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“We know—”
Danny has had enough. “You know nothing, Inspector Davis. Now get out. Both of you.”
She’s unperturbed, just unzips the side pocket of her satchel purse and hands him a card. “This is my cell. It will get me day or night. Give me a call if you decide against a further interview tomorrow morning. But I don’t advise it.”
She and Jalbert get into the dark blue sedan. They drive toward the trailer park entrance, past the sign reading SLOW WE LOVE OUR CHILDREN.
Danny walks over to Bill Dumfries. “What in the hell was that about?” Bill asks.
“Long story short, I found the body of a murdered girl in a little town north of here. Gunnel. Tried to call it in anonymously. They found out. Now they think I did it.”
“Jesus,” Bill says, and shakes his head. “Cops!”
It sounds good, and maybe the doubt Danny thinks he sees in Bill’s eyes is his imagination. Danny doesn’t care. Bill retired from Dumfries Contracting three years ago, and if anyone in Oak Grove knows of a lawyer in the area, it’s Bill. He asks, Bill checks his phone, and Danny has a name and number even before the dark blue sedan turns onto the highway. He types the info into his contacts.
“I’m surprised they didn’t take my phone, too,” Danny says. “If I’d left it in the glove compartment of my truck like I usually do, they’d have it.”
Bill says he’s pretty sure they would have needed a separate warrant for that, then says: “They might ask you to turn it over tomorrow. If you’ve got something on it you don’t want them to see, I’d trash it.”
“I don’t,” Danny says, a little too loudly. People are still looking at him and his trailer door has been left open. He feels violated and tells himself that’s stupid, but the feeling doesn’t go away. Because it’s not stupid.
“Billy!” It’s Mrs. Dumfries, standing in the door of their trailer, a doublewide that’s the fanciest one in the park. “Come in here, your dinner’s getting cold!”
Bill doesn’t look back, but he gives Danny a quick thumbs-up. Which is better than nothing, Danny supposes.
14
In the trailer with the door shut, Danny has a sudden fit of the shakes and has to sit down. It’s the first one since his drinking days, when he used to get the shakes on mornings-after until he got his first cup of coffee into him. Also some aspirin. And of course he had them when he woke up in that Wichita jail cell, and there was no coffee or aspirin to banish them. That was when he decided he had to quit the booze or he was going to get into even more serious trouble. So he quit, and look at the mess he’s in now. No good deed, et cetera.
He doesn’t bother making coffee, but there’s a sixpack of Pepsi in the fridge. He chugs one down, lets out a ringing belch, and the shakes start to subside. The lawyer’s name is Edgar Ball and he’s local. He doesn’t expect to get Ball—it’s past 5 PM on a Friday evening—but the recorded message gives him a number to call if it’s urgent. Danny calls it.
“Hello?”
“Is this Edgar Ball? The lawyer?”
“It is, and I’m just about to take my wife out to dinner at Happy Jack’s. Tell me why you’re calling and make it brief.”
“My name is Daniel Coughlin. I think the police believe I murdered a girl.” He rethinks that. “I know they believe it. I didn’t do it, I just told them where the body was. I’m supposed to go in for questioning tomorrow at the Manitou police station.”
“Manitou PD wants to—”
“Not them, KBI. They’re just going to use a room at the Manitou station to question me. They’re giving me tonight to stew, but I think they might arrest me in the morning. I need a lawyer. I got your name from Bill Dumfries.”
A woman calls something in the background. Ball says he’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Then, to Danny: “I’m a real estate lawyer, did Bill tell you that? I haven’t handled a criminal case since the first year I hung out my shingle, and back then it was mostly DUIs and petty larceny.”
“I don’t know any other—”
“What time is your interview?”
“They want me at ten.”
“At Manitou PD on Rampart Street.”
“If you say so.”
“I’ll represent you at the interview, I can do that much.”
“Thank y—”
