Back of Beyond полностью

“You know what’s going to happen,” Larry said. “Skeeter knows he’s in trouble, too. So he’s going to try and get out ahead of it with the press and the voters. He’s going to start yapping and paint you in the worst light possible and try to taint the investigation.”

Cody shrugged.

“So, what happened with the sheriff?”

“I’m suspended until they clear me.”

“You are so fucking lucky, Cody. You could have killed the coroner or gotten killed yourself. And I don’t doubt for a second that you were hammered at the time.”

“I was blitzed,” Cody said. “But when I pulled the trigger I felt completely sober. Strange how that happens. Adrenaline trumps alcohol: remember that.”

“Are you over it? The binge, I mean?”

Cody said, “I think so. I’m not promising anything, though.”

“Yeah,” Larry said, finally swiveling around in his chair to face him, “I found out how solid your promises are.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” Cody said, looking out the window at the lawn in front of the Law Enforcement Center. “And I want to thank you again for covering for me.”

“The last time,” Larry said. “Ever.”

“That’s reasonable.”

Larry let a beat pass. Then, “I’m rethinking the Winters death.”

“You are?” For the first time in forty-eight hours, he felt a little nudge of hope.

“Yeah. While you were partying with your old pals yesterday, I was doing police work.”

“And?”

“The preliminary autopsy shows blunt head trauma. Of course, they don’t know yet whether is was pre- or postmortem. I mean, the guy was covered with the beams from his roof that fell on his noggin. But there wasn’t any smoke in his lungs. Meaning he was likely dead before the fire got out of hand. As you know, it’s never the fire that kills ’em. It’s the smoke.”

“Interesting there was no inhalation.”

“And there’s another thing good about all that rain and cold weather,” Larry said. “According to the lab, there had been too much time between the death and the discovery of the body to find out if there was any alcohol in his bloodstream. Plus, the heat of the fire could have literally burned it out. But because the body was kept fairly cool, they’re going to cut his eyes out and test ’em.”

Cody winced. “His eyes?”

Larry read from his notes. “The vitreous humor can be tested. This is the jellylike substance within the eyeball. Alcohol can be detected there and it lags behind the blood level. That is, it reflects the blood level about two hours prior to death. If it is elevated, the ME can say that the victim was likely intoxicated. They can’t get a blood alcohol level, but they can possibly say it was there at the time of death.”

“When will they call you back?”

Larry shrugged. “Soon, I hope. It’s not definitive, but if there’s no smoke in the lungs and no sign of alcohol consumption, it will pretty much kill my accident or suicide theory. Because that means somebody opened a bottle and left it to be found with the body, and somebody opened the door of the stove.”

Nodding, Cody said, “So our killer bashed him in the head, drank or poured out the bottle, and set the place on fire.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Larry said.

“Well,” Cody said, “here’s another jump. Whoever did it knew Hank once had problems with alcohol. Since Hank hadn’t had a drop in five years, they’d have to know Hank’s history. A stranger wouldn’t likely know that, would he?”

Larry started to argue but the edges of his mouth turned down and he nodded. “I see where you’re going. But who would know, besides you?”

Cody didn’t answer. He let Larry figure it out.

“Every other person in your AA group,” Larry said. “You people confess everything to each other. They would know.”

Cody said, “Exactly.”

Larry said, “So we need to establish the whereabouts of all of the Helena AA members between the hours of eight and midnight three nights ago.”

Cody paused. “How’d you determine the time of death? The ME?”

“Naw. The receipt from when Winters bought the steaks had the exact time on it: 6:03 P.M. It takes almost an hour to drive from the store to his cabin, so let’s say he was there by seven. Montana Power and Light said the cabin had a power outage at midnight, which I attribute to the fire. So there’s our window.”

Cody was impressed. Larry was good.

“Back to the alcoholics,” Larry said. “Do you know them all?”

Cody nodded.

“Do you have a list?”

“At home,” Cody said. “There’s thirteen in our little group. Of course, there are groups all over and a hell of a lot more alcoholics in Helena than you’d imagine. But our group is small because of when and where we meet. I can e-mail it to you. I can’t officially work on the case, but I can feed you.”

“Cool,” Larry said. Cody could see a light behind his eyes. They were getting somewhere.

“I hate this, though,” Cody said. “I’m betraying their trust. This is really a shitty thing to do to them. I mean, you’ll be surprised. We’re talking doctors, lawyers, a couple politicians. Even somebody in our office.”

Larry was surprised.