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“I didn’t talk to anybody at the bar, but Will hen I came home”
“Are you intimately involved with Natalie Haskell?”
The question jolted Beau Despite his best intentions, his tean to rise He’d wanted to keep Natalie out of this, but that wasn’t going to happen “After Slade beat her up, she filed for divorce He was set to stand trial for assault and would have one to jail She’d have been free to remarry Why would I want to kill him over Natalie?”
“I’ll take that as a yes to rizzled mustache “Did you or did you not threaten to kill Slade Haskell if he bothered his wife again?”
“I did” A drop of sweat trickled between Beau’s shoulder blades, soaking into the back of his shirt It was all circuainst him
Athe clasp, Axelrod slid out a sheet of creased, sweat-stained, blood-spattered white paper enclosed in a plastic sleeve He passed it across the table to Beau “Do you recognize this?”
Beau stared at the crudely phrased letter His stomach contracted He forced himself to speak calmly “I’ve never seen it before Where did you find it?”
“Crunature?”
“It’s a da like this and I sure as hell didn’t write it” As Beau studied the gra, the aard sentences, realization dawned He was being framed—by a perfect store of them
But as it? And why?
“Did you dust this letter for fingerprints?” he asked, knowing his own prints couldn’t possibly be on it
“We tried But the paper was too far gone This isn’t a blasted TV criot, and sometimes it isn’t much” Axelrod slid the letter back into the envelope and fastened the clasp “Must’ve been pretty rough over there in Iraq I hear tell so come back messed up in the head They have spells where they think they’re still in co Beau’s eyes “You ever have trouble that way?”
“It’s called post-traumatic stress, and that’s just one way it can manifest I had a few issues after I left Iraq, but I was lucky enough to get help Apart from some bad dreams, I’ve been fine for years” Beau had answered similar questions openly in the past He had no probleht struck him
“Why would you ask me that question?” Beau kept his tone cal
“Just thinking, that’s all” Axelrod brushed a stray fly off his wrist “We haven’t had a murder in this county for y