you be willing to let us see the tattoo on your back?”
He let out a sigh of frustration. “You bitches want anything else? A lock of my hair or something? Shit. Fine. You want a look at the goods, go ahead.”
Josie turned him around and she and Gretchen lifted his T-shirt, pulling it up to his neck. Gretchen said, “That’s not a skull.”
Silas said, “Whaddaya mean it’s not a skull? It’s a coyote skull. Took weeks to get that shit.”
Josie could see why. The coyote skull took up his entire upper back. Silas Murphy was definitely not the married man they were looking for.
“Let him go,” Josie said, feeling defeated.
Forty-One
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Gretchen asked as she drove them back to the stationhouse.
Josie checked her jeans for blood. The gash on her leg was aflame. She was convinced the stitches had popped, but no blood soaked through. Regardless, the filthy water could introduce infection into her leg. She needed to get it clean as soon as possible. The pain and worry over the possibility of infection were only momentary distractions from thoughts of her grandmother and Sawyer Hayes. She’d managed to evade them while they were questioning Silas Murphy, but the moment they got into the car, the thoughts came roaring back. “What’s that?” Josie asked.
“Silas,” Gretchen said. “Do you think he’s telling the truth? About not being involved with Beverly and about not having seen Vera in all these years?”
“Actually, I do,” Josie said. “He’s pretty easy to crack. Aside from the fact that he ran, he gave up his secrets a little too easily.”
“Well,” Gretchen said. “He’s not the brightest bulb on the tree.”
Josie laughed. “He’s pretty guileless.”
“Or pretending to be guileless to fool us into thinking he’s not a threat of any kind. He has no alibi for when Vera was killed.”
“True,” Josie agreed. “But we’ve got no evidence that would connect him to Vera’s murder. I don’t see what reason he’d have to kill her.”
Gretchen said, “Unless he killed Beverly and Vera saw it and she’s been flying under the radar all this time because of that. His rap sheet lists him as six foot one. Definitely tall enough from what Dr. Feist said—although ballistic testing would be needed to confirm something like that.”
“I don’t see the motive there, though,” Josie said. “Silas is the kind of person who is only ever worried about his next payday or his next smoke or his next drink. He’s like Needle in that way. They don’t think long-term. They try to stay off people’s radars as much as possible unless those people want to buy drugs from them. Violence isn’t really in their wheelhouse. Not that they could never be violent, but given Silas’s history and that interview, I just don’t see him killing Beverly or Vera.”
Josie panned the municipal parking lot as they pulled in. It was filled with news vans from WYEP. A crowd of reporters much larger than the one that had assembled the day Beverly’s body was recovered stood before the back door. Across from the news vans were two patrol cars, lights flashing. Chief Chitwood and Amber stood in front of the first car. The Chief looked smug and triumphant, whereas Amber looked terrified.
“Come on,” Josie said as Gretchen squeezed the vehicle into the nearest parking space. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
The reporters didn’t even register them as they walked toward the Chief. Uniformed officers emerged from the cars and began unloading their prisoners from the back seats.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” Gretchen muttered under her breath as the Mayor and her husband were taken from the back of the first car in handcuffs. Connie Prather followed, also cuffed. From the backseat of the second car, the officers brought out Marisol Dutton and two men, one of whom Josie recognized as Kurt Dutton. She had only seen him in campaign photos around town, but the Dutton Enterprises insignia on his navy polo shirt left no doubt. All of them were lined up in single file. The Chief began marching them inside. As the Mayor passed Amber, she glared. “Did you know about this? Did you know? If I find out you knew about this and didn’t tell me, you’re fired.”
“Shut it, Charleston,” the Chief said over his shoulder. “You’re not firing her. You wanted a press liaison so now we have a press liaison. Watts! Handle the press!”
He left Amber behind, standing before a gaggle of reporters. Josie and Gretchen slipped past her