“You know,” Ro said, “she told those lies to her father. All those lies, and they drove him to come out here with a gun and try to kill me.”

“I’d say you’re half right.” L.B. sat with his coffee, sighed. “The lies drove him to come out here with a gun, but, like I said, I’ve been hunting with Leo. I saw him take down a buck with that rifle, at thirty yards with the buck on the run. If he’d wanted to put a bullet in you, you’d have a bullet in you.”

“I guess it was my lucky day then.”

“Something snapped in him. I’m not excusing him, Ro. There’s no excuse for this. But something’s snapped in him. What the hell’s Irene going to do now? Her daughter murdered, and her husband likely locked up, an infant to care for. She hasn’t even buried Dolly yet, and now this.”

“I’m sorry for them. For all of them.”

“Yeah, it’s a damn sorry situation. I’m going to go see if the cops will tell me what happens next.” He went out, leaving his untouched coffee behind.

18

Too wound up to sit, Rowan pushed up, wandered the room, peeked out the window, circled back. Gull propped his feet on the chair she’d vacated and decided to drink L.B.’s abandoned coffee.

“I want to do something,” Rowan complained. “Just sitting here doesn’t feel right. How can you just sit here?”

“I’m doing something.”

“Drinking coffee doesn’t count as something.”

“I’m sitting here, I’m drinking coffee. And I’m thinking. I’m thinking if it’s Brakeman’s rifle, and if Brakeman was the one shooting it, did he just go stand in the trees and assume you’d eventually wander out into range?”

“I don’t know if it had to be me. He’s pissed at all of us, just mostly at me.”

“Okay, possible.” He found the coffee bitter, wished for a little sugar to cut the edge. But just didn’t feel like getting up for it. “So Brakeman stands in the woods with his rifle, staking out the base. He gets lucky and we come along. If he’s as good a shot as advertised, why did he miss?”

“Because it has to be a hell of a lot different to shoot a human being than a buck. Nerves. Or he couldn’t bring himself to kill me—us—and decided to scare us to death instead.”

“Also possible. Why leave the weapon? Why leave a special edition, which had to cost, which he cared enough about to put his name on, under a pile of leaves? Why leave it behind at all when he had to know the cops would do a search?”

“Panic. Impulse. He wasn’t thinking clearly—obviously. Hide it, get out, come back for it another time. And maybe take a few more shots.” She stopped, rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck as she studied Gull. “And you don’t think Leo Brakeman shot at us.”

“I think it might be interesting to know who had access to his gun. Who might’ve liked causing him trouble, and wouldn’t feel too bad about scaring you doing it.” He sipped at the coffee. “But it could’ve been Brakeman following impulse, getting lucky, being nervous and panicking.”

“When you say it like that, it’s a lot to swallow.”

She plopped down in L.B.’s chair as Gull had opened her mind to alternatives. And thinking was doing, she reminded herself.

“I guess his wife would have access, but I have a hard time seeing her doing this. Plus, I’ve never heard of her going hunting or target shooting. She’s more the church-bake-sale type. And it’s easier to believe she might panic because she’s more the quiet, even a little timid, type. If you get past the first step, her actually coming out here with a rifle, the rest goes down.”

“Maybe a double bluff,” she considered aloud. “He left the rifle so he could say, hey, would anybody be that stupid? But I don’t know if he’d be that cagey. I just don’t know these people very well. We’ve never had much interaction, even when Dolly worked here. Which means I don’t know if anybody’s got a grudge against Brakeman, or would know enough to use him as a fall guy. It’s easier if it’s Brakeman. Then it would be done, and there wouldn’t be anything to worry about.”

“It’s up to the cops anyway. We can let it go.”

“That’s passive, and that’s what’s driving me crazy. Who killed Dolly? That’s the first question. Jesus, Gull, what if her father did?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” She hooked her feet around the legs of the chair, leaned forward. “Say they had a fight. Say she’s coming back from Florence—if she got work there like she claimed—gets the flat. Calls her father to come fix it. I can’t picture Dolly with a lug wrench and jack. He comes out, and they get into it over something. Her dumping the baby on her mother so much, maybe having the kid in the first place, or just dragging him out that time of night. Things get out of hand. She takes a fall, lands wrong, breaks her neck. He freaks, puts her body in the truck. He’s got to figure out what to do, decides to destroy the evidence—and the rest follows. He knows the area, the trails, and he’s strong enough to have carried her in.”

“Plausible,” Gull decided. “Maybe he confesses to his wife, and you get part two. There’s another hypothesis.”

“Share.”

“You said you didn’t know Dolly that well, but you had definite opinions about her. Jim died last August. We’re moving toward July. Is she the type to be without a man for a year?”

Rowan opened her mouth, shut it again, then sat back. “No. And why didn’t I think of that? No, she’d never go this long without a man. There’s a stronger case for that knowing that her whole I-found-Jesus deal was bogus.”

“Maybe the current guy’s in Florence. Maybe that’s why she got work there, or said she did. Or maybe they just met up in a motel on Twelve or thereabouts.”

“Lovers’ quarrel, and he kills her. If there’s a he. There had to be—it’s Dolly. Or her father found out, and so on. But if she had one on the line in Florence, why come back here anyway? Why not just go there, be with him? Because he’s married,” Rowan said before Gull could comment. “She fooled around with married men all the time.”