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You’re not a suspect, but . . . . Barnes had a police record.
    “We know, Jeremy, that you’re not involved. We don’t suspect you of anything, but . . . .”
    There was that “but . . .” he feared. Barnes sighed. He’d worked so hard to get his life together since his arrest.
    “I threw some things out of the apartment. Drugs. Paraphernalia. I cleaned up blood. It was everywhere.”
    Detective Carter noted Barnes’ sincerity and that he was cooperating. He knew, as Jeremy relayed his story, that there was clear evidence of foul play at Regina Hartwell’ s apartment.
    “Tell me about Regina . . . her history.”
    “Reg is in love with this girl named Kim LeBlanc. But Kim dates this guy named Justin. Justin deals drugs, runs guns. Regina’s fronted him money. He’s nothing but trash. Kim and Regina had a fight the other night about Justin.”
    Carter knew he needed to talk to Kim LeBlanc.
     
     
    After the police finished interviewing Anita Morales, they drove her home. They checked all of her locks on her doors; then the officer asked her to do him a favor. “Would you page Kim and ask her to meet you at Regina’s?”
    Anita paged Kim from the police car. “We found out some stuff about Regina,” she said. “Can you please meet me at Regina’s?”

    “Mom?” Kim LeBlanc said into the phone. Her heart raced so that she felt like it was going to beat right out of her chest. It was like a horse after it had run the Kentucky Derby and then dropped dead after crossing the finish line, bathed in a white lather of sweat, foaming at the mouth. That’s the way Kim felt—like she was about to drop dead with a heart attack.
    “Can you meet me at the Circle K, like at 6:30?” The horse fell on Kim’s chest. It was lying there now. She couldn’t see. Everything was dark. It was as though she were dead. God, she was scared. She started crying. She knew that if her mother saw her, she’d know she was messed up and would help.
    “Yes,” said Cathy LeBlanc.
    Kim hung up the phone, then phoned Anita back. “My mother is coming to pick me up, then I’ll be there.” She started crying again, hysterically, that scared little girl who always appeared with Kim’s tears. Her face turned as red as the roses around that dead Derby winner’s neck.
    “I knew you couldn’t handle this,” said Justin Thomas. He lay in bed with her. “We’ll just go to sleep.”
    LeBlanc sighed and took a Valium. It was a long time ’til 6:30.
    The Thomas house was quiet with the passed-out sleep of drugs.
     
     
    Anita Morales sat in her apartment and wrote neat, detailed notes, recalling everything that Regina Hartwell had told her just before she died, remembering everything that had happened since Regina had disappeared. She knew that, one day, she would have to remember, perhaps testify.
     
     
    The detectives decided that Kim LeBlanc just might not show up in response to Morales’s page and phone call, so they decided to send officers after her. Detective John Hunt, Deputy Nelson, and two Travis County deputies left for the James Thomas house in Garfield, a tiny community in Bastrop County, near the Colorado River.
    Drowsy on Benadryl, J. R. Kelly, James Thomas’s nephew, was sacked out on the couch. Earlier, J. R. had climbed a tree to tie a rope around one of its big, thick limbs so that they could swing out over the Colorado River during the Fourth of July celebration. The tree was full of poison oak.
    Now J. R. was covered in poison oak and crashed on Benadryl. Barking dogs woke him—the Rottweilers, he slowly realized as he moved from deep sleep to awareness and finally to alertness. He jumped up. He looked out the window. “Oh, my God!”
    He counted five police cars parked in the yard, and a handful of cops were honking horns and spraying chemical Mace in the Rottweilers’ faces. J. R. ran out the door.
    “Is Kim LeBlanc here?” shouted Detective Hunt.
    The dogs barked and yelped.
    Hunt stayed in his