This print was made within the hour.
Next to the print: a cigarette butt. Filtered. A brand I don't recognize.
"Pick it up?" Banshee asks.
"Yeah. Gloves."
He pulls a pair of work gloves from his back pocket—Banshee always has gloves, always has a folding knife, always has a length of paracord, has never once in all the time I’ve known him failed to have what was needed when something went wrong.
He picks the cigarette butt up by the burnt end and puts it in a sandwich bag from another pocket.
"What brand?"
"Don't know yet. Ash isn't from a Marlboro."
"Camel?"
"Maybe. We'll get a better look at the cabin."
I look at the loft window. The angle. The way the light falls through the open hayloft doors onto the porch of the main house.
I picture the man standing here. Phone up. Patient. He waited.
He saw us walk out hand in hand from the kitchen meeting and he took the shot and he sent it before we made it down the porch steps.
He was here ten minutes ago. Maybe less.
He could still be on the property.
Banshee reads my face. "He's gone, Spur."
"How do you know that for sure?"
"Because if he was still here, the dogs would be barking. They're not."
I listen.
He's right. The kennel is quiet. Six working dogs, all of them quiet—which means whoever was on this property left the property, because those dogs lose their minds when there's an unfamiliar person inside the fence line.
But how the fuck did he get this close to us?
How did no one, or nothing see him?
"He came in through the north fence."
"Yeah," Banshee says. "Or he had a vehicle on the access road and walked in."
We stand in the loft for a minute looking down at the porch.
"I'm going to kill him," I tell Banshee.
"Yeah, you are."
"I want him to know it was me."
"He'll know."
We climb down the ladder.
