Mattie did the math. Eight hours with no alibi. It would take about sixty minutes to get from Willow Springs to Timber Creek. Plenty of time to drive over, kill Adrienne, and drive back. But someone else would have had to take her body up into the wilderness. Unless . . . “All right. And where were you on Thursday?”
He let out a puff of pent up breath. He’d probably anticipated an accusation regarding his lack of alibi. “Just one moment, let me look it up.” He consulted his cell phone again. “Here in the office by eight, with a couple showing them houses most of the morning, lunch with a different client, several different appointments in the afternoon, dinner with my girlfriend.”
So no time to move the body on Thursday. “Do you own a horse, Mr. Cameron?”
“Call me Jim. No, I really don’t know anything at all about horses. Don’t ride. Uh . . . why do you ask?”
“I’ll let you get back to work now. I might need to call you back later for more details or confirmation of this information, but I believe that’s all I need right now. Thank you for your time.”
“Sure, sure. Anything I can do to help, just let me know. Call me anytime.”
He seemed like the eager Boy Scout type. Too eager? Hard to say.
Chapter 20
Mattie was finishing a written summary of her two interviews when Rainbow came to the office door to tell her that Stella had arrived. She and the sheriff wanted Mattie to join them in the briefing room.
“Tell them I’ll be right there.” She sent the two reports to the printer, picking them up on her way. Stella liked to keep a hard copy murder book in addition to a digital record. Mattie didn’t mind; she could organize her thoughts better with printed pages herself.
The grim expressions on her colleagues’ faces told her that they’d already been discussing the autopsy. She joined them at the front table, choosing a seat near the end on the sheriff’s side while Robo settled beside her.
Mattie noticed the detective studying her as she sat, locking eyes until Mattie grew uncomfortable and looked away. She knew from experience that Stella had a way of performing a mind probe, and she didn’t want to participate. She also knew from Rainbow’s and the sheriff’s reactions that she must look like shit this morning. Thankfully, Stella didn’t mention it.
Instead, she launched into summarizing the autopsy. “I was just telling the sheriff about the manner and cause of death.”
Mattie met Stella’s gaze again, raising her brows in question.
“Cause of death: exsanguination from a penetrating wound through the victim’s chest that nicked the left chamber of her heart.”
Bled out. “Shot, then,” Mattie said.
“Yes,” Stella said. “Shot from the back and exiting through the front. The projectile went clear through her. But it wasn’t a bullet.”
“What?”
“The medical examiner says it must have been an arrow.”
Stella paused for a moment for Mattie to digest this image. An arrow shot cleanly through the victim’s chest entering through her back. That must have been a powerful bow, or a powerful shooter. Or both. All kinds of questions raced through her mind.
Was it an accident? Was Adrienne running away? Or worse yet, was she being hunted?
“The ME has some experience with hunting and is familiar with mammal wounds,” Stella continued. “Bullets typically expand and create all kinds of damage as they traverse the flesh, leaving a much larger exit wound than entry. An arrow with a broadhead point that has two steel cutting edges slices through the flesh. Injured animals usually bleed out; the amount of time it takes depends on which organs are damaged on the way through.”
No wonder the two of them looked so grim. “It’s hunting season,” Mattie said. “She could have been killed accidentally and then hidden to cover it up.”
“It’s possible. Another important finding is that she had horsehair on her clothing—quite a bit of it and several different colors. She also had an oily residue on her fingertips, the kind you get when you’ve been rubbing down a horse.”
“She’d been working,” Mattie said.
“Apparently. We need to find out who she had an appointment with,” Stella said. “Where are we with the client list from the vet?”
“Completed,” McCoy said. “No one on that list has admitted to an appointment. Now that fact seems suspect.”
“Let’s review the list for client location. We need to take another look at people who live near the area where the body was buried. And where is the gravesite in relation to the place you found her car?” Stella asked.
Mattie stood and crossed over to a map she’d pinned on the wall. She’d marked the car’s location earlier, and she saw that someone else had drawn an “X” marking the gravesite. Stella came and stood beside her.
“Here we are,” Mattie said, pointing to Timber Creek and then tracing the routes in question. “These sites are both west of here, but you can see they’re only connected by the highway. Each place is accessible by a county road, both roads intersecting the highway about five miles apart. The sites aren’t connected directly.”
“Then we’ll need to take a look at horse clients who live near the car site, too,” Stella said.
“All right. I’ll get the addresses and screen them,” McCoy said. “Where are we on locating Roger Howard?”
“Nowhere,” Stella said with a frown. “None of the ones I’ve turned up are the guy we’re looking for. I found record of him back in high school in Hightower. Then he seemed to drop off the face of the earth.”
McCoy looked at Mattie. “What did you find out this morning?”
She summarized her findings, giving Stella the interview printouts. “We can’t eliminate Jim Cameron as a suspect, and I plan to follow up with Green Thumb Organics. I hope Adrienne had a friend she confided in while she lived in Willow Springs. A best friend could provide insight into our victim’s relationship with her ex-boyfriend. And maybe give us information about her brother.”
Stella had been recording the new leads on the board while Mattie spoke. She’d also summarized the autopsy results. “As you know, our victim was fully clothed, and examination revealed no indication of sexual assault. Our crime scene unit gathered what trace evidence they could from her clothing, and now we’re sending her clothes to a lab in Denver to see if they can find touch DNA on it. Whoever took her up that mountain had to have handled her body a lot. Testing will take some time, but I think we have a good chance of gathering some powerful evidence. That and matching horse-hair samples when we can. The animal DNA labs in the state don’t seem to be as backed up as the human labs. As soon as we have a suspect client, we need to collect a hair sample from his horse, or maybe I should say from his horses.”
“I’ll talk to Dr. Walker again about his client list. See if he’s willing to go out on a limb and suggest someone we might focus on. And we can run everyone through the system to see if we’ve got someone on the list with a criminal background,” Mattie said.
Stella gave her a wicked smile. “I like the way you’re thinking. Also, I’ve got Adrienne’s telephone records on the way this morning. They’re probably in my e-mail as we speak. I’ll start looking at them as soon as we’re done here. It’s supposed to include copies of her texts, too.”
Mattie felt a spark of excitement beneath her dense layer of exhaustion. This investigation was beginning to roll. “I’ll make phone calls to Green Thumb Organics and Dr. Walker.”
“Okay. One last thing, Sheriff. Where are we with Brody?” Stella asked.