Outside the Law

“That’d be cool, man.” Canthus started cleaning his nails with the corner of Mitch’s business card.

Mitch didn’t hold out much hope. How would Canthus locate Larry from jail?

Finally, the bailiff returned. “Looks like you got some friends in high places.”

“I made bail?” Praise be.

“Yeah, but there’s a small complication. Remember, the judge said you had to stay in Bernadette Parish?”

“Sure, no problem.” Once he was out of this place, he would worry about how to get around that rule. He’d get Raleigh to talk to the judge again. Maybe the judge would remand him into Raleigh’s custody. Or Beth’s.

No, not Beth’s. He gave himself a swift mental kick, but that didn’t stop a forbidden fantasy from popping to mind involving handcuffs and a riding crop. He ruthlessly squelched it. Beth wasn’t that kind of girl.

“See, the thing is, the judge won’t just take your word for it. So you have to be fitted with a monitor.” The bailiff got the cell door unlocked, but Mitch just stood there.

“You gotta be kidding me. Where am I going to stay? I don’t live here anymore.”

“You got kin here, right?”

“I’m sure as hell not staying at my brother’s house.” He’d rather be thrown into a cold dungeon and starved than endure living under the same roof as Dwayne and Linda. Dwayne was bad enough, but Linda—she had obsessive-compulsive disorder. Dwayne’s high school sweetheart freaked out if she couldn’t count her French fries before eating them. Mitch could remember her making Dwayne clean her hubcaps with a toothbrush.

The bailiff shrugged. “All I know is they got something worked out.”

Ten minutes later, Mitch was the proud wearer of a black cuff around his ankle that appeared to be made of Kryptonite—indestructible and designed to rat him out if he tried to tamper with it.

“The cuff is equipped with a GPS signal that will report your exact location to a monitoring center,” Raleigh explained. Beth, who for unknown reasons was still hanging out in Coot’s Bayou, sat nearby watching somberly. They were in a small conference room at police headquarters, where they had cuffed him to a chair while the technician from the monitoring company did his thing.

“If you set foot outside Bernadette Parish,” Raleigh continued to explain, “the police have the right to arrest you and return you to jail to await trial.”

“This completely sucks,” Mitch objected. “I have to be able to move around. I have things to do. Obligations.”

“If you’re worried about work, don’t be. Daniel is having your entire computer system moved down here so you can telecommute.”

“From where? Where exactly is it that I’m supposed to stay? Do I rent an apartment? Stay in a motel? And who’s paying for that?” He had a sinking feeling Raleigh hadn’t told him the worst news. “What?”

“You’ll stay at your mother’s house, of course. It looks good, shows you’ve got support, and it’ll save you some money.”

Horrified, Mitch shook his head. “There’s no way. We don’t get along, and anyway, she’d never agree.”

Beth picked that moment to speak up. “She already has.”

This just got worse and worse. “Aw, now, why did you have to go and get her involved?”

“Did you want her to hear about your arrest on the news?” Beth asked. “We talked to her. She’s anxious to help any way she can.”

“Yeah? I didn’t see her at the bail hearing. And what about Davy? Was he anxious?”

“He was agreeable to the arrangement,” Beth said. “They both want to help.”

The technician checked that the cuff was working, and left. Raleigh left, too, mumbling something about signing out with the bailiff. Finally it was just Mitch and Beth in the room, staring at each other.

“Beth, what are you still doing here?”

“You were the one who wanted me here,” she said coolly.

“Yeah, when I thought I was just going to answer a few questions. Don’t you have work to do?”

“This is my work. I need to be there while they’re processing the car, the gun—”

“Good luck with that.” The Bernadette Parish crime lab wouldn’t let her within five hundred feet of their precious evidence, not until they were good and done with it—which meant making anything that didn’t support their case disappear. Then, if she wanted to run her own tests, Raleigh would have to file requests with the court, a process that could take weeks.

“You don’t want me hanging around.” She studied her fingernails with great interest. “That’s obvious. But you’re not going to scare me away by acting like a jerk. This is work. It has nothing to do with…with our personal relationship. Which we don’t have anyway.”

Beth’s face flushed to a lovely shell-pink as her argument wound down.

What the hell was she talking about? “So you’re no longer my friend?” he asked, just to be sure he understood. “We’re just associates now?”

“I’m not sure we can be friends,” she said glumly. “When a line is crossed…well, I could have just left things alone, but I didn’t and I ruined everything.”

“You ruined it?” What the hell was she talking about? “Sorry, I’m confused.”

“Can we not talk about this?” she pleaded.

“Talk about what?” Why were women so confusing? Why didn’t she just spit out what was bothering her?

“I just want to make sure you understand that I’m here only because Daniel asked me to stay on top of things. I’m not trying to…change your mind.”

He gave up demanding that she clarify; his questions were getting monotonous. When faced with an unreasonable female, his strategy was to agree. Saved a lot of unproductive arguing.

“Okay,” he said, offering up a smile.

With a frustrated sigh, she turned and exited the room, and Mitch couldn’t help appreciating the way her sassy little butt twitched back and forth with each tap of her heel on the hard vinyl floor.

He racked his brain to figure out what was stuck in her craw. Maybe she was so repulsed by the things she’d learned about him recently that she really didn’t want to be friends.

That was a depressing thought.

But she said it was a line she’d crossed, not him. What had she done recently regarding… Wait a minute. The zydeco concert. She’d offered him her extra ticket, and she’d acted kind of strange when she did it, standing in the doorway whispering with Raleigh.