Free Presumption of Guilt by Archer Mayor

that if you’ve got a tough case with no leads, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, ’cause someone’s going to blab and spill the beans?”
    â€œOften, yeah.”
    Dave continued. “Well, then it sounds like you’re stuck tween a rock and a hard place, ’cause that would’ve happened by now, right? Which means you’re not dealing with the same bunch of losers who can’t get out of their own way.”
    â€œDon’t you sound like Sherlock Holmes,” Wendy said.
    â€œHe’s probably right, though,” Lester confirmed, dishing out the food. “The killer could’ve been grabbed right after and put in jail for who-knows-what; he might’ve died robbing a bank, taking his secret with him; or just maybe, he got away with it because it was either a random act of violence, or very carefully planned.”
    â€œAnd he got lucky,” Dave added.
    Lester smiled and nodded. “And he got lucky.”
    Wendy raised her glass in a toast. “He or she—and here’s to their luck turning, since Dad’s on the job.”
    Lester accepted the toast, but he was quietly considering what—besides the body of Hank Mitchell—might have been festering for forty years, waiting to be uncovered. And at what cost.
    *   *   *
    Joe had borrowed a whiteboard from somewhere, and set it up that morning in the corner of the office, prompting Willy to stop on the threshold to comment, “We better get milk and cookies with this, or I’m goin’ home.”
    â€œDo shut up for once,” Sammie urged him, pushing him forward so she could enter.
    Joe didn’t care. “I have color markers,” he said. “In case you get confused.”
    Lester laughed as Willy scowled and said, “I’ll manage.”
    Joe waited for them to settle in, fix coffee, check e-mails—and in Willy’s case, put his feet up on his desk—before writing HANK in the middle of the whiteboard, in red.
    He circled it, saying, “This is our starting point. No telling what he did to get himself killed. He may have been a son of a bitch whose thirty-one-year life expectancy was up, or the perfect example of a wrong time–wrong place kind of guy. Whatever it was—big or small, illegal or not—somebody decided he was better off dead. What Willy and I got from his widow last night was a bunch of dominoes, one or all of which may have played a role in toppling this one over.” He tapped on the name with the marker.
    â€œSharon Mitchell being the first,” Willy said. “Always start with the wife.”
    â€œUsually a safe bet,” Sam seconded.
    Joe wrote the name SHARON above Hank’s and drew a line between them. “Fair enough. She told us she tossed him out of the house a month before because he was cheating on her.”
    â€œBB Barrett,” Lester read off the report that Joe had entered into the computer the night before.
    Joe wrote down BARRETT, while explaining, “He had the hots for Sharon and wasted no time making his play after Hank disappeared.”
    â€œBut got nowhere,” Sam pointed out.
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” Willy said. “Lust was in the mind of the beholder. Also, we only have her word she didn’t go for it.”
    â€œWhich suggests they knocked off Hank together,” Sam filled in, “only to find out they weren’t the perfect couple.”
    â€œThe son, Greg Mitchell,” Lester offered. “If you want to play tag team, your report says he was devastated by his old man abandoning them. Could be the kid knifed him, after which his mom, or BB, or both, covered it up and buried him to save the kid’s hide.”
    â€œAt nine years old?” Sam protested.
    â€œSure,” Willy told her. “Two thousand eight—an eight-year-old in Arizona shot his father and another man with a .22. It happens.”
    Without comment,