer.

  Butch Clovis, as the senior detective in the department, had an office directly next to Sheriff Blackstone’s. The detective’s door was closed, and Trish knocked.

  “Come in!” the detective barked.

  Trish opened the door and peeked inside. “Is this a good time?” she asked. “Do I need to get a file?”

  “No, have a seat.”

  In the years she’d been with the sheriff’s office, Trish had only been in group meetings with Clovis. They’d never had a private meeting in his office.

  “Tell me about earlier this afternoon,” Clovis said. “I heard the radio traffic between Deputy Watkins and the dispatcher.”

  “That’s the report I was working on when you came by my cubicle.” Trish started to get up from her chair. “I’ll get it.”

  “No,” Clovis said and held out his hand to stop her. “I want to hear directly from you. Why was Holt Douglas there?”

  “I saw him coming out of Bishop Pennington’s church on my way to the location, and he volunteered to come with me. I was in my personal vehicle and thought it might be a good idea. I didn’t realize it was going to turn into a dangerous situation.”

  “Isn’t that always a possibility?”

  “Yes,” Trish admitted. “It is.”

  “Douglas may be an assistant district attorney, but that doesn’t authorize you to have him on the scene of a possible arrest. That decision needs to be made by one of the detectives or the sheriff.”

  Even after the recent drink of water, Trish’s mouth felt dry. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I can assure you it won’t happen again.”

  “Do you realize you could be terminated over this?”

  Trish tried to swallow but couldn’t. “I do now,” she said. “But I won’t make the same mistake again. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.”

  “Is that what you want me to tell the sheriff? That it was a spur-of-the-moment decision?”

  “I don’t know,” Trish said, unable to keep the desperation from creeping into her voice.

  The possibility of having to tell her mother that she’d been fired flashed through her mind.

  “What can I do to keep that from happening?” she continued, her voice trembling.

  Clovis leaned back in his chair. “Before I answer, I have another question for you. What is the extent of your interaction with Douglas? Be complete and don’t leave out anything.”

  Trish quickly tried to calm down and organize her thoughts. “Well, for the past two years he’s been the liaison for my files with the district attorney’s office. At least once or twice a month I’m in court with him. If one of my defendants is arrested, he usually prosecutes the case.”

  Clovis nodded. “Is that all?”

  Trish tried to remember anything else. “The other day I asked him to give a man I knew in high school a break on the traffic ticket. It was a speeding charge, and I shouldn’t have stuck my nose into it, but—”

  “Other than the speeding ticket for an old boyfriend, is there anything else?”

  “He wasn’t a boyfriend,” Trish corrected. “He was on the football team, and I played basketball.”

  Clovis continued to stare at Trish. As she grew more and more anxious, her ability to think diminished by the same degree. She struggled through a few more sentences. Finally, there was nothing left in her brain, and she simply shook her head.

  “That’s all I can come up with.”

  “That’s too bad.” Clovis tapped a folder that was lying on the corner of his desk. “Why did you pull the investigative file about Rex Meredith’s death for Douglas? Who authorized that?”

  Trish felt her face flush. “No one. He asked me to do it so I did.”

  “Why did he want it?”

  Any loyalty Trish had to Holt was lying on the asphalt of the country store parking lot on the road into Paxton. She certainly wasn’t going to try to protect him if it might jeopardize her own job. She took a deep breath and told Clovis everything she could remember about Holt’s interest in Rex Meredith’s death. The only thing she left out was his suspicion about Clovis himself. She couldn’t think of a way to bring that up without sounding like she agreed with Holt’s theory. Clovis listened without asking questions or taking notes. The fact that he didn’t interrupt made Trish uneasy. If it was a technique the detective used to get people who felt guilty to say more than they intended, it worked. She kept jabbering after she really didn’t have anything else to add and was repeating herself.

  “Last week we agreed that I wouldn’t help him anymore,” she said. “We haven’t talked about it since. His investigation didn’t come up this afternoon when we were in the car together.”

  “Why did you stop helping him?”

  The question caught Trish completely off guard. She hesitated.

  “Are you refusing to tell me?” Clovis asked, a menacing tone creeping into his voice.

  “No, no,” Trish replied. “There was a misunderstanding with Holt’s girlfriend. She thought he was romantically interested in me and broke off their relationship. Holt said we shouldn’t be seen together in public while he tried to patch things up with her.”

  “Hmm,” Clovis grunted. “That’s not good.”

