“You do that,” Will told him. He patted the trunk of the Jaguar. “And we’ll give this baby a real thorough search. I imagine by the time we’re done, you’re going to need that attorney.”
Henry took a dumbfounded step back. For a second, Reyes thought they were getting a glimpse of the real man. A man who was unused to surprises. For a guilty man, he seemed genuinely taken aback, as if he had no understanding of how he’d arrived at this particular moment, watching his car be hauled away by police in front of an audience of his peers.
There was something about a man like Henry caught off guard that made Reyes’s blood run cold even as his chest puffed with pride. Cornering a man like that came with a level of risk. He reassured himself it was one he was willing to take. He wasn’t a little boy anymore, and he had the build to crush a man like Henry in a fight any day. But men like Henry never fought fair, if they fought at all. If he chose to strike back, Reyes was likely to never see it coming.
“This is absurd,” he told them. “You won’t find anything because there’s nothing to find! My wife—my wife…” Suddenly, his face slackened, his eyes and cheeks losing focus.
“Your wife is dead,” Reyes told him. “And we don’t have a body, despite our best efforts. But we have a few other things, things you might prefer kept private, things a man like you wouldn’t want falling into the hands of the police.” He moved toward Henry, determined and angry.
“That’s enough,” Will said, placing a hand on Emil’s shoulder in warning. He turned to Henry. “Now, you can give us your keys, or we can pry these doors open with a crowbar. Your pick.”
Henry glowered and threw his keys at Will’s feet before they turned to leave.
Reyes had said too much, but it didn’t matter. The wheels of justice were in motion, and not even Henry Davenport could stop them. They drove away behind the tow truck and the impotent Jaguar, watching him grow smaller in the rearview mirror.
WHENREYESGOTto the impound lot the next morning, Will was already there, looking incredulous as he wiped his fingers on a garage towel.
“It’s clean,” he told him.
“What?” Reyes couldn’t believe his ears. “What do you mean it’s clean?”
Will shook his head. “I mean there’s nothing there. The guy’s a squeaker. He’s meticulous.”
“That can’t be true.” Reyes pulled on a set of gloves, opened the back passenger door, and leaned inside. “Did you check behind panels? Under the center console? Inside the fuse box and spare tire? Shit like that?”
Will rubbed a hand over his stomach while he nodded. “I’m telling you, we made a mistake.”
Reyes stepped out of the car and faced his partner over the top of the door. “We did not make a mistake, Will. This guy is guilty.”
“Then he’s a professional because there’s nothing inside that car.”
“What about outside?” Reyes asked moving around to the trunk.
“Obviously I checked there,” Will said with a frown. “Even preschoolers know that.”
Reyes circled to the driver-side door. He opened it and pulled the safety lever for the hood, walking around to slide his fingersbeneath the front and pop the latch, raising the hood to look underneath. Will joined him.
“I’ve been over it more than once, Emil.” There was a note of apology in his voice. “Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe it’s not what we think.”
“Just… let me look,” he said, trying to bite back his temper. He refused to give up on the Davenport woman. He would deliver her the justice she deserved. There must be a reason he’d been called to this case.
He spent the next forty minutes combing that car for anything remotely out of place, anything admissible as evidence. But like his partner, he came up empty-handed. There wasn’t even a bit of lint on the floor mat or spare change in the cup holders. He finished back where he started, slamming the hood closed as he cursed.
“It’s not here,” Will told him as Reyes stepped away from the Jaguar. “Maybe he scrubbed it. He beat us.”
But Reyes couldn’t abide that. “We’re not giving it back.”
Will looked stupefied. “Uh… We have to give the man his car back, Emil. You know that.”
“Not yet,” Reyes snapped. He walked around the vehicle one more time, studying it, asking himself, if he were a violent psychopath with a brilliant tactician’s mind and a murder to cover up, where would he hide his evidence? He tapped his chin, an idea beginning to form. The second-to-last line from the letter hammering at his brain—What you seek can only be found barking up the least expected tree.“We need a dog.”
“I’m sorry?” Will asked.
Reyes turned to him, hands on hips. “A canine unit. A sniffer.”
Will looked exasperated. “We don’t even know what we’re searching for.”
“Yes, we do,” Reyes told him. “Give him the pokeweed and that dog will tell us where the evidence is in this car.”
