I waved Roscoe over and she bent beside me and looked at the photograph. I saw a wave of surprise pass over her face as she recognized Hubble. Then she bent closer. Looked harder. I saw a second wave of surprise. She had recognized something else.
`When was this picture taken?’ she asked.
Judy shrugged.
`Summer last year, I guess,’ she said.
Roscoe touched the blurred image of Hubble with her fingernail.
`Did Sherman say who this guy was?’
`The new boss,’ Judy said. `He was there six
months, then he fired Sherman’s ass.’
`Island Air-conditioning’s new boss?’ Roscoe
said. `Was there a reason he laid Sherman off?’ `Sherman said they didn’t need him no more,’
Judy said. `He never said much.’
`Is this where Island Air-conditioning is based?’ Roscoe asked. `Where this picture was taken?’
Judy shrugged and nodded her head, tentatively. `I guess so,’ she said. `Sherman never told me much about it.’
`We need to keep this photograph,’ Roscoe told her. `We’ll let you have it back later.’
Judy fished it out of the plastic. Handed it to her.
`Keep it,’ she said. `I don’t want it.’
Roscoe took the picture and put it in her inside jacket pocket. She and I moved back to the middle of the room and stood there.
`Shot in the head,’ Judy said. `That’s what happens when you mess around. I told him they’d catch up with him, sooner or later.’
Roscoe nodded sympathetically.
`We’ll keep in touch,’ she said to her. `You know, the funeral arrangements, and we might want a statement.’
Judy glared at us again.
`Don’t bother,’ she said. `I’m not going to his funeral. I wasn’t his wife, so I’m not his widow. I’m going to forget I ever knew him. That man was trouble from beginning to end.’
She stood there glaring at us. We shuffled out,
down the hall, out through the door. Across the awkward path. We held hands as we walked back to the car.
`What?’ I asked her. `What’s in the photograph?’
She was walking fast.
`Wait,’ she said. `I’ll show you in the car.’
NINETEEN
We got in the Chevy and she snapped on the dome light. Pulled the photograph out of her pocket. Leaned over and tilted the picture so the light caught the shiny surface. Checked it carefully. Handed it to me.
`Look at the edge,’ she said. `On the left.’
The picture was of Sherman Stoller standing in front of a yellow truck. Paul Hubble was turned away, in the background. The two figures and the truck filled the whole frame apart from a wedge of blacktop at the bottom. And a thin margin of background to the left. The background slice was even more out of focus than Hubble was, but I could see the edge of a modem metal building, with silver siding. A tall tree beyond. The frame of a door. It was a big industrial door, rolled up. The frame was a dark red colour. Some kind of baked-on industrial coating. Partly decorative, partly preservative. Some kind of a shed door. There was gloom inside the shed.
`That’s Kliner’s warehouse,’ she said. `At the top of the county road.’
`Are you sure?’ I said.
`I recognize the tree,’ she said.
I looked again. It was a very distinctive tree. Dead on one side. Maybe split by lightning.
`That’s Kliner’s warehouse,’ she said again. `No doubt about that.’
Then she clicked her car phone on and took the photograph back. Dialled DMV in Atlanta and called in the number from the front of Stoller’s truck. Waited a long moment, tapping her index forger on the steering wheel. I heard the crackle of the response in the earpiece. Then she clicked the phone off and turned to me.
`The truck is registered to Kliner Industries,’ she said. `And the registered address is Zacarias Perez, Attorneys-at-Law, Jacksonville, Florida.’
I nodded. She nodded back. Sherman Stoller’s buddies. The ones who had got him out of Jacksonville Central in fifty-five minutes flat, two years ago.
`OK,’ she said. `Put it all together. Hubble, Stoller, Joe’s investigation. They’re printing counterfeit money down in Kliner’s warehouse, right?’
I shook my head.
`Wrong,’ I said. `There’s no printing going on inside the States. It all happens abroad. Molly Beth Gordon told me that, and she ought to know what she’s talking about. She said Joe had made it impossible. And whatever Stoller was doing, Judy said he stopped doing it a year ago. And Finlay said Joe only started this whole thing a year ago. Around the same time Hubble fired Stoller.’