you approached before?”
I cringed. “I didn’t look. But where’s her shotgun?”
“What?”
“She told me she has a shotgun for protection, but I don’t see one and there aren’t many places to store one.”
Marco leaned on his crutch while his gaze scanned the room. “There.” He nodded to the front door. “There’s a couple of nails protruding from the logs. I bet she kept it there.”
I went over to exam it and frowned. They didn’t look like much, just a couple of large nails jutting a couple of inches out of a log. I was going to have to take his word for it. “If her gun’s missing and she left without her jacket and didn’t douse the lantern…”
“Let’s take a peek at those prints now,” he said in a grim voice.
Getting outside was trickier for him than getting in, but he reached the bottom step, his mouth pinched tight with pain.
“You’re doing too much, Marco,” I said, feeling guilty.
“I was bored staring at those same four walls. I’m glad to be out,” he said, focusing his attention on the snow. “Which way did you walk coming in and out?
“I should have been more careful,” I admitted, feeling terrible. “I think I walked just about everywhere.”
“But you didn’t drive, right? You parked on the road and walked in?”
“Yeah.”
His brow furrowed as he studied the partially snow-covered ground. “I don’t see any tire marks, which means whoever drove down the lane didn’t drive all the way in.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Do you think they were worried about getting stuck?”
He shook his head. “No. Those tire marks you showed me were from a truck. The double tire marks so close together suggests a big one—a dually.”
“What’s a dually?”
He chuckled. “You really ain’t from around here. It’s a pickup with an extra set of tires in the back. It’s good for hauling trailers or heavy loads. There’s quite a few guys up in these parts who fancy themselves NASCAR drivers. They’ll haul their pieces of shit a couple of hours to the Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville or North Carolina or if they’re any good, like the Grisham boys, down to Georgia.” He grinned. “This is the land of NASCAR, Carly. You’ll need to pick a team come spring.”
“A team?”
“Max’ll start showin’ NASCAR races at the tavern. Everyone has a favorite driver. The guys’ll expect you to pick one.”
“They don’t ask me about football.”
“That’s because it’s football. NASCAR’s a religion down here.” He laughed when he saw my face. “Don’t you worry. Max and I will get you up to speed enough to pick a driver and rattle off a few stats. It’ll help with your tips.” He pushed out a long breath, rubbing his chin in a way that told me he wasn’t completely unaffected by being here. “In any case, back to more serious matters…like the reason the truck likely didn’t pull up to the house. I would say they were hopin’ for the element of surprise, except you can hear everything out here. Especially if it was a dually. Lula would have heard the engine.” He hopped off the step into the yard. “Makes me think they were blockin’ her in.”
“You mean her car?” I asked. “So she couldn’t drive away?”
“Yeah, but she could have run on foot.” He turned to look at me. “You think you can show me where you walked?”
I nodded, both relieved he was taking this seriously and worried sick for Lula.
“Get the camera out of the Explorer. We’ll take photos if we find something suspicious.”
I hurried to the SUV and grabbed the camera, then returned to find him several feet away from the porch, studying the ground. Embedded in the snow was a large, heavy-tread footprint. No way that belonged to Lula, or me for that matter.
“Put this on the ground next to that print and take a photo.”
He handed me a quarter, and I gave him a strange look as I took it.
“It’s to show the size of the print. If we turn these photos in to the evidence lab, they’ll be able to compare the size of the print to the quarter to determine the shoe size.”
I set the quarter down and snapped several photos, then showed them to Marco to make sure they were good enough.
He nodded and scanned the ground. “It’s too damn bad the snow’s mostly melted on this section because it looks like the man walked right up to the porch, but I don’t see any sign of ’im walkin’ away,