He stopped. Caught his lower lip between his teeth and bit down. The pouches beneath his eyes rode up and obscured the bottom half of the irises. The two homeboys working on the Stutz looked our way.

Coury kept his lip between his teeth and rotated his jaw. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said. “Too complicated.”

He left me standing there and walked back toward the lot. But he only made his way halfway through, paused by the Stutz. As I drove away he was watching.

CHAPTER

30

Milo stared into his coffee cup, pretended the soil-colored liquid was a bog and he was sinking.

If this was a normal case, he’d have gotten himself backup. As much as he hated meetings and personalities and all the other crap that went with teamwork, multiple suspects demanded it.

An army of suspects on Janie. Six, with Luke Chapman dead. And then there was after-burn: Walt Obey and Germ Bacilla and Diamond Jim.

And the glue that held it all together: J.G. Broussard.

And now, yet another unknown: Alex’s theory about a rogue cop.

Milo’d spent some time thinking about that, trying to come up with a possible name, but all he could conjure was an abstraction. Some asshole doing Pierce Schwinn’s postmortem bidding, playing games and yanking his strings. Someone with the gall to rip off Rick’s car and return it detailed, with a nice little gift.

Vance Coury was in the car biz and wasn’t that a coincidence? But Coury sure wouldn’t have delivered the real murder book.

So maybe the use of the car meant someone was pointing him toward Coury. Or was he really getting overly complicated, now?

The anger that had percolated within him since the first murder book had surfaced kept rising in his gorge.

Coury. The bastard shaped up as a sadist and a rapist and a control freak. Maybe the dominant one in the group. If he and his rich buds were cornered, they’d be likely to ambush the enemy, cut his throat, and burn his body.

One army deserved another, and all he had was Alex.

He laughed silently. Or maybe he’d let out sound because the old lady in the second booth over looked up, startled, and stared at him with that antsy expression that takes hold of people when they confront the weird.

Milo smiled at her, and she retracted her head behind her newspaper.

He was back at DuPars in Farmers Market, trying to sort things out. Vance Coury had stayed in his head because it had been Coury who’d raped Janie the first time and maybe initiated the scene that led to Janie’s murder.

Normally, he’d have investigated the hell out of the guy. But . . . then something hit him. Maybe there was a safe way to learn more.