He disconnected and turned to see Hepner waiting.
“That warrant you asked the judge for?” the deputy said. “We got it. Several of the crime techs have gone over to search the Mullen house.”
Leroy doubted Vi Mullen would be surprised—if she hadn’t already left town, given what Casey Crenshaw had told him.
“She’ll want to know about her brother,” Hepner said.
Finnegan and Casey had given them the location where they’d last seen Emery, but it could take days to find the body, let alone the room where the man had held Casey, and recover any evidence of the murders.
“He is presumed dead at this point,” Leroy said, although he’d learned a long time ago not to presume anything.
It didn’t take long for the highway patrolman to bring him Patience. She had resisted arrest so had been cuffed and had her rights read to her by the time Leroy had her back in Buckhorn.
“Why would you resist arrest unless you had something to hide?” Leroy demanded.
“Are you serious? He told me he was taking me back to Buckhorn for questioning. I had no intention of ever coming back here. I just assumed this was Jason’s doing. He did everything possible to keep me from leaving. Look, I’m married. I made a mistake with Jason. I didn’t want to see him again.” She seemed to notice that Leroy had gone quiet. “What?” She looked from him to his deputy standing by the motel-room door. “What is it you aren’t telling me?” The color drained from her face as if she suddenly knew. “Jason. He’s...he’s dead?”
“Apparently he hung himself.”
“That’s ridiculous. He might threaten to do something like that, but he would never...” She was shaking her head. “No.” She must have realized that he was still watching her closely. “Wait. You can’t think I had anything to do with it?”
“He left what appears to be a suicide note.”
“I want to see it,” she demanded. “I know his handwriting.”
Leroy considered it for a moment before he nodded to his deputy, who retrieved the evidence bag with the note in it. He handed it to her.
She stared down at the note through the plastic and frowned. “This is the note he wrote to me before I left. I gave it back to him. This isn’t a suicide note.”
Leroy had suspected as much. His list of suspects had dropped to three. Benjamin, Shirley and Jen. Benjamin would have been the likely suspect, not that Shirley and Jen didn’t seem equally capable.
Hepner appeared, looking like the cat who’d eaten the canary. “The crime team found something they thought you’d want to see. It was found in Dr. Claude Drake’s wallet.” He held up what appeared to be a note inside an evidence bag. Meet me in the woods.
Leroy looked from the note to Hepner.
“Those droplets?” Hepner said. “They appear to be blood. You can see that the note is old. Dr. Drake had been carrying it around for some time. Probably ten years.”
“You think the blood might be Megan Broadhurst’s? That he found this—” he met the deputy’s gaze “—where she was killed.”
“Why else hang on to it all these years? If, for whatever reason, the killer wasn’t able to retrieve it at the scene,” Hepner said, “Claude could have picked it up. We also found one in the same handwriting with the same wording wadded up and stuffed deep in Devlin Wright’s pocket.”
Leroy felt his pulse jump. Their first good lead. “I assume you have examined the handwriting of our suspects?” Hepner smiled in affirmation. “Who wrote this note?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JEN GLANCED UP as the marshal walked toward her. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew. She smiled to herself, thinking of her mother, who would say “I always knew it would end badly for Jennifer. She just couldn’t seem to help herself when it came to trouble.”
It was true. When she’d lured Megan into that spot in the woods, she’d told herself she wasn’t going to kill her. The rock had just been lying there on the ground as if it was meant to be. Poor little rich girl hadn’t seen it coming, but she should have. She’d been asking for it. Before Megan died, Jen had crouched down next to her because, as her mother would tell you, Jen always had to have the last word.
She’d been at the creek when luckily she’d heard the half-drunk Shirley busting through the woods like a herd of elephants. She’d known she couldn’t let Shirley see her washing off the blood and getting rid of the rock she’d used to kill Megan, so she’d finished and hurried back to the fire. There’d been no time to get rid of the body. Nor had she known how to, until recently she’d discovered the tunnel from the outbuilding—and that handy hunter’s cart.
When she’d sneaked out Friday night to meet with Claude—fortunately, Shirley was a deep sleeper—she’d just happened to see the old man going through the woods. Curious, she’d followed him. She’d seen him go into the shed. Peeking inside through a crack in the wall, she’d watched him lift the trapdoor and disappear through it, the door closing behind him—but not all the way.
She’d been intrigued and had stepped inside the dilapidated outbuilding. As she’d knelt down to lift the trapdoor, she saw why it hadn’t closed completely. There was a dusty bone caught in it. Glancing down into the dimly lit space, she could see what appeared to be a sloped dirt drop to the bottom.
Rising, she’d let the trapdoor close.
She’d made only one mistake—the note she’d given Megan to meet in the woods. She’d forgotten to pick it up when she’d left the body to go get cleaned up in the creek. By the time she heard Shirley screaming and returned, the note was
