CHAPTER ONE #2
“Then why leave the paper there? Why print his own name on the envelope?” Connor said.
“And why come here with a deer in the back like you had unfinished business? Warren would never let a good hunt go to waste. He’d have dressed that deer first and then done this, and even then, he was too stubborn to harm himself. ”
“The angle does seem off,” Matt observed. “It’s possible someone shot him and then hoped we’d think it was a suicide. The blank page is strange. Unless he was playing Junior Spy and used disappearing ink.”
Connor gave him a stern look. “This isn’t the morning for cute, Price.”
Matt lifted both hands.
“But you do agree it’s suspicious?” Connor asked.
Matt moved around the table slowly. “Dr. Blethan will need to examine the trajectory properly. But from what I can see, the angle and placement could be consistent with someone shooting him from the side as he turned to look at them. Entry point’s unusual for self-inflicted.
Not impossible. Just wrong enough that I wouldn’t call it a suicide just yet. ”
“The gun seems a bit far, too?”
"That's possible." Matt glanced toward the revolver. "Bodies can convulse even after a gunshot to the head. He could have thrown it over there. But still, given the angle, it's certainly not cut and dried."
Connor swallowed. “Warren wouldn’t do this. This is a murder. I know it.”
“It sure could be,” Matt said. “But I don’t think we’ll know until later. Warren could have decided he’d had enough and…”
“No,” Connor snapped. “I know what’s going on.”
Connor could feel it. A horror. An anger filling up inside of him that, if he wasn't careful, could consume him.
It had always been there. Ever since he was a kid, in some way, becoming Sheriff was a way to quell that anger; to make him more congenial to the world.
But deep down, he knew. It only took the wrong thing to release that type of rage.
And this was one of those things.
Can I be objective? He thought. It was an impossibility. Some lawmen were perfect. Connor always tried to be a good man. But perfection was never on the cards for him. The edge was always there.
Connor looked at Warren’s hand. Dirt under the nails. A small cut across one knuckle. No wedding band. Warren’s personal life had never been simple. In Harlan County, people remembered enough of it to talk and forgot enough of it to get the details wrong.
“I’m sorry this happened to you, Warren,” Connor whispered.
The words made the lodge feel smaller.
Arnold looked toward the windows. “Who’d want Warren dead?”
“Half the county on a bad day,” Matt said.
Connor shot him a look.
Matt didn’t apologize. “He wasn’t always the jolliest, put that way. And a real estate guy? Dealing in land is just asking for trouble”
Connor said, “Warren was kinder than you know. He was just… Set in his ways, that’s all. He didn’t deserve this.”
“I never said he did,” Matt said.
Connor turned toward the wall where the revolver lay. “What caliber?”
“Looks like a .38,” Matt said. “I’ll know once we process it.”
“Prints?”
“Can’t say yet. The grip looks clean from my initial inspection of the gun on the ground, but like I say, we need more analysis.”
“Clean as in no blood?”
“Yeah.”
“Could it have been wiped?”
Matt gave him a pointed look. “Maybe.”
The place bothered Connor. Not in the same way St. Bartholomew’s had bothered him when he found a woman murdered in its tower months back.
This had no ritual dressing. No theatrical cruelty.
But the care was there in a different form.
The envelope. Warren being seated. The choice of a lodge tied to old hunting stories, old pride, old memory.
Connor had heard Warren talk about it before.
Hell, they’d gone on a couple of hunting trips together and used it themselves.
It was important to him because his dad used it.
Connor could feel it in his bones. Someone else had done this.
Somebody had known Warren would come here. Had he been lured?
“Do we have Warren’s phone?” Connor asked.
“Yeah,” Matt answered. “It was in his front pocket.”
“Process it, see if he took any calls or messages lately. It’s possible he was meeting someone here.”
Matt nodded.
“Have you done a sweep for footprints?” Connor asked.
“That’s the one thing that looks most suspect,” Matt said.
“Why?” Arnold asked.
"I looked for footprints. The only ones I found I'd bet were Tom Reeder's, and yours, Arnold, when you answered the call to come here.
" Matt leaned down and, with gloved hands, moved Warren's lifeless right foot.
He took out a small flashlight and shone on the boot.
"That's a heavy boot. Warren had big feet.
There were very few prints like that. Given the amount of dirt and dust that gets trampled through here, there should have been many more, but I haven't found any.
