Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(42)

I can’t get the image out of my head of Ariana, treading water, her hair slicked back, smiling for just a moment like she didn’t have a worry in the world.





Chapter 54



THE NEXT DAY, Ariana and I are sitting in the conference room, going over everything we know. The tiny room, which was empty when I arrived, has since been transformed into our investigation center. We have boxes and boxes of paperwork, maps, and poster-sized diagrams on the walls, plus a dry-erase board that we’re constantly writing on and wiping clean.

As of right now, the medical examiner hasn’t given us a precise time of death. The heat of the day made the temperature of the body an unreliable indicator. As for eye dilation, the bullet that traveled through Skip Barnes’s brain filled his eye sockets full of blood. The examiner said some of the other determining factors—skin condition, settling of the blood, contents of the stomach—had to wait until the body was in his lab.

We can be sure the death was yesterday morning, but beyond that, we don’t have any more specifics.

McCormack provided us with some security footage from over in his tank yard that shows Gareth being there most of the morning. But he disappears from the cameras late in the morning. This is the time period he claims to have been at the house and heard the gunshot, but it’s plausible that he could have gone to the derrick, taken the shot, and then pretended to discover the body.

There are enough people who live and work on the ranch that someone certainly would have seen him drive over there on an ATV. If we had a team of Rangers, we could have people interviewing McCormack’s men right now. But it’s just the two of us, and we’re hoping to get some more information before we really start interrogating. The tests of gunshot residue and DNA, as well as the ballistics comparisons on the gun, will take a while. But, at the very least, we should find out soon if there’s a match on the fingerprints found on the shell casing.

I feel nervous as we wait, and I’m not sure why. I tell myself it’s just anxiety—I want to get on with this. But there’s something else to it, some growing sense of dread I can’t quite put my finger on.

Then it hits me: we have too much evidence.

We were lucky enough to find the bullet, the casing, and a strand of hair. Any one of those by itself would be a fortunate discovery, but I found all three without even looking that hard. I’ve been assuming Gareth is the shooter, but I haven’t focused on the unlikely carelessness. It’s conceivable his hair could get snagged without him knowing, and it could just be his bad luck that the bullet hit a tree after passing through Skip Barnes. But military shooters are trained to police their brass. Collecting his shell casings would be second nature to a sniper like Gareth.

I remember Gareth’s smug expression. I originally took it for ego, but now I think it might be something else. Did he want us to find the shell?

The chief comes in, looking grim, and my heart sinks. I’ve been waiting for bad news, and here it comes.

“Got the fingerprint results,” Harris says.

His eyes are locked on Ariana.

“Is there something you want to tell us?” he says to her.

“What do you mean?” she says, clearly confused.

He looks at me and says, “You collected the shell casing. Before you fingerprinted it, was the shell ever compromised?”

“I wore gloves on the scene,” I say. “And when I fingerprinted it. I never touched it.”

“Did Ariana touch it?”

“No,” she says. “Never.”

He stares at Ariana, his expression unreadable.

“The fingerprints are yours, Ariana.”





Chapter 55



I SHOOT TO my feet.

“This is a setup, Chief.”

I explain how I was afraid of something like this. The abundance of evidence felt like a trap.

“That may be,” Harris admits, “but we have to take this seriously.”

I say nothing. I can’t argue with that.

Ariana looks pale. I’ve seen the same expression before on people I knew to be guilty, but I’m sure she’s feeling something else.

Defeat.

We’ve been working on this case, fighting against some faceless opponent, and she’s just realized how outmatched we are. We’ve underestimated our adversary, whoever he is—or whoever they are—and now the score is so imbalanced there’s no way we’re going to climb back in this game. At least not Ariana. She’s out, as of right now. For Ariana, the best-case scenario is that she gets pulled off this case.

The worst is that she goes to prison.

Actually, the worst is that she gets the death penalty, but I won’t even let my mind go that far.

“You still have your granddaddy’s rifle, don’t you?” Harris asks Ariana.

She nods her head gravely.

“What am I missing?” I say.

Ariana opens her mouth to speak, and her voice comes out in a hoarse croak. Seeing she can barely talk, Harris answers for her. He says that Ariana owns an M1 Garand, a semiautomatic rifle used during World War II. Her grandfather used it in the Pacific and later gave it to her as a college graduation present.

I nod my head in understanding. The Garand fires a 30-06 round.

And as a semiautomatic, the Garand ejects its shells automatically. The shell could easily have gone tumbling down from the tower without the shooter being able to grab it.