Cassie rounded the corner and stopped short. Balked at the sight of Frank.
“Hey, stranger,” he said.
She gave him a big hug, and I explained how Frank would be overseeing PAR for two weeks while we juggled both investigations.
“Wow,” she said. “Surprising.”
I glanced at the time. We needed to be on the road to meet the DA in Farner County.
“Yes,” I said. “But let’s get underway. I’m driving.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
On our way up 27 toward Hambis, Cassie and I filled in Frank, beginning from day one of the investigation and running through the fire at the mobile home.
“So you burned up your own C.I.?” Frank asked.
He was in the passenger seat of my car, and I glanced over. Made eye contact. “Our dead C.I., yes,” I said, noting how odd it was that everyone skipped this detail.
“And this is what prompted the search for a new informant?”
“Yup, yup,” Cassie said. She moved on, giving Frank a rundown of the man that Richie had found interacting with Freddie Pecos at the ATM in Hambis. How that had led us to case number two. Ending with a description of the six bodies we’d found up north in Shilo.
“But this guy today?” Frank asked.
“Travis Wells,” Cassie said, referring to our potential new C.I. on the gun case. “Hopefully he’s our new BFF.”
All along the highway, the king of the invasive plants, kudzu, devoured the landscape, covering electric poles and lines of cable.
“And y’all haven’t seen him since he got arrested outside this Rotten Coconut place?”
“Exactly,” I replied.
I took an exit, and we moved through Farner County.
The streets were filled with fast-food restaurants and Dollar Generals. Outside a discount store named Dean’s, four blue kiddie pools leaned against a stucco wall.
The county courthouse building was white with an ornate relief molded into a triangular area at the top. Along the perimeter of the lawn out front, tiny blue and white pinwheels spun in the wind.
As we closed our car doors, Cassie asked me to pop the trunk, telling Frank we’d be right behind him.
I got to the back of the car and opened it manually with the keys, scanning inside. “I don’t remember you putting anything back here.”
“Yeah, that’s ’cause I didn’t, Gardner.” She leaned in close to me. We were alone, without Frank for the first time that morning. “What’s he doing here?” she whispered.
“He’s helping us juggle the cases.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” Cassie cocked her head. “But I mean… what’s hedoing here, Gardner?”
I stared at her. I’d just answered this question.
“It’s giving…” Cassie didn’t finish the sentence, and I waited.Givingwas big with her. Sometimes things were giving creepy. Or giving liar. Or giving ’80s vibes.
“Gardner,” she said, “how are you okay with this? You’ve been leading us for over a year now. We’ve closed seventeen cases. That’s our best year yet.”
“And now we can close two more,” I said. “Poulton warned me, Cass. We accept help—or ditch one of the cases. None of us wanted the latter, correct?”
“Correct,” she said, nodding. “Okay, I get it.”
