Shotgun Sheriff

“Then you won’t mind proving that to me. Show me your pockets.”

Woody hesitated, until Reed gave him a nod. It wasn’t exactly a cooperative nod, either, and the accompanying grumble had a get-this-over-with tone to it.

The mayor pulled out a wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and a handkerchief and keys from the front ones. No cell phone, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t taken it. The man had had at least ten minutes to discard it along the way up or down the hill to his vehicle.

“Taking the cell won’t help your friend’s cause,” she pointed out. “I already phoned in the number, and it’ll be traced.”

Woody lifted his shoulder. “Good. Because maybe what you learn about that phone will get Shane out of jail. He didn’t kill Marcie.”

Reed stared at her. “Can the mayor go now, or do you intend to strip-search him?”

Livvy ignored that swipe and glanced down at Woody’s snakeskin boots. “You wear about a size eleven.” She turned her attention to Reed. “And so do you. That looks to be about the size of the footprints that I took casts of over in the brush.”

“So?” Woody challenged.

“So, the location of those prints means that someone could have waited there for Marcie to arrive. They could be the footprints of the killer. Or the killer’s accomplice if he had one. Sheriff Hardin would have had reason to be out here, but what about you? Before this morning, were you here at the cabin in the past forty-eight hours?”

“No.” The mayor’s answer was quick and confident.

Livvy didn’t intend to take his word for it.

“You can go now,” Reed told the mayor.

Woody slid his hat back on, tossed her a glare and delivered his parting shot from over his shoulder as he walked away. “You might do to remember that Reed is the law in Comanche Creek.”

Livvy could have reminded him that she was there on orders from the governor, but instead she took out her binoculars from her field bag and watched Woody’s exit. If he stopped to pick up a discarded cell phone, she would arrest him on the spot.

“He didn’t take that phone,” Reed insisted.

“Then who did?”

“The real killer. He could have done it while Kirby and you were casting the footprints.”

“The real killer,” she repeated. “And exactly who would that be?”

“Someone that Marcie got involved with in the past two years when she was missing and presumed dead.”

Livvy couldn’t discount that. After all, Marcie had faked her own death so she wouldn’t have to testify against a powerful local rancher who’d been accused of bribing officials in order to purchase land that the Comanche community considered their own. The rancher, Jonah Becker, who also owned this cabin, could have silenced Marcie when she returned from the grave.

Or maybe the killer was someone who’d been furious that Marcie hadn’t gone through with her testimony two years ago. There were several people who could have wanted the woman dead, but Shane was the one who’d been found standing over her body.

“See? He didn’t take the cell phone,” Reed grumbled when the mayor didn’t stop along the path to retrieve anything he might have discarded. The mayor got into a shiny fire-engine-red gas-guzzler of a truck and sped away, the massive tires kicking up a spray of mud and gravel.

“He could be planning to come back for it later,” Livvy commented. But probably not. He would have known that she would search the area.

“Instead of focusing on Woody Sadler,” Reed continued, “how about taking a look at the evidence inside the cabin? Because naming Shane as the primary suspect just doesn’t add up.”

Ah, she’d wondered how long it would take to get to this subject. “How do you figure that?”

“For one thing, I swabbed Shane’s hands, and there was no gunshot residue. Plus, this case might be bigger than just Shane and Marcie. You might not have heard, but a few days ago there were some other bodies that turned up at the Comanche burial grounds.”

“I heard,” she said. “I also heard their eyes were sealed with red paint and ochre clay. In other words, a Native American ritual. There’s nothing Native American or ritualistic about this murder.”

Still, that didn’t mean the deaths weren’t connected. It just meant she didn’t see an immediate link. The only thing that was glaring right now was Deputy Shane Tolbert’s involvement in this and his sheriff’s need to defend him.

Livvy started the walk down the hill to look for that missing phone. Thankfully, it was silver and should stand out among the foliage. And then she remembered the note in her pocket with the cell number on it. She took out her own phone and punched in the numbers to call the cell so it would ring.

She heard nothing.

Just in case it was buried beneath debris or something, she continued down the hill, listening for it.

