Seventy-Eight
NASH HADER HAD been kicked out of his house same as he’d been kicked out of his office after his wife had caught him cheating on her—with a waitress from Rowdy’s this time, and one time too many.
For now, he is in a small one-bedroom apartment on the south side of Cross Rivers, living off the last of the offshore money that the bitch, Helene Mayes, hadn’t frozen—and what he’d managed to save from what Briar Crockett had been paying him on the side until Hader had gotten fired as sheriff and Briar had said, “You are of no further use to me.”
In a few weeks Hader will be moving to the small house he’d purchased in Key West a few years ago when the dirty money was still rolling in, ready to put Cross Rivers in his rearview mirror once and for all.
He’s still hungover this morning from the bottle of Maker’s Mark he’d killed the night before, needing coffee badly when he finally drags himself out of bed.
When he walks into the apartment’s tiny kitchen, Roof and Lynyrd Crockett are sitting at his table.
“We let ourselves in,” Roof says calmly, as if dropping by like this is as natural as it could be.
“Your father send you?” Hader says, scratching the part of his gut visible over the drawstrings of his sweatpants. “He said he was done with me.”
“Not only did he not send us,” Roof says pleasantly, “once we’re gone this morning, it will be as if we were never here at all.”
“Not for nothing, Nash?” Lynyrd says. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks for noticing,” Hader says. “Now, what exactly is it you boys want?”
“Intel,” Roof says.
“Intel so important you felt the need to break into my house to get it?”
“Maybe you should call a cop,” Roof says. “Oh, wait.”
“Well, you got me there,” Hader says. “But truth is, I’m still willing to help you boys any way I can. And you know I’ve still got that old place belonged to my uncle over there in Old Mill, you ever need to lie low.”
“Why would we want to do that?” Roof asks.
“You might not believe it, but I was a pretty good cop once,” he says. “That place is yours, you ever need it.”
“For a price, right?” Roof says.
“Man’s still gotta eat,” Hader says. “But what do you—?”
“Your suspect list for those pretty girls who keep disappearing,” Roof says.
Nash Hader still needs coffee. But for now, he has to admit to himself, the Crockett boys have gotten his attention.
“You mind telling me why?”
“While the cops are fixed on finding who shot a cop nobody in this room gives a rat’s ass about,” Roof says, “we’re fixing to find the girls for them.”
Roof grins at him now, then spits some tobacco juice into the mug Nash Hader has just noticed is in front of him.
“You think old 109 is the only one around here who can be a local hero?” Roof asks. “Now go get us the fucking list.”