Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(40)
The question is why they might have fortified their property. Has Gareth really positioned the tower according to his military-trained brain? Or is there a verified threat?
Oil is valuable, but it’s not a commodity that thieves can easily steal.
I visually retrace the road that Ariana and I drove in on yesterday. If Gareth had been here instead of on the range, he could have easily put us in his crosshairs. He could have put a bullet through my brain before I even heard the shot.
From this vantage point, I look over the crime scene. I grab binoculars from an outside pocket of my evidence kit, and through them, I clearly see the body of Skip Barnes, as well as Ariana and Harris searching the scene for evidence.
I’m anxious to climb down from the unshaded metal emitting heat like a cast-iron radiator. But I kneel and then lie prone, as a sniper would, on top of the hot platform. Whoever it was—Gareth or maybe one of his men—would have been hidden mostly from view by the metal mesh railing.
That’s where something else catches my eye. A long strand of dark hair hangs from the metal mesh, as if it became snagged when someone was in this very position.
I rise to my knees and take out another evidence bag, then insert the hair inside. I hold it up in the light, looking at the strand, now curled inside the plastic.
The strand looks like the long hair Gareth McCormack keeps tied back in a ponytail.
Chapter 52
IT’S AFTER DARK when I pull up in front of Tom and Jessica’s house. The light in the garage is on, and I see Tom tinkering with his Mustang.
“You okay?” I say as I approach.
He nods, but he looks upset. Tom picks up an open can of Texas Lager from the workbench and offers me a fresh one. The radio is tuned to a classic country station, and an old Ronnie Milsap song is playing.
“Get your article sent off to the Associated Press?” I ask, cracking my beer.
He nods again, leans against the fender. His hands are dirty with car grease.
“I don’t know how you get used to it,” he says. “I feel like I’ve had a heck of a long day, but I only had to write about it. You have to figure out who did it.”
“It’s not an easy job,” I say, “but someone’s got to do it. Just like your job.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll admit to having had my share of conflicts with the press, but people need to be informed.”
Jessica comes out in a nightgown and puts an arm around Tom. “You ready to come in?” she says.
He finishes the last of his beer and pulls down the garage door. The lawn chairs from the other night are still sitting out, and I tell them I’m going to relax for a few minutes and finish my beer.
I’m alone, perched at the edge of Jessica’s garden, listening to the chirp of insects. The sky is full of stars, bright and beautiful. Sitting here is peaceful, but it’s hard for me to enjoy it. My fingers itch, for one, like there are fire ants crawling over my skin. More than that, though, there’s simply a lot on my mind.
After the medical examiner arrived, Ariana and I went on to the ranch house and interviewed Carson and Gareth McCormack. Gareth had a smug expression on his face the whole time. We didn’t tell him we had a strand of hair, the bullet casing, or the bullet slug itself recovered from a tree. I’m not sure he would’ve been so self-assured if he’d known.
He consented to be swabbed for DNA and gunshot residue. And he showed us his gun collection, which took up an entire room of the house, every wall covered in corkboard and displaying rifles, shotguns, handguns, military rifles, muzzleloaders, crossbows, compound bows, and everything else you could think of. There were a few items—two machine guns, a short-barreled shotgun, some suppressors—that require a permit to own, but he had the proper paperwork.
In the stockpile were a Remington Model 783 and a Winchester Model 70, both of which will fire a 30-06 round. McCormack agreed to let us take those so we could compare the rounds fired. Every rifle barrel has lands and grooves that leave unique markings on a bullet, kind of like a fingerprint, and as long as the slug from the tree isn’t too mangled, we’ll know if either of Gareth’s guns fired the bullet. He agreed to let us take the guns so readily that I’m sure neither of them will result in a positive match. Which means that if it was him, he used another gun he’s not sharing.
“Don’t leave town, Gareth,” I said as we were leaving.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll stick around so you can give my guns back with a big fat apology.”
We also swabbed Carson and all of his men for gunshot residue, including Dale Peters and Mr. Broken Nose. But we ran out of time before we were able to properly collect statements from everyone. When I had a moment alone with Dale, I gave him a good hard stare and said, with just a touch of anger in my voice, “You still think we’re barking up the wrong tree?”
He lowered his eyes, his skin pale. He’d just lost a friend to murder—but if he was hiding something, I wanted him to feel guilty for it.
We’ll have the fingerprint results soon, and through the Rangers I can get the DNA testing fast-tracked. But there’s still loads of work to do. We need to have the ballistics tested on Gareth’s guns. We need to properly interview every one of McCormack’s men, setting up a timeline of where people were, what they heard, what they saw. We need to search Skip’s residence and see if there’s any clue why someone would want to kill him. And we need to find and notify Skip Barnes’s next of kin.