“Let’s just say I have my reasons for asking. Their place isn’t far from here, right? A mile or two, maybe?”

“They’re not the best neighbors,” Russ conceded, with a nod, “but in all fairness, they could probably say the same thing about me.”

“Any boundary disputes? Problems with trespassing?”

Russ thought for a while, then shook his head. “Way back, my mom had a few nasty run-ins with Gretchen—Mrs. Lansing. They were friends, once upon a time, drinking buddies, more like, but then they had a falling-out over something—I don’t remember what, if I ever knew, since Mom had anger issues.”

“Gretchen Lansing was a drinker?” Eli asked, surprised. He’d probably exchanged less than half a dozen words with the woman in his whole life, and he didn’t pay much attention to gossip.

Maybe he ought to re-think that approach.

“Oh, yeah,” Russ said, with emphasis and a roll of his eyes. “Third time around, Dutch McKutchen, your late predecessor, ran her in for drinking and driving—this was way before your timed—she did six months in the old county jail.” The facility was closed now due to lack of funding. Prisoners in the Creek cooled their heels in the town’s two-cell hoosegow until they were either released or transferred. “Guess that turned her around because she hasn’t kicked up that kind of dust since then, to my knowledge anyhow. Doesn’t even drive these days—Fred takes her to and from work. Freddie did, too, until Judge Farley pulled his license for driving without insurance.”

It occurred to Eli that Russ knew a lot about the Lansing family, for a disinterested neighbor. “If you’d seen our Jane Doe with Freddie,” he ventured carefully, “would you be scared to say so? Afraid of reprisal?”

“No,” Russ said firmly. “I’m not stupid—like practically everybody else around here, I know Freddie’s a grade A asshole, and bone-mean to boot, but if I knew they’d been together, him and that girl, I’d say so. That way, I wouldn’t be the number-one suspect in a murder investigation.”

“That’s reasonable,” Eli said. Then he sighed and stood up, the half-finished water bottle in one hand, the framed photo under his arm.

Russ didn’t rise from his chair; in fact, he looked a little gray around the gills, and his large body gave the impression of a punctured raft with a hole in it, slowly deflating.

“Don’t forget the swab, Russ. Marisol’s office, first thing tomorrow morning.”

Russ nodded, sighed. “You know it’ll come back positive,” he said. “I’ve never seen that girl in my life, but it’s uncanny how much she looks like Bethanne. Nobody’s going to believe I didn’t know who she was.”