Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [9]
“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