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draped the guns—cracked open—over his
arm. It was a bit of a burden but he certainly wasn’t going to leave two
weapons within reach of a man whose story he hadn’t fully verified yet.
    He stared off in the direction Joe
Starkey had indicated. The trees were thick here, the ground littered with pine
needles. A shooter had a thousand places to hide and a pretty safe bet that he
could walk around without leaving tracks. Still . . . he had to check it out.
    “Stay right here by this tree,” he
told Starkey. “Do not move.”
    The older man nodded and sat with
his back to the tree.
    Beau circled the tree, found the
place where Jessie’s blood stained the needles, the spot where the evidence
that he’d been dragged out of the woods began. He stared off into the trees,
trying to envision a straight path for a bullet. Walking slowly and turning
frequently, he stayed on line, scanning the ground.
    The shooter would have wanted some
kind of cover; the sun hadn’t risen but he could have been spotted in the early
gray light of dawn. So he would have kept to the trees, ducked behind one until
he had a line on Jessie and could step out to get the man in his sights. The
problem was that the shooter couldn’t get too far away. More than fifty yards
or so and there would have been too many obstacles in the way. Beau kept
turning, getting that picture in his head. He scanned the ground, hoping to
find a brass casing. If the killer had gotten careless and left it behind, it
could be the very thing that would convict him.
    But—no such luck. He widened his
search area. Joe could have been mistaken about the direction. Shots echo in
the hills, way more than most people would imagine. Still, no brass and not a
single footprint.
    He made his way back to the tree
where Joe Starkey sat. The man’s eyes and nose were swollen and red, his face
wet with tears. Beau cleared his throat and Starkey looked up.
    “I didn’t find anything,” Beau
said. “I’ll get a team out here. Work a larger search area, more people . . . if
there’s evidence here we’ll find it.”
    But down inside he didn’t believe
it. The shooter merely had to be careful to walk on the blanket of pine
needles, and to pick up the one small piece of brass that would implicate him.
As long as he did that he, or she, probably had gotten away with murder.
    “Come on, Joe. Let’s get going.”
    Joe wiped his shirt sleeve across
his face and sniffed deeply as he stood up. Beau put the shotguns into the back
of his SUV and they rode quietly back to Sembramos. Joe pointed out the turns
to his house, apparently forgetting that Beau had visited there only yesterday.
    The plain little blocky house sat
two blocks off the main drag, on a dirt road with no sidewalks. Tan stucco,
flat roof, a yard that might have once had a lawn but was now taken over by the
wild grasses and a generous number of dandelions. The only thing that
differentiated it from most of its neighbors was the shade of red on the
peeling front door and the dozen or so people milling around outside. Some had
angry expressions. Beau pulled to a stop and Joe opened his door.
    “I’d better come in,” Beau said. He
checked his sidearm and got out of the cruiser.
    One of the men spotted the
sheriff’s vehicle and started toward him. The man stood at least a head taller
than Joe Starkey, much closer to Beau’s height, but otherwise Joe and this one came
from the same mold. Thin limbs, lined faces, generous gray in the dark hair.
    “Them Rodartes done this,” the man
said through clenched teeth that had a tan cast to them. “If not that Lee
Rodarte hisself , then one of them others.” Even the
gnarled finger that shook when he spoke reminded Beau of Joe Starkey.
    “Do you have some evidence of
that, Mr. . . .?” Beau kept his voice quiet.
    “This’s my little brother. Bobby.”
Joe Starkey had watched the exchange.
    Beau took in Bobby’s size and
nearly smiled at the description.
    “Do you have