She blinked, picturing the earnest guy with the receding hairline, which he tried to disguise by shaving his head. “Really.”
“Oh, yeah. Dad and son both have become familiar faces at the station.” His mouth twitched. “That’s small-town life, you know. No secrets.”
“That could be good,” she said doubtfully.
“And bad,” he agreed. “You get used to it.”
Angel Butte, Cait reflected after she’d said good-night to him and was getting ready for bed, had been even smaller when she’d lived here as a child. Her mother had had a secret. Had she somehow kept it? And if not, who had known?
CHAPTER FIVE
A RAP ON his half-open door brought Colin’s head up from the equipment request he’d been considering when he wasn’t brooding about the fact that Cait had had dinner with Chandler last night. Sure, with two other people also, but what if the bastard had his eye on her?
“Captain?” It was Jane Vahalik, the detective he’d promoted to lieutenant last fall after he’d had to shoot and kill her predecessor, who in turn had been trying to kill Nell. Vahalik was young for the job of supervising the detective unit, but, despite a few missteps, he thought she was going to be up to it.
Jane was thirty-four, average height, no beauty but with an interesting face, an unruly mass of dark chestnut hair she usually wore in a ponytail and hazel eyes. He knew she was a swimmer, which kept her more fit than three-quarters of the other officers in the Angel Butte force.
He waved her in. “What’s up?”
“Thought you’d want to know we have a murder.”
He raised his eyebrows. Their murder rate was low for a town this size. The statistic was one he took pride in. “A visitor or a local?”
“Local.” She sat without waiting for an invitation. “He still had his wallet, or we might be floundering for an ID. He’s not the kind of guy who’s likely to have prints in the system.”
“Anybody I’d know?” His patience was wearing thin.
“Maybe. He’s the airport manager. We’re pretty sure he is,” she corrected herself. “He’s not married, so we’ve asked a maintenance supervisor out at the airport to give a positive ID.”
What the hell? “Not Jerry Hegland?” he asked.
“You do know him.”
He shook his head. “I know of him. Not sure I’ve ever come face-to-face with him.” That was true enough, as far as it went.
What were the odds, he had to ask himself, that Cait would mention him in such a context and the man would turn up dead ten days later? Chance, of course, but one that unsettled him.
“Tell me about it,” he ordered.
The body had been found on the shoulder of a rural road. A home owner on her way to work early that morning had spotted it. She’d assumed the man to have been the victim of a hit-and-run. The medical examiner had immediately determined that the victim had been shot.
“Two shots, back of the head. Classic execution. Only one exit wound, though, so we ought to be able to recover a bullet in the autopsy.”
“Jesus. Is his face recognizable?”
“Yeah, from one side.” She grimaced. “He’s a mess.”
“Killed there?”
“Sanchez says no. There wasn’t much blood. He likely hadn’t been dead long when he was dumped, though. Best guess so far, he was killed something like eight to ten hours before the body was found.”
“All right. Keep me informed.”
She nodded and left. Somewhat reluctantly, he went down the hall to Raynor’s office.
The office that should have been his.
“Your boss in?” he asked the assistant.
“He just got off the phone. Go on in.”
Having to knock rankled, as did the sight of another man behind that desk. He tried not to hold getting screwed out of the job against Raynor, but he couldn’t always help himself.
He shared the details he knew, shook his head when Raynor asked if he’d known the victim and left as soon as possible. As he strode back down the hall to his own office, he was thinking about Cait. He’d have to tell her before she heard from someone else.
* * *
“JERRY HEGLAND WAS found dead today.”