Tess walked him to the station door, thankful that Tami was alive and praying she’d lead them to her assailant. In the meantime, she left Bender to try to contact the supervisor of the work crew while she went back to the Stairsteps to look for brass. It was raining lightly; her mother would call it a drizzle. An icy drizzle. And it was cold, which thankfully meant the few tourists had been chased away.

She first rechecked the area where the car had been parked and then walked to the viewing platform, all the while thinking about the cold, harsh journey Tami took downriver. Tess had rafted the Rogue from the fish hatchery below Lost Creek Lake to the very boat ramp where Tami had been found. It bothered her beyond belief that anyone would shoot a person and shove them in the water, much less a harmless, innocent woman.

She wished a shooting had occurred to her earlier. But this was Rogue’s Hollow, not Long Beach. What could Tami have done to anyone that would provoke a shooting?

The viewing platform was off to the side of Midas Creek. Only the far edge was close to the water, and even then, Tami would have to have practically been thrown from the platform to hit the creek and go over the falls. That would have been enough trauma to be fatal, without being shot twice.

As she looked over the railing at the stair-stepping waterfalls, a troubling thought creased her brow. Did this violence have anything to do with Chevy, or was it just another matter of an opportunistic work crew member?

Tess hated coincidences, and this one bothered her as she returned to the station. She and Bender went to work accounting for all the members of the work crew. Bender had had no luck raising the supervisor of the work detail on the phone, so they drove to his house in White City. The weather grew increasingly worse; freezing rain turned to hail. They found the supervisor hungover and grouchy.

“We’re working a half day today,” he said. “Hoping it will warm up a bit after noon.”

Tess told him why they were there.

“My guys have worked their tails off for nearly two weeks and you want to pin a shooting on one of them?”

“If one of them is guilty, yes. Did you see any of them spend a lot of time with the cashier at the Hollow market?”

He sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “Nah, no one more than another.”

“Any of them seem off to you?” Bender asked.

“No. Like I’ve said repeatedly, they are all hard workers. I was surprised about the thief.”

They pressed him a little more, but he had nothing to say. Tess knew he’d been angry after the theft arrest. He’d felt that Bender had accused him of not watching his people carefully enough.