”I didn’t do it, Sarge.” I kept on walking, but I could hear him laughing.

”Maybe you’ll get to defend the killer,” I heard him say. ”Yeah, maybe the killer’ll be just like ol’

Johnny Wayne. Innocent. Railroaded by the system.”

April 12

10:00 a.m.

Special Agent Phillip Landers’s cell phone rang a little before ten a.m., just as he was wrapping his mouth around a breakfast burrito at Sonic. Bill Wright, the Special Agent in Charge of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation office in Johnson City, was calling. Bill was Landers’s boss. Not that the brown-nosing jerk should have been the boss. Landers should have been the boss. By his own account, he was, by far, the smartest, hardest-working, best-looking TBI agent in the office. He knew he’d get his chance soon, though. Wright was about to retire.

”There’s a body at the Budget Inn,” Wright said as Landers chewed slowly and stared at a teenage waitress on a pair of roller skates. ”Male. Stabbed to death. That’s about all I know. I already called forensics. They’re on the way.”

The Johnson City police didn’t have any forensics people on the payroll, so murders were often passed along to the TBI. Landers took his time finishing his burrito. No big rush. The guy was already dead.

There were six city cruisers in the Budget Inn parking lot when Landers pulled in a half hour after he got the call. All of the cruisers had their emergency lights on, as though the cops who drove them were actually doing something. The patrol guys never ceased to amaze Landers. They’d stand around for hours at a crime scene, fucking off, trading gossip, and hoping for some little tidbit of information they could share with each other. If they were really lucky, maybe they’d get a glimpse of the body and could go home and tell their wives or girlfriends the gory details.