“Died this morning, but you know that, right?”

“You know I’m investigating him for drug trafficking. You could have alerted me.”

“Nothing to report yet.”

He rolled his neck from side to side. “This isn’t a game.”

“Good, because I’m not having fun. I just left the Sanchez house and had to float the idea that they might know something about Walker’s death.”

“Did they?”

“I don’t know. They had good reason. But they normally wouldn’t be the types to kill.”

“He hanged himself.”

“Maybe.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Witness, a Ms. Alana Stone, said he was riding high last night and had just gotten paid,” she said.

“Who paid him?”

“Don’t know. I do know his attorney, Harold Sunday, visited Ms. Stone in the hospital.”

“This doesn’t mean his mindset didn’t turn on a dime.”

“You’re right. But I suspect you know a lot more about him than I do. In the interest of sharing, do you think he’s the kind of man who would kill himself?”

“No.”

“You were investigating him for drug trafficking.”

“He’s the smaller fish that leads to a whale.”

“Maybe the whale wanted him quiet for good,” she said. She recapped what Ms. Stone had told her about the second man in the apartment.

“Was the second man Sunday?”

“I don’t know. He says he was with a woman about that time.” She hesitated.

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. But Sunday and Walker were tight. I heard Walker got young, pretty girls hooked on drugs and trafficked them. Not a stretch to say that Sunday bought sex from the women.”

He leaned against his car, letting the heat bite into the pain in his right thigh. He had been shot ten years ago during a highway traffic stop. The bullet had torn through muscle, which still stiffened when he was burning the candle at both ends.

“Do you have proof?”

“I’m off the case. That’ll be your job to find it.”

“I always get the sense with you there’s more.”

“I’m tracking down a few missing person cases. Might not lead anywhere, but it’s a hunch.”

“If you find anything that connects them to the Jane Does, call me.”

“Sure. Also, the uniforms are canvassing for surveillance cameras around Walker’s apartment,” Jordan said. “When we have something, I’ll call.”

“I expect nothing less.”

“Do the same if you find out what happened to the Jane Does.”

Her direct order told him what he suspected. The Austin Police Department might have relinquished the case, but she had not. “Will do.”

Jordan ended the call with Spencer and, out of the car, walked into the small hardware store. Her teeth were clenched. The ranger’s graveled voice rumbled in her head. And for some reason she was always on edge after they interacted.