“If Dirk is Jeremy, you’ll want to be in on the hunt and the capture. Right?”
“Definitely. I’ll call Knutz first thing tomorrow morning. Have him start putting together a task force.”
“Any chance you can get here tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“For a couple of urgent reasons. First and foremost, Amelia needs someone watching her back.”
“I thought that was your detail. What’s the other urgency?”
“I need you to bail me out.”
* * *
Even before thanking Headly for picking him up, as they walked from the jail, Dawson asked him if Amelia was safe.
“Soon as our call ended last night, I talked to Knutz. He’s got people he occasionally uses for surveillance, sorta freelancers. He put somebody on Amelia. A gal actually, but she’s one of the best, he says.
“Anyway, she followed Amelia when she left the sheriff’s office. She went straight to her apartment, spent the night there without incident. She left it this morning at eight o’clock.” He checked his wristwatch. “About ten minutes ago.”
“So she’s okay?”
“Didn’t I indicate that?”
“What about the boys?”
“They weren’t with her.”
“She must have left them with the museum guy and his wife. She said she might. It was probably for the best. But somebody should be guarding that house, too. They—” He caught Headly looking at him curiously. “What?”
“For a jailbird, you’re awfully concerned about the welfare of a widow and her two kids.”
“If something happens to them, it’ll be on your head for not telling the locals about the possibility of Jeremy’s resurrection.”
Querulously, Headly said, “Another one of Knutz’s freelancers is watching the museum guy’s house. Okay?”
“Why didn’t you just say so?”
“Well, I’ve been a little busy lately getting your ass out of jail.”
“Thanks, by the way.”
Headly merely snorted.
Dawson said, “I wasn’t worried about being formally charged.” He’d spent an uncomfortable night in jail—fortunately not in the same cell with Ray Dale Huffman, whom, had he gotten close to, he might have strangled. “It was only a matter of time before they had to let me go.”
Headly motioned him toward the rental car he’d picked up at the Savannah airport.
“How do you figure?”
“They didn’t have any evidence.”
Headly used the remote key to unlock the car doors. They got in on opposite sides, and Headly started the engine immediately. “Of illegal drug possession or homicide?”
“Certainly no evidence tying me to Stef’s murder.”
Headly just sat there with his hand on the gearshift, looking at him, silently asking about the other possible criminal charge.