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