Reed followed her, of course.

Livvy would have preferred to do this search alone because the sheriff was turning out to be more than a nuisance. He was a distraction. Livvy blamed that on his too-good looks and her stupid fantasies about cowboys. She’d obviously watched too many Westerns growing up, and she reminded herself that in almost all cases the fantasy was much hotter than the reality.

She glanced at Reed again and mentally added maybe not in this case.

In those great-fitting jeans and equally great-fitting blue shirt, he certainly looked as if he could compete with a fantasy or two.

When she felt her cheeks flush, Livvy quickly got her mind on something else—the job. It was obvious that the missing cell wasn’t ringing so she ended the call and put her own cell back in her pocket. Instead of listening for the phone, she’d just have to hope that the mayor had turned it off but still tossed it in a place where she could spot it.

“The mayor’s not guilty,” Reed tried again. “And neither is Shane.”

She made a sound of disagreement. “Maybe there was no GSR on his hands because Shane wore gloves when he shot her,” she pointed out. Though Livvy was certain Reed had already considered that.

“There were no gloves found at the scene.”

She had an answer for that as well. “He could have discarded them and then hit himself over the head to make it look as if he’d been set up.”

“Then he would have had to change his clothes, too, because there was no GSR on his shirt, jeans, belt, watch, badge, holster or boots.”

“You tested all those items for gunshot residue?”

“Yeah, I did,” he snapped. “This might be a small town, Sergeant Hutton, but we’re not idiots. Shane and I have both taken workshops on crime-scene processing, and we keep GSR test kits in the office.”

It sounded as if Sheriff Hardin had been thorough, but she would reserve judgment on whether he’d learned enough in those workshops.

“But Shane was holding the murder weapon, right?” Livvy clarified.

“Appears to have been, but it wasn’t his gun. He says he has no idea who it belongs to. The bullet taken from Marcie’s body is on the way to the lab for comparison, and we’re still searching the databases to try to figure out the owner of the gun.”

Good. She’d call soon and press for those results and the plaster castings of the footprints. Because the sooner she finished this crime scene, the sooner she could get out of here and head back to Austin. She didn’t mind small towns, had even grown up in one, but this small town—and its sheriff—could soon get to her.

Livvy continued to visually comb the right side of the path, and when they got to the bottom, they started back up while she examined the opposite side. There was no sign of a silver phone.

Mercy.

She didn’t want to explain to her boss how she’d let possible crucial evidence disappear from a crime scene that she was working. She had to find that phone or else pray the cell records could be accessed.

“What about the blood spatter in the cabin?” Reed asked, grabbing her attention again.

“I’m not finished processing the scene yet.” In fact, she’d barely started though she had already spent nearly an hour inside. She had hours more, maybe days, of work ahead of her. Those footprint castings had taken priority because they could have been erased with just a light rain. “But in my cursory check, I didn’t see any spatter, only the blood pool on the floor. Since Marcie was shot at point-blank range, that doesn’t surprise me. Why? Did you find blood spatter?”

“No. But if Shane’s account is true about someone clubbing him over the back of the head, then there might be some. He already had a head injury, and it had been aggravated with what looked like a second blow. But the wood’s dark-colored, and I didn’t want to spray the place with Luminol since I read it can sometimes alter small droplets. Judging from the wound on Shane’s head, we’d be looking for a very small amount because the gash was only about an inch across.”

She glanced at him and hoped she didn’t look too surprised. Most non-CSI-trained authorities would have hosed down the place with Luminol, the chemical to detect the presence of biological fluids, and would have indeed compromised the pattern by causing the blood to run. That in turn, could compromise critical evidence.

“What?” he asked.

Livvy walked ahead of him, up the steps and onto the porch and went inside the cabin. “Nothing.”

“Something,” Reed corrected, following her. He shut the door and turned on the overhead lights. “You’d dismissed me as just a small-town sheriff.”

“No.” She shrugged. “Okay, maybe. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I dismissed you, too.”

Since her back was to him, she smiled. For a moment. “Still do?”

