Hix wasn’t smiling when, two and a half hours later, he turned his eyes from the whiteboard timeline case profile he’d drawn up that was butted to the wall across from his desk—a whiteboard that had way too much white—to watch Bets and Larry come through the front door to the department.
They both looked to him but only Larry walked back to his office. Bets went to her desk.
Hix got up from behind his and had his ass leaning against the front of it when Larry walked in, coming to stand in front of him.
“Faith has been updated and you were right. It was her Calloway had sex with the day he died. She told Bets they . . . he . . .” He cleared his throat and pushed through it. “She likes to get up with him. Get him breakfast. So after he showers, he wakes her up and they . . . take care of business.”
“Right.”
“Doesn’t rule out another woman,” Larry pointed out.
“Lance didn’t say he found vaginal fluid from more than one woman, but I’ll call him later and make sure of that.”
Larry nodded.
“Do me a favor, man, and call the others in,” Hix requested.
Larry turned to the door and walked out.
Hix stayed where he was and watched the progression of his team as they filed into the office.
Donna was last in and she closed the door behind her.
They fanned out exactly as they’d done the day before. Donna at one end, Bets beside her, Larry beside Bets, Hal on the other end, like Larry was playing buffer for Donna and Bets against a colleague they both despised.
In the rare times he had a briefing with them all, this was always the way they positioned themselves.
He’d never noticed it.
Now he did and Hix’s high estimation of Larry rose higher.
“Right, unless anyone else had ideas since yesterday, I want us to start adjusting our focus and broadening our scope. We’re lookin’ for drifters. Homeless. And partners. We got nothin’ so nothin’ is out of bounds. Two men, man and a woman, even two women. Ask around. Hit the bars, diners, cafés and shelters in the county. New faces. Known folks. People actin’ hinky. People givin’ a bad vibe and gettin’ attention. Work as partners, Larry and Hal, Donna and Bets. Work it out amongst yourselves who’s going where. We struck out finding a crime scene, we have to focus on finding a suspect.”
“So you think it was about the truck,” Bets noted.
“Only thing missing is that truck,” Hix replied.
“That’s the only thing I can think too. Figured, maybe he picked up a hitchhiker or something. Maybe a fugitive who needed a ride but not one he had to share.”
That was a good idea, but unlikely. Unless the kill freaked him out, that brand of perp would take Calloway’s wallet, or at least the fifty-three dollars in it, especially if he took the time to move the body from the crime scene.
Even so.
“Run with that,” Hix ordered. “Anyone recently jumping bail who’s desperate enough to go to those ends to get his ass out of Nebraska. Do a search on that before you and Donna head out.”
“We got a BOLO on that truck, Hix, and no hits on it,” Donna pointed out.
“He might be layin’ low, Donna. I’ll start reaching out to law enforcement outside the adjoining counties at the same time hitting park services. Rangers get police alerts, gonna make sure they’re on the ball as well as get folks to put a bug in the ear of anyone they know in Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Montana, South Dakota, doin’ the same myself.”
“What about Iowa and Missouri?” Hal asked. “Not like roads don’t lead those places.”
“Great stretches of nothin’ in the states I named, Hal,” Hix returned. “This man is on the run, he wants a lotta nothing. Not to hit a state where he’ll be nabbed by highway patrol or a town cop faster ’n he can say his own name. But bugs in the ear means be on the lookout same as BOLO actually stands for be on the fuckin’ lookout, so right now, havin’ dick, we gotta light some fires under people in hopes they’ll get motivated to lend us a hand. We also gotta go with hunches, attempt to create a focus of efforts and see if we can find a needle in a goddamned haystack then pin motive and opportunity on the damned thing.”
Hal looked to his boots.
Hix cut his gaze through his team. “Time to get moving.”
They didn’t hesitate but Hix turned his attention to Hal.
“Hal, a minute.” He looked to his door where Bets was the last to file out. “Close the door, Bets. Yeah?”
She couldn’t quite fight back her grin as she muttered, “Yeah,” and closed the door behind her.
Hix looked to Hal.
“I’ll make this short because there’s shit to do,” he began. “You waste time sayin’ stupid shit during a briefing one more time, Hal, you’re suspended. I’m not fucking with you. We got a dead citizen and his grieving widow and kids in this county and I don’t need to be explainin’ to you how to do your job or the decisions I make. You got a genuine question or suggestion you wanna add, I’m open to it. You wanna bust my balls for whatever reason, shut it down.”
“You’re threatening to suspend me during the first murder investigation in McCook County in fifty-two years?” Hal asked incredulously.
“Yes, Hal, I am.”
Hal straightened his back and puffed out his chest. “You’re giving preferential treatment to the other deputies.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hix asked, now he was incredulous.
“You told Bets to tell me to bring fucking coffee to a crime scene yesterday.”
“It was six in the morning, settin’ up to be a long day since we had the first murder victim on our hands that the county’s seen in fifty-two years, so yeah. I want my deputies alert and that means I want them to have some damned caffeine, and to get that not every one of ’em stoppin’ by Babycakes on the way to check out a body dump.”
“I coulda brought the tent,” Hal pointed out irately.
Hix could not believe what he was hearing.
“You’re bustin’ my balls and wastin’ my time,” he warned low.
Hal was and it would seem he couldn’t stop himself from doing it.
“You’re handlin’ Bets with kid gloves ’cause it’s clear you got fed up with puttin’ up with her dewy eyes, obviously laid it out, and you gotta expend effort to kiss her ass and snap her out of it ’cause she’s a girl and not a man who first, wouldn’t give you dewy eyes and second, you could just say it like it was and he’d take it like a man. Not to mention, you left me behind as forensics’ errand boy while the rest of you started the investigation.”
Hix couldn’t even think of his first point without physically getting in the man’s face.
So he focused on the second.
“Those Cherry County boys treat you like an errand boy?” he asked.
“No,” Hal mumbled. “You did.”
“Hal, I left you behind because you have experience at a murder scene so you’d know more what you’re lookin’ for working with forensics at a dump site. And I told you to show them McCook hospitality because those boys aren’t paid by our county and they coulda told us to go spit rather than hauling their asses down to another county to investigate a crime scene. It’s called interdepartmental relations and that leads to interdepartmental collaboration, somethin’ right now we need.”
Hal opened his mouth.