Miles looked up at him. “What?”

“He didn’t have a case. Beck Swanson suddenly got a case of amnesia about what happened.”

“But I was there-”

“You got there after it happened. You didn’tsee it.”

“But I saw the blood. I saw the broken chair and table in the middle of the bar.

I saw the crowd that had gathered.”

“I know, I know. But what was Harvey supposed to do? Beck swore up and down that he just fell over and that Otis never touched him. He said he’d been confused that night, but now that his mind was clear, he remembered everything.” Miles suddenly lost his appetite, and he pushed his plate off to the side. “If I went down there again, I’m sure that I could find someone who saw what happened.”

Charlie shook his head. “I know it grates on you, but what good would it do? You know how many of Otis’s brothers were there that night. They’d also say that nothing happened-and who knows, maybe they were the ones who actually did it. Without Beck’s testimony, what choice did Harvey have? Besides, you know Otis.

He’ll do something else-just give him time.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Miles and Otis Timson had a long history between them. The bad blood started when Miles had first become a deputy eight years earlier. He’d arrested Clyde Timson, Otis’s father, for assault when he’d thrown his wife through the screen door on their mobile home. Clyde had spent time in prison for that-though not as long as he should have-and over the years, five of his six sons had spent time in prison as well on offenses ranging from drug dealing to assault to car theft. To Miles, Otis posed the greatest danger simply because he was the smartest. Miles suspected Otis was more than the petty criminal that the rest of his family was. For one thing, he didn’t look the part. Unlike his brothers, he shied away from tattoos and kept his hair cut short; there were times he actually held down odd jobs, doing manual labor. He didn’t look like a criminal, but looks were deceiving. His name was loosely linked with various crimes, and townspeople frequently speculated that it was he who directed the flow of drugs into the county, though Miles had no way to prove that. All of their raids had come up empty, much to Miles’s frustration.