Page 87 of Stockman's Showdown

‘Look at you, cupcake.’ Standing beside him with her hand propped on her hip. ‘Getting with the programme of finding that inner playful spirit. Or should I say, it’s good to see you getting that broomstick out of your arse, babe.’

He rolled his eyes, but it didn’t stop his grin. Bree had just called himbabe.

The next six drums held nothing but more soupy muck. On the second-last drum, the pitchfork’s tines hit something tall, that thumped against the side of the drum.

‘I heard that.’ Bree’s eyes lit up.

‘I felt it.’ Whatever it was, it lay lengthways, making it hard for the pitchfork to catch. ‘Can’t get it.’

‘I’ve got it.’ With her arm wrapped inside a garbage bag, Bree reached into the black sludgy gunk. Her thick, fiery curls began to tumble forward, spilling over her shoulders in a wild cascade.

‘Bree, your hair.’ Ryder gently gathered the mass of hair, holding it back with care. To have her hair in his hands was one of those daydreams finally coming true, where the strands were heavy and soft in his grip, the red catching the shed’s light like copper.

‘Got it.’ She pulled up the object by its metal tip, to reveal a shotgun.

Ryder instantly recognised it. ‘It’s a 1960 Winchester M12.’

‘I know. I have twenty-two of these lying around the place.’

‘You said sixteen before!’

‘Only sixteen of them are working models.’ She lifted the gun higher. ‘This has to be the murder weapon, doesn’t it?’

‘It might be. But first, let’s drain the oil out of it.’ Ryder ripped the blue plastic tarp off Dex’s workbench and spread it out over the gravel under the stars. From the top shelf, he grabbed some rubber gloves and snapped them on. ‘Go get my phone, Bree. We need to document this properly for the police.’

She returned quickly, holding up the phone.

‘Don’t touch it,’ he warned, carefully lifting the grease-covered firearm from the oil drum. ‘If we’re lucky, the oil might have preserved fingerprints or DNA.’

‘After all this time?’

‘Submerging it in oil provides some protection. I’ve seen it before during investigations.’ Ryder raised the weapon on wooden blocks he’d scavenged from Dex’s workshop, setting an oil tray underneath to let it drain.

‘How do you know all this?’

‘My old unit wasn’t just about being weapons engineers. We worked like a JAG team, handling specialised investigations involving military firearms.’

Bree tilted her head, studying him with a curious expression. ‘So that’s why Marcus and Porter let you look at the case file?’

Ryder gave a short nod. ‘Get ready to videotape the next part.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m cracking the chamber to see if it’s loaded.’ Carefully, he worked the mechanism and pulled out a corroded shell casing. He held it up for the camera. ‘This shotgun doesn’t fire bullets—it uses shells loaded with pellets or slugs. These steel pellets might match what they found in the body.’

‘When will we know?’ Bree asked, keeping the phone steadily recording.

‘We’ll need a specialised forensic lab to confirm it. I can do the preliminary analysis myself, but it needs an independent review for transparency.’

‘Aren’t we technically tampering with evidence?’

‘No, we’re preserving it.’ Ryder placed the shell casing and steel pellets into separate plastic bags, like he’d seen Porter do earlier. ‘I’m not leaving a loaded firearm sitting on my property. And this will go to the police once the oil has drained.’

He washed his hands at the industrial sink, glancing at Bree as she filmed the last shot of the oil drum. ‘Good work. I’ll load these images to my PC and email them to Marcus in the morning.’

‘Can you send them to Porter, please?’

He arched an eyebrow at her. ‘Why?’

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