Chapter 31
The next morning, Max glanced at Noelle as she sat in his passenger seat. Worry and concern hovered around her like a cloud. She still hadn’t heard from Emma.
He was worried too. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened between them last night. They’d taken a big step. Both of them. He’d been holding in those three little words for several weeks, concerned he’d send her running if he spilled them too soon.
Apparently, in the middle of a crisis was the right time to tell her.
“Emma’s phone could have died or broken,” he said, fully aware he wasn’t saying anything she hadn’t thought of a dozen times. “She could be in another dead zone.”
“I know,” said Noelle, looking out the window at the white fields of snow-covered sagebrush as they drove to Redmond. “But it doesn’t feel right.”
They’d done a quick stop at Emma’s and “Uncle Tommy’s” homes again that morning.
Both had appeared undisturbed since last night, so they’d tossed another flake of alfalfa in the horse’s manger.
At Emma’s she’d filled Cornbread’s bowl with a bag of food they’d bought on the way, and then she’d checked the chickens, who still had plenty of feed.
But now they needed to maintain the forward momentum on their murder cases. Their focus today was to go through the home of Eli Chisholm. The victim from Judge Holtz’s vehicle explosion.
The skies were clear at the moment, but the storm yesterday had left six inches of snow in Bend, and they’d get another eight inches that night. Approximately half of their yearly snowfall was occurring within two days. Not taking into account the snowfall in the Cascades.
“I can have someone check her phone’s location,” said Max. Typically a warrant would be needed, but he knew someone who could work around that. He tried not to abuse the shortcut, but he wanted to alleviate Noelle’s stress.
And his. He’d never met the teenager, but he knew she needed help.
“You can?” Noelle sounded skeptical.
He picked up his phone and opened his texts. “What’s her number?” He typed it in as Noelle read it off and sent it in a text to his friend.
“You feds get all the perks,” said Noelle.
“This one’s a favor,” said Max. He glanced at his GPS.
They were close to Chisholm’s house. “Is that it?” Up a long, steep driveway to his left were two small homes.
A set of tracks on the hill had already broken the snow.
Max switched to 4WD and easily climbed the long driveway.
A small Honda was at the end of the tracks in front of the house on the left.
The home on the right had an unbroken layer of snow.
“That must be the owner,” said Noelle. A tall man with a cigarette and no coat stood on the home’s porch, his shoulders hunched against the cold.
Eli Chisholm had rented the little house for six years. The owner had agreed to let them into the property.
Max parked in front of the garage and sized up the owner as they got out. The man reminded him of Lurch from the Addams Family but was not nearly as tall. “You must be Will Tomac,” he said as he approached and held out his hand. Tomac’s cigarette dangled from his lips as he shook their hands.
“Mind if I see some ID?” Tomac asked. He appeared to be in his late fifties, and his long-sleeved T-shirt had a dark stain near his belly. Noelle already had her ID out, and Tomac studied it carefully as Max dug for his. Tomac eyed Noelle. “Heard of you.”
Noelle tensed. “Some people have,” she replied. Her shooting of a killer last year had been in the local news for weeks.
“You did good. Bad business, that,” Tomac told her with a solemn nod, and then he studied Max’s ID.
He handed it back without comment. “I haven’t been in the house for three years,” he told them.
“Not sure what we’ll find.” He took out a key, unlocked the front door, and waved them inside with a flourish.
“Do you own that house too?” Noelle asked, pointing at the other home that shared the steep driveway.
“Yep. Both renters up here are good tenants. Pay on time for the most part. Don’t break much stuff.”
“Did you know Eli that well?” asked Max as they stepped inside. He put on a pair of gloves and turned on the light. “Please don’t touch anything while we’re here,” he added.
“Just know him enough to collect the rent,” said Tomac. “Seems okay. So, he’s missing?” He blew out a long stream of smoke.
Law enforcement had managed to keep Eli Chisholm’s identity as the body in the trunk out of the media so far. Locating family to inform of the death was proving difficult.
“Something like that,” said Max. “Like I said on the phone, we can’t talk about it yet.
” The home was dark, and the furnace rattled in the background.
He’d sniffed cautiously when they entered, on edge from the thought that they might find another body inside.
