If I Should Die_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [43]
Tim leaned forward from his chair at the table across the room. “Deputy, my guests could have been killed. This has all gotten out of control.”
“There’s nothing that tells me there’s a connection between the guy with the rifle and the vandalism you’ve been having,” Weddle said. “For all you know it could have been a hunter and he didn’t even know you were there.”
“That doesn’t explain the note,” Tim said.
Lucy glanced at Sean. He sat on the couch watching the deputy with a deceptively casual expression. He’d been so angry after finding the sniper’s note in their truck, and uncharacteristically silent after Weddle arrived. She forced herself to stop pacing, but she couldn’t sit.
“I’ll take it to the sheriff and see what he thinks,” Weddle said, “but at this point, we have more important issues to discuss, such as interfering with my investigation.”
“What investigation?” she snapped, unable to keep the sarcasm from her tone.
They’d decided not to mention she’d picked up three of the maggots they’d found. She felt uncomfortable keeping the information from a cop, but he hadn’t taken her seriously, and she didn’t trust him. His attitude today told her they’d made the right choice. She’d already packaged up the bugs to ship to a lab once she figured out exactly where to send them for the fastest, most accurate analysis.
“There were strands of hair on the rock,” Lucy continued, “and the maggots I’d seen in the woman’s mouth were in the tunnel opening, right where the cart had been. It’s pretty clear someone used the cart to move the body.”
Weddle looked ill as she spoke, and Lucy was silently pleased. Childish, perhaps, but this cop wasn’t making anything easy. She’d been around law enforcement officers her entire life and expected them to do the job; most did. Weddle was one of the few who seemed both clueless and incompetent.
“I ran you both. You live in Washington, D.C., not Boston,” Weddle said.
Lucy frowned. “Boston? We never said we lived in Boston.”
“You said you were friends of Tim Hendrickson from Boston.”
“You know what they say about ‘assume,’ ” Sean spoke up for the first time.
Weddle didn’t get the insult. He continued. “And you, Rogan, should have told me you’re a licensed private investigator. You’re just on vacation?”
“Yes,” Sean said curtly. “When we found out about the vandalism, we told Tim we’d help him get to the bottom of the situation.”
“And found a dead body.” His voice dripped with sarcasm.
Lucy exclaimed, “The body was there! I told you there is evidence, but it needs to be collected immediately to avoid any more degradation. The larvae need to be collected as soon as possible and sent to a lab. They’ll be able to dissect them and detect human DNA, to prove that they grew inside a dead body, and possibly yield enough DNA evidence to identify the victim.”
“Ms. Kincaid, I appreciate your diligence, but you need to leave this investigation to us. You tampered with evidence by returning to the mine. We may be a small county, but we’re not hicks and we know what we’re doing. You should have told me you worked at a morgue.”
She had left her position three months before, but evidently her official records hadn’t caught up with her status. She didn’t correct him, but said instead, “Then you should believe me. And the fact that someone shot at us—they may have been trying to scare us away so they could destroy that evidence!”
“Which you’ve given them ample time to do since you breached the crime scene.”
“Now you’re calling it a crime scene?” She began to pace again. She hated confrontation, but couldn’t seem to stop her anger from spilling out. “You’re missing the point! Someone shot at us! I don’t know if it’s related to the dead body or the vandalism, but I don’t like being shot at.”
“That wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t go back to the mine,” Weddle snapped.
Lucy clenched her fists, and Sean rose from the couch and put his hand on her arm, halting her movement. Usually she was the one who tried to calm Sean down.
“Deputy,”