Mitch’s spirits lifted. “Darcy asked for our assistance with the investigation?”
“This morning. It didn’t take him long to draw a parallel between this double homicide and your former colleague’s, Randy Nelson. Almost identical MO. The DEA has nosed in.”
“Which comes as no surprise,” Mitch said.
John nodded. “But they don’t want it advertised that they’re involved. Darcy emphasized that, and so did Jim Tucker.”
“You talked to Tucker?”
“About you. He called shortly after I’d spoken to Darcy. Tucker thought I should know that you’re still sporting a hard-on for Roland Malone.”
“Metaphorically speaking, of course,” he quipped.
“This is no joking matter, Mitch. Tucker said to tell you that he’s got people on ‘that element,’ and that you arenotto interfere. He wants to keep Malone clueless of their interest.”
“Message delivered and received.” Mitch placed his hands on the arms of the chair and was about to stand up to go.
John stopped him. “Stay. As I’m speaking, Nix and Lear are coming this way to break the news to us about the Nelson murder connection to Bayou Coeur. Act surprised, and not a word about Malone. Tucker was adamant about that.”
Mitch turned his head just as Nix thrust open the office door and strode in, Lear trailing her with less vigor. Mitch turned back to John. “Darcy asked for our help, and you assigned them?”
“That’s right.”
“John—”
“If you have a problem with that, we’ll discuss it later.”
“You bet your ass we will.”
After a moment of palpable tension, John offered Nix the extra chair, but she remained standing. Lear propped his butt on the window sill, causing the blinds to rattle, which momentarily reminded Mitch of Dylan’s office window.
Nix had either anointed herself spokesperson, or she and Lear had agreed ahead of time that she would take the lead. In any case, she did.
“Darcy finally got an ID on the girl.” She referred to an iPad she’d brought in with her. “Mandy Adams. Seventeen years old, came from a small town in central Mississippi. Several months ago, she ran away. She’d been expelled from school for drug usage on campus, and not for the first time.
“Two notable ironies. Her mother is on the faculty of the high school that expelled her, and her dad is the town pharmacist. Both of them are well-respected pillars of the community. This girl was a disaster waiting to happen.”
Mitch, who’d been focused on a nick in the wood on the edge of John’s desk, didn’t raise his head, but lifted his gaze to Nix and said, “That would be a catchy epitaph for her.” The statement was laden with anger and sarcasm.
“Mitch,” John said in a chastening tone.
Mitch looked at John, then at Nix, and said, “Mandy Adams might have been trouble, but I don’t think she was waiting for a disaster like almost being decapitated. Some mean fuck did that to her.”
A strained silence lasted until Lear bravely cleared his throat and contributed to the discussion for the first time. “I was with Darcy when he questioned her parents. They hadn’t heard from her since she ran away. They didn’t know where she was or how she was surviving. No idea who Paul Adler was, or how she’d come to be with him. They’re devastated. Her body will be released to them tomorrow.”
Nix gave the devastated parents five seconds of respectful silence before resuming. “One big development today. The DEA is now in on the investigation. One of their agents was killed in a similar manner a few years ago. Darcy told us you knew him,” she said to Mitch.
“Yeah. He and I worked closely together for a while. He was killed six, seven months after I left the agency. When he was reported missing, John and I were tipped by a junkie we had in jail here in Auclair. He was trying to swing a plea deal and wanted to barter information.
“He told us that the last time he’d been in New Orleans, he’d heard scuttlebutt on the street that an undercover fed had been dumped in Bayou Coeur. John and I had fished in that channel, so we were familiar with it. We assembled a search and recovery team. Took us two days, but we found Nelson’s body tangled up in the root system of a cypress grove.”
John picked up there. “We leaned on the snitch to tell us where Nelson had been killed and by whom. He was a weasel. If he’d have known, he would have given it up. He didn’t.”
“You never had a suspect?”
Mitch looked at John, who sat in granite-jawed silence, his eyes sending a silent warning for him not to go against Jim Tucker’s stern instruction that Roland Malone’s name was not to be breathed. “No,” Mitch replied in a clipped tone. “Nary a suspect.”
Nix asked, “Do you think the same person killed these two?”
