“Yes,” Russ said, sounding more resigned than defensive. “I’m on some new stuff. Takes a while to kick in.”
“Stick with it, okay?”
Russ made a harrumph kind of sound. “Trust me, I will. After what happened out there—” He cocked a meaty thumb over one shoulder to indicate the lot where he and Cord had stumbled across the body. An event guaranteed to eff-up a man’s day. “I might just double up on the happy pills.”
Eli was through making small talk. “Russ, if you have any idea who that girl might be, I need you to tell me. Now. There’s a family resemblance, I’m told, and that can’t be a coincidence.”
Russ startled Eli a little by practically bolting from his chair. He crossed the room, rustled around in stacks of stuff on top of a bookshelf and came to stand just on the other side of the coffee table, holding out a framed photograph.
Eli took it, examined the face behind the dust-coated glass.
“That’s my sister,” Russ said. “She was sixteen when that was taken. It was the year before she would have graduated, if she hadn’t run away.”
Bethanne had been a pretty girl, at least when this picture was taken, even with mild acne scars, cat-eye glasses and crooked teeth. Her hair was dirty blond and badly cut, and her eyes, a soft shade of blue, revealed a depth of sorrow few sixteen-year-olds ever encounter.
Eli felt a pinch at the back of his heart, looking at her. His memories of her were vague. “Was she a good student, Russ? Did she have friends?”
Russ sighed, and the sadness in that sound rivaled the hopelessness so visible in Bethanne’s time-faded eyes. “Let’s just say, she tried hard in school. The folks didn’t place a lot of importance on things like that, as you probably already know. As for friends, who can say? Bethanne spent a lot of time by herself, maybe by choice, maybe because nobody else wanted to hang out with her. Shallie was the smart one in this family, and God knows, she was good-looking. Still is.”
Eli was still holding the photo, still searching that face for some indefinable clue. “Can I keep this for a while? I’ll have it scanned and then give it back.”
“No need,” Russ said. “I can print out a copy right now.”
“Thanks,” Eli replied, following Russ into a nearby room, which was much cleaner than the one they’d just left, and outfitted with some very nice equipment two powerful computers.
“I’m guessing you didn’t hear a shot?” he ventured, while Russ approached one of the desktops, tapped a few keys, and scrolled through a steady stream of photos in search of Bethanne’s image.
Russ didn’t look around. “No,” he replied, “I didn’t. But I might not have paid much attention even if I had—lots of grouse-hunting goes on around here.”
True enough.
Presently, Russ selected a picture and pressed print.
Handed the copy to Eli.
“I appreciate it,” Eli said.
“Sure,” Russ said, returning to the living room and dropping into his chair with a force that threatened to snap the framework.
“That’s quite a set-up you’ve got in there,” Eli observed, cocking a thumb in the direction of the computer room.
“I use one for gaming,” Russ told him. “I mostly code on the other one. Taught myself.”
“Impressive,” Eli replied honestly. He’d underestimated Russ, and he was sorry for that. “I’m fairly literate, as far as work stuff goes, but I still have to ask my nephew to translate a lot of things.”
“I didn’t kill that girl, Eli,” Russ repeated, out of context.
“Okay,” Eli said.
It wasn’t a challenge. It was an invitation to say more.
“What motive would I have?”
“What motive does anybody have? Murder never really makes sense, not to most people.”
“Then there are the exceptions,” Russ said, with resignation.
“You ever have any trouble with Fred Lansing or his boy, Freddie?” Eli asked, probably because those two had been at the back of his mind ever since he’d laid eyes on Jane Doe lying there on the hard ground.
Russ looked up, surprise in his eyes. “Nothing recent,” he said. “Why?”
“Let’s just say I have my reasons for asking. Their place isn’t far from here, right? A mile or two, maybe?”
“They’re not the best neighbors,” Russ conceded, with a nod, “but in all fairness, they could probably say the same thing about me.”
“Any boundary disputes? Problems with trespassing?”
Russ thought for a while, then shook his head. “Way back, my mom had a few nasty run-ins with Gretchen—Mrs. Lansing. They were friends, once upon a time, drinking buddies, more like, but then they had a falling-out over something—I don’t remember what, if I ever knew, since Mom had anger issues.”
“Gretchen Lansing was a drinker?” Eli asked, surprised. He’d probably exchanged less than half a dozen words with the woman in his whole life, and he didn’t pay much attention to gossip.
Maybe he ought to re-think that approach.
“Oh, yeah,” Russ said, with emphasis and a roll of his eyes. “Third time around, Dutch McKutchen, your late predecessor, ran her in for drinking and driving—this was way before your timed—she did six months in the old county jail.” The facility was closed now due to lack of funding. Prisoners in the Creek cooled their heels in the town’s two-cell hoosegow until they were either released or transferred. “Guess that turned her around because she hasn’t kicked up that kind of dust since then, to my knowledge anyhow. Doesn’t even drive these days—Fred takes her to and from work. Freddie did, too, until Judge Farley pulled his license for driving without insurance.”
It occurred to Eli that Russ knew a lot about the Lansing family, for a disinterested neighbor. “If you’d seen our Jane Doe with Freddie,” he ventured carefully, “would you be scared to say so? Afraid of reprisal?”
“No,” Russ said firmly. “I’m not stupid—like practically everybody else around here, I know Freddie’s a grade A asshole, and bone-mean to boot, but if I knew they’d been together, him and that girl, I’d say so. That way, I wouldn’t be the number-one suspect in a murder investigation.”
“That’s reasonable,” Eli said. Then he sighed and stood up, the half-finished water bottle in one hand, the framed photo under his arm.
Russ didn’t rise from his chair; in fact, he looked a little gray around the gills, and his large body gave the impression of a punctured raft with a hole in it, slowly deflating.