Page 25 of Midnight Ride

“She’s at home for today.”

“Okay if I drive up and check on her?”

“Of course. I planned to call you.”

“Sure you did.” Savanna’s cheeks were rosy-red, she was so fucking fuming at Travis. She ran out the front door and jumped into her car.

“She’s upset,” said Molly. “Were you going to call her, Travis?”

“Don’t think so.”

Travis finished giving Molly the details of the incident at the Dry Run and then he wanted to move on to the background information she had dug up on all the members of the hunting party.

“Any one of them stand out as a possible killer, Molly? You must have a favorite.”

“I don’t want to venture a guess. I’ll let you do that.”

“Lay it on me.”

“Both of the older twin brothers have a history of abuse. I’m not clear on who Trevor Oliver’s victim was, but there is documented abuse on the twin boys, Dan and Van, by their father.”

“That’s a much stronger motive than him tossing their phones in the fishpond,” said Travis. “How far does that go back, Molly? Are there medical reports we can access? If it was going on for years, it might have been time to end it—in the eyes of the boys.”

“Very possible,” said Molly. “There’s more. One of the other men in the hunting party—Roger Prentice—has a long-running history of mental illness. Only one of the things I read in his file—he killed his neighbors’ guinea pigs and hung them on the clothesline by their ears.”

“Good thing Tammy isn’t here to listen to that,” said Travis. “Wouldn’t sit well with her. She’s an animal lover.”

“Doesn’t amuse me either,” said Molly. “The rest of the men seemed fairly ordinary. Nothing on the wife, but if she was living with the victim the entire time the boys were growing up, she must have known about the abuse. She might have decided to end it…in her own way.”

“She could’ve hired one of the men in the hunting party to do the deed for her,” said Travis. “Uh huh. We now have several suspects besides the boys themselves.”

Travis strolled down the hall to the break room for more coffee and Wyatt Thompson called him from the newspaper office in Cut Bank.

“Wyatt?”

“Heads up for you, Travis. I put out a special edition with the picture of the twins and the plea for information and I printed your landline number to call.”

“Okay. So, we may see some action today when the paper hits the ranchers’ mailboxes and the boxes in town.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. Do you have anything else I can use for a follow up?”

“Wish I did. This is going way too slow to suit me. Maybe the article will speed things up. Thanks, Wyatt. I’ll call you as soon as we get something solid.”

Travis sat down at the table with his coffee and tried to think. Hard to concentrate on the murders when he wanted to kill the asshole in the run for hurting Tammy. He hadn’t been in the break room for five minutes when he heard a lot of noise and people shouting in the squad room.

He set his cup down and strode down the hall to see if Molly needed help and she did. Her face was flushed, and her ever-present smile had vanished. A sure sign she wasn’t happy about something.

Alison and Trevor Oliver were standing at the front counter freaking out over Dick Morgan being dead as dirt and our office not notifying them.

“The next of kin had to be found and notified before anyone else,” said Travis. “That’s the way it works. Since you are not Mister Morgan’s next of kin, you weren’t first on the list.”

“Well, we should have been,” Alison shouted in her high-pitched whine. “This is the same case as my murdered husband, and I have the right to know all the details.”

“No, you don’t, ma’am. Your husband was the victim, but this office can’t share any details of the investigation into his murder with you or with anyone else.”

“That’s just stupid. I want to speak to your superior.”

“Good luck with that, ma’am. I’m the sheriff of this county, and I’m about as high as you can go.”

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