Texas Outlaw (Rory Yates #2)(43)

I don’t say any of this to Harris, even though he’s probably thinking the same thing.

The three of us ride in Harris’s patrol car over to Ariana’s house. I ride in back because I don’t want Ariana to have to do it. I don’t want her to feel like a criminal. When we get to her place, she unlocks the door and takes us to her bedroom.

“It’s under there,” she says, pointing to her bed.

The chief puts on rubber gloves and kneels down to retrieve it. The gun is probably eighty years old but looks in good condition, the wooden stock oiled and the iron barrel polished. The rifle has no telescopic sight, just the original rear-aperture sight that adjusts for distance based on hundred-yard increments.

The head shot that killed Skip Barnes would not have been easy with this gun. It would take a good shooter.

“Do you keep it loaded?” Harris asks Ariana.

“Yes,” she says, her voice still dry. “There’s an eight-shot clip, and I keep it full.”

Harris ejects the clip, and we all count the 30-06 rounds inside.

Seven.





Chapter 56



“CHIEF,” I SAY, “she’s obviously being framed. If Ariana shot Skip Barnes, she wouldn’t have come home and put the gun back under her bed—and then led us here right to it.” I tell him that someone obviously came, stole the gun, and then replaced it, all while Ariana and I were at the open space. I say we need to conduct interviews of people in the neighborhood and see if there were any witnesses who saw someone coming in or out of the house.

“We’ll do all that,” he says. “But first we need to check the ballistics on this gun. See if it matches the bullet fired. We’ve got a bullet and a shell casing from the scene. We’ll be able to tell if this rifle fired the shot or not.”

I don’t object. He’s right. But I already know what we’ll find. The bullet and shell casing will have similar marks.

This is the gun.

And I suddenly realize that the hair we found is probably Ariana’s as well. Gareth, or whoever set her up, could have easily stolen a strand when he was in her house taking the gun.

Harris seems to think this as well because he says to Ariana, “If one more piece of evidence comes in linking you to the murder—the ballistics test, the DNA results, anything—I’m going to have to arrest you.”

Harris takes a cheek swab for DNA evidence, and he swabs Ariana’s arm for gunshot residue. Even though it’s been a day since the shooting, he’s trying to be thorough. He also asks for the clothes she was wearing yesterday.

“You shouldn’t be handling that evidence,” I say to the chief. “You could be compromised.”

“Bullshit,” he snaps, losing his cool.

“It’s no coincidence all this happened while Ariana and I were out at the open space,” I say, also getting angry. “You were one of the few people who knew we’d be gone.”

“I’m not going to listen to this shit,” he says, practically yelling. “You could be compromised.”

“Me?” I say.

“Yeah, you,” he snarls. “You claim to have been with Ariana at the time of the shooting. You could have been in on this.”

“That makes no sense,” I say, but he’s caught me off guard. The anger in my voice subsides as I try to defend myself. “I’m not from around here. What motivation would I have to kill Skip Barnes?”

“I’m not saying you had anything to do with it,” Harris says, his voice also calming slightly. “I’m saying your loyalty to Ariana might be clouding your judgment.”

I smirk to indicate my disbelief in what he’s saying, but he has planted a seed of doubt in my mind. Is my affection for Ariana obscuring my thinking? How would I handle this if it weren’t her?

“Were you two really out at the open space that whole time?” the chief asks. “You were gone longer than you needed to be. What were you doing?”

I open my mouth to give him an honest explanation of our whereabouts, including our time eating lunch together and swimming in the river, but Ariana stands up and says, “You don’t need to defend me, Rory. I’m sure this is all some big mistake.”

In my opinion, there’s no use hiding what we did, not when there’s so much at stake, but I can tell Ariana doesn’t want it to get out that we were splashing around in our underwear. No one would believe that’s all we were doing. And this is a small town. She doesn’t want the reputation of being some badge bunny sleeping with the visiting Texas Ranger when she should have been investigating a murder.

“You don’t trust me,” Harris says to me, “and I don’t trust you. So that means we’re both going to keep a close eye on this evidence and make sure it gets handled on the up and up. Got it?”

I nod, not sure what else to do. If my lieutenant was supportive, I’d call him to bring in the cavalry, let the Texas Rangers come in and take over the whole damn investigation. But the way things went with Kyle last night, I’m on my own here.

We’re all quiet for a moment, and then Ariana asks, “Can I stay on the Susan Snyder case until the results come in?”

Harris stares at her, shocked that Ariana doesn’t fully realize the level of danger she’s in.