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Except Archie Gamble’s house.
She felt Noah sidle up to her. His physical presence had become like a magnet. If he was within reach, it seemed like every cell in her body yawned open toward him. “What is it?” he said. “Gamble?”
The back of her calf still prickled where his last cigarette butt had bounced. It hadn’t hurt her. There wasn’t even a stain on her jeans. But something about the man had thrown her hackles up.
As if reading her mind, Noah said, “I get it. My alarm bells were going off too, but I couldn’t find a damn thing to connect him to Eve Bowers or the Collinses. I checked multiple databases, social media, cross-referenced known addresses and employers. Nothing comes up.”
“He could be Claudia’s patient,” Josie suggested. “That wouldn’t come up in any search, not with the strict privacy laws in place.”
“Gamble’s not married—doesn’t sound like he ever was—and he denied knowing her at all. But it won’t hurt to check out that angle, I suppose. I’ll add it to the list. Maybe Gamble and Claudia were having an affair.”
It was hard to imagine the kind and vivacious Claudia that Josie had met in December with the tetchy man they’d just met who was very likely shooting cats on his property. Josie didn’t like to make assumptions—doing so could be the difference between life and death in their line of work—but her gut told her an affair was not the connection between Gamble and Claudia. “I doubt that very much,” she said.
He sighed. “Me too. Just trying to consider every possibility, especially with a case so thin on leads.”
Josie looked over at him. Dark stubble ran the length of his jaw. No one was around, so she lifted a finger and ran it along his jaw. “We should be in bed right now,” she said.
He captured her hand and gave it a squeeze before releasing it. “Don’t remind me.”
They had sent Mettner home to get some sleep. The department was already stretched thin as it was with two murders in less than twenty-four hours. None of them wanted to go home, not while such a huge case was going on, but they needed sleep if they were going to solve this thing.
“I’m calling Precious Paws Rescue as soon as they open,” Josie said.
“You’re going to piss this guy off,” said Noah.
“I hope so,” Josie answered.
His chuckle faded as Hummel emerged from the gap in the trees, his breath clouding in front of him. Dirt and dead leaves streaked the knees of his suit. Brittle twigs crunched under his feet. “We’re ready to get it out of here.”
“Did you get anything?” asked Noah.
“A phone,” Hummel said. “Presumably belonging to Eve Bowers.”
“It would make this a lot easier if it was the killer’s phone,” Noah pointed out.
Josie said, “Figure out the number. We’ll draw up a warrant for the phone so we can access its contents as soon as possible.”
“Sure thing,” Hummel said.
He made no move to return to the car.
Josie said, “What is it, Hummel?”
“Listen, we didn’t really find anything useful in this car. I mean, I’ve still got to process it for prints, but other than that? So far, all we found were a couple of short, dark hairs. None with roots. Regardless, those could belong to anyone Eve Bowers had in her car. We’ll go over the entire car once we get it to the impound lot, but it doesn’t look promising.”
“What are you getting at?” Noah said.
Hummel said, “If he came here in her car, this guy had to be on foot, right?”
“That’s what I thought,” said Josie.
“I hear we’ve got a new K-9 officer,” Hummel said.
“News travels fast around here,” Josie said.
“He’s not an officer,” Noah said. “He’s a consultant, and yeah, we’ve got one.” He looked at Josie. Tension knotted her shoulders. There was no question that a search dog might be useful in this scenario. The killer had been inside the car. There would be a scent trail. Maybe he had gotten into another vehicle that he’d stashed nearby. Maybe he’d walked all the way home. Maybe he was Archie Gamble. But they couldn’t explore those possibilities unless they got the dog out here to search. Even if the trail disappeared, following it might yield important clues.
Josie said, “Okay. Hold off on impounding the car. I’ll call Luke.”