  “You think Holt and Angelina ought to get back together?” Trish asked, mystified.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Clovis looked directly at her. “You’re going to be my eyes and ears and report back to me what Douglas does next. If you’re not helping him with his investigation, that won’t be possible.”

  “Why do you want to know what he’s—”

  “Has Ralph Granger authorized Douglas to reopen an investigation?” Clovis interrupted.

  “No, and I’m not sure I can convince him now to tell me what he’s found out.”

  “You’d better figure out a way to make it happen. It’s going to take more than chasing down a few deadbeat dads for you to justify your continued employment here. Is that clear?”

  Trish had to blink back tears. She managed to nod her head.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I don’t want to have to ask you for updates. I expect you to let me know. Immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all.” Clovis dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

  28

  The sun dipped behind the trees as Holt sat on his back deck with an open Bible in his lap. It was mosquito season in Paxton, and a purple bug light on a pole about twenty-five feet away zapped an intruder every few seconds. Henry lay contentedly at Holt’s feet.

  Holt read the first few chapters of Genesis and immediately picked up on blame-shifting as an ancient strategy to avoid the consequences of wrongful conduct. He wasn’t surprised that Adam’s attempt to transfer responsibility for his sin to Eve was doomed to failure as surely as the same tactic would fall flat in front of Judge Lomax in the Paxton Superior Court.

  Holt then used the concordance in the back of the book to find passages about confession. He quickly saw the link between confession and repentance, a term he thought he understood before realizing his definition was closer to regret. Biblical repentance was similar to voluntary restitution, which explained why Trish Carmichael had hammered him over the head with the idea that he had to do something about his lie. A criminal defendant who came forward with a plan to pay back stolen money could, in some situations, receive a lesser sentence. The same seemed to apply to matters of faith, although Bishop Pennington had emphasized in his sermon that God’s forgiveness was a gift.

  Nothing Holt read showed him what form repentance should take in his circumstance. Every scenario he played out in his mind ended up hurting the people connected with him or Calico. He didn’t walk into a courtroom unprepared, and on a personal matter this important Holt wasn’t going to act without a clear sense of what he wanted to accomplish. On the quiet deck in the fading light, he closed his eyes and offered a simple, silent prayer for guidance.

  Trish was scheduled to work first shift the following day, so after six hours of restless sleep, she stood in front of her bathroom mirror and adjusted the dark brown tie that was part of her uniform. Going into the kitchen, she poured an extra-large glass of orange juice. She toasted half a blueberry bagel and spread cream cheese on top of it.

  Deeply upset about her conversation with Holt and still reeling from her encounter with Butch Clovis, Trish wasn’t hungry, but she knew if she didn’t eat, a headache loomed in her future. So she dutifully chewed the bagel as she sat at the kitchen table. The first streaks of morning light filtered through the curtains into the kitchen. Marge emerged with a yawn from her bedroom.

  “Sorry I didn’t wait up for you,” she said. “The baseball game was over earlier than normal, and I barely kept my eyes open for the postgame show.”

  “That’s okay. I went straight to bed.”

  “Did you have a good evening at work?” Marge asked as she held the empty coffeepot under the faucet.

  “Let me do that for you,” Trish said, stepping forward. “Why don’t you watch the morning news on TV?”

  Trish handed her mother the TV remote. As soon as the picture and sound came up, Trish knew she’d be able to avoid her mother’s questions. Being confined to the house and a wheelchair only increased Marge’s interest in the outside world. Before the accident, Marge worked for a local florist and rarely slowed down to watch TV news. Now it was a regular part of her life.

  “The coffee will be ready in less than a minute,” Trish said as she watched the black liquid drip into the clear glass pot. “Do you want me to stay and fix your first cup?”

  “No,” Marge said without taking her eyes off the screen. “But I look forward to seeing you this afternoon. Maybe after you take a nap we can go out to dinner. I’m craving a steak.”

  Trish thought about the new steak restaurant. It was pricey, but she and Marge were normally so frugal that it might be fun to splurge on a Monday night, and it would distract Trish from her recent troubles.

  “How about the new place Keith took me to the other night?”

  Marge turned toward her. “No, the café on Main Street is fine for me.”

  “Their steaks are as thin as a piece of cardboard and have about as much flavor. I’m already getting excited about both of us dressing up and going out someplace nice. It will be fun, and I’m going to pay for it.”

  “No,” Marge started. “It’s a waste of—”

  “Bye, Mama,” Trish said, cutting her off. “See you later. Your blue-and-yellow dress would be a good choice. Think about it as an early birthday dinner.”

