CHAPTER THREE
C HAPTER T HREE
Matt followed the swirling emergency lights and parked at the curb behind a row of patrol vehicles. His boots crunched on sun-scorched grass as he crossed the strip of ground between the sidewalk and street. Drought conditions had been unrelenting, and water restrictions meant brown lawns for the region. Matt walked past a group of neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. Outside the front door, he checked in with the deputy manning the crime scene log, where every person who entered the house would be listed.
The deputy slid his pen into the clasp at the top of the clipboard. “Top of the stairs, end of the hall.”
Matt donned gloves and booties and stepped over the threshold. He spotted deputies—also suited up—at the back of the house. Evidence markers stood on the stairway next to small, dark-red paw prints. Matt carefully avoided them on his way up. At the end of the hall, he stopped just inside the primary bedroom.
Bree faced a king-size bed, studying the two dead people sprawled on it. She was of medium height with brown hair and hazel eyes, but there was nothing else average about her. She commanded respect from every cell in her being. It wasn’t the uniform, which bulked up her slim frame, or the badge she wore with pride. It was her. He respected the hell out of her, and there wasn’t a single deputy in her department who didn’t.
He stepped up next to her. “Hey.”
Bree glanced at him. Her gaze softened. “Hey, yourself. I’m glad you’re here.”
“No offense, but I’d rather be home in bed.”
“No offense taken. So would I, but here we are.” Bree pointed to the bodies. “Josh and Shelly Mason. They’ve lived at this address for twelve years. Neither has a criminal record. They were found by their teenage daughter, Claire.”
Claire Mason.
“I know that name,” he said.
Bree cleared her throat. “She worked on the yearbook committee with Luke last year.”
“Shit. That Claire.” A deep sigh squeezed Matt’s chest as he pictured the girl. Now Claire was an orphan.
“Yeah,” Bree agreed with a bone-rattling sigh.
Crimes involving children cut him to the core, especially since he’d moved in with Bree. Matt had grown close to her niece and nephew, nine-year-old Kayla and seventeen-year-old Luke.
Together he and Bree turned back to the bed. The blood seemed amplified by the bright-white sheets. Mr. Mason slumped sideways on doubled pillows. Red saturated his gray T-shirt in two distinct blotches. The stain near his shoulder was quarter-size. The second stain, larger than a dinner plate, was in the dead center over his heart. From the chest wound, blood had spread down both sides of the victim’s ribs to the mattress beneath him. A hardcover book still sat open on his lap, the pages smeared with red.
Mrs. Mason had flung the covers off her legs. Her body was twisted sideways, as if she’d started to get out of bed before she was killed. Her hand reached toward the nightstand. An obvious gunshot in the side of her face had blown her cheek wide open. Blood and gore splattered the pillowcase and white leather headboard. A second shot below her armpit had bled copiously, leaving a shiny puddle of red that had dripped down the side of the mattress onto the carpet. Brachial artery, Matt guessed.
“Looks like two shots each,” he said.
Double tap.
“Execution?” Bree asked.
“They weren’t head shots, but it was quick and efficient.”
“They killed him first,” Bree said as they continued to theorize.
“Makes sense,” Matt agreed. “He was the bigger threat, self-defense wise. Take him out of the equation. She’d be easier to manage.”
Bree paused. “She saw it coming.”
“Yeah. She did.” Matt pictured the husband, startling as someone charged into the bedroom, his book falling to his lap. “What would most people do if a stranger walked into their bedroom?”
“Some people might freeze,” Bree said. “Fear can be paralyzing. But once he started shooting, survival instinct should have kicked in. Fight option: grab a weapon if you have one and are thinking clearly enough to use it. Flight option: get out of bed. Try to escape.”
“The intruder either shot them straightaway or had the gun pointed at them while they exchanged words.”
Most people didn’t have the skills to fight and instinctively fled. Had his wife screamed or been silenced from panic?
Matt heard the shots in his imagination, saw the husband’s body jerk, the wife flinch. “The shots spurred her into motion. She tried to get free of the covers and run. But she didn’t have a chance. He shot her before she could even get out of bed.”
The woman’s face was turned awkwardly back toward her husband. She hadn’t died instantly. She’d seen her husband’s fate.
Matt hoped death had come quickly for them both because lying there, unable to move, bleeding, watching the life drain from a loved one, would be worse.
