“So this is patrol?” Isabel says as we walk through the quiet woods, twilight just beginning to fall. “I’m disappointed. I should at least get to carry a gun.”
“You should have brought yours.”
Her brows lift. “I don’t have a gun, Casey.”
“Just checking.”
She chuckles at that. “I know I’m on your suspect list. You unreasonably failed to accept my alibi.”
“You were brewing beer. Alone.”
“I always do it alone. And the beer should provide my alibi. If I left it at that stage to go shoot Garcia, I’d have had to throw out the brew and start over. I may be capable of shooting a man, but I’d never cut into my profits like that.”
I shake my head.
“The question of who had a gun is the main one, isn’t it, though?” she says. “You keep those tightly regulated.”
“We’ll know more when we get that bullet.”
“So your sister hasn’t dug it out of the corpse yet?”
I know better than to react. “For that, we’ll require a corpse, and we aren’t ready to write Marshal Garcia off prematurely.”
She smiles. “Ah. Yes. Of course.” She walks a few more steps and says, “It’s actually your sister—not the case—that I wished to speak to you about. I believe she’d have an easier time in Rockton if others were aware of her condition.”
“Condition?”
She studies me. “May I presume your sister has never been assessed for ASD?”
“ASD?”
“Autism spectrum disorder.”
“April?” I laugh. “She has her quirks, but no. She’s a freaking genius. Yes, people with autism can be gifted in some areas, but April was an A-plus student in all areas.”
“Autism is a spectrum. There are so-called savants, gifted in one subject, such as math or art, but others can be like your sister, intellectually unimpaired. It’s the social and affective areas where I see the signs. Has anyone ever described your sister as socially awkward?”
I tug Storm away from a deer dung pile. “Sure. She lives for her studies, her work. She’s not a people person, so she lacks some … okay, most social skills.”
“Has her demeanor been described as chilly? Unemotional? Detached?”
“Yes, but so has mine.”
“You’re reserved. There is an abundance of emotion there. You prefer not to show it, a stance I can understand. As women, overexpressiveness can be seen as a weakness. It seems proof we are not rational beings.”
“But when we’re not emotional, we’re seen as cold bitches.”
“The eternal struggle of a professional woman. You and I both deal with it by accepting ‘cold bitch’ as a sobriquet far more acceptable than ‘hysterical bitch.’ In your sister’s case, though, I believe it isn’t so much restraint as a restricted emotional range. Would I be wrong in that?”
I walk for a few paces before saying, “No.”
“And her sense of humor? How would you describe that?”
“Uh, nonexistent.”
“She doesn’t make jokes.”
I smile at the thought. “Definitely not.”