Susan twisted around. “The case Archie was working?”
Robbins looked to Claire. Claire shrugged. “Go ahead,” she said. “She practically works here now.”
“It was a couple,” Robbins told Susan. “One male, one female, in their late twenties. Been dead about two years.”
“Huh,” Claire said matter-of-factly.
Susan looked between Robbins and Claire. “So are they related to Molly’s murder or not?” she asked.
Claire took the folder from Robbins and leafed through its contents. “I don’t know. There are a lot of fucked-up people in the world, and it’s a great place to dump a body.”
“So what are you going to do?” Susan asked.
Claire closed the folder. “It’s a cold case. It can wait a couple of days.”
Susan thought of Molly’s body on the slab in the morgue. “Molly’s murder isn’t cold,” she said.
Claire moved close to Susan. She was shorter than Susan, but she was stronger, and Susan had to fight the instinct to take a small step back. The room had cleared out except for a few cops who still stood around the map. But Claire still lowered her voice. “Archie’s out there with Gretchen Lowell,” she said to Susan. Her voice was calm, her eyes level, but there was something unrelenting in her posture that gripped Susan by the throat. “She’s had him all night. How many nails do you think she has in him by now?”
Susan wasn’t going to give up that easily. “Molly’s death may be related to Parker’s and the senator’s murders,” she said.
Claire rolled her eyes in frustration. “They weren’t murdered, Susan. They went off the road. It might have been suicide. It might have been an accident. But we don’t have any evidence that it was anything more than that.”
Susan shook her head. “Gretchen Lowell dumped Heather Gerber there. Some killer dumped a couple there two years ago. And now Molly Palmer?”
“Just because you hear hoofbeats, doesn’t mean it’s a zebra.”
“What does that even mean?” Susan asked.
“It’s almost always a horse,” Claire said, hands splayed. “The hoofbeats.” She ran a hand through her short hair. “I’ve got to clean up. Henry wants me at the press conference.”
The press conference. “Me, too,” Susan said. “Give me a minute.” She turned and started to pack up her notebook, in the process knocking over her cup of coffee, which spread across the table, splattering the map. Susan gasped in horror and lunged for some napkins on the counter next to the microwave.
“Jesus,” Claire said. “I’ll meet you out there.” She turned and left the room.
Two cops still hovering next to the map, one of them Mike Flannigan, lifted the map off the wet table. Susan flung the napkins onto the puddle of coffee on the table and then ran over and began to dab up the coffee off the map, which the two men had laid out on the carpet.
She’d managed to splatter coffee all the way into Central Oregon. Santiam Pass. Bend. Prineville. She fumbled with the napkins, careful not to disturb the Post-its that marked roadblocks. As she soaked up the coffee, she noticed there wasn’t a Post-it at the intersection of I-5 and Highway 22. “There’s no roadblock on 22,” she said.
“Twenty-two doesn’t go anywhere,” Flannigan explained. “Just up into the mountains.” He took the map from Susan and began to carefully roll it up. “There’s a fire up there.”
“I thought they were getting that under control,” Susan said.
“Wind changed,” Flannigan said. “Fire’s almost four hundred acres. We don’t need a roadblock. The Forest Service closed 22 this morning.”
CHAPTER
46