Morrow assured him that both issues would be handled and left to see to it.

“Okay,” Joe said to Hick, “next up, the bartender.”

The man behind the bar was a barrel-chested giant with a bushy black beard that blended into his hair, which he wore in a braided ponytail extending almost to his waist. He was dressed in an army-green wifebeater, which left his arms bare to show off their sleeves of elaborate tattoos.

If Joe owned a bar in the backwoods that served a rough-and-tumble clientele, he would want this guy in charge.

He offered him and Hick coffee, and they accepted. After declining cream and sugar, Joe began the interview by asking him if Jordie Bennett was a regular customer.

He laughed, flashing remarkably straight, white teeth. “No. Her showing up here tonight made history. She walked in, my jaw dropped. That’s why I noticed the time. Ten p.m. on the dot.”

Joe and Hick looked at each other, thinking, Like she was meeting someone.

Joe went back to the bearded man. “She’d never been here, but you recognized her.”

“Soon as she cleared the door. She and her brother are the closest thing we have to celebrities in this town. People who didn’t know them already sure as hell did after that Billy Panella mess. Y’all haven’t treed him yet?”

“Working on it,” Joe said tightly.

“Find the money?”

Joe ignored that. “The shooting victim, had he ever been in here before last night?”

“Not that I recall, and I have a talent for remembering faces. Especially faces like his. Ugly son of a bitch.”

“Uglier now,” Hick murmured.

“Yeah,” the bartender said with a small sound of regret. “When the kid came running in here, yelling and puking, I went outside to see what was what.” His beard only partially concealed his grimace. “I’d seen the like in Iraq. Only good thing about going out that way is that you never know it. This poor bastard turned his back to the wrong guy, I guess. When they came in, I knew right off that both were carrying, but I never would’ve—”

“How’d you know they were carrying?” Joe asked.

“I have a talent for that, too,” he said without false modesty. “I spot someone packing, I keep an eye on him. Or her. But those two didn’t seem to be looking for trouble.”

“Ms. Bennett, was she packing?”

“No. Purse was too small and her clothes fit her too good.” He flashed a man-to-man smile, which Joe was hard-pressed not to return.

“Tell me about the other guy.”

He squinted one eye. “Better looking than his pal, for sure. In fact, they didn’t strike me as two who’d be friends. They were as different from each other as daylight from dark.”

“How so?”

“Every way. The fat guy seemed more easygoing. Looked you in the eye when talking to you. He drank beer and went through a bowl of popcorn. The other one never touched it. He drank two shots of tequila. Oh, sorry about the glass.”

They’d learned from Morrow that the bartender had washed it as soon as his customer had emptied it, so there was little hope of lifting prints from it for identification. The beer bottles Mickey Bolden had drunk from had gone into a barrel with other trash, but they hadn’t been needed to ID him.

“What else about the two?” Joe asked.

“The fat guy talked a lot more. The other one didn’t say much at all. Avoided eye contact. Never caught him smiling. Looked like a man with a lot on his mind.”

“Taciturn,” Joe said.

“If that means ‘Do not mess with me,’ then yeah. Wore the warning like a sign around his neck.”

Hick asked, “Did you notice any reaction from them when Ms. Bennett came in?”

“I really couldn’t say because my attention was on her. I remember serving them another round after her arrival, though. The beer drinker seemed to be in no particular hurry to finish. But the other made quick work of his tequila, then went over to the jukebox.”

He told them that Mickey had made a phone call, and when he concluded it, he paid their tab with cash and joined his buddy at the jukebox. Soon after that, they left together.

“Neither said anything to Ms. Bennett?” Joe asked.

“No. And I’m certain of that, because by then the kid had moved in and was hassling her. I was on the verge of telling him to back off when she up and left.”

“How long behind the two men did she leave?”

“Minutes after. Five, maybe.”

Joe rubbed his eyes, which were gritty from lack of sleep and stinging from the lingering tobacco fog in the bar. “Okay, the taciturn one, can you give us a more detailed physical description?” He began by asking his height, wanting to know if the bartender’s recollection corresponded with Royce Sherman’s “on the tall side.”

“Six three at least. Lean, but ripped. More wide receiver than running back. Y’all Saints fans?”

Joe nodded, asking, “His approximate age?”

“Hmm, mid- to late thirties. A face that severe, it’s hard to tell.”

“Hair?”

“Brownish. Longish. Not as long as mine.”

Joe noted the length of the man’s braid and smiled. “That’d be hard for any man to beat.”

“His came to his collar in back.”

“Facial hair?”

He stroked his luxuriant beard. “No. I would’ve noticed.”

“Tattoos, scars, piercings? Anything like that?”

“No tattoos. None visible, anyway.” He extended his arms. “I would have noticed ink. He did have a scar, though. Here,” he said, touching the side of his chin.

Joe’s heart skipped.

Hick stopped pecking on his iPad screen and raised his head.

Joe cleared his throat. “You sure?”

“About the scar? Yeah,” the bartender replied. “I noticed because it cut through his scruff. Oh, does that count as facial hair? He’d gone two, maybe three days without shaving.”

“Describe the scar.”

“Well, as I was facing him, it was…” He used Joe’s chin as a means of remembering correctly. “On the left side. Sort of curved, like the letter C, only backward,” he said, drawing one in the air inches from Joe’s face.

Without taking his eyes off the bartender, Joe asked Hick, “Got a picture handy?”

Joe’s heart had resumed beating and now thudded with dread as Hick went through the necessary steps to open his photos file. He brought up a mug shot, zoomed it into a close-up, and turned the screen toward the bartender, who happily exclaimed, “That’s the guy. No question.” Then, gauging their expressions, his white smile wavered. “Not good?”

Joe turned away and reached for his cell phone, saying to Hick over his shoulder, “I gotta alert the office.”

Hick was left to answer the bartender’s question. “No. Not good. Especially for Jordie Bennett.”

Chapter 7

Well?” Shaw demanded.

“What is that?”

Holding the scrap of food wrapper by both ends directly in front of Jordie Bennett’s face, he stretched it taut so she could better see what had been scrawled on it. “A phone number. Local area code.”