And there were scuffed marks in the dust, horizontal lines as far as I can tell. "
Connor felt his blood run cold. “So someone swept the floor clean before Tom Reeder found the body.”
“Definitely possible,” Matt answered.
“Did you check for tire marks or footprints in the mud outside?”
Matt shrugged. “Afraid the ground’s too dry. It doesn’t hold much of a print at the moment. I can do a second pass, but I doubt anything will show up.”
Connor looked toward the kitchen doorway, perfectly angled from where Warren was lying.
The killer could have come from there, maybe. Waited out of sight while Warren opened the envelope. Stood close enough to fire once and finish it.
After the Nolan Pruitt murders, one body had a different meaning in Harlan. People had learned how quickly one murder could become two, then three. The county had not recovered from that shock.
Warren Holt was one homicide. Maybe that was all.
Or maybe that was the lie people told themselves before the next body came.
Connor stared at the blank sheet of paper again. What did it mean?
Warren's cold, dead face stared sideways. Connor had to find his killer. And to do that, to give himself the best chance, he had to admit that he was no homicide detective. Worse, he did not know if he could trust himself looking into the murder of someone he liked.
“I wonder if we’re going to need outside help for this.”
Matt looked up from the floor. “For one homicide, Sheriff?”
“Yeah. A second set of eyes wouldn’t hurt. I’m no expert in murder. We should bring one in to take a look.”
A grin moved across Matt’s face, slow and aggravating. “Like an FBI agent?”
Arnold’s expression changed at once. “I see where you’re going with this, Price. I totally agree.”
Connor looked between them. “It’s not like that.”
Matt straightened. “Didn’t say it was.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Arnold scratched the side of his neck and tried to hide a smile. “Nobody’s saying anything. It would just be good to get her here to help, wouldn’t it? She helped a lot last time. We’re not thinking anything bad about the idea, Sheriff.”
“You’re both thinking plenty.”
Matt raised the camera again. “That’s allowed. Thinking hasn’t been banned in Harlan County yet.”
Connor exhaled through his nose. “After the Nolan Pruitt murders, the community’s still shaken. We get outside help early, we tie this up quickly before people start worrying bodies are going to pile up again.”
Matt’s grin lingered. “Fair enough, if that’s your motivation.”
“It is. Besides, it needn’t be her… It could be anyone from the FBI.”
“Sure.”
“Matt.”
The grin faded to something closer to professionalism, though not all the way. “I’ll send everything over to Dr. Blethan. Photos, scene notes, preliminary measurements. Ballistics once the weapon’s processed.”
“Good.”
Connor took one final look at Warren. At his friend. A flash of Warren laughing, one hand holding a bourbon, the other a hand of cards came to him. He’d never see that grin again. No one would.
Connor stepped out of the dining room and moved through the front room toward the porch. Behind him, Matt’s camera clicked again. Arnold stayed inside, speaking quietly into his radio to Cheryl about getting the body moved.
Outside, sunlight had climbed higher over the trees. Warren’s truck sat nearby with the deer still tied in the bed. Flies had gathered now in a restless black cluster along the wound. The eye had begun to turn a cold milky color.
Connor paused at the porch rail.
From here, the woods rolled away in every direction. Harlan County looked peaceful if a man didn’t know better. Green slopes. Birdsong. Tracks cut through dirt by people who believed no one else noticed where they went. He’d get Matt to do a sweep of the soil and grass around the place.
What should he do next? Uncertainty was beginning to build in his gut.
Connor took out his phone.
For a moment, his thumb hovered over the contacts.
Selena had been in his phone once under a name he couldn’t bear to delete and couldn’t bear to see. When she came back for the Pruitt case, he had entered the number again under her full name, as if the formality could protect him from what it meant.
Selena Raven.
The contact waited on the screen.
Connor looked back at the lodge. At the men inside. At the dead man at the table.
Then he scrolled past Selena’s name.
This needed to be official. No personal call dressed up as police work. No excuse to hear her voice and pretend the case had required it.
He found another contact.
Meg Calloway.
Selena’s boss. The woman who had sent Selena home to Harlan once and, as far as Connor could tell, cared about her enough to do it again.
Connor pressed dial.
The line rang twice.
A receptionist answered with clipped efficiency. “Section Chief Calloway’s office.”
Connor watched a fly circle the bed of Warren’s truck, then land.
“Hello,” he said. “This is Sheriff Connor Chase from Harlan County. Can I speak with Meg Calloway, please? It’s urgent.”