She worked her elbow free of his grasp and pointed toward a black sedan. “Figured,” he said.
Besides his SUV and the sedan, the only other vehicle on the gravel lot was a pickup truck with a bashed-in grill and two bullet holes in its rusty rear fender. He walked Beth Collins over to the sedan.
After she unlocked it with a fob, he reached around and opened the driver’s door for her. “Nice wheels. All the extra options.”
“I don’t know what half of them are for. It’s a rental I picked up at the airport.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“You flew in from New York?” That was an easy deduction. The show she worked for broadcast from there.
“Yes.”
“You don’t sound like New York.”
“I grew up in this area. Straight out of LSU I moved up there.”
“Where you trained to trick people into clandestine meetings. Or did you need training for that? Did the television network teach you how to do it effectively, or did it come naturally to you?”
Looking perturbed, she turned her head aside to watch an eighteen-wheeler on the highway blow past. Coming back to him, she said, “Mr. Bowie—or should I call you Detective Bowie?”
“How about John?”
Without calling him anything, she said, “I came down here specifically to talk to you.”
“Well, that’s too bad. Because I’m not talking. Tell your slick host that calling me an arrogant prick gives pricks a bad name. Tell your bosses that I was rude, lewd, misogynistic. Tack on whatever unflattering adjectives you want. I don’t give a damn about their opinion of me. In fact, the lower it is, the better I like it.”
To her credit, she kept her cool. “Aren’t you the least bit curious to hear why I think that what happened to Crissy Mellin will happen again, that there’ll be another victim?”
“Of course it’ll happen. A hundred times. A thousand times. Regrettable. Sad. Tragic. Violence against women is a malignancy eating away at the fabric of most so-called civilized cultures. But those crimes will be somebody else’s problem. Not mine.”
“But it will be your problem. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
If the bartender hadn’t interrupted, he might have asked her to elaborate, or at least asked, What the hell? But he’d lost the opportunity, and he was now glad he had, because he wasn’t stupid.
He’d spent the past three and a half years since the Mellin case walking a razor’s edge, trying to avoid embroilment of any kind. If he gave an ounce of credence to what Beth Collins had said and pursued it by even one baby step, it could easily tip the scales of the balancing act he had going with Thomas P. Barker, his boss and nemesis. Their antagonistic relationship was none of her business, and filling her in on it could stimulate further conversation, which he would avoid as fervently as he would avoid leprosy. But despite what he’d said about his disregard for the opinion of others, he didn’t want her to leave remembering John Bowie as a complete and utter asshole.
He shifted his weight, crunching the gravel beneath his boots. “Listen, Ms. Collins—”
Rather than listen, she interrupted. “The upcoming episode establishes that Crissy Mellin’s abductor is dead.”
“He fucking is. I cut his body down.”
“What if that young man wasn’t the culprit?”
“Oh. I see where you’re going. We got the wrong guy.” He scoffed. “The one we found hanging in his jail cell.”
“Yes, that one.”
“And the real bogeyman is still out there?”
“It’s possible.”
“Uh-huh.”
Agitated, she said, “How can you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Be so blasé. I just told you something that should rattle you. You’ve dismissed it out of hand. Like this isn’t extraordinary. Like it happens to you on a daily basis.”
“It does. We and every law enforcement agency in the world get dozens of crank calls every day. Crazies call with conspiracy theories or to report—”
“Never mind.” She turned her back to him and climbed into the car. “I began with you because you were quoted in one article as saying that the investigation was handled ‘hastily.’ Apparently, during the years since, you’ve had a change of heart. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She reached out to pull the door closed.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Knowing that he would probably kick himself later for what he was about to do, he grabbed the door above the window and held on. They played tug-of-war with it. He outlasted her and continued to hold the door open while she glared up at him from the driver’s seat.
She placed the heel of her hand over the horn icon on the steering wheel. “Let go of the door or I’ll lay down on this.”
He hitched his head toward the building behind him. “The scumbags come to your rescue, and after they vanquish me, what then? You’re left alone with them to have their wicked way with you? I don’t think so.”
She expelled a breath. “Please let go.”
“Why the subterfuge?” Asked out of context, the question got her attention. She stopped trying to close the door.
“What?”