I’d started the PI business with my two best friends from my Air Force days. Nathan, Big Jim, and I did everything together, three fast-living young bucks. On a cold, blustery Christmas Eve thirty years ago, a distraught husband we’d nailed for cheating walked into our office and blew Nathan away before turning the g*n on himself.
Big Jim took it hard. He hit rock bottom and stayed perpetually drunk for two years. I wasn’t far behind him in that department. I kept him on the payroll until he sobered up and left the business to become a Texas Ranger. Big Jim’s a captain now, or so I hear. We haven’t spoken in a decade. Sometimes I think about calling him, but I can’t seem to bridge the gulf of years.
I turned to the truck, but Denise caught my elbow.
“Trip, wait a second. This isn’t some
