“And what are you doing here, Sarah?” asked Agent Vasquez. Sarah looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. Tears ran down her face.
“One of them must be dead,” she said. She pointed in to the living room at the blood-splattered couch.
Vasquez pushed past her and examined the couch. Johansen stood near her, watching.
“It’s fresh. Tacky, but not dry yet. It’s not my field, but this can’t be more than an hour old.”
“Any sign of the cause?” asked Johansen. He stood watchfully near Sarah. He made it look innocent, but Vasquez could tell by the tension in his shoulders that he was keeping a tight eye on her. Vasquez smiled to herself as she continued to examine the couch. He was always the watchdog.
“Yes,” she said. “There appears to be a hole in the cushion. It goes right through into the wall behind the couch. It’s got to be a bullet hole.”
Sarah fell back against the kitchen wall and closed her eyes. “What’s happening?” she asked. “My whole life is falling apart. Can’t you people do anything but follow the trail? Can’t you stop anything?”
Vasquez approached her. “It’s time that you helped us too, Sarah,” she said. “What more do you know?”
“I know that Ray believed Ingles is the one. And I think he’s right.”
“The one?” asked Johansen. “The one what?”
“The one who kidnapped Justin. The one who released the virus and made it all seem like Ray did it.”
“And what about Brenda,” he asked.
“That too.”
“Hmm,” said Johansen. He arched his eyebrows. “It all seems a bit easy to blame someone else without any proof of anything.”
“Well what about this blood?” she demanded. “Here is some more evidence of violence.”
“All we know is that everywhere your husband goes crimes keep happening.”
Sarah dropped her face and bit her lip. Her hair hung in her eyes. Vasquez gestured to Johansen that he should get lost.
“I’ll go outside and look around,” he said, he caught her eye and gave her a look that said he didn’t think the woman-to-woman chat was going to fix anything. Vasquez just repeated her get lost hand-motion. He let the porch screendoor slam behind him.
“What else is up, Sarah? Why are you so sure that Ray is right about Ingles?”
“Because we had an affair. Ingles and I, I mean.”
Vasquez crossed her arms and nodded. Sarah looked up and then quickly dropped her eyes to the floor again. Vasquez waited, knowing that often the best way to get information was to simply listen.
“It was a short thing, a fling, I suppose people might call it.”
“When?”
“Before Ray and I married. Almost eight years ago now.”
“Nothing happened while you were married?”
“No, he tried to communicate for awhile, sent flowers, left notes on my car. But we never saw each other.”
“Sounds like old news. So why would they be ready to kill over it?”
“Robert,” she snuffled, dug a Kleenex out of her purse, then continued, “I mean Ingles-he got all weird about it. He freaked out and scared me, that’s partly why I dropped him. Besides, things became more serious with Ray then.”
“Were you ever seeing them both at the same time?”
Sarah hung her head. Her pretty hair hid her face. “It ended sometime after Ray and I got engaged.”
Vasquez nodded. She toed the floor between them. “So, you left him for Ray.”
Sarah nodded.
“Does Ray know any of this?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“I wish you had told us this earlier, but I’m glad you did now, at least,” said Vasquez. She walked over to the stove and touched the teapot that sat there. It was still warm.
Johansen came back in. “I’ve got the sheriff’s unit on the way to check out the bloodstains and the bullet hole. I can’t find any sign of a struggle outside. All the cars are gone and everything looks peaceful.”
He looked from one to the other of them. “Did I miss something?”
“I’ll tell you later,” said Vasquez.
Out in the orchard, less than a mile from the house, Spurlock and Ingles worked to rid themselves of Ray.
“All right, now we’ve got him all trussed up like a chicken,” said Spurlock. He laughed. “A big, foil-wrapped chicken. Now what?”
“We’ll put him back in the pickup and cart him away from here,” suggested Ingles.
“But what-” Spurlock began then broke off as a car passed by beyond the almond trees. He watched its blurred shape cautiously. He pointed toward the car. “Is there a road just over there?”
“Yes, but there’s never much traffic,” said Ingles. “It’s a dead end. Only goes down to a few farms and then stops.”
“Okay, back to Vance,” said Spurlock, “I can’t drive him far in the back of this pickup. Even if we cover him, he’ll flop around when he comes to and attract attention. He might even be awake now, faking us. I didn’t hit him that hard.”
“I’ve got a camper shell back in the garage. My plan is to put it on the truck and that should solve the problem.”
Spurlock shook his head again. “No, I don’t think so, I don’t want to go back to the house right now. The place seems too hot to me. I want to get out of here.”
Ingles opened his mouth to continue the argument, but then the big car out on the road came back by again, traveling more slowly this time. It was the same large, white vehicle. Ingles and Spurlock watched it slow to a stop, then begin backing up.
“Cop,” said Spurlock with certainty. “C’mon, let’s get King Tut here into the back.” Heaving together, they lifted Vance over the edge and rolled him into the bed of the truck. Ingles limped into the driver’s seat and Spurlock scrambled into the cab on the passenger side.
“Give you a dollar to a pound of shit that he’s comin’ down this dirt track of yours to see what we’re up to. Told you this place was too fucking hot to hang around.”