Even Steven by John Gilstrap

did, but—”
    “I told him about the murder,” George offered. “I’m sorry, was I not supposed to?”
    He was supposed to stay the hell out of the investigation and chase squirrels, but Russell kept to the high ground. “No, that’s okay. You did fine.”
    “We don’t need lawyers, do we?” Mandy had a little girl’s voice and a set of boobs that weren’t nearly as natural as the granola she no doubt grazed on for breakfast.
    “Not unless you’re going to confess to a crime.” Russell meant that to be lighthearted, but no one seemed to take it that way. What was it about West Virginia that seemed to erase people’s sense of humor? “No, you don’t need a lawyer. I just need you to tell me what you know.”
    The couple exchanged nervous looks, silently bidding the other to tell the story. Finally, they started together, then clammed up again.
    “You start, Gary,” Russell prompted.
    “Okay, well, I don’t know if this really means anything or anything, but last night around midnight we heard some yelling out here, as if somebody was trying to hurt someone.”
    “Well, we can’t say for sure that anyone was being hurt,” Mandy corrected.
    “No, no, well, of course not, because we couldn’t see anything. But don’t you think that’s what it sounded like?”
    “I know that’s what we said at the time, but now that I think back on it—”
    “You heard yelling,” Russell interrupted. He felt his blood pressure rising. “We’ll just keep it at that. Yelling, but you can’t say for sure what it meant.”
    “Yes, exactly,” Gary said.
    “Right,” Mandy agreed. “I mean, we thought it was angry, but, you know, out here at night, it’s hard—” Something she saw in Coates’s glare caused the words to harden in her throat.
    He turned back to Gary. “Yelling.”
    “Right. It sounded like a little kid.”
    Tim came under the tape now and stood shoulder to shoulder with his boss. “Now, that’s interesting,” Russell said. “Could you make out what they were saying?”
    “No, not really. In fact, I’m not sure they were really saying anything. That’s one of the reasons I think that a kid was involved. You know how they just sort of yell, but don’t really say anything?”
    Gary had just described both of Russell’s ex-wives. “How close were you to these screaming people?”
    Gary and Mandy silently conferred again with their eyes. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Hard to say in the woods, but I’d guess they were probably a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty yards from our campsite.”
    “And how far was your campsite from here?” Tim asked. Sometimes, Russell wondered if Tim thought his vocal cords might atrophy if he didn’t exercise them enough.
    Gary turned to George. “Well, we were more or less where you first saw us, so how far is that?”
    “Half a mile, maybe? Straight up this path.”
    Russell paused for a moment, giving his brain a chance to make something of this information. How could an argument with a child cause a shooting all the way down here?
    “When did you hike in?” Sarah asked. Now everybody wanted in on Russell’s interview.
    “Last night,” Mandy said.
    “From the top of the mountain or down below?”
    “Down below.”
    “So did you pass the people who were camped here?”
    Another silent conference. Gary said, “I remember seeing a camp here, but I don’t remember seeing the people. I’m willing to bet, though, that at least one of them was a woman.”
    Please don’t make me ask, Russell thought in the silence that followed.
    “They had a cute little flower wreath hanging on the front of their tent,” Mandy volunteered. “We commented on that as we passed by.”
    Russell looked down at the cards in his hand and started shuffling through them. “Ranger Rodgers, I don’t suppose you remember how many of the campers on our short list checked in as a couple, do you?”
    She answered without hesitation, “Six.”
    “Really?”