Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(23)

Kapelow narrowed his eyes and didn’t respond. There was an uncomfortable silence.

Finally, the sheriff said to Joe, “I’d appreciate it if you let me conduct this investigation without interference or second-guessing. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“You did,” Joe said. “I’m here to help.”

“You aren’t.”

Joe let that sit. Then he said, “I talked to the maintenance supervisor. His name is Darin Westby. He said he wasn’t on the property yesterday, but he suggested a few leads we should talk to. I thought maybe you’d like me to share that information with you since you’re in charge of the investigation and you have the manpower, and I’m just me.”

Kapelow didn’t react in any way. After a long half minute, he said, “Write it up and email it to my office. We’ll follow up.”

Joe moaned. “I could just tell you—”

“Write your report and forward it to my office,” Kapelow said, cutting in. He thrust out his jaw and said, “I don’t know how things were done around here in the past, but an investigation is a process. It’s linear. It starts by ruling things out and then proceeding in the proper direction and not everywhere at once. We gather and then evaluate hard evidence and don’t run around due to speculation. Too many inputs and it goes off track. I understand that you’re trying to offer assistance, but it needs to be done in a methodical way.”

It was the longest Joe had heard Kapelow speak.

“I’ll write it up,” Joe said through gritted teeth.

“Thank you.” Kapelow turned his back to Joe and said, “That will be all.”

Joe bristled. It went against his grain to be dismissed like that. He said, “I drove an ATV up here, so I could go down on the property and take a look. Maybe I can help figure out where the shooter set up.”

Kapelow didn’t move except for slightly turning his head. He said, “I’ve got the rest of my men and most of the PD down there on the golf course doing an inch-by-inch grid search. We’ve only got a half hour of daylight left and I can’t let you disturb their search.”

“So it’s a no?” Joe asked, even though he knew the answer.

“It’s a no.”

“Have they found anything?”

“Not yet. So I can’t risk you driving around down there like a maniac. You could run right over the depression in the grass where the shooter set up.”

Despite himself, Joe saw the logic in it. And there was no doubt Kapelow was in charge.

“Do you mind if I come in and look out the window?” Joe asked. “I’ll steer clear of the blood on the floor.”

Kapelow said, “Are you some kind of expert in trajectory and ballistics?”

“Nope,” Joe said. “But I’ve spent my career out in the field doing investigations of big-game hunters and poachers. I’ve done hundreds of field necropsies of animals that were shot and left to die. I’ve developed some pretty good instincts where a shot came from and from how far away based on the angle of impact and how deep the slug penetrated a carcass.”

Before Kapelow could object, Norwood said to him, “He knows his stuff, Sheriff.”

“This is much different from finding a dead deer,” Kapelow said to Norwood.

“With all due respect, sir,” Norwood responded, “meat is meat and bone is bone. I know that sounds crass, given what happened to Sue Hewitt, but . . .” He trailed off.

Joe appreciated the support. “What can it hurt?” he asked the sheriff rhetorically.

“I already told you,” Kapelow said. “Too many inputs.”

Meaning, Joe knew, the sheriff didn’t welcome any opinions except his own.

“You’ve got a minute in this room,” Kapelow said to Joe. “Then please exit the crime scene and let us do our work.”

Joe nodded, then stepped into the dining room and skirted around the area where Norwood and his assistant were working. He gave them a ridiculously wide berth. Joe could feel the sheriff’s eyes on his back.

He walked into the space between the dining table and the window and looked out at the golf course. The dusk sun was at its most intense and it lit up the golden leaves of the trees so that they looked almost neon. The crowns of the trees against the horizon looked like upside-down clouds. He could see several Saddlestring PD officers walking slowly between the trunks in their grid search.

The bullet hole in the glass was almost squarely in the center of the bottom third of the window.

Joe turned around toward the table. He pointed at the empty place setting and the chair behind it.

“Judge Hewitt was sitting there,” he said. Then he sidestepped so that Hewitt’s chair was directly at his back. “That means the angle of the bullet wasn’t dead-on center. It came from the southeast.”

Which meant, he figured, that the shooter hadn’t been on the fairways or bunkers within sight straight east. That’s where the searchers were.

Unfortunately, the ground sloped from left to right. A grassy berm obscured the line of trees until all that could be seen of them were the very tops.

“I doubt the shooter climbed to the top of those trees to gain a clear shot,” he said as much to himself as to Kapelow and Norwood. “Otherwise, he’d be holding on to the top branches for dear life and trying to aim a rifle at the same time. But if he was lying prone on the top of that berm . . . Maybe.”