It took effort for him to not reach for Bree’s hand. Their cohabitation wasn’t a secret. Everyone knew he’d moved in with her, but they agreed that on-duty PDAs weren’t professional. Being together helped, though. Even without touching her, he felt stronger standing next to her. Their relationship didn’t have a legal status—yet—but his heart belonged to her just the same.
Considering the inherent danger in their work, it wasn’t hard to imagine them in that bed ... His stomach rolled over, and he fought the image.
Can’t happen to us. We have top-of-the-line security. We have dogs, including a former K-9. We’re armed.
But the scenario where a killer beat their alarm system wasn’t impossible, and he knew it. So, instead of dwelling on the risk that came with Bree’s job, he focused on the crime in front of him—and on locating and stopping a vicious killer or killers before they could destroy more lives.
“Find any stray bullets?” He scanned the wall behind the bed but saw nothing except for a few individual blood droplets.
“Not yet. Forensics is on the way. As soon as the medical examiner is finished, we’ll get to work on this room.”
The ME had jurisdiction over the body. No one would disturb the remains until she gave the order.
Matt pivoted in a circle, scanning the room. The nightstand drawer hung open. A few small items—a pen, a pad of sticky notes, a book—had fallen to the floor. The primary bedroom was large, with a sitting area in front of a wide window. He could see into a roomy walk-in closet with a built-in organization system that looked like furniture. Clothes, shoes, and bags were strewn on the floor. Matt crossed the room and stared into the closet. “Her handbags are all open. Coat pockets have been turned out. Is the rest of the house neat or messy?”
“Very neat and organized, except for this room and the home office, which were both tossed.”
“Maybe the killer was looking for something specific.” With a gloved finger, Matt opened a skinny top drawer on the woman’s side of the closet. Inside, small, felt-lined compartments held jewelry. He gave the man’s drawers on the opposite side a cursory look and found expensive-looking cuff links. “They left valuables in the closet. This probably isn’t a burglary gone wrong.”
“Agreed.” Bree pointed to the corpses. “If the Masons surprised a burglar, they wouldn’t have already been in bed, and most burglars would have run when they realized someone was home.”
“Do we know how they got in?” he asked.
“They cut a neat hole in the patio glass door. They scoped out the place. Planned the entry. Knew what time the Masons went to bed.”
“Yep.” Matt stepped away from the closets and faced the bed again. Mr. Mason wore plaid pajama bottoms with a gray T-shirt. His mostly gray hair was thinning and cut short. He had a runner’s body, lean and wiry. His wife was dressed in a matching pajama set in a silky material. A floral robe in shades of red was draped over the foot of the bed. She was slim and had good muscle tone for her age.
A commotion in the hall caught Matt’s attention. He turned to see the ME carrying her kit through the doorway, her assistant following in her wake. Dr. Serena Jones was a tall African American woman. She wore blue scrubs and rubber clogs under protective booties.
“You’re quick to respond,” Bree said.
Dr. Jones stopped, set down her kit, and tugged on gloves. “I was working late, catching up on paperwork from that multivehicle collision the other day.” She approached the man’s side of the bed. Leaning over him, she prodded his face and manipulated his jaw. Rigor mortis, the stiffening of the muscles after death, began in roughly two hours and affected the small muscles of the face first. She lifted his shirt hem and examined his torso, paying particular attention to the skin of the back. The chest wound gaped like a screaming mouth. She used a scalpel to make a tiny slit in the torso, well away from the gunshot wound. She inserted a thermometer into the incision and took a core body temperature via the liver. Then she moved to the female’s side of the bed and repeated her examination. “They haven’t been dead very long. Facial muscles are beginning to stiffen. Lividity is also just starting to show. A body loses about 1.5 degrees every hour after death in normal conditions, but normal temperature does vary a bit between people, so considering that”—Dr. Jones tipped her head—“my initial takeaway is they’ve been dead two to three hours. And unless the autopsies reveal a big surprise, cause of death is fairly obvious: multiple gunshot wounds. Manner of death is homicide.”
Matt checked his watch—11:30 p.m. “The victims were killed between eight thirty and nine thirty p.m.”
“The sun set about seven thirty. It would have been dark by eight or so,” Bree said.
Criminals generally preferred darkness for breaking and entering.
And murdering.