double murder.”
She sighed. “That’s what we thought.” Her expression clouded, and she looked out toward the bay.
“What?” Joel asked.
“Nothing. It’s just they looked so, I don’t know, posed in the canoe. I was thinking it could be some sort of creepy suicide ritual.”
“Maybe the killer posed them.”
She shuddered. “That’s even creepier.”
“So, like I said, no hits on the fingerprints. And no distinguishing scars or birthmarks. Both have tattoos, but nothing distinctive.”
“What about time of death?” She dropped onto a plastic stool and pulled off one of her mud-caked boots.
“Within one to three hours of when they were discovered.”
She took off the other boot. “Okay, so Miranda Rhoads found them about six forty, which means they were shot between three forty and five forty, or thereabouts.”
“Given the bullet hole in the boat, I think we can narrow it down even more. If they’d been out there two hours, the canoe could have been at the bottom of the bay.”
“We’re lucky Miranda found them when she did or there’d be nothing left to find. What else?”
“No track marks or signs of drug use,” he said. “But the tox screens will take a while.”
“I bet they come back positive. This thing feels drug related to me. They were probably out there making a handoff.”
Joel folded his arms over his chest. “What’s the evidence of that?”
She glanced out at the bay. Calvin was climbing into the boat now and taking off his scuba tank. They were done for the day.
“What else would they be doing out there in the dark?” she asked. “Most sane people are asleep at that hour.”
“Miranda Rhoads wasn’t.”
She shot him a look. “You know what I mean. They didn’t have any fishing gear. It looks like they went out there in the dead of night, so what the hell were they doing? No one would sleep out there—you’d get eaten alive by mosquitoes.” She heaved a sigh. “Any leads on their car or where they might have been staying?”
“McDeere’s been looking for an abandoned vehicle, but so far nothing. And he checked in with the motels and campgrounds.”
“So, we still have no clue where they were staying or what they were doing here.”
Joel raked his hand through his hair, frustrated. The recovered slug was a good development, but what they really needed was IDs on their victims so they could start retracing their movements leading up to the murders.
Nicole stripped off her socks and dropped them into the boots, then retrieved a pair of flip-flops from under the table. She turned to watch as Emmet and his brother docked the boat. Calvin tied up, then hefted his scuba tank over his shoulder and walked barefoot up the dock. He wore only black swim trunks and a dive mask that dangled around his neck. The mask had left marks on his face, and it looked like he’d been underwater awhile.
Joel glanced at Nicole as the brothers walked over. Nicole and Emmet were like oil and water, but she’d had a thing for his brother Calvin for years.
“Hey, man.” Emmet stepped under the tarp. “You hear about the slug?”
“Yeah. Good work.”
Emmet went straight for the cooler while Calvin set his scuba tank on the ground and started rummaging through a duffel.
“Mint condition,” Calvin said as he joined them under the tarp. He scrubbed his hair, sending water droplets everywhere; then he reached out his hand for his brother’s drink. Calvin guzzled water and plunked the bottle on the table.
“Here, check it out.” Emmet tugged a small white envelope from his pocket and showed Joel the slug. It looked a hell of a lot better than the one pulled from John Doe’s body at the autopsy.
Nicole stepped closer. “Amazing. So much destruction from something so small.”
Calvin swigged more water. “I can put in a call, if you want,” he told Joel. “A buddy of mine works in the county crime lab. He’ll put a rush on it for us.”
“Thanks,” Joel said, although he doubted anything would come of it in time to be much use to them. If they arrested a suspect and recovered a gun, a match would be useful at trial. “We recovered another slug at autopsy, but it’s mangled.”
Calvin nodded. “This one’s your best bet.”
“What’s your guess on turnaround?” Nicole asked him. “We don’t have a lot of leads right now.”
“Depends how backlogged they are.”
Joel’s phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket. His pulse picked up at the sight of the San Antonio area code.
“Breda,” he said, stepping