“I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”
“There is, trust me,” he said. “Things like—”
“Like how a person could be so cruel?” I said in a shouty-whisper.
“Riley—”
“Riley, come on in,” Carl called from behind his desk.
“I have to go,” I said, not even looking at Jay as I walked past him into the sheriff’s office. I heard him exhale loudly as I did, but I was right about his professionalism preventing him from causing a scene.
I took a deep breath as I sat down in a chair opposite Carl’s desk.
“Trouble in paradise?”
I gave him a look that said Drop it. Thankfully, he did. We spent the next ten minutes on my questions about the incident at Rosalee’s and the status of the investigation. The hammer had been sent to the lab for prints, and they had a few descriptions from witnesses that they were trying to match. After I had enough information for the article, I screwed up my courage and asked him the one question I wanted to know the answer to more than any other: “Do you think this could have anything to do with me?”
“Riley,” Carl said, his face softening, “you were sitting in that restaurant next to a man who has angered a number of dangerous criminals over the course of his career. There’s a far greater likelihood that hammer was meant for him than for you.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding in, unsure of whether that made me feel better or worse. Either someone was trying to hurt me, or someone was trying to hurt Jay.
“By the way,” Carl said, “I sent Butter over to talk to Brandon Laytner.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and read from it. “He told Butter that on the night of the murder he’d been home alone. No alibi. Same thing for early this morning. Butter said he got real belligerent when he asked him about that. He said, ‘Where the hell do you think I was at 2 a.m.?’”
I could totally see Brandon being rude to Butter. I’m sure he would have treated me the same way had I not been with Ridley. But being a bully didn’t give you a free pass on anything.
“Are you going to look into it further? I mean, there were tobacco leaves at the scene and this guy had a clear problem with Arthur and he works with tobacco plants . . .”
Carl held up a hand to stop me. “We are looking into it. Rest assured.” Evidently Carl hadn’t changed his mind about letting me help. “And I sent the note over to the lab in Richmond to see if they can get any prints off it. I’ll let you know what we hear.”
He stood to walk me out, and his police scanner crackled to life. I heard him mutter under his breath, “Good Lord, what now?”
“Sheriff, this is unit five and we are responding to a ten-one-hundred off Route K.”
“What’s a ten-one-hundred?”
“Dead body—shhh,” Carl whispered.
The voice on the radio continued. “Officers were driving on Route K just past mile marker eight-nine when we were flagged down by two men in hunting gear. The men said they were out turkey hunting and found a deceased male lying in the field.”
The scanner cut out and I sucked in a sharp breath. Carl put a hand out to tell me to calm down. A second later the scanner came back on. “We were able to confirm the presence of a body. We have a white male with what looks like a gunshot wound to the head.” Another cutout, more static. “We found a hunting license identifying the man as one Bennett Nichols of Tuttle Corner, Virginia.”
CHAPTER 39
We’ll have to run some tests to be sure, but looks like it was a hunting accident,” Tiffany Peters said to us as we walked up to the spot where Bennett Nichols’s lifeless body lay shrouded by tall grass. “My guess would be that his gun accidentally discharged, hitting him once in the neck, shot clean through his carotid.” She spoke with equal parts authority and glee, her tiny witch-hat earrings dangling as she talked.
I stayed back a few paces, not wanting to get too close.
“All right,” Carl said. “Call Dr. Mendez and get him out here.” Then he turned to his deputies and asked, “See any signs of foul play? Any other footprints, anything like that?”
Deputy Wilmore spoke first. “Yeah, but they’re probably from the two guys that found him. They were friends of Jim Nichols, this is his land. They said Jim told them his son was going to be hunting from 5:30 till about 8 a.m. They didn’t come out here till after 1 p.m.”
“Tiffany, how long would you guess the body’s been there?” Carl asked.
“Hard to say without testing it, but I think it’s safe to say at least six hours, since rigor mortis has started.”
“Okay,” Carl said, turning to Butter. “Did we check those guys’ guns to see if they’d been fired recently?”
Butter nodded. “We’ll send ’em to the lab to be sure, but I don’t think so. Those guys are real shaken up over this. I don’t think they had anything to do with it.”
“Has anyone talked to the family yet?”
Both Butter and Wilmore shook their heads. I didn’t envy that job. I can’t imagine anything worse than having to tell a woman her husband just died, except maybe having to tell parents that their son did. I thought of Libby. How would she take the news? Her relationship with Bennett had been complex and toxic, but longstanding all the same.
Carl rubbed the back of his neck as he looked over toward the body. “Chances are this was just an accident,” he said, “but I can’t close my eyes to the possibility that it was something more given his involvement with Arthur Davenport. We’ve now got
