Michael Manseur stared through the two-way glass at Jerry Bennett. The nightclub owner was sound asleep, his head rocked back, his mouth wide open. Bennett's toupee looked like it was made from straw, his makeup was smeared. There was blood on his face and his shirt from using a baseball bat on Suggs.
“Looks like a man without a care in the world,” Manseur said to his partner, Larry Bond.
“He said killing Suggs was self-defense. Says he didn't hire any killers. Doesn't know yet that we have the negatives. Let's wake him up and show them to him.”
“Killing Suggs probably was self-defense. Get Ellen Caesar-you two handle it.”
“You serious?” Larry asked him.
“As a heart attack.”
“This is your case, Michael. It's a big fat juicy one.”
“Yeah. Well, it's just a case. And I'm about done in from doing everything myself while you were off lazing about. Ellen's good with self-deluded fools like Bennett.”
Manseur enjoyed the perplexed expression pasted on his partner's face. It was nice to surprise people sometimes.
Manseur accepted the congratulations from the other detectives as he moved through the bull pen. He stopped at his desk to get his coat. He probably would have spent the night with Larry interviewing Bennett, but for three things: first, Bennett was toast; second, he really needed to see, kiss his daughters and his wife; and third, the superintendent of police had told him that morning that he was going to get the slot Suggs's death had left empty.
He slipped on his coat and looked at Suggs's open office door. Inside, two detectives were searching files, paper by paper. Michael took one last look at his desk and saw a white envelope from the print lab in his in-box. The corpse in the Rover. He opened the envelope, pulled out the paper, and put on his reading glasses.
He read the name of the owner of the two partial prints three times, trying to figure how he had could have contaminated the request. Obviously he was looking at the wrong inquiry. Some technician must have put two things together somehow. It was simply impossible. The burned corpse in the Rover couldn't be who the FBI claimed it was. Somebody had to be playing a joke on him.
He read the name one more time, still thinking he was reading it wrong, that it would become something close to what it said, but not the same name at all.
Nicholas Green
101 Bobcat Lane
Houston, Texas
Licensed private investigator
Nicky Green.
Even though it wasn't possible, Manseur grabbed the computer keyboard and typed in a request for the Texas driver's license and P.I. license picture of Nicholas Green.
The screen showed two images of his Nicky Green. He stared into the eyes, studied the shape of the head, the jaw, and realized that, although the man he knew as Nicky Green was a dead ringer for the corpse Nicky Green, he wasn't him.
It hit him like a bullet in the chest. Winter Massey had it all wrong.
Manseur didn't know when the real Nicky Green had been killed-precisely when the switch had been made-but it had happened after the real Green left Hank and Millie at the guesthouse and before the new Nicky Green had appeared on the scene of the hit-and-run. He had either run them over himself or had someone else do it so he could take Green's place. The real Green's body must have been in the Rover when it hit the Trammels. An accomplice did drive it off and dump it because the fake Green-Styer-had been back at the scene taking Green's life over.
Winter thought Adams was the bad guy. Manseur grabbed his phone, called Winter's cell phone, then remembered he had ruined it in the river.
Massey was probably in the hotel suite with Nicky Green, the man who had been sent to kill him. Manseur dialed the hotel and asked to be put through to Winter's suite. Massey answered.
“Massey, thank God,” he said. “Are you alone?”
“No. What you need?” Winter replied.
“Listen to me carefully. You are in danger. I got the burned corpse's prints back, and Jesus, Massey, you won't believe it… they belonged to-”
“Nicky Green.”
Manseur was stunned. “You knew?”
“He's long gone, Michael. It's finally over.”