“We can rule that out,” Lindstrom said.
Sophia eyed her thoughtfully. “Why were you meeting him this morning?”
“He called me last night around eleven,” she said. “Told me he had some information on the murders. If he was guilty, I doubt he’d do that.”
Why hadn’t he called her? Sophia wondered. Because he was angry? Because he hadn’t been able to find her? That would’ve been while she was looking out for Rod over at the safe house. But she’d had her phone with her. No call had come in…. “Did he give you any idea what he had?”
“No. None. He was acting a little paranoid. Said he didn’t want to go into it over the phone.”
“And then he was killed.”
“From what I’m seeing.”
Kevin spat again, hitting the dirt not far from his boot. “He wasn’t out here just for kicks. Tormenting UDAs isn’t something he’d do alone, not unless he was seriously planning to hurt someone, which I highly doubt. And if he was with friends, we would’ve heard from them by now. You don’t see your buddy get shot and not say anything.”
“Was the car running when you found it?” Lindstrom asked.
Kevin’s hand scraped over his beard growth. “No. And there was no other vehicle in the area.”
Rod stepped closer to the body. “How’d you spot him?”
“I caught a glimpse of red from the ridge up there—” he pointed to his left “—just as the sun was coming up. I used my binoculars, so I wouldn’t walk into anything dangerous. Maybe this is my land, but I know not to interrupt the wrong people out here,” he explained. “And this is what I saw.” He took the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Since there are no cell phone towers out here, we use these around the ranch. First thing I did was notify my wife that we had a problem.”
A problem. Sophia already had a problem. This made it worse. “I hope the Feds will come in on this one, too,” she muttered to Rod. To start with, they needed someone who knew more about blood spatter analysis than she did. A blood-spray expert would be able to determine the angle of fire and how far the gun had been from Stuart’s head when it went off. It appeared that the shooter pulled the trigger from inside the truck, which meant they might be able to glean some of his DNA—if the Locard principle held true.
Edging closer, she peered into the cab. A piece of flesh hung from an exit wound above Stuart’s left ear. Sophia didn’t want to fixate on that morbid detail, didn’t want to acknowledge that she was seeing someone she’d dated a few times in a state like this. And yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Suddenly, her vision dimmed. Afraid she might pass out, she closed her eyes and took some deep breaths, and when she opened them again, she tried to convince herself that none of this was real. It was merely a puzzle that needed to be solved, and she needed to do the solving. But in the past several weeks, she’d seen everything from skeletalized remains to this. It didn’t matter. Death was something she could never get used to.
“Look at his eyes,” she said.
“What about them?” Rod leaned around her. “Are you talking about the bruising?”
“Yeah. You think he got in a fight before he came here?”
His face more masklike than ever, Rod shook his head. Sophia guessed he, too, was struggling to distance himself from the fact that he’d known this person. It had to be even harder for him. Stuart was—had been—his half brother. Maybe they’d never been close but in some ways the animosity between them only complicated matters. Now they’d never have the chance to put their differences aside. “Raccoon eyes are typical with a gunshot wound to the head,” he said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“What are you talking about?” Lindstrom tried to squeeze between them.
Careful not to touch the truck, Sophia stepped out of her way. She found it difficult enough to hold herself together without having to tolerate Lindstrom. “I didn’t notice it on Benita Sanchez,” she murmured to Rod.
His gaze remained fixed on the bruising. “Doesn’t happen every time. Depends on the damage. Besides, it wouldn’t have shown up so clearly against darker skin.”
“So something’s wrong with his eyes?” Lindstrom asked.
Rod also stepped back. “The bruising. It’s normal for this type of death.”
He seemed to know a fair amount about murder. How many other cases had Rod worked? Sophia wondered. What had they been like? He’d become so distant this morning she could hardly believe he was the same man she’d slept with last night.
“What’s your guess on time of death?” Sophia asked.
A muscle twitched in his cheek, the only outward sign—besides his general reticence—that this was difficult for him. “Without an M.E. here to get a body temp, it’s hard to say. But…I’d guess maybe three hours.”
Lindstrom inserted herself into their conversation once again. “Why not longer?”
He gestured toward Stuart’s corpse. “Rigor’s just setting in.”
Sophia knew rigor mortis was caused by a chemical reaction involving the loss of adenosine triphosphate, which made the muscles contract and hold rigid. She also knew that it typically started with the small muscles in the face, neck and hands and that it set in about two hours after death. She’d read a lot of forensics books since the UDA murders had begun, hoping for insights. But she’d never actually seen rigor before. In her first murder case—the domestic dispute that had ended so badly—she’d been called to the scene immediately. And all the illegal immigrants who’d been killed since then had been discovered either before or after the thirty-six-hour period when rigor became a factor.
“Provided your estimate is accurate, he died around four.” Lindstrom stated the obvious.
Wondering where Vonnegut could be, Sophia turned to James. Maybe the M.E. felt no sense of urgency to respond quickly to the deaths of illegal aliens, but now they were dealing with the murder of a prominent citizen. “Have you heard from Dr. Vonnegut?”
He checked his watch. “After Dad called Mom and I reported this, Officer Fitzer contacted us to say he’d notified you and Dr. Vonnegut. I guess he’s been sick. A day he’d spend golfing in Tucson with some old college buddies.”
“I hope we caught him before he could leave,” Lindstrom cut in.