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I’d grown increasingly leery of him as the meeting went on and now I regretted agreeing to it. It would have been far more prudent to write my thanks on business stationery and put it in the mail.

Caro said, “Having a jury proclaim that you have not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt—which was the outcome of my trial—isn’t the same thing as being proven innocent. I’m sure you understand the difference. In a primitive, nonintellectual fashion, laymen realize it too. That’s why many people in the community still regard me as a killer. Before this, I never followed social media, never paid any attention to it. But I can hardly ignore it now. The things they say. Terribly distressing.”

He turned away, shaking his head. Studying his profile, I was amazed to see that he was entirely serious. Caro’s wife had just been murdered, but his chief concern was his public reputation.

Caro sighed. “Thank God my patient suffered complications with her delivery on the day of Iris’s death. If I hadn’t had an alibi, they’d probably blame me for Iris as well as Aurora.”

I needed to put distance between us because I was seized by an impulse to get up and knock him out of his chair. How could Caro obsess about his public image when he should be mourning his wife? I knew what grief felt like, what it looked like. Caro didn’t exhibit the signs. I didn’t expect him to follow my miserable example and become the town drunk, but he sure didn’t seem too torn up about Iris. He didn’t appear to be thinking about her at all.

The gumbo arrived. I had a moment to compose myself while Caro tasted it, then nodded his approval.

While he ate, I clutched a soupspoon as an internal debate ran through my head. I didn’t believe in Caro’s innocence. I still harbored suspicions about his role in the death of Aurora Gates. And since the trial, Jenny had planted new seeds of doubt from her digging expedition into the death of his other patient.

A search for the truth could turn up startling results—not necessarily the outcome Caro sought.

Caro finished his gumbo and gave me an inquiring look. “Well, what’s your answer? I have no problem meeting your hourly rate. I know you can get results.”

He was right about that. I could do the job. A lawyer is a hired gun. I’d devoted my career to it. But we needed to negotiate. If Caro wanted me to go to the mat for him, he would have to provide me with a compelling reason to cooperate. “I’ll work for you, Caro. On one condition.”

I could see the satisfaction in his eyes. He thought he’d already won. “Good! That’s good, I’m glad to hear it.” He paused, then added, as if it were an afterthought, “What condition?”

“You’re going to bond out Rue Holmes.”

CHAPTER 79

MY LAW office was officially closed. The front of the building was locked up tight, shades drawn, lights out.

The back conference room had been transformed. Jenny, Rue, and I had plastered the walls with charts, photos, reports, and news articles. Every scrap of information we could uncover on the string of local murders—Iris Caro, Aurora Gates, Desiree Whitman, Benjamin Gates, Coach Davies, and Carrie Ann—was on display.

It was a gut-wrenching immersion, I can’t deny that. I spent my days surrounded by images of the violent execution of my wife, the nearly headless body of her lover, and the corpse of Aurora Gates after the fish had eaten her face away.

Under normal circumstances, no one would have been able to work in that room, engulfed by the hideous sights mounted on the walls. But these weren’t normal circumstances. My life was at stake. Rue’s too.

Rue sat silently at one end of the conference table, seemingly oblivious to the grisly images. I sat at the opposite end, scribbling the particulars on a notepad. There was no absolute pattern. The causes of death weren’t identical. The race and gender of the victims varied. If there was a common thread, I couldn’t see it yet.

Jenny stood near the wall that was devoted to the Iris Caro homicide. Fewer exhibits were tacked up there. We didn’t have all the information yet. I had made a written request for discovery, and Mason had filed one on Rue’s behalf. But Gordon-James was in no hurry to turn over his file. We were still in the dark on the particulars of the police investigation.

“Stafford Lee?” Jenny said, looking up at the enlarged news clipping with Iris Caro’s portrait. “This is incomplete.”

“Hell, Jenny, you think I don’t know that? The DA will hold out as long as the rule permits.” I sounded impatient, and I knew I needed to rein it in. But I was so wired, it didn’t take much to make me snap.

“I’m thinking about what we’ve put up here. The probable-cause statement says Iris’s death was the result of suffocation, not trauma to her head. So why haven’t we added the out-of-state victim? I want to devote some space to that cold case.”

“Why?” I asked.

“There was evidence of strangulation in that one.”

“Strangulation and suffocation are different,” I said.

“But they’re also alike, don’t you think? It’s an intimate crime, requires close contact. Both involve depriving the victims of air, making them unable to breathe. We definitely shouldn’t close our minds to the possibility that the homicides are all related.”

Jenny raised a valid point. I went back to my legal pad, made a new note: Strangulation versus suffocation?

Jenny backed away from the wall and looked around. “When I scope it all out, it’s so blatantly obvious. Daniel Caro is still the likely suspect. Not you, not Rue.”

I glanced at Rue to assess her reaction. She had no response. Rue’s listlessness worried me. It was completely out of character. I said, “Caro has convinced the police that his alibi is solid.”

Jenny shook her head, bemused. “So why would Daniel Caro be motivated to bond y’all out? I know what he told you, Stafford Lee, but still, it doesn’t add up.”

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