“I know. Oh, and I called the snowplow driver who was working the road in front of the Cahill lane that night, the same dude Deputy Mercado interviewed. His story hasn’t budged. Dark car, maybe an import, pulled out in front of him. He didn’t notice the plates, but thought they were from Washington.” She pulled into the parking lot, which had been plowed earlier but was now covered with snow. He wadded up the white sack, and she said, “Just toss that into the back. I’ll get it later.”

Mendoza parked, and they headed into the hospital and to the second floor, where they found James Cahill sitting up on the edge of his bed and arguing with a nurse about being released. He was dressed in jeans and socks, a hospital gown still covering his torso. Bandages were visible on his shoulder and head, but his eyes were clear.

“James Cahill?” Rivers asked, though, of course, he recognized the man.

“That’s right.” Wary, lips flat, eyes suspicious.

Rivers offered up his ID. “Detective Brett Rivers, Riggs County Sheriff ’s Department. This is my partner, Detective Mendoza.” She too held out her ID wallet.

Cahill slid a glance at the outstretched identifications, then met Rivers’s gaze without flinching. “Okay.”

The phrase cocky son of a bitch flitted through Rivers’s mind. “We’d like to ask you some questions about the night you were injured.”

“I don’t remember much of it.”

Rivers felt the back of his neck tighten. “Well, maybe you can tell us what you do remember.”

“Just a sec. Do you mind?” He indicated a wrinkled shirt on the bed beside him—one he’d been told Bobby Knowlton had left for him as the police had confiscated the clothing he’d been wearing on the night he’d arrived. Before Rivers could say anything, he let the hospital gown fall and, with difficulty, slid into the shirt, his jaw tightening, his skin blanching beneath his beard as he forced his right arm down the sleeve. “You aren’t the only ones who want to know what happened that night.”

“Were you alone?”

“I just said I don’t know.” He grimaced as he ran a hand over the tuft of brown hair on his head that wasn’t swathed in a bandage. “Why don’t we just cut the bull? I’ve seen the news and know that Megan Travers is missing, that the rumor is that she and I got into some kind of fight at my place, but I don’t remember it.”

“None of it?” Mendoza asked.

A beat . . . and Rivers got the impression Cahill was going to lie, or at least stretch the truth a bit.

“I don’t recall anything about that night. At least, nothing concrete.”

“Do you remember being with Megan?” Mendoza asked.

He shook his head.

“She was at your house that night.”