His father put the box on the couch. “I was scared,” he admitted.
“Of what?”
“Of what they might find.”
Rod felt his eyebrows shoot up. “Like what?”
“He’d been acting strange lately. Secretive. And he’d been staying out late, after the bar was closed. I couldn’t even guess where he was going. At first I thought he had a girlfriend or maybe he was visiting a prostitute. I tried to tell myself it was none of my business. He was a grown man, after all. But he hated Mexicans so much that…”
His words trailed off as if he’d only belatedly realized who he was talking to. Stuart had hated Mexicans because of Rod and his mother and what their presence in his life had meant, and Rod knew it. Stuart probably got a lot of his resentment from Edna, but the superiority he felt wasn’t unusual among farm owners.
“You thought he might be the UDA killer,” Rod said.
Bruce sighed. “I’m sad to say it, but the suspicion was there. Especially when…when I heard where they found Stu’s body. I kept imagining him heading out into the desert, going hunting, if you will, and coming upon a group of illegals whose guide was prepared for him. There wasn’t any weapon in the truck with his body, but I figured it could’ve been stolen. Why leave it behind? Anyway, I wanted to see if his guns were here, that sort of thing.” He shook his head. “But mostly I didn’t want his mother to suffer, knowing her son had murdered twelve people. That’s not the kind of grief and shame that will ever go away. And if he was dead, he couldn’t hurt anyone, anyway. I decided I could get rid of the evidence and at least save her that much pain.”
“So you came here and looked around.”
“That’s right. His guns are here and accounted for. But I also found this box of stuff. And now I don’t believe it was him at all. I believe he figured out who the real killer was, and that’s why he’s dead.” Bruce pointed to the bits of paper, envelopes, even photographs, in the box. “Take a look.”
Rod sat on the couch and pulled out an envelope filled with pictures.
“See that white Ford?” Bruce asked as soon as Rod had had a chance to study the first one.
Rod nodded.
“That belongs to Charlie Sumpter.”
“How can you tell? This picture was taken from too far away.”
“It says so on the back.”
Rod flipped it over. Sure enough, someone had written Charlie Sumpter and 1:23 a.m. “That’s Stuart’s writing?”
“Without a doubt. Stuart even had that picture magnified so you can see a closer view of the vehicle. It should be next.”
It wasn’t. The other photos were various shots of Charlie’s house from the front, side and back.
“Where’d it go?” Bruce muttered, rooting around in the box until he came up with a photo that had fallen out. “Here it is. See this? This shows part of the license plate. CFF432. That’s Charlie’s, all right.”
“But what does this picture prove? That Charlie was out in the desert somewhere on—” Rod glanced at the date stamp “—June 21?”
“It proves his truck wasn’t at his house the night the Sanchez couple was killed.”
“That doesn’t mean Charlie killed them.”
“It means he could have. Look at the other pictures.”
Rod went back to the shots of Charlie’s house. They had the same date stamp but showed no truck anywhere on the premises. And they also had times written on the backs—times that were within seconds of each other but twenty minutes after the picture of the truck in the desert.
It was hardly a smoking gun, but…it did raise some questions. “So Stuart was watching Charlie’s place and following him?”
“That’s right.”
“You think he was following Charlie last night?”
“I do. I think Charlie somehow guessed that Stuart was onto him and shot him.”
Rod wasn’t so sure. “Charlie’s been out of town. We haven’t even been able to reach him.”
“Not according to this.”
Bruce took out another picture of Charlie’s vehicle. This one showed it turning out of his drive. The surprising part was the date. It had been taken the night before last, when Charlie was supposedly gone. “Interesting.”
“That picture suggests he’s been home,” Bruce said.
Stuart’s research was amateurish and haphazard—circumstantial, at best. But he’d obviously believed in his suspicions enough to have done a lot of surveillance. Had he been hoping to impress Sophia by solving the puzzle of the UDA murders? Had to be. Either that or he’d wanted to come off as a hero to the whole town, because he sure as hell didn’t give a damn about the poor murdered UDAs.
Still, the fact that he’d wound up dead while trying to keep an eye on Charlie was unnerving, especially since Rod knew Sophia was out at Charlie’s place right now.
Suddenly in a much bigger hurry to get back to her, he stood. “I’ll look into this. Let’s keep it between us until we have concrete evidence.”
“No problem.” Bruce met his gaze. “Just…catch the son of a bitch who shot Stu, okay?”
“I’ll do that,” Rod promised.
His father stared at him for a long second. “I wish things could’ve been different between you and me.”
“You’re not supposed to worry about that anymore, remember?”
“I’m only saying.”
“There’s still the future. So how am I getting back to town? You taking me?”
“No. Edna needs me tonight. I’ll drive you to the house and give you the keys to one of the farm trucks. I can send a worker to retrieve it in the morning. Where are you staying?”
“The Boot and Spur.” Rod started for the door, then thought of something else. “By the way, does Charlie smoke?”
“Like a chimney,” he said. “Always has.”
Starkey’s widowed mother met them at the hospital in Douglas, where Starkey had been taken by ambulance. The doctors weren’t making any promises as to his chances of survival. They hadn’t said much at all. But they were doing their best to save him. At least, that was the message conveyed by the middle-aged nurse who’d just poked her head into the room to give them an update.
“Do you think he’ll live?” Rafe asked Sophia, his face pale and somber.