Sam figured the killer hadn’t wanted to be arrested for driving a stolen vehicle and had shot Tyler then disappeared.
"I still think we can find someone who saw something. That killer must’ve gotten a ride from someone. That stretch of road is too far away from anything for him to have gone anywhere on foot," Jo said.
This far north, most of the roads were remote. Houses were spaced far apart. Tyler had been up at the north end of town, almost to the Canadian border. There would’ve been no one around for miles to see what happened.
"Whoever it was must’ve been smart enough to wipe the car clean," Sam said.
The car had been wiped of fingerprints. The only thing they’d found was a partial print in the ashtray along with a dusting of cocaine. Sam figured they’d had drugs in the car. The cocaine might’ve come out of a bag they were stashing in the ashtray. They must have been in a hurry to get out of there after the shooting. Maybe the bag ripped in the killer’s haste to grab it out of the car, and some cocaine spilled out. "Seems like if someone knew enough to wipe for prints, they would’ve been a criminal with a record, but we didn’t get a match from the database for the partial."
"Poor Tyler probably didn’t know what he was stumbling onto," Jo said.
Hadn’t he? Sam wondered about that. There were a few discrepancies, like the fact that he hadn’t pulled his gun and that he’d been shot right in front of the police cruiser. If the killer had come out of the stolen car with a gun, wouldn’t Tyler have pulled his? It was hard to know exactly—Tyler hadn’t logged the stop in his logbook, so there were no notes as to why he was pulling over. Sam just assumed his intention had been to help the disabled vehicle.
"We’ll get to the bottom of it." Sam glanced sideways at Jo. Logging a stop was police protocol. Usually, they called in or logged it in a book. That time of night, there was no one in the squad room to take the call, so they each carried a logbook. Sometimes they bent the rules a little and logged things after the stop—when they got back to the station. Except for Tyler—there was no "after." He never made it back to the station. Jo had forged the log in his notebook to avoid a black mark on his reputation during the state investigation. "By the way, thanks for covering for Tyler."
Jo shrugged. "We look out for each other, right?" She spun her chair around so that she was facing out into the main bar. She looked relaxed, casual. But Sam knew she was recording every detail of what was going on in the bar inside that superior brain of hers.
Her eyes widened, and she jerked her head toward the door as Billie slid a basket of fries across the bar to her. Sam turned to see Mick Gervasi, private investigator and his best friend since grade school, saunter in.
Mick was wearing a black jacket, leather like Jo’s but bulkier. His dark hair was cut in a short military style. His clear-blue eyes scanned the bar much like Jo’s but for a totally different reason. Mick didn’t trust anyone, and he was looking around to see if there might be trouble he wanted to avoid.
A slight smile ticked up the corners of his lips as he spotted them. He headed toward the bar and slipped into the seat beside Jo.
Billie slid a tumbler half full of amber liquid and ice in front of him before his jean-clad ass even settled into the seat. Whiskey. Jack Daniels, to be exact. Mick was a regular.
Jo spun back around, and the three of them hunched forward, their elbows on the bar, leaning in toward each other with Jo in the middle. Sam had hired Mick to do a little investigating into Tyler’s shooting, and Jo was totally on board.
The investigation by the state police wasn’t going anywhere, and Sam and Jo technically weren’t supposed to be getting involved. Conflict of interest or some damn thing. They weren’t about to let strangers handle Tyler’s investigation, but they had to be careful how involved they got. That was where Mick came in.
"So what have you got?" Jo picked up a fry and slid her eyes toward Mick.
Mick took a swig from the tumbler. The condensation had already dripped down from the sides of the glass to form a wet ring on the bar. He put the glass back down exactly on top of the ring.
"Not much. I’m digging into all the relatives and connections for Barbara Bartles. I’m thinking maybe her car wasn’t stolen by a stranger." Mick shrugged and looked out over the bar. "But I haven’t come up with anything concrete yet."
Sam swigged his beer. It was cold, slightly bitter with the lemony tang. He thought about the car that Tyler had pulled over. It was a late-model Ford. The registration in the glove compartment said it belonged to Barbara Bartles, who turned out to be an elderly woman. She claimed the car had been stolen the day before.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Jo munched on fries and scanned the room by looking in the mirror behind the bar. "Here he comes."
She swung around in her chair again, her elbows on the bar as a young guy with thin brown hair pulled back into a ponytail slid in between her and Mick to capture Billie’s attention.
Jesse Cowly leaned across the bar, his long ponytail swinging to the side and brushing her arm. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Sam could see he was already trying to turn on the charm, his smile wide as he looked at Jo’s cleavage. Then his eyes trailed up to her face and widened with surprise when he recognized who she was.
"Hey, Jesse, you’re just the person we’ve been looking for." Jo’s words caused a flicker of concern in Jesse’s eyes.
If he was guilty of something, he was good at hiding it, though. He squared his shoulders and gave Sam and Jo a blank look. "Oh? Why is that?"
"Heard you were partying with some campers last night," Jo said.
"Yeah, so? Is there a law against that now?" He grabbed a longneck from Billie and slapped a few bills on the bar then took a step back, still facing Jo and Sam.
"No law against partying," Sam said. "But when one of the other partiers gets murdered…"
Jesse’s brows shot up. "Murdered? Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t have anything to do with any murder."
Sam glanced at Jo. Jesse seemed panicked enough to be telling the truth, but that was more Jo’s area. He knew she’d be studying his body language.
"But you were with them, right? One of them was named Lynn. Do you remember her?" Jo asked.
Jesse scratched the back of his neck. "I remember them. They were here in the bar. You can ask anyone. So what? Lots of people were in the bar."
"Yeah, but you went back to the campsite with her, didn’t you?" He was acting cocky now. Arrogant. It reminded Sam of his cousin’s trial almost twenty years ago. Those guys had been cocky and arrogant, too. Until Sam and Mick had stepped in with their own brand of justice.
Jesse frowned. "What is this? Are you interrogating me? You can’t just come in here and ask me questions without reading me my rights or something."
Sam put up his hands palms out and plastered an easy smile across his face. "We’re not interrogating you. We’re sitting here in the bar having a conversation. If we wanted to interrogate you, we’d bring you into the police station. We just want to know what you saw out there at that campsite."
"I didn’t see anything because I wasn’t at the campsite. I was here in the bar all night. I never went out there, so whoever you got your information from is lying."
Jesse stormed off, and Jo and Sam exchanged a look.
"Well, looks like someone is lying," Sam said.
Jo turned back toward her beer. "They usually do when it comes to murder. The hard part is figuring out who’s doing the lying and why."