Paula held the plastic evidence bag with the blood-smeared butcher knife and turned it over in her hands.
“There are hundreds, if not thousands of knives like that, Paula,” John said.
“Not like this.” She rotated the bag so the hilt was against the plastic and an elaborately embossed monogram showed through. In the center of the scrollwork, the initials P. N. stood proudly. “My mother got these for me when I bought my house. They were a housewarming gift.”
John caught the monogram in spite of her trembling hand. “There has to be an explanation for this. The break-in you had, your garage—this could have been taken at the same time.”
“This was in a butcher block on my kitchen counter. Sherman had to have taken it when he was in my house.”
John took the evidence bag and rolled the top closed. He gave it back to the officer. “Get these to Karen Baylor in the forensics investigation unit, got it?” John tossed him the keys to his sedan.
“Yeah, got it.”
The hospital employee behind the counter waved them over. “Mr. Ronland is out of recovery.” She gave them the room number and directions to the fourth-floor ward that served surgical patients.
After two elevators and a serpentine path through pale-colored hallways, they finally found Ronland in a room with another recovering patient.
A sheet covered Ronland from the waist down, exposing a heavy gauze pad on his chest, three inches to the right of center and about a fist’s width from his collarbone. Patricia sat at her brother’s side, and she didn’t look happy to see the detectives.
“Has he woken up yet?” John asked.
“No. The doctor wasn’t sure how long he’d be out.”
“How’d he do in surgery?” Paula said.
“Punctured lung and an embolism. Lost a lot of blood.” She flipped a hand to the IV pole, which held four different bags: blood, pain meds, anticoagulants, and antibiotics.
The sight conjured bad memories for John of when his son was tethered to a similar hospital bed by wires, tubes, and monitors.
“I’m glad he’ll be okay,” Paula said.
“You call this okay? He almost died. And for what? Because of you people. You don’t give a damn about him or his life. You guys just bleed him for what you can—literally—and leave him for dead.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Patricia got louder as the exchange continued.
“What did you mean about us bleeding him for what we could? Other than—” John started.
“My brother made mistakes. He faced them and took his medicine like a man. He paid his debt and was doing his probation like he was supposed to, and you guys wouldn’t leave him alone.”
“I only talked to him for a few minutes at the car wash.”
“You guys picked him up and took him downtown, threatening him to cooperate in another case against one of the people he worked with.”
“Charles Sherman?” Paula asked.
“That sounds right,” Patricia said. “My brother claimed that man was the one responsible for bringing everybody down back then. George tried to put it all behind him, and you wouldn’t let him.”
“Who took him ‘downtown’?” John asked.
“How the hell should I know? All I know is we were having dinner, and they showed up at my house and dragged him off.”
“Who, who, who. You sound like a goddamned owl. The police took him. The officer with that black uniform, all Nazi-acting—”
“Black uniform? Sheriff’s department?”
“It doesn’t matter who took him. Police is police. He cooperated with a roomful of white cops and look where that got him.”
A moan came from Ronland.
Patricia turned to her brother. His eyes were open, small slits peering back at her.
“Patti, what’s a guy gotta do to get some sleep around here?”
She hugged him, and he groaned.
Ronland noticed John and Paula in the room.
“No, I don’t know who did it. So you don’t have to waste time with me. Didn’t see him. He came from behind. White guy—that’s all I know.”
“Your sister said something about you getting picked up and brought downtown. What was that about?” John asked.
Ronland’s eyes shifted to his sister and then, with some difficulty, back to John. “She did, huh? She should mind her own business.”
“It was Wallace, wasn’t it? The guy who picked you up in his sheriff’s uniform?”
He nodded. “Yeah, it was. He had Sherman in the car with him to prove that he knew what he was talking about.”
“What’s that?”
“He wanted to get the band back together. Wallace still had an inside track on contraband and drugs seizures—not as big as before, but he wanted to continue where we left off.”
“What was Sherman’s role in this new operation?”
“Sherman didn’t say much; it’s like he was preoccupied or didn’t want to be there. I don’t know. It was weird.”
“What did Wallace want from you?”
“He didn’t say until after he dropped Sherman off. Then all he wanted me to do was follow Sherman and find out where he was hiding his stash back from when we were skimming off the task force. I said I wasn’t interested.”
“Follow him? Wallace wasn’t with him?”
“No. Wallace had to drop Sherman off and leave. That was the only way Sherman would agree to work. No one but him could know where he hid his stash.”
“What’s up with that? He didn’t trust Wallace?” Paula asked.
“Sherman didn’t trust anyone. The deal was that Wallace would get Sherman out of prison on these little field trips, and he’d hand over some drugs to sell to the white boys. Then Wallace would take him back to his cage.”
“How many trips did Sherman make?”
“I don’t know. It looked like Sherman had done it a lot, because they had their act down tight.”
“He happen to mention anything else?”
“This was after Bobby Wing got killed and Wallace made some comment about no one having the heart to take a risk anymore. Rich coming from the only one of us who didn’t go to jail or prison for that bullshit.”
A spark lit in the back of John’s mind.
“Paula, how did the case against the SSPNET begin?” John asked.
“An informant.”