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Noah smiled. “That is where things get really interesting. That is private property that belongs to a man named…” He hesitated for dramatic effect before delivering the surprise. “Archie Gamble.”
Josie turned her attention back to the phone, zooming in and out to try to get a better sense of the property. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that name in a matter of hours,” she said. “You know what that means.”
Noah reached across and powered up the Mobile Data Terminal. “I’m way ahead of you,” he said. A moment later, a driver’s license photo of Archie Gamble appeared on the screen. It was not at all what Josie had expected. Not that she had known what to expect. Maybe the elusive boyfriend of Eve Bowers? Then again, did women cryptically write the names of their boyfriends on the back of their boss’s junk mail and leave it inside a book about relationships? Josie couldn’t say, but she would be surprised if Gamble had been the person to give Eve the “glow of a woman in love.” The man was in his fifties, grizzled, with hard, flinty eyes, long salt-and-pepper hair, and an unruly beard to match.
“Record?” Josie asked.
“Believe it or not, no,” said Noah. “He’s clean.”
“As far as anyone knows,” Josie said. “Let’s go.”
Outside the car, her breath made tiny clouds that floated up and away into the darkness. The night brought a deeper cold which sent a shiver up and down her body. She pulled her coat more tightly around her. Near one of the cruisers, Mett gathered with two uniformed officers, talking in low tones.
Josie recognized one of the officers as Dougherty. He pointed behind them, to the shoulder of the road and beyond. All she could see was blackness. “We took a walk into the clearing about fifty or sixty feet from the road to make sure it was the vehicle everyone’s looking for. It’s a Nissan Rogue. Tag is registered to Eve Bowers. VIN is a match. Minimal damage to the car, no skid marks on the road that we could see, so it doesn’t look like this is a crash. You probably know we’ve got permission to remove the vehicle since it’s on state gameland. But we figured you’d want the ERT out here to have a look at it before they impound it, so we didn’t touch or disturb anything.”
“Good call,” Josie said. “But the ERT is going to be a while. They’re packing up at another scene.”
Dougherty nodded. “No problem. We’ll wait.”
Mettner gave a long sigh. “So that’s it? We sit out here for a few more hours?”
“No,” Josie said. “There’s something else we can do.”
Noah brought Mettner up to speed on the discovery of Archie Gamble’s name inside Eve’s apartment as well as the fact that he owned the property adjacent to the state gameland where Eve Bowers’s car had been found.
Mettner grinned. “Well, hell. Let’s go talk to him.”
TWENTY-ONE
They left the uniformed officers to guard the scene while they drove around the wooded area to the front of the property. A rusted metal mailbox teetered on a post next to a dirt driveway. Josie bounced in her seat as she turned the SUV into the driveway. Headlights illuminated dead grass and barren trees on either side of them. It felt like she’d been driving for an hour before a small house came into view. As the headlights landed on the white siding, something fluffy and gray scurried along the side of the house and ran into the darkness. It looked very much like a cat. Gamble’s abode was a single-story, low-slung rectangle. Off to their right, an awning was visible. The small porch beneath it was a black hole. No lights came from the windows or anywhere on the exterior of the house. Josie parked next to a small black pickup truck.
Mettner said, “Leave your headlights on. Can’t see shit out here.”
She left them on although the light didn’t reach past the pickup and didn’t illuminate the front porch. As they piled out of the vehicle and carefully made their way closer to the house, she blinked a few times to adjust her vision to the darkness. On the other side of the pickup, the first few slabs of a concrete walkway were visible. They followed it until it made a sharp turn toward the porch.
Before them, an orange circle glowed, disembodied. Then the scent of cigarette smoke reached Josie’s nostrils. The three of them froze. Josie’s fingers twitched, wanting to reach for her service weapon but not yet having any clear indication that a threat was imminent. They had found a murder victim’s car on the property next to Gamble’s—which was bisected by a road. That didn’t give them the right to enter his property. The only justification for their presence was that they’d found his name in Eve Bowers’s apartment, which gave them the right to attempt to question him. It was possible he had nothing at all to do with Eve’s murder, or Claudia’s, and that his name turning up twice in one day in the course of their investigation was simply a coincidence. Except that Josie didn’t believe in coincidences. Her stomach clenched. She squeezed her hand into a fist. Noah’s breath tickled the back of her neck. Something in front of them creaked.
“Mr. Gamble?” Josie called out. “Archie Gamble?”
A low, raspy voice spoke from somewhere in the darkness. “Three of you all coming here around evening time dressed like that—you must be cops.”
Noah called out each one of their names. “We’re here from the Denton Police Department.”
“Whatcha all want with me then?” came the voice.
Josie blinked again, willing her eyes to adjust more quickly to the darkness. When he took another drag of his cigarette, Archie’s face came into relief for a second. He looked even more grizzled than in his driver’s license photo. Unkempt hair, sunken eyes with pouches of wrinkles under them, unruly eyebrows, a long beard.
Mettner said, “We’re sorry to disturb you, sir, especially in the evening. We found a vehicle near the backside of your property where it butts up against Wertz Road.”
“You say you found a vehicle on my property?”
“No,” Noah said. “Across Wertz Road from your property.”
“That’s state gameland, son. Got nothing to do with me.”
Josie said, “That vehicle belonged to a woman who was murdered today. We found your name among her personal items. We’d like to ask you some questions.”
The orange circle flared and then sailed through the night, leaving a trail of sparks that quickly faded. Something landed at their feet. Another creak. Archie said, “I’m gonna turn on this here flashlight I’ve got so we can see each other properly, but I’m gonna tell you right now I’ve got a pellet gun in my lap. I’m not aimin’ to harm anyone with it, so don’t you all shoot me.”
