20

Patterson led me to a little room that was no bigger than a closet and sat down in front of a large computer monitor. He opened a program and surveyed a long list of files. He shook his head and pulled out his two-way. “Martha?” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

“What was the approximate time of Mr. Waters’s visitor?”

“About ten or so. Maybe ten thirty.”

“Over.”

He selected a file, and a view of the front doors of the sheriff’s department came up. He pressed a key, and the footage sped up. He stopped it a second later and reversed, going slowly this time. A man moved backward toward the main entrance. Patterson stopped the video and played it forward at normal speed.

The man walked toward the desk, his head down, but I didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.

The feathered hair, the faux-Southern gangster style. It was Walsh’s thug, the man who’d accompanied him to the library a few days ago.

*   *   *

I argued with Patterson until my voice was nearly gone. He just kept shaking his head and telling me it was out of his control. “I’d be a fool to ignore this confession.”

“How do you explain Preston Argent’s visit?”

“I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” he said and picked his two-way off the desk. He clicked the button again.

“Martha, can you run a search on a Preston Argent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Print me anything relevant, and bring it to the closet, okay?”

“Give me a minute.”

He put the two-way down. “Happy?”

“Maybe. Depends on what she finds.”

While we waited, I tried to explain Jeb Walsh to him. That was part of the problem. Patterson didn’t understand why I considered Jeb so vile. All he seemed to know about him was that he was an author and good friends with the mayor.

When I finished telling him about his book and the hateful rhetoric inside, he sighed. “I get your concerns. I really do. And because of that, I’m going to keep an open mind about this. But, I have to tell you”—he looked at his watch—“I feel like we’ve wasted nearly an hour talking about the part we already have the answers to when we could be out there looking for her.”

I understood his point. In his view, she was missing, alone, maybe injured. In my view, someone had her. And until I figured out who, nothing else mattered.

Martha came in with a file a few minutes later. She handed it to Patterson, smiled at me, and walked out.

Patterson looked it over and nodded. “You ain’t going to like this.”

“What?”

“He’s a lawyer, all right. Or at least was in Alabama. He’s fairly clean too. There’s something in here about assault and battery, but he was a minor, and the charges were ultimately dropped. Since then, not even a speeding ticket.” He closed the file. “I think we just need to keep looking for her.”

I wished he was right, but every instinct I had told me he wasn’t.