Free Blanco County 04 - Guilt Trip by Ben Rehder Page A

that means I’ll have to pull my deputies off the river.”
    “We don’t have a lot of choices.”
    “We’re already stretched thin as it is, between this case and the Lucas thing.”
    “Anything new there?”
    “Get this. Nicole found out that Lucas didn’t have a phone. He’d disconnected it. So no recent phone records. Also, we talked to his landlord—this old guy up in Waco. He didn’t say much, but he told us that Lucas had been paying his rent for the last few months in money orders. He’s always used checks before that.”
    Marlin could decipher what that meant. Lucas paid with money orders because he didn’t want to deposit quantities of cash into his checking account. Money that he had made by selling drugs.
    “The state fire marshal sent a team down, and they’re overhauling the place today,” Garza said. “Then we’ll know for sure.” Garza rapped his knuckles on the desk, hoping, Marlin knew, for some good luck. Nobody wanted Lucas’s body to be found in the rubble. “What’s your plan?” Garza asked.
    “Back to the river, I guess.”
    “Gonna keep looking, huh?”
    “For now.”
    “Sounds like you got yourself in a shitpot of trouble,” Buford said, seated, looking around the room. Damn nice office. Mahogany desk. Matching bookshelves. Oil paintings on the wall. The hot secretary from outside was fetching coffee. Hell of a deal, this public service gig.
    The senator—Herzog—didn’t appear to like Buford’s way of phrasing things. Kind of got this prissy look on his face. “That’s one way of putting it,” he said. “And you’re supposed to help me out of it…somehow?”
    The guy was looking Buford and Little Joe over, like a man who had just discovered a cockroach in his chili. Buford had seen that look before, people thinking he was a rube. He could handle it, though, as long as Herzog didn’t maintain an attitude. Hell, Buford had been known to play it up a little, Columbo-style. Let people think he was a yokel. Nobody keeps an eye on a yokel.
    Uncle Chuck—or “Mr. Hamm,” as Buford had called him in front of the senator—had given Buford the lowdown, but he wanted to run it by Herzog, make sure he had the story straight. Make sure Herzog wasn’t candy-coating some of the details. “What I hear is, you got a nasty phone call. Guy mailed you some pitchers, and now he wants something in exchange. I got it right so far?”
    The senator started to say something, but apparently thought better of it and simply nodded instead. He came across as fidgety, like he had better things to do.
    “And these pitchers are what you’d call embarrassing. You and a woman.”
    “That’s the gist. I already told Hamm all of this. In detail.”
    Buford looked at him. “Bear with me. No sense in rushing through it.” He flipped through his notes. “You got no idea who it mighta been who called, how long they been watching you, nothing like that.” He looked up. “You mind letting me have those photos?”
    Herzog immediately shook his head, Buford seeing the impatience in the man. “Out of the question,” Herzog said, almost like he was ready to call the whole thing off. “That’s just ridiculous, anyway. What reason could you possibly have for needing them?”
    He was still talking down to Buford, and it was starting to piss him off.
    Buford smiled at him. “See, them photos can tell me things, maybe point me in the right direction.”
    Herzog snorted. “Yeah, right. If you think I’m—”
    “For example,” Buford said, cutting him off, “were they taken from up close or with a zoom lens? A zoom lens tells me the guy knows something about photography. He’ll have equipment lying around somewhere when I find him. Same thing with a date stamp. Could tell me what kind of camera it is, even the model. What’s on the back of the photos? Anything on there from a processor? Because if there is, that’s something else to worry about. Means it’s been out of the man’s hands