Lydia was on the bottom-had she seen the killer? No-she always made love with her eyes closed. At least she had with her husband.
Her dead lover was sprawled on top of her. Four bullets in his back, one in the back of his head. He certainly hadn’t seen the killer. Tom hadn’t seen so much blood since he’d been the first responder at a brutal Korean gang shootout in Del Paso Heights. Lydia was drenched in it. His and hers. The killer had placed a single bullet in Lydia’s head. Why? Wouldn’t he have known the bullets penetrated the man’s body?
Of course, Tom realized with sick knowledge. He had wanted to make sure Lydia was dead. Just in case.
Tom had to leave. Call for help. Do something, dammit, anything but stand here and look at his wife dead and naked in the bloody arms of another man. He was a cop, he knew to leave the scene undisturbed. But he had a burning question. He had to know who. What man had Lydia turned to because Tom wasn’t good enough? What man had slept with his wife? Did he know him? Was he a friend? Another cop?
Tom’s eyes were dry, but his throat constricted as the brutal slaying of his wife hit him. She didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve to die an adulteress.
Tom didn’t touch anything. The man’s face was turned away from the door. Barely breathing, Tom walked around the bed to look at his face. Pent-up rage ate at his gut. He would have yelled at Lydia had she been alive. He’d been prepared to confront her and her lover. Throw her out of the house. Now? Guilt and anger battled with a surreal sense that this could not be happening.
Tom stared at the dead man, one eye full of blood from the bullet behind it. But Tom recognized him-a man he’d never met personally but had seen in action in the courtroom. A prosecutor, Chase Taverton.
He turned to leave, to call in the murder, to give himself five minutes of fresh air before he told Claire her mother was dead.
Then he saw it. His personal firearm, a Smith amp; Wesson.357. On the nightstand, not in the drawer. He always stored it in the nightstand on his side of the bed.
It was on top of the nightstand, on Lydia’s side of the bed.
His gun.
His wife.
Her lover.
This wasn’t right. His gun was in the wrong place. Had someone used his gun to kill them? His feet were like lead as he stared, trying to make sense of what had happened in his bedroom.
He heard the front door slam. “Daddy?”
Claire.
He couldn’t let her see her mother like this.
He quickly left the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind him. “Claire, don’t-”
“What’s wrong?”
“We need to leave.” Get her out of the house, protect the crime scene. Protect Claire.
“Is Mom gone? What happened? What-” Tom’s little girl stared at the gun in his hand.
Fear crossed her young, pretty face. Was she afraid of him? No, not his Claire Beth. He’d walked into a nightmare.
“Claire, I came home and found her. She’s dead, honey.”
“Dead? Who? What happened?” She said the words, but confused and scared, hadn’t comprehended what he meant.
His own gun had killed his wife. The shock hit him and he realized he was in serious trouble. He didn’t want Claire to know but the truth was certain to come out.
“Claire Beth, we have to leave now. Your mother-God, I wish I didn’t have to tell you like this-she’s dead, honey. Someone killed her and Taverton. They’re both dead.”
Claire shook her head, her eyes wild, her jaw clenched in denial. “No. No! I don’t believe you!”
Tom hadn’t been holding her tightly enough and she broke free, stumbled around him, bumped against the wall, ran to the end of the hall.
Sirens sounded in the distance. A neighbor must have heard the shots and called the police. How long ago?
Tom followed his daughter, reached for her as she flung open his bedroom door. She stared.
“Claire-”
She screamed.
Tom grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to him. “We have to leave.”
“Daddy-what happened? What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Tears streamed down Claire’s cheeks. There was doubt in her blue eyes. She didn’t believe him. She didn’t believe her own father.
“I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“But-” She looked at the gun in his hand, her entire body trembling.
“I didn’t kill your mother.”
The sirens were closer. On their street. “We have to talk to the police. Tell them everything. The truth.”
Claire’s bottom lip quivered. She pushed away from him and ran from the house. Through the open front door Tom saw two patrol cars pull up. One cop-a rookie named Adam Parks-jumped out and ran to Claire, pulling her to safety behind the car, peppering the distraught girl with questions.
Tom holstered his service weapon and stepped from the house, hands in front of him, palms up. He was in uniform of course. He was on duty. Parks looked at him quizzically. “O’Brien?”
“This is my house,” Tom said. “There’re two dead bodies in the bedroom. I didn’t touch anything.” Not that it would matter, Tom thought. It was his house, his gun, his wife in bed with another man.
He knew what the crime scene looked like. He knew what these cops would think as soon as they saw the naked bodies.
Worse, he knew what Claire thought. How could he convince her he’d never hurt her mother?
Parks and another cop-Reynolds-went in and searched the house, came out, and said, “Detectives are on their way, and the chief of police.”
Tom nodded.
“What happened?” Reynolds asked quietly. “You came home for lunch and found your wife in bed with another man? Just lost it?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“It’s just you and me, Tom.”
Tom turned. He wasn’t going to answer any questions. He knew better than to talk without an attorney.
Seventy-two hours later he was arrested on two counts of murder.
THREE
When Mitch Bianchi trained in underwater forensics, he thought he’d find something he was not only good at, but enjoyed.
He was very wrong, at least on the latter point. He was good at it-combining his love and skill of diving with his innate law enforcement savvy. But recovering floaters was the worst job in the Bureau, even worse than his work identifying remains in the mass graves in Kosovo early in his FBI career.
But skill trumped desire every time in the Bureau, and this time Mitch had a stake in the investigation. If Oliver Maddox was dead, it gave Mitch one more direction to turn in his private investigation into the murders of Lydia O’Brien and Chase Taverton.
“You’re quiet this morning,” Steve Donovan said as he turned onto River Road heading toward Isleton, where Maddox’s white Explorer had been found in the river. According to the sheriff’s diver, the victim in the driver’s seat had been there for a while. Four months? Possible. And it would confirm Mitch’s suspicion that Oliver Maddox had found out something that made someone nervous enough to kill. Again.