Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [8]
Tom inserted his key, but locked instead of unlocked the door. Claire hadn’t said whether she’d gone into the house, only that she recognized the man’s car. Why would the door be unlocked? Had Claire seen more than she wanted to admit?
Tom turned the key again and went inside, knowing instantly that something was very wrong.
He reached for his gun, its weight comforting as fear-laced adrenaline rushed through his veins. It was the acrid smell—not of sex, but of death. Blood mixed with the lingering scent of gunpowder.
His rubber-soled boots made no sound on the worn wood floor of the narrow hall. The mirror over the living room mantel reflected his profile—hard, chiseled, tough. A cop. If he dared look at his eyes, they would have been a wild, fearful blue.
Every door was closed. The bathroom. Claire’s room. The linen closet. The small guest room that Lydia used as an office. And the door at the end of the hall. Their bedroom.
Not closed, he noticed while approaching, but ajar. Pushing it open with his shoulder, Tom stepped over the threshold.
The queen-size bed, lit by the midafternoon sun oddly filtering through the half-closed blinds, was in disarray from a rowdy session of sex. Both victims were naked, the male lying facedown on top of the female. Both bloody, the attack so quick and efficient that the male victim didn’t have time even to think about a defense.
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 & 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