“Not because of your skill. You seem to know what you’re doing. But I’m concerned you won’t do everything possible to clear Shane’s name.”

“And I’m concerned you’ll do anything to clear it.”

He made a sound of agreement that rumbled deep in his throat. “I can live with a stalemate if I know you’ll be objective.”

The man certainly did know how to make her feel guilty. And defensive. “The evidence is objective, and my interpretation of it will be, too. Don’t worry. I’ll check for that blood spatter in just a minute.”

Riled now about the nerve he’d hit, she grabbed a folder from her equipment bag. “First though, I’d like to know if it wasn’t Woody Sadler, then who might have compromised the crime scene and stolen the phone.” She slapped the folder on the dining table and opened it. Inside were short bios of persons of any possible interest in this case.

Reed’s bio was there on top, and Livvy had already studied it.

He was thirty-two, had never been married and had been the sheriff of Comanche Creek for eight years. Before that, he’d been a deputy. His father, also sheriff, had been killed in the line of duty when Reed was seven. Reed’s mother had fallen apart after her husband’s murder and had spent the rest of her short life in and out of mental institutions before committing suicide. And the man who’d raised Reed after that was none other than the mayor, Woody Sadler.

She could be objective about the evidence, but she seriously doubted that Reed could ever be impartial about the man who’d raised him.

Livvy moved Reed’s bio aside. The mayor’s. And Shane’s. “Who would be bold or stupid enough to walk into this cabin and take a phone with me and your deputy only yards away?”

Reed thumbed through the pages, extracted one and handed it to her. “Jonah Becker. He’s the rancher Marcie was supposed to testify against. He probably wouldn’t have done this himself, but he could have hired someone if he thought that phone would link him in any way to Marcie.”

Yes. Jonah Becker was a possibility. Reed added the bio for Jonah’s son. And Jerry Collier, the man who ran the Comanche Creek Land Office. Then Billy Whitley, a city official. The final bio that Reed included was for Shane’s father, Ben Tolbert. He was another strong possibility since he might want to protect his son.

“I’ll question all of them,” Reed promised.

“And I’ll be there when you do,” Livvy added. She heard the irritation in his under-the-breath grumble, but she ignored him, took the handheld UV lamp from her bag and put on a pair of monochromatic glasses.

“Shane said he was here when he was hit.” Reed pointed to the area in front of the fireplace. It was only about three feet from where Marcie’s body had been discovered.

Livvy walked closer, her heels echoing on the hardwood floor. The sound caused Reed to eye her boots, and again she saw some questions about her choice of footwear.

“They’re more comfortable than they look,” she mumbled.

“They’d have to be,” he mumbled back.

Though comfort wasn’t exactly the reason she was wearing them. She’d just returned from a trip to visit her father, and one of her suitcases—the one that contained her favorite work boots—had been lost. There’d been no time to replace them because she had been home less than an hour when she’d gotten the call to get to Comanche Creek ASAP.

“I do own real boots,” Livvy commented and wondered why she felt the need to defend herself.

With Reed’s attention nailed to her, she lifted the lamp and immediately spotted the spatter on the dark wood. Without the light, it wasn’t even detectable. There wasn’t much, less than a dozen tiny drops, but it was consistent with a high-velocity impact.

“Shane’s about my height,” Reed continued. And he stood in the position that would have been the most likely spot to have produced that pattern.

It lined up.

Well, the droplets did anyway. She still had some doubts about Shane’s story.

Livvy took her camera, slipped on a monochromatic lens and photographed the spatter. “Your deputy could have hit himself in the head. Not hard enough for him to lose consciousness. Just enough to give us the castoff pattern we see here. Then, he could have hidden whatever he used to club himself.”

Reed stared at her. “Or he could be telling the truth. If he is, that means we have a killer walking around scot-free.”

Yes, and Livvy wasn’t immune to the impact of that. It scratched away at old wounds, and even though she’d only been a Ranger for eighteen months, that was more than enough time for her to have learned that her baggage and old wounds couldn’t be part of her job. She couldn’t go back twenty years and right an old wrong.

Though she kept trying.

