Page 21 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

Maybe you don’t want to, a nagging voice in his head suggested. Maybe you won’t like what you’ll find.

Tough.

Anything was better than this, he thought, starting to drift off again.

Not knowing was killing him.

CHAPTER 6

Bobby Knowlton climbed out of his truck—an aging, beat-up Chevy—then tossed the butt of a cigarette into the snow, its red ember fizzling as he half-jogged to the house. “God, it’s cold,” he said with a mock shiver as he approached Rivers and Mendoza.

Knowlton was pushing sixty, wiry, his features sharp as a razor’s edge. His leathery skin was permanently tanned from working outside, and he hadn’t bothered to shave for a day or two, silvery stubble covering his chin.

“You’re the detectives, right?” He was wearing a jean jacket, battered Levis, and a baseball cap pulled tight over his head.

“Brett Rivers, Riggs County Sheriff ’s Department.” Rivers offered up his ID, but Knowlton waved it away, stuck out his hand, and shook Rivers’s palm. “My partner, Wynonna Mendoza.”

“I’d like to say ‘a pleasure,’ ” Knowlton said, glancing at the badge Mendoza had flashed, “but under the circumstances? Not so much.” He shook her hand as well, then added, “I go by Bobby. Christened Robert, but my folks called me Bobby as a kid, and the name just stuck. Look, I don’t know why I’m here. I mean, I already gave my statement to some deputy, and I just don’t know what more I can tell ya.” He was nervously searching the pockets of his battered jacket. He pulled out a crumpled box of Marlboros, then changed his mind and shoved the pack back inside. “As I said, I gave my statement two days ago to a deputy.”

“Kate Mercado,” Mendoza said.

Bobby gave a quick nod. “That’s her.”

Rivers met the questions in the foreman’s eyes. “I’d just like to go over it one more time.”

“Oookay.” Knowlton paused. “You’re not thinkin’ I had somethin’ to do with all this,” he said, suddenly suspicious. “’Cuz that’s just plain crazy talk. You know?”

Rivers hadn’t gone there, but he let the foreman run his mouth just to see what he had to say. “I was down at the Brass Bullet. Kinda my thing after work. I was there for two, maybe two and a half hours, waitin’ on a feed delivery that was held up ’cuz of the weather, s’posed to come in later, after hours. Y’know?” His bushy eyebrows rose beneath his cap. When Rivers didn’t respond, he frowned and held up a hand. “Well, hey. If you don’t believe me talk to Mike, the bartender, Mike—oh, what’s his name—Mike . . . Mike.” He snapped his fingers. “Mike McGillicuddy. Yeah, that’s it. Talk to him. He’ll tell ya.”

Rivers said, “I just wanted to hear it myself.”

Knowlton took a second to size him up, seemed satisfied with what he saw, and said, “Well, okay, then. Let’s go inside. Freezin’ our asses out here.”

That was the first statement the foreman uttered that Rivers accepted as fact. As Knowlton began unlocking the front door, a dog began to put up a ruckus, barking and scratching on the other side of the thick oak door. “That’s Ralph,” Knowlton explained, then yelled through the panels as he let himself in. “Ralph! Hush! Geez, hold your horses, will ya? I’m comin’.” To the detectives, he half-apologized. “The deal is that I said I’d take care of Ralph, didn’t want him to be taken by animal control or whatever. He’s fine.”

He didn’t sound fine. It sounded as if the dog intended to shred the door to pieces while barking his fool head off.

“Is he dangerous?” Rivers asked and saw that Mendoza had backed up a step.

“Ralph? Nah. It’s the whole ‘bark is worse than his bite’ thing, y’know?”

Rivers wasn’t so sure, and as Knowlton swung the door open, the dog shot out, a black-and-brown streak that leapt across the porch and down the few steps to start running in wide circles through the snow in the front yard. Yipping excitedly, snow clumps flying, the shepherd tore from one end of the yard to the other.

“Guess he’s got a little energy to burn off,” Bobby remarked as they stepped inside. “I shoulda taken him home with me. I kept thinkin’ James would be released any time and would want the dog here.” He snapped on some of the interior lights, and in the wash of illumination, Rivers eyed the room again.

The front of the home was split by a staircase, living room on one side, dining room on the other. The living area was filled with a mismatch of comfortable furniture in no particular style: leather recliner, short sofa, two easy chairs now toppled over; they had been, it seemed, situated around a fireplace with a raised hearth, one corner of which was still stained with blood.

Cahill’s blood, he presumed.

Lab tests would prove it out.

The house was just the way the police had left it, swept by the crime-scene team, fingerprints taken, electronics removed, trace evidence collected, digital photos snapped, blood samples already sent to the lab and currently being checked for DNA. A faint odor of ash from the last fire hung in the air.

“Man, you guys really know how to trash a place,” Bobby said, surveying the disheveled shelves and layer of fine fingerprint dust. “Don’t you all ever clean up after yourselves? James is gonna be pissed.”

A messy house was the least of James Cahill’s problems.

Knowlton adjusted his hat on his balding head. “Isn’t all this overkill? I mean it’s not like anyone’s dead, right?”

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