“But no drug charges?”
“Nope. Not listed online, anyway. But everything’s online these days, so I don’t know how it could have been missed. Mostly the devil he knew was booze. Also, nothing out of the ordinary on his own Facebook page but a lot of bad grammar and memes about hunting and football.”
His comment made me snicker. “Bad grammar? Are you one of those people, Hobbs?”
He smirked at me, his eyes amused. “I told you, I do a lot of crossword puzzles. I like a solid vocabulary and good spelling. So I guess I am one of those people, and I’m not going to apologize for it. Anyway, why would you mention drugs in connection with Gable?”
I passed on what Regina had told me about Landry Tithers. “The fact that Anna wondered about whether Gable was selling again for Landry makes me wonder if he just never got caught with drugs. She said he’d been weird for a couple of days, but he didn’t smell like alcohol. She assumed his strange behavior had to do with drugs.”
Hobbs stretched his long arms out in front of him. “Then possible scenario? Landry Tithers maybe sold him drugs, or tried to get Gable to sell drugs for him, and he was the guy who shot Gable?”
“That’s definitely a possibility, I suppose. Let’s look up Landry and see what kind of charges, if any, he’s got.”
I don’t know Landry Tithers personally. I only knew of him, and what I knew wasn’t good.
“Already done,” Hobbs said, showing me the screen of his phone. “A couple of possession charges, one possession with the intent to sell.”
“But nothing violent?”
“No assault. Though he does have one resisting arrest. I guess that could be considered violent, depending on how you define it, but no real history of violence. Just a bunch of drug charges.”
“Then there’s the SD card, the one Uncle Darling heard the killer talking about, what does that mean?” I put my head in my hands and groaned. “I can’t make any sense of why the killer would want that if he was disguised by a mask. According to Uncle Darling, the killer said, and I quote, ‘Give me that effin’ SD card’ like he specifically came to the store for it, as proven by the fact that he didn’t steal anything, according to Stiles, and no merchandise was missing. Was the SD card the reason he was in the store in the first place?”
He cupped his chin. “I don’t think it’s such a stretch to think a criminal wouldn’t want to be on any tape, even disguised, but I think you’re right. I think. I don’t think it has as much to do with recognizing him and more to do with something he did. But then that begs the question, what’s on the SD card that’s so bad he was willing to kill for it? And if it’s Landry Tithers, is he the kind of guy who’d wear pants with a crease down the front? Because look at this picture of him. He’s unshaven and a little scraggly. Does he look like the kind of guy who wears pants with a crease—a big enough crease for fashion-forward Uncle Darling to notice?”
As I stared at the picture of Landry Tithers, I definitely questioned whether he was a candidate for murder, considering what Uncle Darling told us. He was indeed unkempt and greasy and even a bit scrawny. I don’t know that he could have wrestled a gun from Gable without help.
“And here’s something else to think about,” Hobbs said. “Maybe the SD card isn’t from Feeney’s at all? Maybe, whoever killed Gable wanted an SD card that had nothing to do with Feeney’s at all. Maybe that just happened to be where he confronted him about it? Maybe the card is from a phone or a camera?”
Now my head was spinning. “I say we move on from our only suspect at this point and look up the missing girls’ Facebook pages and Twitter handles, maybe see if we can dredge up any clues from them. I don’t understand the connection between Kerry Carver’s lipstick, the murderer, and Gable Norton, but I think we should try and look for one.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Hobbs agreed.
As I stared at the pictures of the missing girls, I had to agree with Westcott. His theory didn’t seem so outlandish. “I have to admit, I don’t know about the economic angle of things, but the rest of it? Westcott might be on to something. Their looks coupled with how they were taken, all walking somewhere, it’s all very similar. But can we call him a serial killer if no one has turned up dead? Is that why I haven’t heard about it on the news? I mean, there are no bodies to speak of. Or that we know of. Just a lipstick.”
Hobbs steepled his hands in front of his mouth. “Serial kidnapper? Is that even a thing? I don’t know. The only thing I do know is, I think this guy Westcott has a point, and I wonder if there are more girls we don’t know about.”
A violent chill ran along my spine. “Maybe we should email him? See if he gets back to us? He might not want to talk to us, but it’s worth a try.”
Hobbs took his phone back. “I’ll do it.”
“When you’re done, you take Jasmine Franks, who’s been missing for two months, and look at her Facebook page. I’ll take Kerry Carver and the other girl, Lisa Simons—who, by the way, has been missing for three months.”
As we both took to the task of scouring Facebook pages and Twitter timelines, a comfortable silence fell between us, the clack of my fingers on my keyboard the only interruption.
When my eyes became gritty and sore, I looked away from the computer, reaching up toward the ceiling to stretch my arms. “I’ve got a big fat bupkiss from these Facebook and Twitter pages. How about you?”
Hobbs squeezed his temples and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Same here. Other than the initial details of their alleged abductions, and the pleas for their safety and for the police to look into it, there’s not much else. There are tons of prayers being sent up and ‘I miss you’s’ posted, but nothing that sends up any smoke signals.”
Looking at the time on my laptop, my hot chocolate long gone cold, I realized it was almost two in the morning, and that made me yawn. “I’m going to send the girls’ parents a message on Facebook and see if they won’t talk to me.”
Hobbs reached across the table and laced his fingers with mine. “You’re exhausted. You need to get some rest, Hal.”
But not him. He looked fresh as a daisy. “How come you look like you just rolled out of bed after a refreshing twelve-hour nap?”
He shrugged and grinned sheepishly as he tucked his phone into his back pocket. “I’m a night owl, I guess. I’m used to being up this late.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember seeing the lights on in the cottage one night when I got up for some aspirin. It was pretty late, as I recall.”
“I like the night. We see eye to eye on a lot of things. The peace and quiet being one of them. No phones, no doorbells. It’s a great time to do a crossword puzzle.”
Chuckling, I understood. Running a busy factory, I spent the day with a lot of boisterous workers, not to mention some rather noisy machines. Peace and quiet was a small blessing from time to time.
“So let’s call it a day for the moment? Uncle Darling’s going to need all my attention tomorrow, with the way things are shaping up with Uncle Monty, but fingers crossed these girls’ parents will at least give me the time of day.”