held.
Becca sat across from the cell, her head tilted down toward her phone. As if she’d heard his approach, she closed a few apps and tucked the phone in her back pocket as she rose.
“Have you spoken to Ryan Davis?” Gideon asked.
“Right now, he’s sleeping it off, which is an improvement. At least he’s calmed down. The sobbing was pitiful. Worse than the vomiting.”
Gideon looked through the cell door window. Ryan’s long, thin body was curled into the fetal position. His shirt and jeans were stained, his face was as pale as snow, and his mouth hung open. There was a bucket by the cot.
“Like I said, really drunk. He’s not going to have much to say for a few hours,” Becca said.
“What did he say in the bar?” Gideon asked.
“He was shouting at the bartender. He seemed to know that Lana was a frequent patron through his Find My Friends app. Lana must have forgotten to disable it, or maybe she liked the idea of him tracking her. Either way, Ryan knew Lana had been at the Double R Bar.”
The Double R was located a few blocks from the beauty shop. “You said he was crying?”
“Like a baby.”
Some of the guilty did cry once the heat of murder had cooled and they realized their loved one was dead or injured. He had arrested a few drunken cowboys who’d mourned the girlfriend or drinking buddy they had assaulted. “Stay here and make sure he doesn’t get sprung. Call me when he wakes up. I’m headed to the Double R.”
Gideon crossed town in less than fifteen minutes and parked in front of what looked like a nineteenth-century saloon. Painted letters resembling twisted ropes spelled out DOUBLE R BAR across a plate-glass window. A red neon sign flashed OPEN. This time of day, the parking was easy, and the bar would be quiet. Nothing worse than shouting over music or fending off drunks during an interview.
Hat in hand, he pushed through the front door, pausing as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Behind the bar was a young woman with red hair gathered up in a ponytail. A blue T-shirt, sporting the bar’s logo, stretched over large breasts, then whittled down over a narrow waist and into faded jeans.
Drying a glass tumbler, she eyed him suspiciously. “Officer, what can I do for you?”
He reached for his badge and showed it to her. “I’m Detective Gideon Bailey.”
“Marcie Cash.”
“You called in a disturbance this morning.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.” She placed the glass on the shelf and reached for another damp one in the sanitizer. “I had a couple last night.”
“Ryan Davis. He said he was Lana Long’s boyfriend.”
“Right. The sensitive one. Don’t get many of those. Yeah, what can I tell you?”
“He said Lana is a regular here?”
“She was. Liked to sit on the right side of the bar,” she said, nodding toward a trio of empty barstools.
“What can you tell me about her?”
“From Denver. Looking to find a little adventure. Had a boyfriend, and I don’t mean Ryan. She told me her new guy was local.”
“Did he ever come in here?”
“No. She always came in alone all dolled up, flirted a little, had her three Moscow mules, and then left by ten.”
“Did she ever mention the boyfriend’s name?”
“No, but she hinted once that she might be getting married. I wanted to call bullshit on that, but I keep my mouth shut. Insulting the customers hurts tips,” she said.
“Why didn’t you believe her?”
“The single boyfriends generally join their ladies. The married ones do not. Why all the questions about Lana? She okay?”
He sidestepped her questions. “You think Lana’s boyfriend was married?”
“Either married or in prison,” she said carefully, as if she saw the meaning behind his diversion. “And for the record, I’m rarely wrong.”
Joan thumbed through the files, her fingertips skimming the manila folder tabs identified with typewritten labels trimmed in red. She removed her phone from her bag. She would not remove any physical files from the room, just as she’d promised. But Gideon had said nothing about her taking photos.
The first file contained the crime scene images of her former house, blackened and gutted by fire. The walls remained standing, but the roof had collapsed into the interior. Her room had been on the east side, which coincidentally had sustained the most damage. Puddles from the firefighters’ water hoses dotted the scorched front lawn, the gold juniper plants along the foundation had been trampled, and the ten-foot-wide ponderosa