Instead, he’d smelled a home that needed to be dusted and have its bathrooms scrubbed.
He and Noelle quickly checked all the rooms and closets while Tomac impatiently smoked in the entryway.
Max entered the garage and flipped on the light, wincing at the disorganization and clutter.
Chisholm had stacked boxes, all sorts of yard tools, and various paper supplies haphazardly around the garage.
He could have opened a small convenience store that sold toilet paper, laundry detergent, and paper towels.
In the center was a Chevy pickup that had seen better days.
The smell of spray paint was strong in the garage, and Max spotted several cans of gray spray paint on large sheets of stained cardboard near one tire.
He realized Chisholm had done his own paint job on the Chevy. It looked like crap.
Max took out his phone and sent the plate number to Darby back at the office. She replied almost instantly that the plates had been stolen off a Dodge Durango three months ago in Bend.
Not surprised.
He moved next to the driver’s door and snorted.
Chisholm had sprayed just enough paint on the windshield to hide the VIN.
“Idiot,” Max muttered, realizing the truck was most likely stolen too.
He opened the driver’s door and took a picture of the frame’s sticker with the VIN and sent it to Darby.
If Chisholm had also covered that VIN with paint, he would have simply popped the hood and checked the engine block or firewall.
VINs were all over the place on newer vehicles.
Not an experienced car thief.
His phone rang. Darby.
“Rhodes.”
“Max, that vehicle belongs to Gage Chambers. Isn’t that the dad of the teenager you told me about?”
Emma’s father.
“Dammit.” Ideas ricocheted through his brain, unable to form a complete thought.
How . . . why . . .
The plates were stolen three months ago.
“Is the truck reported stolen?”
“No.”
“Dig up whatever you can find on Gage Chambers,” said Max. “Noelle couldn’t get Emma to talk about her dad that much but suspected he’d been gone for a while. See if you can access any banking or credit card information. I want to know where he’s been.”
“On it.” Darby ended the call.
Max was still trying to wrap his head around what he’d found when Noelle spoke from the doorway. “It reeks of paint out here.”
“That’s because Chisholm—or someone—spray-painted Gage Chambers’s truck. And attached stolen plates.” He watched her face and saw the same confusion that he felt.
“Chambers? I don’t get it . . . What the hell?”
“That’s what I thought too,” he said. “What’s the connection between Chisholm and Emma’s dad?”
“I don’t know. But now Emma—well, a Chambers—has popped up twice in this investigation.
First she found Michael Munoz, and now her father’s truck is in the garage of our second murdered man.
” Noelle spoke slowly, trying to find the link.
She pulled out her phone, and he knew she was checking for a reply from Emma.
“Still nothing. How long do you think that truck has been here?”
“Plates were stolen three months ago, but they could have been on a dozen different vehicles since then.” He ran a finger over the ridiculous paint. “Dusty. It was painted a while ago.”
“Did you look inside?”
“No.” Max turned back to the open driver’s door and did a quick scan under the seats using the light from his phone.
He leaned over and popped open the glove box.
It’d been cleaned out. “No one has an empty glove box,” he said.
He opened the cab’s rear driver’s-side door and did the same quick search with his light.
Something dark caught his eye, and he leaned closer to the bench seat, studying the seams. They were stained in several spots.
That could be anything.
Then he caught a faint whiff of bleach and a citrus-scented cleanser. “Noelle. I smell bleach.”
She opened the door on the opposite side and nodded as he pointed at the stained seams in the rear seat. “I smell it too. We need a forensics team to go over the truck. Shit. I hope nothing has happened to her dad.”
“When you hear from her, we need to pin down exactly how long he’s been gone.”
“If she ever gets back to me,” said Noelle grimly. “Emma is definitely a skittish one.”
“She’ll turn up,” Max said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Anything in the house?”
“I didn’t see anything unusual,” said Noelle. “Other than Chisholm probably hasn’t changed his sheets in six months or cleaned the shower since he moved in.”
“So he’s not likely the type of guy to bother thoroughly cleaning something with bleach if there’s a spill in his truck.”
“Definitely not. Although it’s not his truck.”
“True.”