“I was told he was going to turn around,” James said. “He’s on his way. I’m sure it won’t take much longer. My mother will call me on the radio once he arrives, and I’ll go back for him.”
“How will we get the body out?” Lindstrom asked.
“That won’t be as hard as you might think,” Kevin told her. “We can hook a trailer to one of these ATVs. That’s how we deliver food to the cattle.”
“Makes sense.” Sophia pulled her digital camera from the case hanging around her neck. Now that she’d had a few minutes to deal with the shock and the upset, she needed to get down to business. She had to photograph and take a video of the scene before she could touch it. And then she planned to search for any scrap of evidence. She wasn’t going to miss a cigarette butt this time. She wasn’t going to miss anything ever again. She didn’t expect to find the murder weapon, but hoped she’d at least recover a shell casing.
And if that shell casing had the familiar bulge she’d seen in the casings from the Sanchez murders, this was the work of the same person.
If that bulge wasn’t there… She didn’t even want to think about that.
Sophia had just snapped her first picture when Rod spoke up. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” She turned to face him.
He was standing behind her, keeping out of the way so she could do her job. He pointed. “That silver thing in the ashtray.”
How had he even seen that?
Careful not to brush against anything, she leaned in. “It’s a memory stick.”
“Can you read the logo?”
“Looks like…Department 6.” Recognizing the significance of that, she gaped at him.
“With my computer broken in pieces on the floor, I didn’t even think to check for it,” he said. “But why would he take something like that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it was the only personal thing you brought with you.” Or it had been planted by the killer….
“What would he want with my work files?”
“I doubt it was the work files that interested him. It was the possibility of more personal stuff. Which goes to show you that he was as curious about you as he was frightened.”
That evening Rod sat in a booth at the Rockin’ Rooster Drive-in. He had the bag of toiletries and clothing he’d just purchased on the seat beside him, and his Hummer was parked where he could see it through the window. But he didn’t have a room yet. The Sundowner had been full, as he’d expected. Before Stuart’s death, he’d hoped the news crews would leave soon, that they’d do a story on the UDA killings, maybe shoot some footage of the border fence with the patrol officers at work, then go on their way—at least until a break in the case or some new development brought them back. It wasn’t cheap to keep these people on location, and there had to be bigger news breaking someplace else. But that all changed when Stuart was killed. Now the whole town was buzzing like a hornet’s nest, and the newspeople wouldn’t leave. They’d stay for another day or two, make the most of the drama involved in other people’s pain.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed back the tray that’d held his double cheeseburger and stretched out his legs. A few reporters had even shown up at the Simpsons’ as the boys from the morgue were loading Stuart’s body. Fortunately, the ranch was a big place, the crime scene remote. They hadn’t been able to pinpoint its exact location any earlier from what they’d heard on the police radio.
Rod was glad he and Sophia had left about then. Any later, and he would’ve bumped into Bruce, who’d figured out where his boy had been killed and come out to defend whatever he felt was there to defend. Rod had heard Sophia talking on the phone with him the whole time they were driving to the towing company to get the Hummer. Bruce was furious that she hadn’t checked in with him sooner. He seemed to think he was entitled to know what was happening every step of the way. But she’d told him in no uncertain terms that he had no right to interrupt her when she needed to focus, that she’d been doing her job, and if he wanted his son’s killer caught, he had to respect that.
Already full, Rod picked at the remaining fries and finished his shake. He wasn’t in any hurry to leave the drive-in. This little spot was more popular for lunch than dinner, and today it seemed to be overlooked completely, which gave him time to adjust to what had happened and what it might mean.
The two teenage girls working the counter giggled, momentarily drawing his attention. But they were only talking to each other, so he lapsed back into his own thoughts.
Stuart had been shot twice in the head. One bullet had penetrated his temple and exited on the other side, where it had struck the window, without shattering it, oddly enough, and fallen to the floor. The other had gone in through his jaw. There didn’t seem to be an exit wound for that one. Both entrance wounds were round, about four-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and there wasn’t any soot or stippling to suggest the gun had been fired right up against the skin.
The killer must have been a few feet away, which led Rod to believe he might not have been sitting in the cab, as Detective Lindstrom had initially surmised. If the killer had ridden with Stuart, he’d gotten out before turning and shooting him. And he’d collected his shell casings, just like the perpetrator of the UDA murders when he’d shot his first ten victims.
That wasn’t how he and Sophia had wanted it. A couple of shell casings could’ve tied Stuart’s case to the UDA murders quite neatly, but at least they had the bullet found on the floor of the truck and should have the one in Stuart’s jaw. An X-ray would locate it and enable Vonnegut to extract it during the autopsy—
Rod glanced up when the door opened. Then he froze. Edna and Patrick had walked in. And it didn’t look as if they’d come to order a burger.
23
“Did you do it?” Edna’s eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot, were riveted on him as she shuffled closer. She appeared ten years older than when he’d seen her at the drugstore—old and shrunken and weak, as if she couldn’t manage without the help of her oldest son.
Patrick allowed his mother to lean on his arm but avoided Rod’s gaze. He, too, seemed like a shadow of his former self. The shock of his brother’s death had apparently leeched all the fight out of him.
Rod sat up straight. “What are you asking me?”