The interior of the house contrasted sharply with the beautiful day dawning outside. Birds sang in the towering trees that shaded the property and the lake lapped gently at the shore only fifteen yards or so from the front entrance. It was a rustic paradise. Pine and moist earth overpowered every other scent, and the forest behind the house created a deep and resounding quiet. Everything about this crime seemed incongruent with its surroundings.
Trying not to let the disturbing sight get to him the way it had yesterday, Myles ordered himself to maintain some emotional distance. He’d grown soft since coming here, had gotten caught up in the idyllic life of a “safe” community. “You’re jaded, you know that?”
“I’m just saying. It wouldn’t be the first time a wife decided to off her hubby to avoid detection. With humiliation and divorce on the one hand and the answer to all her financial problems on the other…” He let his words fade away.
“She didn’t need to embezzle. Pat would’ve given her any amount. They’d been married for forty years.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Myles arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re jaded, like I said.”
“Yeah, well. You spend twenty years working for the LAPD and that’s what you get.” He shrugged. “You can take the cop out of L.A., but you can’t take L.A. out of the cop, not after that long. I plan to check her bank accounts and telephone records, just in case.”
“You do that. I’m relying on you to be thorough. Don’t waste a lot of time, though. I want to catch this bastard. And the longer you dick around with Gertie, the less chance we’ll have.”
“I don’t dick around when I’m on the job, Sheriff.” Jared sounded insulted. He had a tendency to take things literally and to carry logic to illogical extremes.
“I’m telling you not to pursue her exclusively, okay?”
“Of course I won’t. I’ll follow every lead.”
“Perfect.”
“You seem uptight,” he added. “Is there a reason?”
“Pat’s murder isn’t reason enough?” Myles retorted, but he knew his agitation had as much to do with Vivian as Pat. He couldn’t figure her out. He wanted to feel angry at her for being so unreasonable, but those marks on her arm, the ones put there by her ex-husband, made it impossible to hold her resistance against her. She probably didn’t want to give another man any control over her life, and yet her body craved what every healthy adult body craved.
Including his…
“We’ll get the guy who did this,” Jared promised.
Myles tilted his head as he studied the smeared blood on the tiles, the fingerprint dust, the partial footprints, the spatters on the wall, baseboards and cupboards. In some places, so much blood had been spilled that it hadn’t completely dried. Knowing it came from the man who’d sold him his house made Myles sick to his stomach. He’d seen death—car accidents and gang shootings when he worked for the police department in Phoenix—but never such a brutal slaying. And never anyone he knew. “What about Pat’s stepson?” he asked.
“Delbert’s on my list.”
Jared’s absolute reliance on logic was usually helpful in an investigation. At any rate, no one else had as much experience with murder. Since Myles had taken over as sheriff, his office hadn’t dealt with a crime worse than hunting without a license or holding up a liquor store with a Super Soaker. “Good.”
“You placing your bet on Delbert?” Jared asked.
Myles propped his hands on his hips. “I’m not placing any bets.”
“So why’d you bring him up?”
“Because he’s at least as likely to have killed Pat as Gertie is.”
“Except that he lives in Colorado.”
“Travel being what it is, maybe he came back.”
“I spoke to a few of Gertie’s neighbors last night. I guess she and Pat had some sort of falling-out with her son over a vehicle?”
That hadn’t been cleared up? Myles had all but forgotten it. “About a year ago, Pat and Gertie lent him the money to buy a new truck. He was supposed to pay them a couple thousand the moment he received his tax refund but he didn’t. I remember Pat complaining about it when he came to the station to deliver the calendar he gave out at Christmas, but…I haven’t heard about that since.”
“I’ll see what Delbert has to say,” Jared said. “If I can reach him.”
“You’ve tried?”
“Three times. Could be he’s on his way here.”
Myles walked over to the sliding glass door and found droplets of blood even there. Pat had put up a fight; he’d simply been overpowered. “I’m sure he is,” he said. “Especially if he expects to be included in the will. Delbert has always taken his parents for everything he can.”
Jared wrote a note about Delbert on his pad with a pencil that’d been broken in half and barely had any lead.
“Is that shitty pencil the best you can do?” Myles asked, momentarily distracted.
Jared held up his hand to examine the pencil stub. “What’s wrong with it?”
Myles opened his mouth to say that he could at least carry a decent pen—but snapping at such an inconsequential detail only revealed his stress. What did it matter as long as that pencil put words on paper?
Once again reining in the irritation that’d been lurking ever since he crawled out of bed, Myles waved away Jared’s concern. “Not a thing,” he said, but Jared was too literal to let it go. He couldn’t understand why Myles would mention it if he didn’t expect some action to be taken.
“There might be a pen in my car…?.”
“Forget it.” Even if there was a pen in his car, he had little chance of ever finding it. His vehicle was so full of wrappers, receipts and other flotsam, Myles often wondered if it violated the health and safety codes. “What about the call Pat received prior to coming here? Do you know who made it?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Jared blinked at him. “The number goes to the pay phone outside the Kicking Horse Saloon.”
The fact that Pineview didn’t have cell service wasn’t going to help them solve this crime. Here, pay phones were still an important form of communication, which meant that call could’ve come from anyone. And that particular location, right outside the town’s favorite bar, made it unlikely that a bystander would pay attention when someone was using it.
“So you’re checking out Gertie and Delbert,” Myles summarized. “Who else is on your list?”
“All the hunters, campers, fishermen and recreationists who’ve come through here the past couple of days.”
Myles eyed the blood spatter on the wall. The photographs shot by the forensic techs would be sent to an expert. But it would take time to get the analysis.
“Least fifty.”
“That narrows it down.”
Jared didn’t react to his sarcasm. “We got a partial thumbprint—in blood—on the door handle. That should help. Especially in conjunction with all the footprints.”
Except that none of them were very clear. They’d lifted the prints with tape but who knew if they’d show anything useful. “If we find a suspect these things might help. Otherwise…”
“If it’s not Gertie or Delbert it’s one of the campers.”
“Why would a camper call about a rental and then kill the real-estate agent?”
“Sometimes there isn’t a reason.”
“You think we have a psychopath in the area?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“I don’t know about that. Pat wasn’t attacked as soon as he and whoever he was with came into the house. He was murdered in the kitchen—as if he spent some time with his assailant, had a discussion first. If death was the goal from the beginning, there’d be no reason to pretend to be a prospective renter. Not once the killer got
