“Mute him,” Tucker said as he grabbed the image he’d just sent to my printer.
“No, don’t—”
I muted Eamon, cursing beneath my breath, then I set my phone on my desk, where we could both see the screen with that line crossing through the volume icon. Assuring us that even though Eamon was still shouting at me for information, he couldn’t hear us. “What did you find?”
“Denny accepted my fake friend request,” Tucker said. “Probably because I used a stock photo of a hot college girl as my profile pic. I can see his photos now, but there are no recent ones of him. At all. So I scrolled all the way back to the beginning, where I found this one, from several years ago.” He slapped the picture onto my desk, and I stared down at it. It was almost identical to the one I’d found in Silas’s cabin, only this photo included a third figure. Another boy, not much older than Billy. “That…” Tucker tapped on the third figure’s face. “Thatis Denny. Silas’s son. Look closely, Charley.”
I blinked at the photo for a second.
“Fucking hell. That’s Cam Senet.” He’d been a regular for more than a year. In fact, we’d played ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ for him just last week, when his girlfriend had dumped him. Thevery dayAustin and Bishop had showed up at the bar. “Hell, he was here last night.” I swore as I picked up my phone, still staring at the photo. “Cam is short for Camden…” I said, thinking aloud.
“As is Denny,” Tucker noted, completing my thought. “Which means his alias is really more of an alternate nickname.”
I exhaled. “You think Billy’s innocent?”
He shrugged. “No idea.”
“It can’t be coincidence that both Cam and Billy have a connection to Silas, can it?” I asked. “They could be working together. Right?”
Another shrug. “I guess it’s time to talk to Billy again.”
“And to find Cam.” I unmuted Eamon and put him on speaker. “Have you actually met Denny?”
“Yeah. It’s been years, but—”
“Was he a regular at the bar, when you were Marshal?”
“No, he was too young to drink, and he left town after his dad—”
“Do you know of any aliases he might have gone by? Nicknames? Mother’s maiden name? Family names?” Anything that might help verify that Cam Senet was, in fact, the Denny in question.
“No. I don’t know his mother’s name. Billy might, though. He—”
“Thanks for the help. I gotta go. And the next time I call you, you betterdamnwell answer your phone.” I hung up and dropped my broken cell on my desk as I sank into my chair with my head cradled in both of my hands.
“Charley?” Tucker’s footsteps echoed toward me, but they stopped at least a foot away. “Why’d you hang up on him? He still has infor—”
“We don’t need him anymore; we have Billy, and frankly, even if Billy is a suspect, I’d rather talk to him than spend one more second on the phone with Eamon fucking McLane.” I shoved my chair back and stood. “Come on.”
“Have you seen the picture?” I asked as I shoved my way through the swinging doors into the dining area.
Davey, Vance, Bishop, and Austin all looked up from half-empty plates and laptop or phone screens, where they’d huddled to work in the corner booth. They all nodded.
“It’s Cam Senet,” Davey said. “Mr. Unlucky-In-Love, himself.”
“Yup. Okay. Tucker, get us an address for Cam Senet, then Austin, you go scout it out. Keep an eye on him. Observation only. Do not engage. Don’t let him see you. We aren’t going to make a move until we’ve spoken to Billy and we have a better idea of what’s going on.”
I turned to Vance. “You’re with me. Let’s go talk to Billy the Kid.”
SEVENTEEN
“Hey, Billy. I brought you some breakfast,” I said as I opened the door at the bottom of the steps. “It’s probably not as good as what you’d make, but I do my best.”
It was a six-egg western scramble, and it was damn good.
Billy sat up on the cot Nolan Blake had occupied until yesterday, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His face was creased from the pillow. He’d been sleeping.
While we were upstairs trying to figure out what part he’d played in the deaths of six women, he’d been down here asleep. Evidently completely unfazed.
