In Seconds

Just when she’d stopped looking behind her…

Eager to send her brother an email, to get some reassurance that he, Peyton and Rex were okay in upstate New York and to keep him apprised of what was happening in Montana, she quickly prepared Mia’s breakfast. Then, sitting at the desk in one corner of the living room, she went online—and that was when her throat closed as if someone had tightened a noose around it.

It was Tuesday, not Sunday. This wasn’t the day she and Virgil usually communicated. But there was a message from him. And it was marked Urgent.

4

Myles went straight to the vacation rental where the murder had taken place. Now that the initial shock was over, and the forensic techs and the coroner were gone, he wanted to examine the scene by himself. He planned to look at it from all angles to see if he could get some impression of the events that’d led up to Pat’s death. He also wanted to see if he could figure out a possible motive.

But, early though it was, he wasn’t the first person at the cabin. An old dented Porsche 911 sat parked off the narrow road on a thick layer of pine needles. Myles recognized it as belonging to Jared Davis, the investigator he’d put in charge of this case.

“Who’d want Pat dead?” Jared called out as soon as Myles stepped over the yellow crime-scene tape. But he was nowhere to be seen. He must’ve heard the cruiser and glanced out the open door before Myles came up the walk.

“No one I know,” Myles replied to the disembodied voice.

“There’s his wife.”

“Gertie? She wouldn’t have the upper-body strength.” He found Jared in the dining room, crouching not far from the blood on the kitchen tiles, notepad in hand. It was cool outside, about sixty degrees, but the temperature would soon climb to eighty. Why Jared would be wearing a trench coat and wing-tipped shoes, Myles had no idea, but the investigator reminded him of the character on the TV show Columbo, which his mother used to watch. He even acted like him—a little disheveled and disorganized, often absorbed and seemingly inattentive, although he rarely missed a thing.

“She could’ve hired someone to do it.”

Myles was just as skeptical of that, but Jared continued before he could respond.

“She stands to collect half a million in life insurance. I checked.”

Because most murders were committed by family or friends, Jared had classified her as a “person of interest.” That was standard procedure, to look close to heart and home. But Myles didn’t believe Pat’s killer could be Gertie. “You’ve got to eliminate every possibility, right?”

Jared stood but at five foot eight he barely came to Myles’s shoulder. “You don’t think it’s her.”

Myles had made that clear yesterday. “Not a chance. I saw her after she found her husband. She was destroyed. Grief like that can’t be faked. Besides, they were happy, always together.”

“Maybe she’s a hell of an actress. Maybe, when I dig a little deeper, I’ll find out she’s been embezzling from her husband’s real-estate company and he was about to audit the books.”

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.