Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Afternoon
The lawyer, Crockett Bluetone, denied killing Charley-Anna Blackridge. He had a brief affair with her four months ago and took her to San Francisco for a long weekend out of sight of the wifey-poo. Shortly after that the fire went out for both of them. He hadn’t seen her in over three months. “We parted on amicable terms. That was it.”
River had a question.
“Is anyone after you for any reason?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
He was.
Absolutely.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes people kill one person not to get to that person but to get at another person.”
The lawyer frowned.
“No one’s after me. If what happened to Charley-Anna was murder, it had nothing to do with me.”
River studied the man’s eyes, found no lies and headed for the door.
“See you around.”
The lawyer stood up.
“There’s a saying,” he said. “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
“Don’t worry about it. I could care less who you stick your dick in.”
River got home to find January in white shorts and a white tank top. She hadn’t come across any mysterious envelopes taped anywhere. No one called. If a hitman was lurking around, she hadn’t seen him.
She ran a finger down River’s chest.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
He frowned.
“It’s dangerous for you here.”
“Too bad.”
He studied the horizon. The mountains were a dark jagged band against the sky. The sky above was filled with light.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.
“Where?”
“Down by the river. I want to see how good you can shoot a gun.”
“You’re so romantic.”
He nodded.
“The first rule of being romantic is to not be dead.”
Walking with his arm around January’s waist, River told her about an old friend named Charley-Anna who got dropped from a roof last weekend. That’s where River was this afternoon, checking the woman’s house and subsequently feeling out a hotshot lawyer named Crockett Bluetone.
“Do you think he did it?” January asked.
“I’m not sure. He admitted having an affair with her four months ago but says they split up amicably shortly after that.”
“You don’t believe him.”
No.
He didn’t.
“Why would he kill her?”
“It could be any number of reasons,” he said. “The obvious one is that she might have been blackmailing him. She might have threatened to tell the wife about the affair unless he paid her off. She might have even set that up from the beginning. Maybe that’s why she was keeping the airplane tickets-they were the proof. Or she might have found out some dirt on him during pillow talk time and was blackmailing him about that. There’s also the possibility that he was in trouble with some third party and they sent him a message by killing her. For all I know he was still seeing her. He says he wasn’t but who knows? She might have been precious to him and someone else knew it.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I need to chew on it.”
“You want me to seduce him? I can get him to talk.”
River laughed.
“No, no seducing.”
“Why not?”
River picked her up, flung her over his shoulder and slapped her ass.
“Because.”