“You asked me about the last time we talked,” Bud Gilliam said. “Maybe I wasn’t totally honest.”
“That’s not abnormal,” I said, my eyes steady on the man. “We just met.”
“Julie and I argued,” he said. “She’d talked with some guy who said he could help her. Do some procedure on her mouth. I told her she didn’t need it done.”
As he spoke, I looked more closely at the photo of Julie Gilliam. I couldn’t help but think that something had gone wrong with the cheiloplasty surgery, intended to fix the problem Julie had been born with. Her lips showed asymmetry, and a small scar ran up toward the philtrum, the vertical grooved indent below her nose.
Bud Gilliam continued. “I mean, if she wanted to do it—sure, I told her. But she was beautiful as is. We argued, and she took off in a huff. That’s the last time I saw her.”
“Thank you for your time,” Shooter said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the station.”
He nodded and turned, his shoulders slumped.
Out in the rental car, I paged backward in my notebook, looking for contact information for the sketch artist Cassie and I had met four hours ago, thinking of this man that Julie Gilliam had met with.
Beside me, Shooter muttered something under her breath, then got out and headed back to the houseboat. As she did, I called up W. C. Walker.
“Mr. Walker,” I said. “This is Gardner Camden with the FBI. Do you remember me from this morning?”
“A bird like you, brother?” he chuckled. “You’re hard to forget.”
“The sketch you did,” I said, staring out the window as Shooter placed a hand on Bud Gilliam’s arm. “You said there was a nickname in Spanish that the women used. For the man in the sketch?”
“Right,” he said.
Out the window, Bud Gilliam handed his shotgun to Shooter. She said something, and Gilliam went back inside the houseboat. Came out with a revolver, which he also handed to Jo.
“You say it wasel joven,” I said to the sketch artist. “The young man. But not that.”
“But something like that,” he replied.
Shooter placed the two guns down on the table on the houseboat and hugged the man, something that was not covered in the death notification manual. Gilliam held on tight. When they stepped apart, she took the two weapons and headed over to our car.
“Was itel médico?” I asked the sketch artist.The doctor.
“There you go, brother,” Walker said. “Hot damn, itwas el médico. Is that a clue?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By 5:35 p.m., Shooter and I had made our way back to the precinct, first driving through the swampland, then veering south toward Shilo.
As we found a spot in the parking lot, I saw insignias from four counties on the police cruisers parked there. News of the bodies we’d discovered had attracted the attention of surrounding police departments.
Shooter and I made our way to the second floor. Cops—some in uniforms that included wide-brimmed campaign hats, others in suits—crowded outside the office of Detective Warner Quinones, who eyed us and nodded. We threaded around the open cubes toward the glass-walled conference room at the north end of the second floor.
“Everyone on Yelp raved about this restaurant,” Richie said as we entered. He placed two paper bags atop a credenza and set out six cans of Coke and Sprite. “So I picked up a couple quarts of their specialty.”
“Quarts?” I said.
I hadn’t eaten all day and was looking forward to solid food. Still, Richie talked so often about being “a foodie, through and through” that I figured the meal would be of high quality. Or if not, some cuisine popular among Floridians under thirty.
“Minorcan clam chowder,” Richie said, opening the top of the paper bag and laying out four soup containers for the group.
“What the hell is Minorcan clam chowder?” Cassie said, entering after Shooter and me, her face half-buried in a case file.
I looked to Cassie. “Are you asking me?” I said. “Sorry, I don’t know everything.”
“The chef gave me a taste at the restaurant,” Richie replied. “It’s made with seafood stock. But it’s got this hot pepper in it. Called datil.”
