Page 42 of The Sheriff's Baby

“Arlo lives in San Antonio,” Joelle added. “You want me to have Ruston send someone out to pick him up and bring him in for questioning?”

Duncan thought about it for a couple of seconds and nodded. “See if Ruston or another SAPD cop can do the interview.”

That would save them from having to wait around for Arlo to come in. Duncan figured Joelle was spent for the day. He certainly was, and added to that, they would need to re-interview Kate and try to get Willie Jay to talk.

Joelle nodded and immediately called her brother. She’d barely had time to convey what they wanted when Duncan’s own phone rang, and he saw Luca’s name on the screen.

“We have a problem,” Luca said the moment Duncan answered the call on speaker.

“What?” Duncan asked after he groaned.

“Woodrow found a truck on one of the ranch trails that’s near the McCullough ranch. Inside it, there were two dead bodies.”

Chapter Eleven

Two dead bodies.

Hearing Luca say that had given Joelle an initial hit of adrenaline. But that had been six hours ago. Now she was just wiped out and had to force herself to stay alert and focused as Duncan read the latest update he’d just gotten from Woodrow and the CSIs.

“Two males,” Duncan said. He was standing behind his desk, reading from his laptop. “Both were identified through prints since they had criminal records. Darrin Finney, forty-two, from San Antonio, has a sheet for B&E, assault and drug possession. Troy Oakley, thirty-six, from Austin, has a nearly identical sheet, minus the drugs. The deaths were set up to look like a murder-suicide with Troy being the killer.”

Joelle, who was seated in the chair, looked up at Duncan. “Set up?” she questioned.

Duncan nodded. “There was a note left at the scene, but the CSIs said the angles of the kill shots were wrong for it to have gone down that way.”

He turned his laptop so she could read the note that had been photographed. The handwriting was basically a scrawl so it took her a moment to make out what it said. “Too many cops after us,” she read aloud. “This is better than going to prison. We were wrong to go after that deputy and the other woman.”

Even without the wrong angles of the kill shots, Joelle would have suspected the murder-suicide was a ruse. Sometimes, criminals did do things like this, but the truth was the cops weren’t on the trails of these two. Their names hadn’t even surfaced so far during the investigation.

“Both men had GSR on them,” Duncan continued. “And Darrin Finney had some cinnamon gum in his pocket.”

Continuing to fight the fatigue, Joelle considered that a moment. Molly had said one of her kidnappers chewed that particular flavor of gum so that probably meant these two were the ones who’d taken her.

“The truck they were in was reported stolen earlier today,” Duncan added a moment later, “and there doesn’t seem to be a connection between the owner of the vehicle and either of these two dead men.”

Molly had also mentioned she believed they had transported her in a truck. So that matched as well.

“These two took Molly,” Joelle summarized. “Maybe they did, anyway. Since Willie Jay ended up at the ranch with Molly, he could have been one of her initial kidnappers.” She paused. “And that would mean the two worked together with someone else to cover both her kidnapping and the attack aimed at me. Thesomeone elsecould be just one person. Or two.”

“Probably two,” Duncan said. “Because I don’t believe they’d see going after a cop as a one man job. So, with two dead and one in custody, there’s almost certainly someone else out there we need to find.”

“You’re thinking the fourth man might be this Arlo Dennison Hamlin told us about?” she asked.

Duncan shrugged and then sighed. She wasn’t exactly sure the reason for the sigh until he closed his laptop and walked around the desk to take her by the arm.

“I’m taking you to my place,” he said, lifting her from the chair.

Part of her wanted to argue, to try to continue to push through the avalanche of information they’d gotten on this investigation. But the baby moved just as she opened her mouth to insist she had another couple of hours in her. She didn’t. And the baby was a reminder that she had already had too much stress on her body today and she needed rest.

Duncan let go of her arm once they got moving out of his office and into the bullpen. Slater, Woodrow and Luca were all there. All still working. And that gave Joelle some fresh guilt over leaving when they hadn’t. Still, the exhaustion wasn’t giving her much of a choice about this.

Slater and Woodrow were both on the phone so Duncan turned to Luca. “Could you follow Joelle and me to my place?”

Luca’s nod was quick. “You want me to stay there with you tonight?”

Duncan considered that for a moment and nodded. “Three of the attackers are out of commission, but I believe there’s a fourth one and their boss are still out there. Let’s go in one cruiser.”

Luca nodded as well, and after mouthing the plan to Slater, he grabbed his laptop and went out the door first with Joelle and Duncan right behind them. Following their recent travel patterns, Duncan rode shotgun and Joelle took the back seat.

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