A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

Joe shook his head.  “Well, if he did, he wasn’t at The Last Call,” he said.  “And no one else could remember seeing him that night.”

“Okay, so, if it wasn’t about booze -- what was it about?” she mused.

“Well, of course, there’s always the old standby.  He might have had someone on the side.  It would fit the timing -- late at night, and it would also fit the fact that he told Lauren he was going to work.”

“I guess that could explain what he was doing out on his own at that hour,” Lily said, but she didn’t seem convinced.

Joe thought about it.  “But the thing is, Dale never struck me as the pro type.”

“And what exactly is the pro type?”

“Well, I mean, look at the wife he had.  Unless she was cold as stone, and she sure doesn’t come across as being that way, why would he have needed to step out on her?”

“Sometimes, you just don’t know what goes on in other people’s marriages,” Lily reminded him.  “But let’s suppose that he was there to pick up a prostitute -- why the alley?  That’s so last century.  These days, there are at least two motels on lower Broad Street that rent rooms by the hour.  No one needs to do someone up against a back alley wall anymore, especially in the middle of winter.”

“Oh, and what exactly do you know about rooms by the hour, and walls in back alleys?” Joe inquired.

Lily laughed.  “Oh, you’d be amazed at how extensive my knowledge is,” she said,  “And be sure to note that I said knowledge -- not experience.”

“Of course,” Joe conceded.  “I wouldn’t have thought anything else.”

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” she said.  “I’m not saying he didn’t have a woman on the side, but knowing Dale, if he did, she would have had her own place, and it all would have been neat and discreet.”

“Well, if he wasn’t there for another woman,” Joe wondered, “what the hell was he there for?”

“We’ve been assuming that we’re talking about something legal here,” Lily said slowly.  “But what if we should be talking about something that maybe wasn’t so legal?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Well, don’t forget,” she reminded him, “he wasn’t on duty that night, but he had his service weapon with him, didn’t he?”

A light suddenly went on in Joe’s head.  “Wait a minute,” he said.  “Randy and the chief both said there was no operation on for that night that they knew about.  But that doesn’t mean Dale couldn’t have been working something on his own -- something that maybe he hadn’t filled them in on yet.  He was on the drug detail, wasn’t he?  And the drugs come in off the docks, don’t they?  He could have been there for some kind of a meet, maybe it was a new snitch that he wasn’t too sure about yet.  And if that was the case, then it would have been perfectly reasonable for him to have his gun with him for protection.”

“If you’re right,” Lily said, “then we may have ourselves a witness.”

“A reluctant witness,” Joe corrected her.  “No one’s come forward yet.  So, what kind of person witnesses a crime and doesn’t come forward?”

“The kind who doesn’t want to get involved.  The kind who doesn’t want anyone to know he was there when the killing went down.”

“Exactly.”

“And who would that be?”

Joe shrugged.  “Well, if we eliminate the other woman, what does that leave us with?  It had to be a source that Dale was trying to develop.  A potential snitch, maybe.  And the time and the location tell me we’re probably talking about drugs.”

“Which makes our chances of finding him slim to none.”

“Probably,” Joe agreed.  “But I think I’ll nose around a bit.”

If either of them realized that their investigation of Jason Lightfoot in connection with the murder of Dale Scott had just turned a very sharp corner, neither mentioned it.

. . .

Not unlike the city itself, the Port of Port Hancock was actually two ports in one -- the one that promoted an exclusive marina that catered to private yachts, charter boats, and tourists, and the one that catered to commerce.  And there were two kinds of commerce -- the one that was carried on openly and officially, and the one that avoided regulation, required no manifest, and wasn’t very official.

The Port Hancock Police had for years tried to shut down the illegal traffic, with only limited success, and drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and other contraband continued to find their way onto the peninsula with very little interruption.

Old Eddie wasn’t hard to find, if you knew where to look.  Joe didn’t know him by any other name, and doubted anyone else did, either.  He had always been Old Eddie, from as far back as when Joe was a kid with a fascination for the sea.

He knew the old man must now be at least eighty years old.  He was tall and gaunt and bent, with a long sweep of white hair he tied back in a ponytail, a scraggly beard, and slanting brown eyes above high cheekbones.  Reported to be half white and half native, he had never really been comfortable in either camp.  The docks had been his home, his family, and his livelihood for more than sixty years, and would be his legacy long after he was gone.  After all this time, there probably wasn’t much about the docks that Old Eddie didn’t know.

“Hello there, Joe,” he greeted the private investigator, talking around the worn-down stem of a hand-carved pipe that was always wedged in the corner of his mouth.

“How’s it going, Eddie?” Joe asked, plunking himself down on the bulwark beside the ancient mariner.

“Got no complaints, no complaints at all,” Old Eddie replied.  “How about you?”

“Too many to name,” Joe told him with a chuckle.

“Hear tell you’re doing some work on the right side of the Lightfoot case.”

“That I am,” the former police officer confirmed.

“Nice boy, that