“Why only pretty certain?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out until I’m required to give you discovery. But I will tell you she heard arguing and what she thought might have been a shot or two. And that’s it for now.”

“OK. Will you give me the courtesy of telling me if you indict Ms. Woodruff?”

“Sure thing.”

“Will you let her surrender herself?”

“I guess she’s entitled to a little leeway in light of the mess we made last time.”

“Are you certain you’re not stepping in it again?”

“Unlike some people who shall remain nameless, I don’t shoot first and ask questions later.”

“What are you thinking about for a charge?”

“You want to know if I’m going for a lethal injection?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know enough to answer that question right now.”

“Fair enough.”

“Honestly, Mary, I sincerely hope this search is an exercise in futility. I don’t enjoy making life difficult for someone who’s already had one awful experience with the justice system. But I’ll go after Ms. Woodruff full-bore if I believe, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she murdered John Finley.”

As soon as the last police car was out of sight, Mary got down to business.

“Monte Pike is in charge of your case, and he isn’t a loose cannon like Max Dietz. This guy is very bright and very methodical. He didn’t tell me much, but he did tell me that your neighbor, Ann Paulus, will testify that she saw Finley go into your condo around the time he was killed. Was he here?”

“Yes. The bastard broke in.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He said he was on the run.”

“From whom?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He said I would be in danger if I knew.”

“If he was on the run, why did he go to your place?”

“He came back for his duffel bag. He said there were passports and ID in different names he could use. He’d hidden the bag in my house just before he was kidnapped.”

“Pike told me the neighbor heard an argument and possibly shots.”

“There was an argument, but I didn’t shoot John, even though I was tempted. When I caught the bastard sneaking around my house, I thought he was a burglar. I fired a shot into the floor at his feet.”

Mary had seen an officer digging something out of the floor in the hall. She made a note to ask if it was a bullet.

“When I saw who it was, I went ballistic. The son of a bitch ruined my life, Mary. I’m pushing papers, my chances of making detective are slim and none, I was humiliated and forced to stand trial. I let John know what I thought of him. That’s when he explained what happened and why he couldn’t help me right away. I calmed down a little after that and told him to take the duffel bag and get out. When he left, he was alive and well.”

“What did Finley tell you?”

“He said he was a navy SEAL with contacts in the CIA. After he left the military, he freelanced for the Agency on occasion, and they took him off the books so anyone who checked on him wouldn’t know about his background. TA Enterprises was created to purchase and refit the China Sea and to provide money to finance the operation that almost got John killed.”

“Tell me about that.”

“John told me that the China Sea was anchored in the Columbia River near Shelby. On the night he was kidnapped, she had just returned from a rendezvous at sea where she’d picked up a cargo of hashish from a freighter from Karachi, Pakistan. John guessed that the hashish was going to be sold to pay for covert operations that couldn’t be financed from budgeted funds because they were illegal.

“John told me that a crew member named Talbot murdered the rest of the crew. John killed him in a gunfight, but he was wounded. My house was the only place he could think of, so he drove here. He still had a key. He’d just finished hiding the duffel bag when two men broke in and attacked him.

“John thought that Talbot didn’t know that the CIA was behind the smuggling operation and thought John was just another drug dealer. He thought Talbot cut a deal with a Mexican named Hector Gomez to steal the hashish. John’s kidnappers worked for Gomez. They took him to a deserted spot and were going to kill him, but a team of government agents rescued him. Everything that happened on the ship was kept quiet so the people who were going to buy the hashish wouldn’t get alarmed and back out.”

“Why didn’t John come forward earlier?”

“He couldn’t stop my prosecution without blowing the deal. After he sold the hashish, he insisted on helping me. That’s when he made that video.”

“If I can corroborate your story, I might be able to convince Pike to drop the case against you.”

“God, Mary, I hope so. I can’t go through another trial.”

Woodruff had been fighting to keep her composure, but she suddenly burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. Mary felt helpless as she watched her shoulders shake with each wrenching sob.

“I didn’t do anything. You have to believe me. If anyone killed John, it would be the drug dealers or the CIA. I just wanted John out of my life.”

“Well, he’s back in it. Hopefully, he won’t be for long.”

Chapter Thirty-five

A rap on her doorjamb brought Mary’s eyes up from the memo she was writing. Mark Gilbert, her investigator, dropped into a chair.

“I thought you might be interested in this,” he said as he handed Mary a rolled police report written by Tom Oswald of the Shelby, Oregon, police department.

“You told me Miss Woodruff said Finley’s ship was the China Sea and it was docked in Shelby, so I decided to see if I could find out anything about it, and sure enough this cop wrote a report. It’s pretty interesting. I think you should give him a call.”

As soon as Mary finished Oswald’s report, she swiveled toward her phone and dialed Shelby PD. Ten minutes later, she turned to face her investigator again.

“We’re meeting after his shift tonight.”

“Do you want me to come along?”

“No, I think he’ll talk more freely if it’s just me. You know, he said something interesting as soon as we were connected.”

“What’s that?”

“He said he’d been expecting my call.”

“I wonder why.”

“I didn’t want to push him. I’ll ask tonight.”

“One more thing,” Gilbert said. “I still have informants from my days as a cop. I’ve been trolling for information, and I came up with some interesting stuff. A few days after Finley was kidnapped, two men were found on a logging road. They’d been murdered. The men worked for a Mexican drug cartel. One of them was wearing a leather jacket.”

“Like the kidnapper Sarah described.”

“There’s a rumor on the street that Finley had a quarter million dollars with him when he left the ship and that’s why the kidnappers were following him.”

“Finley told Sarah that he was rescued by government agents. They must have taken the money when they killed the drug dealers.”

“Makes sense. Tell me what happens tonight,” Gilbert said.

“Will do.”

If Mary hadn’t run a MapQuest search, she might have missed the bar, which stood on an empty lot away from a run-down gas station on an otherwise unpopulated stretch of highway. There were no streetlights on this part of the road. A quarter moon and the neon beer signs in the tavern window provided a little light. A pickup and a beat-up Chevy were parked in the gravel lot that fronted the tavern. The isolation made Mary uneasy, but her hand gripped the handle of a.38 Special she carried in the deep pocket of her belted Burberry trench coat.

When Mary opened the door to the bar, she was hit by the smell of stale beer and sweat. The inside of the tavern was almost as dark as the outside, and it took a moment before her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Two men were perched on stools, nursing drinks at opposite ends of a scarred, liquor-soaked bar. The bartender and the two men turned and stared when the door opened. Mary didn’t waste any time on them. She scanned the tables and found the only other customer nursing a beer in a booth in the back.