“An interesting text. ‘Need more scratch,’ it read. Sent to another throwaway cell phone.”

“More scratch as in he wanted more money?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Remy said. “Sent on Wednesday.”

This was two days before the short guy had been shot out in the forest behind the bar. I put out my cig, and we moved to my truck, our eyes on the employees inside the bar cleaning up.

“Hey,” I said to Remy. “You don’t have the final medical report on Dilmendes on your phone, do you? The guy in the passenger seat of the Caprice?”

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“That other bullet he took. Through his back.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “There were no other bullets, P.T. The headshot was his only injury. A through-and-through.”

I took this in. Then where the hell did the bloodstain on the back of the passenger seat come from?

“We’d been thinking that the short guy—”

“Carilla,” she interrupted.

“Carilla.” I used his name. “That he was our shooter, but there’s another possibility, Rem. The bullets in the gut of the college kid and Carilla were both .22 slugs, right?”

“Yup.”

“Well, we know the bullets in the two dead guys on the roadside were also from a .22. If the slugs match, that could mean it’s the same gun. Meaning the old man from the forest is our killer on the side of the road.”

Remy nodded. “So under that theory, the old man enters the back seat of the Caprice.”

“Driver’s side.” I pointed. “Back door.”

Remy nodded, agreeing. “Two guys that are soon to be dead are in the front.”

We each thought about this for a second, and I pictured it.

“I’ve been stuck on that blood,” I said. “The bloodstain on the back of the passenger seat.”

“‘Fixated’ is a better word.”

“I’ve been fixated,” I agreed. “But here’s my new theory. There’s three guys in the car. Driver and his buddy in the front. And Carilla, also a buddy, in the back seat, passenger side.”

“Okay . . . ?”

“Old guy gets in. Pops Vinorama, the driver. Pops Dilmendes in the passenger seat. He turns to shoot Carilla, but by this time, the short guy has the door open and is on the run.”

“He grazes him in the left hand with a bullet,” Remy said.

“Exactly.” I nodded. “That’s why he had the gauze on his hand.”

“And all those medical supplies in his motel.”

“The shot nicks him,” I said. “And after that, the old guy’s searching for Carilla—because whatever he killed the other two men for, Carilla’s a witness to it.”

Remy’s eyebrows went up, and I could tell from the look that she liked the logic.

“If that’s the case, P.T., then the blood on the Ace bandage will match that blood on the back of the seat. Both would be Carilla’s blood. That’s easy to test.”

“And then,” I said, “maybe you won’t refer to me as fixated, but astute.”