“The receptionist who fancies herself a supermodel?”
Ah. Robo-Barbie. “Who hired jiggly Jilly?”
“Who do you think?”
Dawson. Typical he’d chosen a hot chickie to play fetch and carry for him. “How’d you find out about the report?”
“Claire Montague dropped it off personally.” Kiki scowled. “Stupid woman was all puffed up like a peahen, bragging that her instructions were to give it only to Dawson. That’s not all she wanted to give him, if you get my drift.”
A burst of jealousy flared inside me. “Is he interested in her?”
“Not in the slightest. When Dawson left to go home for lunch, I snuck into his office and copied the file.”
“Did you have a chance to look at it?”
“Only to see a bunch of medical gibberish. You’ll have to do some research to decipher it, which is why I wanted to give it to you as soon as possible.”
“Thank you.”
Mitzi delivered my food. The mix of fried onions, melted cheese, tangy horseradish sauce, and toasted bread smelled heavenly, but I’d lost my appetite. All I wanted was to hole up in my office at the ranch and dissect the reports.
Kiki stood. “I’ll let you enjoy your lunch.”
I didn’t linger after the plates were cleared.
FOURTEEN
As I zipped toward home, I tried to stop obsessing about what information the reports held and took a moment to enjoy the drive. Even my dirty windshield couldn’t mask the sky’s brilliance. Cloudless. Vast. An intense shade of blue that straddled the color spectrum between turquoise and sapphire.
Few artists had captured the magnificence of a spring sky. Plenty of talented hands showcased the bleak winter sky. Or the hazy, hot, dry hues of a stormy summer sky. Or the color-leached tones of an autumn sky. Spring was so transitory in western South Dakota it almost wasn’t a season. Which is why it’d always been my favorite time of year.
Shoonga bounded across the yard to greet me. Nothing like a dog’s slobbering, barking, yipping as the ultimate welcome home.
Jake’s head was buried in the engine compartment of the farmhand. Inside, Sophie sat at the kitchen table doing word searches as she hardboiled eggs. Hope watched TV, Joy asleep at her breast. Just a typical day at the ranch.
I locked myself in Dad’s office. While I waited for the computer to boot up, I rifled through the stack of bills, intending to divide them in the order they needed to be paid, when I remembered book work was no longer my domain. I did a quick tally:
Not doing ranch books.
Not helping with the cattle.
Not doing domestic chores.
Wow. I was getting to be as useless as teats on a bull around here.
Not entirely useless. You cough up cash out of your retirement pay every month for operating expenses.
That thought was even more depressing. Had I really become the type of hobby rancher I loathed? And would I feel guiltier if I was elected sheriff?
Did your dad feel guilty?
Good question.
I opened the manila envelope and slid the papers out, shuffling until I found Jason’s personal effects. The lists were separated into three categories: body, vehicle, and motel room.
Items listed found on and around the victim’s body:
Clothing:
Brown leather jacket
Jeans
Long-sleeved dress shirt
T-shirt
Briefs
Socks
White athletic shoes
Black leather belt
Loose change in front right pocket
Noticeably absent: any type of wallet or identification.
I checked off the items, one by one. Another item was noticeably absent. J-Hawk’s knife, which he claimed he never was without. He’d had it in Clementine’s because he’d been waving it around like a madman. Maybe it was on another list. I kept looking.
Items listed found in victim’s vehicle:
Vehicle registration
Proof of insurance
Manufacturer’s manual
South Dakota map
Cell phone and charger
Two boxes of folders filled with Titan Oil information
Four empty cans Red Bull energy drink
Twelve protein bar wrappers
Two pairs sunglasses
Three ball caps
Winter jacket
Windshield scraper
Leather gloves
Rubber boots
Duffel bag contents:
Athletic shorts
Sweatpants
Two T-shirts
Socks
Athletic shoes
Deodorant
iPod
Three water bottles
Four protein bars
Forty (40) unopened pill containers of prescription-brand OxyContin.
Holy crap. Forty? No wonder Dawson had spelled it out and listed it numerically. Be easy to assume a mistake had been made in the cataloguing.
My question? Why did Jason have that much OxyContin in his possession? Was working for Titan Oil that stressful?
I went back over the list. No mention of the knife. Anywhere. Something was wrong here. I scanned the next header.
Items listed found in victim’s motel room:
Three pairs jeans
Four pairs suit pants
Four dress shirts
Two suit jackets
Two ties
Two pairs dress shoes
Five long-sleeved casual shirts
Three T-shirts
Seven pairs underwear
Nine pairs socks
Belt
Toiletry bag contents:
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Condoms
Dental floss
Electric razor
Aftershave
Mouthwash
Nail clipper
Four (4) pill containers of prescription-brand Nexavar
What the hell was Nexavar? I’d never heard of it. My stomach-flipped when I looked at the first item under the next heading.
Suitcase contents:
One hundred (100) unopened pill containers of prescription-brand OxyContin.
I stared at the paper, as if the meaning of the words would change.
The J-Hawk I’d known, the man who’d saved my life, had been a regimented career military man who walked the straight and narrow.
This Jason Hawley was either a drug addict or a drug dealer or both.
I scoured the paperwork again. I didn’t discover anything new, but I realized there’d been no personal effects. No pictures of his family. No wedding ring.
No knife.
If the knife wasn’t at the crime scene, in his SUV, on his person, or in his hotel room… where was it?
As much as I questioned Dawson’s investigative progress, I doubted he would’ve missed such an important piece of evidence-given the fact Jason Hawley had been stabbed as well as shot.
Had Jason waved the knife at his attacker, like he’d done in the bar? Had the killer grabbed the knife and used it on Jason? What kind of sick fucker did that?
One smart enough not to leave evidence behind.