“Mike?”
She knew he was dead before she reached him. A bullet hole in his right temple, blood saturating the chair’s back. A handgun in his lap, near his bandaged right hand. No decomposition noticeable. She thought of a hunter’s phrase . . . fresh kill.
Mattie drew her weapon. Holding it ready, she strained to listen, wanting to hear any movement, any rustle of sound that could tell her if she was alone or not.
The place sounded dead. Cautiously scanning the room, she checked for a pulse at Mike’s neck. Nothing. She’d known he was dead, but she had to check. Using standard operating procedure, she raised her weapon in both hands and slipped quickly toward an open doorway that led to the next room.
The kitchen was awfuclass="underline" food-encrusted dishes were piled on counters and the floor and appliances were covered with years of grime. From there, she cleared two bedrooms and a bath, finding no one.
Once again in the kitchen, her eyes swept the countertop but were riveted by what she spotted toward the back, halfway behind a stack of dirty dishes.
A box of rodent poison.
Moving into the living room, Mattie stared at the dead man and felt a moment of regret. Son of a bitch. Her gut told her this was the man who tried to poison her dog . . . and she’d never have the pleasure of kicking his ass.
Chapter 14
In the dim evening light, red-and-blue strobes circled from atop three Timber Creek County Sheriff cruisers, throwing a cyclical colored wash on the log walls of the Chadron house. Yellow tape enclosed the crime scene. Despite seven years of police service, the effect still gave Mattie an eerie feeling. She approached from down the street where she’d been knocking on doors, asking neighbors if they’d heard or seen anything unusual that day. Everyone she’d turned up had denied it. Homes were thinly scattered on this edge of town, so it could be possible.
Detective LoSasso arrived in her silver Honda. After parking her car, LoSasso strode up to Mattie, face rigid with anger, an icy glint in her blue eyes. “What made you decide to come over here tonight?”
“I learned that our dog victim had salmonella, and I knew Chadron cooked at the restaurant that was shut down yesterday because of the same illness. I thought he might be incapacitated or sick. I did a welfare check.”
“And you didn’t think of calling me first?”
The question surprised her. “I knew you’d gone home for the night. There’d be no reason to call you before doing a welfare check.”
Sheriff McCoy came up to join them. LoSasso narrowed her eyes and stared at Mattie. “We’ll talk later.”
“Thanks for coming back, Detective,” said McCoy. “From the looks of things, we’ve got a suicide on our hands. I’m eager to see what you think.”
Still giving Mattie a hard stare, LoSasso paused. She turned away without speaking and walked toward the house with McCoy. Mattie followed behind, keeping her distance. She’d let the detective have a few minutes in the house before requesting what she’d been wanting to do ever since she found the body: sweep the area with Robo.
Inside, LoSasso appeared to take in the scene. Doctor McGinnis, who also acted as Timber Creek’s coroner, stood near the body.
“Good,” the doctor said in lieu of greeting. “You’re finally here. I’d like to get this body transported as soon as possible, but Sheriff McCoy wouldn’t let me move it until you’d seen it.”
Mattie noticed that LoSasso stiffened. The detective had driven more than one hundred miles this evening just to go home and then turned around and drove back to Timber Creek. The delay was not her fault.
“Simply following protocol,” McCoy said. He introduced the doctor to the detective.
Silent, LoSasso squatted down next to the corpse and studied it. The odor assailed Mattie, and now she recognized it for what it was: a cross between raw meat and the ironlike taint of blood.
“Cause of death is a gunshot wound to the head. Time of death, according to degree of rigor mortis, I’d guess two to six hours ago,” McGinnis said.
LoSasso glanced at him. “Can you tell me something I don’t know, Doc?”
McGinnis looked offended. “I’ll leave that up to the medical examiner, Detective. That’s why I want to transport the body as soon as possible.”
“Is the CSU done with taking pictures?” LoSasso stood to take latex gloves from her pants pocket.
“Yes,” McCoy said. “They got here about a half hour ago.”
“Then let’s start bagging this evidence.” She picked up the handgun with gloved fingers, handling it delicately. “We’ve got a neat little Walther P22 here, semiautomatic, uses the same caliber ammo as the casing Robo found.”
She bagged the handgun and then lightly touched a bandage on the dead man’s hand. “Would you help me take a look at this, Doc?”
Dr. McGinnis moved forward, gloving up once again. “If you’ll just step aside a moment, Detective,” he said, and he began unwrapping the bandage.
The wound that he uncovered looked nasty, the fleshy part of the hand torn and bruised and bearing two obvious puncture marks that even Mattie could see.
“Looks like a dog bite,” McGinnis murmured.
“Um-hmm,” Stella said, meeting Mattie’s gaze.
Mattie wondered if this was how Belle had gotten away after being force-fed balloons filled with cocaine. “I’d like to go get Robo now if it’s all right with you, Sheriff.”
Attention fixed on the dead man, McCoy agreed, allowing Mattie to leave the house and return to her cruiser. On the way out, she met Brody.
“What were you doing here, Cobb?”
“Welfare check.”
“What made you think a welfare check was needed?”
Although he used a combative tone, she reined in her temper and told him about the salmonella concern. “And by the way, Chadron’s door was open. Was it that way when you checked this morning?”
He frowned. “No, it was not. He must’ve come home tonight.”
“Must have. Now, the sheriff wants me to go get Robo to do a drug sweep here, so I’d better go do it.”
“Did any of the neighbors see anything?”
“I couldn’t find anyone who’d seen or heard anything, but not everyone was home. We might have to check that again tomorrow.”
“I’d think it would have been called in if someone heard a gunshot,” Brody said.
“People still take potshots at coyotes and skunks over here on the edge of town.”
“Okay,” he said, waving her off. “Go on, now.”
As she drove down the street to get Robo, Mattie thought about Chadron trying to poison him. She assumed he’d been planning it for a while, possibly even before Grace’s death. She realized how easy it must’ve been for him to scope it all out, since he lived so close to her.
Robo met her at the door with his usual exuberance, loading up quickly when she told him he was going to work. Back at the crime scene, she left him in the car until the detective told her to bring him in. Using the same approach she’d used to sweep the cabin, it took Mattie the better part of an hour to sweep the house. Robo alerted twice, once at the kitchen cabinet under the sink and once at the living room sofa. In both instances, they found what appeared to be a packet of cocaine.
By the time Mattie finished, things were wrapping up. Brody had searched the outside premises and found Mike’s truck parked inside an old shed, but the dog trailer and dogs were still missing. The CSU had gleaned all they could from the scene and had left. After putting Robo in the car, she went to make sure it was all right with the sheriff if she clocked out.