  “My birthday isn’t until September.”

  “Neither is mine. That’s why I said ‘early.’ ”

  Trish knew Marge’s resistance was token opposition to satisfy her conscience. She would love a chance to get out of the house for a special time together.

  Monday morning at the sheriff’s office was one of the busiest times of the week. Crimes that occurred during the weekend had to be processed and funneled into the criminal justice pipeline. Most offenses were petty, but today the office was buzzing about a man from Alabama who was arrested late Saturday night and charged with kidnapping and aggravated assault. The facts of the case made Trish shudder. On her way to her cubicle, she looked up and saw Butch Clovis approaching from the opposite direction. There was no place to hide.

  “Good morning,” she said as she hurried by him.

  “Just a minute,” the detective said.

  Trish froze and slowly turned around. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve thought some more about our conversation yesterday,” Clovis said in a low voice. “You realize it was off the record, don’t you?”

  “Uh, yes, sir.”

  Clovis eyed her closely. “Do you believe Douglas is on to something in his investigation? The way you spoke about it gave me the impression you believe his theory about Greg Stevens.”

  Trish swallowed. One of the things that had kept her tossing and turning in the night was concern about that very issue. Clovis stepped closer. Trish was already up against the wall and couldn’t move.

  “He’s a smart lawyer,” she managed. “And persuasive.”

  “Meredith’s death was thoroughly investigated,” Clovis replied emphatically. “As the first detective on the scene, I interviewed potential witnesses, analyzed every piece of evidence, and ran down all possible theories, including Greg Stevens as his father-in-law’s murderer. There was only one logical conclusion—Rex Meredith committed suicide. Tony McDermott came in late to the investigation and started asking questions I’d already answered. His nose got bent out of shape when the sheriff told him to move on to other cases that needed his attention. Now he’s retired up in the mountains with nothing better to do than stir up trouble here. I don’t know what’s motivating Douglas. Maybe he has his eye on Ralph Granger’s job. Whatever his reason, it would be terribly wrong to drag Mr. Stevens through the mud of public opinion with false accusations. He and his wife do a lot for this town that no one knows about and should be treated with respect.”

  “They’re giving money to the building fund at my church even though they aren’t members,” Trish offered.

  “I didn’t know about that, but it proves my point.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Clovis fixed his gaze on Trish. “I want you to contact Douglas by the end of your shift and get back in the loop. I want real-time data.”

  “Today?” Trish asked, suddenly feeling even more trapped. “What am I supposed to say to him?”

  “That you want to continue helping with the investigation.”

  “But the situation with his girlfriend—”

  “Is something you as a woman should be able to handle. She runs the beauty salon in that blue house on Broadmore Street, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk to her, if that’s what it takes. Convince her you aren’t interested in Douglas.”

  Trish’s mouth dropped open.

  “Detective Clovis!” a female voice called out on the interoffice intercom. “Someone from the crime lab in Atlanta is on the phone for you.”

  Clovis kept his attention fixed on Trish. “Get back to me. No excuses.”

  It was 7:15 a.m. when Trish sat down in her cubicle, but she felt like she’d already worked an eight-hour shift. She turned on her computer and checked her to-do list. The first five items were cases she needed to prepare for court on Thursday. She mentally added Convince Holt Douglas to tell me about the Meredith/Stevens investigation to the top of the list.

  If she could stall for time, Trish would see Holt in court on Thursday, but it would be in the midst of the controlled chaos of managing a court calendar, and there wouldn’t be a good chance to talk. Trish’s eyes returned to her list. She could ask Holt to meet with her in private to discuss an upcoming case on the calendar; however, the cases in her queue were as ordinary as a bushel of turnips. They presented no legal questions that couldn’t be solved in a matter of seconds. And even if she manufactured an excuse to arrange a meeting, there was no guarantee Holt would change his mind about letting her help with the investigation.

  Toward noon Trish scooted her chair away from her computer and peeked down the hallway toward Sheriff Blackstone’s office. The sheriff and Butch Clovis were talking near the sheriff’s door. Trish jerked her head back into her cubicle before they saw her. Half the day was gone, and she’d not come up with a plan. Against her will, she was being forced to consider talking to Angelina Peabody. She looked up the phone number for the salon and, after staring at it for several seconds, punched in the number. While the phone rang, she tried to decide what to say.

  “All About You Salon and Spa,” a chirpy female voice answered. “How may I help you?”