John pulled in a deep breath. “Okay, what were you going to say?”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
John gave his friend a forbidding look. Mitch remained impassive. Then John lowered his head and massaged his forehead with his middle finger and thumb. “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have dragged her into this.”
Mitch gave a short laugh. “I think it’s the other way around. You wouldn’t have touched that case again if it weren’t for her.”
“Not true.”
“Bro, come on. You should’ve seen your face when you walked in just now. I feared for my life. You wanted to clobber me with a club and drag her off by the hair to your cave, there to dwell.”
John lowered his hand from his face and looked at Mitch with exasperation. “What the hell?”
“You know what I’m saying.” Appearing hesitant, Mitch stroked his mustache several times before continuing. “She’s great. Awesome. But is she why you’re going out on this very skinny and unstable limb? Are you…? Are you doing it just to…”
“Get her into bed? If that’s what you think, then you’re insulting her and me.”
“Sorry. But I’m your friend, so I had to ask. You’re raining down hell on yourself, John. Again. I just want you to be doing it for the right reason.”
“I want to see justice done.”
“I get it. But you almost didn’t survive that case.”
“No ‘almost’ to it, Mitch. I didn’t survive it. I’m still struggling to survive it. I didn’t do right by that girl, and I drag around that guilt like a ball and chain. And what about Billy Oliver?”
“Nothing that went down was your fault.”
“Feels like it.”
“Only to you.”
“I’m the one that counts. If I can get answers to the questions I should have asked back then, if I can save another woman from the same fate, then maybe, maybe I can live with myself.”
Mitch chinned toward the bedroom door. “What if she’s wrong and there is no moonstruck bogeyman lying in wait?”
“Then the only thing this hell-raining has cost me is a work situation I despised. You said yourself that I should have walked out a long time ago. You asked me why I stayed. Well, this is why.”
Mitch still looked doubtful. John said, “Let me ask you a question. What if it turned out that Beth’s prediction was right, and another woman was taken, and I had done nothing to try to prevent it?”
Mitch sighed. “Damn. Why’d you do that? Valor leaves me no argument.” He snuffled, then took his pistol from the shelf. As he slid it into a holster hidden inside his threadbare jeans, he looked toward the closed bedroom door. “You have my permission.” John took umbrage, but before he could say anything, Mitch raised his hands in surrender. “Just sayin’.”
John mumbled an obscene insult, but they walked together to the door, where Mitch turned to him. “Call me if you need me.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to rain down hell on you, too.”
Mitch poked him in the chest. “Call me.” Then he turned and jogged down the front steps.
“Mitch.”
Mitch stopped and looked back, and for several seconds the two communicated only with their eyes. Then Mitch said, “You, too, buddy.”
And without anything more, he left.
Beth gave Max a thorough and candid account of the day. This time she didn’t omit or sugarcoat anything. She summed up by telling him without apology that she was hiding away with John Bowie in a fishing camp in a swamp.
“Jesus,” Max said. “That’s a thing?”
“It’s a thing. This one has been in his family for generations. It’s like a museum with very unique exhibits.”
“None I’d pay to see.”
She laughed. “No, you wouldn’t,” she said, noticing a length of twine attached to the wall at both ends. Dangling from it was a row of aged Christmas cards. “Before, I lied by omission because I didn’t want to upset you. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. I know you don’t approve, and that you’ll—”
She was interrupted by a gurgling sound that alarmed her. “Are you strangling?”
The alarming sound continued. She came up on her knees on the bed. “Max? Max!” Then she realized that he wasn’t choking. “You’re laughing?”
“Well, it’s funny.”
“Funny? You scared me half to death. What are you laughing at?”
“How long have you worked with me?”
“What?”
“Answer me.”