Livvy met Reed’s gaze. It wasn’t hard to do since he was still staring holes in her. “You really believe your deputy is incapable of killing his ex-lover?”

She expected an immediate answer. A damn right or some other manly affirmation. But Reed paused. Or rather he hesitated. His hands went to his hips, and he tipped his eyes to the ceiling.

“What?” Livvy insisted.

Reed shook his head, and for a moment she didn’t think he would answer. “Shane and Marcie had a stormy relationship. I won’t deny that. And since you’ll find this out anyway, I had to suspend him once for excessive force when he was making an arrest during a domestic dispute. Still … I can’t believe he’d commit a premeditated murder and set himself up.”

Yes, that was a big question mark in her mind. If Shane had enough forensic training to set up someone, then why hadn’t he chosen anyone but himself? That meant she was either dealing with an innocent man or someone who was very clever, and therefore very dangerous.

Because she was in such deep thought, Livvy jumped when a sound shot through the room. But it wasn’t a threat. It was Reed’s cell phone.

“Kirby,” he said when he answered it.

That got her attention. Kirby Spears was the young deputy who’d assisted her on the scene and had carried the footprint castings back to the sheriff’s office so a Ranger courier could pick them up and take them to the crime lab in Austin.

While she took a sample of one of the spatter droplets, Livvy listened to the conversation. Or rather that was what she tried to do. Hard to figure out what was going on with Reed’s monosyllablic responses. However, his jaw muscles stirred again, and she thought she detected some frustration in those already intense eyes.

She bagged the blood-spatter sample, labeled it and put it in her equipment bag.

“Anything wrong?” Livvy asked the moment Reed ended the call.

“Maybe. While he was in town and running the investigating, Lieutenant Wyatt Colter made notes about the shoe sizes of the folks who live around here. He left the info at the station.”

That didn’t surprise Livvy. Lieutnenant Colter was a thorough man. “And?”

“Kirby compared the size of the castings, and it looks as if three people could be a match. Of course, the prints could also have also been made by someone Marcie met during her two years on the run. The person might not even be from Comanche Creek.”

Livvy couldn’t help it. She huffed. “Other than you, who are two possible matches?”

“Jerry Collier, the head of the land office. He was also Marcie’s former boss.”

She had his bio, and it was one of the ones that Reed had picked from the file as a person who might be prone to breaking into the cabin. Later, she’d look into his possible motive for stealing a phone. “And the other potential match?”

Reed’s jaw muscles did more than stir. They went iron-hard. “The mayor, Woody Sadler.”

“Of course.”

She groaned because she shouldn’t have allowed Reed to stop her from arresting him. Or at least thoroughly searching him. Mayor Woody Sadler could have hidden that phone somewhere on his body and literally walked away with crucial evidence. Lost evidence that would get her butt in very hot water with her boss.

“I’ll talk to him,” Reed said.

“No. I’ll talk to him.” And this time she didn’t intend to treat him like a mayor but a murder suspect.

In Reed’s eyes, she saw the argument they were about to have. Livvy was ready to launch into the inevitable disagreement when she heard another sound. Not a cell phone this time.

Something crashed hard and loud against the cabin door.

Chapter Three

Reed drew his Smith and Wesson. Beside him, Livvy tossed the UV lamp and her glasses onto the sofa so she could do the same. Reed had already had his fill of unexpected guests today, and this sure as hell better not be somebody else trying to “help” Shane.

“Anyone out there?” Reed called out.

Nothing.

Since it was possible their visitor was Marcie’s killer who’d returned to the scene of the crime, Reed approached the door with caution, and he kept away from the windows so he wouldn’t be ambushed. He tried to put himself between Livvy and the door. It was an automatic response, one he would have done for anyone. However, she apparently didn’t appreciate it because she maneuvered herself to his side again.

Reed reached for the doorknob, but stopped.

“Smoke?” he said under his breath. A moment later, he confirmed that was exactly what it was. If there was a fire out there, he didn’t want to open the door and have the flames burst at them.

