Hick was only slightly more cordial. “Funny how that works, Dupaw. You let killers go, they kill somebody else.”

Dupaw took umbrage. “My hands were tied. The police had nothing on him.”

“They were still digging.”

“Meanwhile an innocent man was languishing in jail.”

“He wasn’t—”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” the prosecutor said. “Ring a bell?”

Joe wanted to ring his bell, all right. The prosecutor shied away from a case if there was the remotest possibility of losing it.

“Do you have any solid leads on the Bolden murder and the Bennett woman’s disappearance?”

Hick glanced at Joe, who remained silent and sullen. Speaking for both of them, Hick said, “We have a crime scene unit assisting, but the Terrebone Parish SO is investigating Bolden’s murder.”

Dupaw frowned. “Do the personnel out there have the chops for it?”

“As murders go, it was straightforward,” Hick said. “Kinnard came up behind Bolden and shot him in the back of the head.”

“Yes, but the victim’s association with Billy Panella make it bigger than a straightforward murder. Do a bunch of country bumpkins have the know-how to—”

“The country bumpkins have balls,” said Joe, who had kept his cool for as long as he could. “When they catch Kinnard they’ll charge him for murder and won’t give a fuck how long he languishes in jail.”

Xavier Dupaw puffed himself up with righteous indignation and stalked out.

Joe stood, pushing back so hard off his rolling chair that it hit the wall behind his desk. Each minute that ticked by without something happening was making him crazy, because every minute that ticked by reduced the odds of Jordie Bennett being found alive.

If she didn’t make it, Joe would forever blame himself for not notifying her of her brother’s escape from the safe house as soon as they’d discovered him gone. Joe had mistrusted her just enough to withhold the information, then watch her to see if Josh would seek her out for help and, if he did, to see what action she would take: Shelter him, or surrender him to the authorities.

He might never know, and that was gnawing at him.

He and Hick had reviewed witness statements taken in the bar until they could recite them from memory. Deputy Morrow’s only lead—a woman who called the sheriff’s office and swore she saw Jordie Bennett being fed into a tree shredder—turned out to be the fabrication of a schizophrenic who’d gone off her meds. Her family apologized profusely, but investigators couldn’t recover the time it had taken to ascertain that it was a false alarm from a head case.

Now, feeling claustrophobic, Joe headed for the door. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Call Tennessee again. See if they’ve turned up something.”

Hick looked prepared to argue, but he reached for the desk phone. When Joe returned, Hick was hanging up in apparent disgust.

“Five minutes of conversation boiled down to two words: still nothing.”

Joe hadn’t expected there to be a breakthrough, but he shared Hick’s disappointment and chagrin. Josh Bennett had been missing for four days, and the only traces of him discovered so far were the ankle monitor and a set of sneaker prints leading from the safe house through a greenbelt about two miles deep that eventually fronted the access ramp of the east–west interstate, where it was assumed he had hitched a ride.

Frustrated, Joe returned to his desk chair and pinched the bridge of his nose till it hurt. “Where is that sniveling little shit?”

“He’s littler than when we last saw him.”

Joe lowered his hand from his face and shook his head in bewilderment. “What gets me is that nobody became suspicious when Bennett began making these cosmetic changes.”

“The dry eye was diagnosed by an ophthalmologist,” Hick reminded him. “He was even prescribed drops for it.”

“All right, but the drastic weight loss? I shed twenty pounds, Marsha might or might not notice if I’m standing in front of her buck naked. On Bennett’s frame you’d notice that kind of drop.”

“Not if he dropped it over a six-month time period.”

“I guess,” Joe sighed. “The bottom line, though? He played them like a freakin’ fiddle.”

“Played all of us, Joe,” Hick said grimly.

Joe’s scowl conceded that.

As the afternoon wore on, they decided to use the local evening newscasts to go public with Joshua Bennett’s fugitive status.

Joe called in the office’s media liaison. “Notify the local stations. Tell them in advance that I won’t be answering any questions. I’ll only read aloud a statement, so make it good.”

The agent said jokingly, “What am I supposed to say? Accountant at large? Armed with a deadly calculator?”

Joe didn’t think it was funny. “Say he’s wanted for questioning into his sister’s suspected kidnapping and Mickey Bolden’s murder.”

Hick looked at Joe askance. “He is? Since when?”

“Since I said so,” Joe retorted. “And it’s one hundred percent true. If Bennett hadn’t taken a hike, Panella wouldn’t have sent his favorite hit man and an accomplice after his sister. Mickey wouldn’t be dead, and she wouldn’t be missing. Last night would have been just another night of pool for Skull Head and his cronies, Deputy Morrow could have stayed to finish his victory pizza party, I’d have copped a feel off Marsha during ‘Take My Breath Away,’ and you’d have test-driven one of your promising relationships.”

By now he was boiling over. “That nerd has eluded law enforcement agencies for four days. Maybe the public can do our job better and find him for us. So I don’t care if we label him a goddamn ax murderer or the sniper who actually shot Kennedy, I want Josh Bennett’s altered-state image on TV by five o’clock.”

The other agent scuttled out to write the official statement.

A few hours later, Joe and Hick watched the first edition newscasts while eating another carryout meal off the desk. While Joe was reading the statement, the stations showed file footage from their coverage of the Panella-Bennett case and placed a photograph of Josh taken at the time side by side with an artist’s sketch of how he’d looked when last seen in Tennessee.

“Well, let’s see if that shakes something loose,” Hick said as he muted the audio. “Wish you’d consulted me on your wardrobe, though.”

Marsha called to tell him she’d seen him and asked when he was coming home. He told her not to expect him any time soon. He could wait for a development at home just as well as here, but while uniformed officers were out beating the bushes and dragging the bayous, he felt he should be on duty, too.

He paced while Hick essentially ran their trot lines.

“Call Morrow back.”

“Joe, I talked to him an hour ago. He promised to call if anything…” He stopped arguing when the phone rang. He answered and identified himself. “That’s us.”

He listened for a moment, then sprang from his chair and motioned Joe out of his. “We’ll call you from our car for directions.” Promptly Hick hung up. Joe was already out the door. Hick followed.