The loud truck grumbled past the other two cars and wheezed to a stop farther up the hill, near the wooden barrier at the end of the road. The side door bore a county seal. A large cable winch was mounted on the rear. The engine dropped to an idle, and the exhaust pipe belched a cloud of blue smoke into the already smoggy air.

“We’re here for a tree stump,” Moore said. He held the envelope out between them again and shook it. “It’s all in the warrant. We’re going to rip it out and take it with us.”

Keegan looked down at the envelope. He couldn’t make sense of what the lieutenant was saying. “Stump?”

“I’m sure you remember Officer Tate,” the lieutenant said. He gestured to his right, but the kid cop had drifted backwards a yard or two, so Moore had to turn to find him.

Officer Tate, looking self-conscious, dug his hands into his pockets and stepped up to take his place beside the lieutenant.

“Tate here says you told him you were using an old tree stump for target practice that morning he came up here,” the lieutenant said.

In that instant, it dawned on Keegan where this was going, and the realization hit him like a gut punch.

“We’re going to see if we can dig out a bullet and get it to ballistics,” Moore said. “Who knows what we’ll find out? Maybe it’ll look like the slug we pulled out of Ormsby.” He smiled that easy, ingratiating smile of his. “At any rate, I’ll bet it won’t match that old wheel gun you tried to palm off on me the other night.”

Moore waited a beat to see if Keegan had any response, and then he turned to the kid cop and nodded for him to scram. The kid legged it up the hill in the direction of the idling truck. He seemed happy to be leaving the lieutenant’s shadow, a nervous kid let loose from the principal’s office.

When Moore and Keegan were alone, the lieutenant stepped closer, keeping the fence between them.

“Tate’s never going to make detective,” Moore said, the truck engine still rumbling behind him. “But the kid’s not entirely stupid, either. He’s got a good head for details.”

Keegan’s fingers felt bloodless, but he kept his eyes locked on Moore’s. It was what an innocent man would do.

Moore looked away, down the road towards the first hairpin turn. “The morning you were out there shooting,” Moore said. “The kid said there was a lawnmower making a hell of a racket. Said the two of you had to shout to hear each other.”

“So?”

“I called Ormsby’s landscape company,” he said. “They said they were running the mower all morning.”

“And?”