Page 38 of Brimstone Hollow

“Chief, we should check his phone,” I repeat. “Will said he got a text and ran off.”

“I’ll get a warrant for that,” Dishman says. “And a tech guy.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Well, what do you suggest?”

“Let’s just check it now.”

He gives me a long, dubious look. “Well, we can’t. If we’d brought my cruiser, maybe, but I don’t have my crime scene kit. No gloves.”

I open my bag and dig out the pouch of stuff I keep for situations just like this. I open a baggie of nitrile gloves, hand him a pair, and keep one for myself. As I’m tucking everything back in place, Dishman looks in my satchel and asks, “Is that a lock-picking kit in there?”

“Nope,” I lie, and push the kit deeper into my bag before snapping on my gloves.

Dishman squats down, gloves on, pats Dean’s front pockets, and comes up with a phone. He taps it but the Face ID denies him entry.

“Sorry,” he says flatly. “It’s locked.”

I grunt, snatch the phone from his hand, and hold it in front of Dean’s still-open eyes. The phone unlocks.

“Presto,” I say.

Dishman stares at me. I can’t tell if the look is admiring or aghast.

“You know,” he says, “you’re disturbingly comfortable with dead bodies.”

“Have you attended many murder cases, Chief Dishman?” I ask.

“Enough,” he says. “Never gotten used to it though.”

“Me neither. Not really. But I have a job to do so I just push it down, lock it in the vault.”

Dishman frowns at me. “That vault ever get too full, Miss Gore?”

I ignore him and open Dean Griffon’s messages, but there’s no recent text. I go to the notifications instead. Looks like there’s a pop-up from his security camera. I open the app and we watch as a silver truck appears under the lens, driving slow. There’s the sound of a truck door opening, then the crunch of gravel as someone walks close by, then it cuts off.

“Can you go back?” Dishman asks. “Look at the plates?”

I scrub backward but the camera never catches the plates. There’s only a glossy sheen of silver as the truck—yet another Ford F-150 by the look of it—barely comes into frame. There’s a sticker on the window: a faded Harley-Davidson shield. But nothing else to identify it.

“How many silver Ford pickups you got in town?” I ask.

He says, “Almost as many as we got black ones.”

I shake my head and look back down at the phone, the list of recordings.

“There’s more,” I say. “After Dean left the picnic.”

We watch the next video. It clearly shows Dean arriving in his black truck, getting out, heading toward the RV garage. Then there’s a third video, the silver truck leaving. Even less visible now as it rolls out behind Dean’s truck. Then, finally, there’s the red Bronco as Dishman and I arrive. There’s nothing else for today except Griffon leaving around tenAM, with his truck bed full of plastic folding chairs.

I go back to flicking through Griffon’s phone while Dishman walks around the scene.

“Look!” I say, finally holding it out to him. It’s my own website. “He was checking me out. He has an article open about me. The case I worked in Quartz Creek.”

“Half the town’s probably got information about you open on their phone. Your website’s open on my computer back at the station. So, Dean got curious, like everyone else—it doesn’t mean he cut your brakes.”

He holds his hand out for the phone and I grudgingly give it to him. Then, while he pulls his own phone out, calls the police station, and reports the crime, I walk away from him and Griffon’s corpse and back to the door, where I inspect the busted lock.