There was another crashing sound. This time it came from the rear of the cabin. Livvy turned and aimed her gun in that direction. Reed kept his attention on the front of the place.

Hell.

What was happening? Was someone trying to break in?

Or worse. Was someone trying to kill them?

In case it was the or worse, Reed knew he couldn’t wait any longer. He peered out from the side of the window.

And saw something he didn’t want to see.

“Fire!” he relayed to Livvy.

She raced to the back door of the cabin. “There’s a fire here, too.”

A dozen scenarios went through his mind, none of them good. He grabbed his phone and pressed the emergency number for the fire department.

“See anyone out there?” Reed asked, just as soon as he requested assistance.

“No. Do you?”

“No one,” Reed confirmed. “Just smoke.” And lots of it. In fact, there was already so much black billowy smoke that Reed couldn’t be sure there was indeed a fire to go along with it. Still, he couldn’t risk staying put. “We have to get out of here now.”

Livvy took that as gospel because she hurried to the table, grabbed the files and the other evidence she’d gathered and shoved all of it and her other supplies into her equipment bag. She hoisted the bag over her shoulder, freeing her hand so she could use her gun. Unfortunately, it was necessary because Reed might need her as backup.

“Watch the doors,” he insisted.

Not that anyone was likely to come through them with the smoke and possible fires, but he couldn’t take that chance. They were literally under siege right now and anything was possible. The smoke was already pouring through the windows and doors, and it wouldn’t be long before the cabin was completely engulfed.

The cabin wasn’t big by anyone’s standards. There was a basic living, eating and cooking area in the main room. One bedroom and one tiny bath were on the other side of the cabin. There was no window in the bathroom so he went to the lone one in the bedroom. He looked out, trying to stay out of any potential kill zone for a gunman, and he saw there was no sign of fire here. Thank God. Plus, it was only a few yards from a cluster of trees Livvy and he could use for cover.

“We can get out this way,” Reed shouted. The smoke was thicker now. Too thick. And it cut his breath. It must have done the same for Livvy because he heard her cough.

He unlocked the window, shoved it up and pushed out the screen. The fresh air helped him catch his breath, but he knew the outside of the cabin could be just as dangerous as the inside.

“Anyone out there?” Livvy asked.

“I don’t see anyone, but be ready just in case.”

The person who’d thrown the accelerant or whatever might have used it as a ruse to draw them out. It was entirely possible that someone would try to kill them the moment they climbed out. Still, there was no choice here. Even though he’d already called the fire department, it would take them twenty minutes or more to respond to this remote area.

If they stayed put, Livvy and he could be dead by then.

“I’ll go first,” he instructed. He took her equipment bag and hooked it over his shoulder. That would free her up to run faster. “Cover me while I get to those trees.”

She nodded. Coughed. She was pale, Reed noticed, but she wasn’t panicking. Good. Because they both needed a clear head for this.

Reed didn’t waste any more time. With his gun as aimed and ready as it could be, he hoisted himself over the sill and climbed out. He started running the second his feet touched the ground.

“Now,” he told Livvy. He dropped the equipment bag and took cover behind the trees. Aimed. And tried to spot a potential gunman who might be on the verge of ambushing them.

Livvy snaked her body through the window and raced toward him. Despite the short distance, she was breathing hard by the time she reached him. She turned, putting her back to his. Good move, because this way they could cover most of the potential angles for an attack.

But Reed still didn’t see anyone.

He blamed that on the smoke. It was a thick cloud around the cabin now. There were fires, both on the front porch and the back, and scattered around the fires were chunks of what appeared to be broken glass. The flames weren’t high yet, but it wouldn’t take them long to eat their way through the all-wood structure. And any potential evidence inside would be destroyed right along with it. If this arsonist was out to help Shane, then he was sadly mistaken.

Of course, the other possibility was that the real killer had done this.

It would be the perfect way to erase any traces of himself. Well, almost any traces. There was some potential evidence in Livvy’s equipment bag. Maybe the person responsible wouldn’t try to come after it.

But he rethought that.

A showdown would bring this fire-setting bozo out into the open, and Reed would be able to deal with him.