Free Unfinished Business by Jenna Bennett Page B

few days or weeks? He spent ten
years undercover. He must have been responsible for sending a lot
of people to prison. Some of them might hold a grudge.”
    “Oh,” Grimaldi said, “I’m sure many of them
do. And I’ll do that. I know that anyone I was involved in
arresting hasn’t gone anywhere. After Mr. Lamont escaped this
winter, I put the fear of God into everyone in the penal system. If
anyone I’ve ever arrested so much as moves toward the exit, I hear
about it. But if I wasn’t involved in the case, I wouldn’t
necessarily know. So that’s a good thought. I’ll look into it.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I’ll let you know what I find out.” She
hung up without giving me time to respond.
    There was a moment of silence while I
dropped the phone back into my bag. Then—
    “The Harley?” Dix asked. He was watching me
in the rearview mirror, with one eye on the road.
    I nodded. “They found it in a shed behind
the bar where Rafe was last night.”
    “That’s not good,” Dix said.
    I shook my head. “It makes it less likely
that he left of his own free will. He wouldn’t just walk off and
leave the Harley sitting there.”
    “Maybe he decided to hitchhike,” Mother
suggested, her tone of voice implying that he was the type of
person who would.
    “I suppose he might have,” I agreed, more to
work it through in my own head than because I believed it. “There’s
a truck stop half a mile down the road from Gabe’s, on the other
side of the interstate. He could have walked there and found a
ride.”
    Mother nodded.
    “But why would he? He had a vehicle of his
own. And if he didn’t want to ride the bike out of town, he could
at least have driven to the truck stop. Why walk along the road for
half a mile when he didn’t have to? In the dark, with cars flying
by, there was a good chance someone would run him down before he
made it fifty feet down the road.”
    Mother had no answer for that.
    “And if he was concerned enough for the bike
to roll it into the shed, he would have been concerned enough not
to leave it there at all. The TBI is only a five minute ride from
Gabe’s. The house is even less. And the bike would have been safer
in either place.”
    “Perhaps he ran out of gas,” Mother
said.
    Huh. I suppose he might have. Although if he
was that low on fuel when he got to Gabe’s, I would have expected
him to take care of it before he went inside. He wouldn’t want to
deal with it at eleven o’clock at night.
    But maybe someone siphoned off the gas while
he was inside Gabe’s. And when he came out, the bike wouldn’t
start. So he rolled it into the shed where it would be safe,
until...
    But no. If the gas tank was dry, he wouldn’t
have to worry about anyone stealing the bike. If it had started,
Rafe would have left on it. And anyway, he wouldn’t have started
walking down the road. He’d have gone inside and asked Wendell or
one of the rookies for a ride to the nearest gas station. These
were TBI agents. They didn’t take stupid chances. Or at least not
those kinds of stupid chances. If someone had siphoned off the gas
and left Rafe stranded, he would have wondered why. He certainly
wouldn’t have done something like start walking down the side of
the road on his own in the dark.
    Still, I’d make sure to ask Grimaldi to have
the forensic techs check the tank. Just in case there was something
to Mother’s suggestion.
    “Anything else?” Dix wanted to know.
    I shook my head. “We’re meeting Wendell and
the rookies at the TBI at six-thirty. And Grimaldi’s checking to
see whether any of the people Rafe put in prison is newly released
and looking for revenge.”
    Dix nodded.
    “For now, I guess we just wait and see what
happens.”
    “Easier said than done,” Dix muttered, and
that was certainly true. I settled back into the seat and watched
the trees flash by outside the car, and thought unpleasant
thoughts.
    The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations is located in Inglewood,