“Yes. Gallo thought he might have had one at that time and killed his daughter. He almost went crazy. He took off into the woods after he killed Black. Catherine went after him, hunted for weeks, and tracked him down.”

“But you said she changed her mind about Gallo’s killing the kid. Why?”

“How do I know? It was a judgment call. She just said that Eve and Gallo had been stupid to take the word of a murderer even if every instinct told them that he was telling the truth. They should have looked in another direction. The other direction was Queen and Jacobs. Black had been hired as a contract killer many times before by them. It wasn’t logical that they wouldn’t have known his intention to kill the little girl. Queen and Jacobs were regarding Gallo as a threat, and he had a history of mental problems. Kill the child and send him over the edge? There was a possibility that they’d been involved or hired someone else to kill Bonnie. So they went after them.”

Venable could almost feel Dickson’s frustration and impatience at the other end of the line. Well, suck it up, big man. He was almost finished.

“Nate Queen was killed over a week ago, and that left Thomas Jacobs. Catherine and Gallo tracked him to New Orleans, and she’s hoping either to force Jacobs to confess or get info from him about who did kill Bonnie Duncan. Gallo has rented a house on the bayou across the Mississippi, where they’re going to take Jacobs to interrogate him.”

“Then she should be able to tie this up soon,” Dickson said. “How soon?”

“I don’t know. The last I heard, Catherine had told Eve Duncan and Joe Quinn about Thomas Jacobs, and they were on their way to join Catherine and Gallo in New Orleans.”

“You don’t know?” Dickson asked. “Give me an estimate.”

Screw this. “I don’t have a crystal ball, dammit. It will be done as quickly as she can do it. When she gets the information, she’ll call me. As you can see, I’m not totally out of the loop.”