Sam picked up his orange K-Cup of Gorilla organic, popped it into the receptacle, and pressed the brew button. The smell of coffee wafted up.
He glanced at the rack where their K-Cups were all neatly stacked. Tea for Reese, dark roast for Jo, generic for Kevin. His eyes fell on the Moonbucks brand. Tyler’s brand. A hollow feeling filled his stomach, and his eyes flicked automatically to the empty desk in the corner.
"Pop one in for me, will ya," Jo said then stopped short, following his gaze. Her face immediately softened, her eyes misting.
Sam turned his attention back to the coffeemaker. He removed his spent K-Cup and popped hers in, swapping his now-steaming blue police-issue mug for the bright-yellow smiley-face mug she preferred. When it was full, he handed it to her.
They proceeded to Jo’s desk. She sat in the chair, her hands curled around the steaming mug. Sam rested his hip on the corner of her desk, and she offered him a jelly donut from the white bag she’d brought. Their usual morning routine. It was the closest thing to a meeting they ever had, crowded around Jo’s desk, discussing their plan of attack for the day. Of course, there were usually three of them. The fact Tyler wasn’t there weighed heavily on Sam, and judging by the way Jo kept glancing at the empty desk, he could tell it did on her too.
Sam was just about to start talking about the Palmer case when the door opened and Reese came in with the phone pressed to her ear.
"Yes, Mrs. Deardorff. I know that goats can be very destructive."
Reese shot a look at Sam and rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know Mrs. Hoelscher needs to keep Bitsy in her yard. No, we can’t put a restraining order on a goat. I’ll have an officer come by to take your statement."
"They’re at it again, huh?" Jo asked.
Nettie Deardorff and Rita Hoelscher had been next-door neighbors for over fifty years. The two widows didn’t have much to do but complain about each other. Sam didn’t know what had happened to start it, but ever since he could remember, the two had been feuding. Lately, Nettie had been complaining about Rita’s goat, Bitsy. The previous week, she’d complained Bitsy had eaten up all her bulbs from her garden. The only way to appease them was to send an officer out and pretend the other woman would get punished somehow.
"This time, she’s saying Bitsy chewed her siding." Reese flipped a postcard to Sam.
"That’s odd. She complained about Bitsy last week. I thought it was Nettie’s turn this week," Jo said.
"Maybe they are getting senile and forgetting whose week it is," Reese said.
Jo eyed the postcard over her steaming mug. It had a big pink flamingo on the front. "What’s that?"
Sam flipped it over and recognized the oversized shaky scrawl.
It’s hot as hell down here. And boring. Only talk about knee replacements and gout. Get me out of here. P.S. Sorry about Tyler
-H
"It’s from Harry." Sam flipped the card to her, and she smiled. Harry Woolston was the former chief of police. Harry had held the job for what seemed like a hundred years. He hadn’t wanted to retire, but age had forced him out. Now he was down in Florida and bored out of his mind.
The two months he came back in the summer, he usually spent pestering Sam for information on the various cases they were working. Though Sam had to admit his advice did come in handy sometimes. Harry was more old school than Sam and didn’t believe in any of the newfangled methods of forensics. He refused to use a computer, and Sam didn’t even know if he knew how.
Jo set the card aside. "I guess we better get back over to the campsite. Let them know we’re dealing with a murder."
Sam figured rumor might have already gotten around to them, but he knew Jo wanted to watch them as he gave them the news. Maybe one of them would have some kind of a nervous tic or something that would give them away. Sam wished it would be so easy, but he knew it wouldn’t.
"Yep. Kevin can take pictures. The ones I took yesterday are just on my phone. We need something better." Sam held up his phone. "And we can compare what Kevin takes to what I took to see if anybody moved anything."
"And we can find out why they lied about Jesse." Jo drained her mug.
"Maybe Jesse was the one that was lying."
"Good point. He was acting kinda cagey. He has a tic in his shoulder that gives him away. And he was scratching a bug bite, so I know he was in the woods. But I think he would’ve been more nervous if he was the killer. He seemed genuinely surprised about the murder, even if he is hiding something."
The door opened, and Kevin sauntered toward the coffee pot. "Hi, guys."
"Hey, Kevin. We’re headed back to the campground today."
Kevin turned while his mug was filling. "Whole different line of questioning when you know it’s a murder, right?"
"I was hoping you could take more pictures of the area where we found the clothes after you left yesterday. We think that might be the murder site." Sam saw Reese waving around some paperwork at her desk. "Oh, and I need you to head over to Nettie Deardorff’s. She’s complaining about Rita Hoelscher’s goat again."
Kevin rolled his eyes. "Sure. Okay."
"I was wondering if you wanted to log a few extra hours. With this murder investigation and us being shorthanded…" Sam’s voice trailed off, and everyone looked in the direction of Tyler’s empty desk.
"I can put in a few extra, I suppose." Kevin turned back toward them, and something dark flashed in his narrowed eyes. "Is there anything new about the investigation?"
"We’re not supposed to be investigating it," Jo said.
"Yeah, I know. But you guys are investigating it, aren’t you?" Kevin’s voice rose at the end. "I mean, we want to find out what happened to him, don’t we?"
Sam glanced at Jo. Since Kevin was part time, they didn’t work as closely together. Kevin was a good cop, but he didn’t feel a connection with him like he had with Jo and Tyler. But Kevin was part of the team, and his help might come in handy. Jo nodded slightly.
"I’ve had Mick looking into a few things," Sam said. "The only lead we have is the stolen car. And so far we have no leads as to who took it."
"And the fingerprint we found on the ashtray," Jo added. "We ran it through AFIS, but nothing came up. Whoever it is isn’t in the system."
Kevin made a face. "Weird that the staties’ investigation hasn’t turned anything up. I mean, why was he out there? Why hadn’t he pulled his gun? What did his log say?"
Jo cleared her throat. "Well, he didn’t exactly put it in the log."
Kevin’s brows shot up. "What do you mean? We’re supposed to either call things in or log them in our notebook. And since it was after midnight and there was no one to call it in to…"
"Right. He should have written the stop in his notebook. But you know how it is when you’re out there alone. He probably saw the car and was pulling over to help. I’m sure he didn’t think it was going to be any police business," Jo said. "Probably figured he’d change the tire and send the motorist on his way."
"It’s still supposed to be logged. Wouldn’t that have been a red flag for the staties?" Kevin asked.
"Yeah, well, they didn’t exactly know that he didn’t log it." Jo took a deep breath. "I wrote the stop in his notebook the next day after he died."
"You what?" Kevin’s voice rose. "If Dupont finds out, he’ll have a field day with that."
Jo held up her palms. "I know. But I didn’t want anything to tarnish Tyler’s reputation. If they saw he didn’t go strictly by the book, they might’ve tried to make it into something it wasn’t." She shook her head at Kevin’s incredulous look. "Come on. We all know that Tyler was a good guy. He was probably just trying to help, and you know none of us go one-hundred-percent by the book in writing this stuff down. We all do it at the end of the shift. I just did it for him because he couldn’t do it for himself anymore."