closer at the truck. It, too, was riddled with bullets. He searched but found nothing that looked like blood anywhere on the truck or in the barn.
By a rough estimate, he counted over two hundred holes on the north-facing wall. At least a third of them hit the truck.
Someone shooting up a barn? This wasn’t target practice, and the price of ammunition told him no one but an idiot would spray more than two hundred rounds into the siding. Was someone trying to get rid of evidence? That made no sense—if they wanted to get rid of evidence, it would be easier to set the truck on fire. Were they trying to blow up the gas tank? Clearly, it hadn’t worked.
Matt went outside and walked around the perimeter. He found spent brass—whoever did this didn’t collect their brass. Definite possibility for fingerprints. There were multiple vehicle treads—not clear enough to get any real imprint, but clear enough that Matt knew at least two trucks had been here.
Could Roger Kline believe that shooting up the barn would destroy evidence in the truck? Was he trying to blow it up? If so, there were far better ways to make a truck explode. Or was this the handiwork of the same person who killed David Hargrove? Had David been here when the barn got shot up? If so, why not kill him here?
Matt leaned to the second option, but David’s murder had been almost...perfect. And Matt didn’t use that word lightly.
There was no evidence. Autopsy and forensics had come up with zip. You couldn’t run ballistics on a shotgun even if they found it. David was shot and killed on a rarely used road in the middle of the desert where eventually he’d be found...days or weeks. Why was he there? That was the million-dollar question.
Based on the timeline Tanya had given them—which Matt wasn’t holding his breath was accurate—David had left at quarter to eight to “help a friend.” What if he was out here, getting the truck ready for Monday...because that’s when A-Line was scheduled to pick up the slag from Southwest Copper. Was he attacked? Forced somehow to drive his truck back toward Patagonia?
But why there? Out here was a far better place to kill someone. Why take him anywhere? General rule of thumb for bad guys: if you want to kill someone, kill them. Don’t pussyfoot around, talk to them, move them. You kill them and leave—it was the best chance of getting away with it.
Unless they needed David to do something for them. Or maybe he hadn’t been out here at all. Perhaps the shooting was meant to intimidate him. It could be that someone lured him out of town and killed him...someone he knew. Trusted.
“What the hell were you into, Hargrove?” Matt muttered as he stared at the sad barn. “And where’s your wife and brother-in-law?”
At this point, Matt feared again they were dead and they may never find their bodies.
But you found David Hargrove, and quickly, he thought to himself.
They found Hargrove quickly because Joe Molina drove right past the body. A coincidence, but plausible. Hiking, picnic, return and find a body...
Joe had been worried on Thursday morning when he called him...on Friday he had been both upset and angry that Matt hadn’t arrested Hargrove, even though all the evidence against him was circumstantial. Joe knew that they needed to wait until the A-Line pickup on Monday to track the truck... Joe knew that they had the warrant to track the vehicle electronically. And yet he was still adamant that Matt “do something.”
Why?
“Dammit, Joe. Did you take the law into your own hands?”
Except that made no sense. Killing Hargrove would make Joe a murderer, and why would he kill someone when he knew they were this close to ending the operation?
And the autopsy confirmed that Hargrove had been killed between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. Joe had been with Kara.
He was getting a headache thinking about it. Because the more he learned, the more the motive eluded him.
Matt went back into the barn and, after slipping on a pair of gloves, searched the cab of the truck.
Bingo again. He could now directly tie A-Line to Roger Kline and the parent company, RSK. Inside the center console was the trucking license for Roger Kline, listing his known home address in Phoenix. The truck was registered to RSK, Limited—out of Las Vegas. Which was more proof that Kline had been involved in the multilayers of