AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It looked as though Joe had stepped inside, closed the door, and shot his brother, then himself. A murder-suicide. Simple and not really unusual. It happened, too damned often. But that wasn’t what had happened here.
“Looks to me like ole Joe finally had enough of Jaime stealing his women. ” Gene sighed and shook his head. “Those boys never did amount to much despite Calvin Walker tryin’ to send them through school. They graduated but never did do much else, did they?”
Zeke held his tongue there. He didn’t know what Calvin Walker had done for his distant cousins any more than he knew why the hell he left his daughter, Rogue, to suffer in that damned bar outside of town. It wasn’t any of his business, either, Zeke told himself, other than asking the necessary questions to close this case.
He stared around again and shook his head. Hell, Joe and Jaime had been tight.
Fraternal twins rather than identical, but still, damned close in looks and with each other. The girls loved them. Young, old, or married, it didn’t make a difference. The Walker twins were laid-back, easygoing, laughing, and as thick as thieves. Poke at one brother and you might as well poke at the other. And yes, they were known to fight over their women, but never in a serious way.
This just didn’t make sense.
“Forensics is pulling up, coroner is behind him. Looks like the new chief of police is here to oversee how you’re usin’ his boys,” Gene announced mockingly as Zeke stepped toward the open door and moved to the rickety front porch before heading toward the driveway.
Alex Jansen pulled in behind the forensic team and the coroner. The new chief of police was ex-military and damned sharp.
Zeke held up his hand, stopping the forensic team as Alex strode toward him. There was still the slightest limp in Alex’s stride from a wound received during a mission in the Special Forces before he took over the job of chief of police, but the limp was growing less noticeable.
Dressed in a short-sleeved dark blue shirt, jeans, and boots, Alex looked like exactly what he was. An animal prowling in a man’s body.
“Zeke. ” Alex extended his hand, his gray eyes concerned. “We got problems out here?”
“Seems I might have. ” Zeke pushed his hat back on his head as he stared around the sunlit meadow the Walker mobile home sat within. “Walk in here with me. I need another set of eyes. We go as far as the door and that should be enough to keep from messing up your boys’ area. ”
Alex nodded and followed behind him as Zeke led the way back to the trailer and then stood aside as Alex stepped into the doorway. Zeke didn’t talk. Instead, he stood by the doorway, staring at the scene again.
“Immaculate,” Alex murmured, and Zeke knew Alex wasn’t talking about the state of the habitation but rather the scene of the death itself. “No apparent hesitation on the shooter’s part. Walked in, aimed, and shot. Jaime didn’t fight, and neither did Joe. ” He turned to Zeke
. “Any sign of drugs?”
Zeke shrugged. “I’m leaving that call up to your boys and the coroner. I’m ordering an autopsy just to be sure. The rest. ” He just shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right, Alex. ”
Alex stared around again, his arms crossing over his chest, eyes narrowed. “No,” he finally said slowly, carefully. “It doesn’t feel right, but sometimes, it doesn’t. ”
And there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it, either, Zeke finished silently. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had died in this county and the answers weren’t there, and it wouldn’t be the last. But this one was closer, it was more personal, despite the distance he tried to keep between himself and Rogue Walker, cousin to the two dead twins.
He moved back as Alex stepped outside and stared around the overgrown clearing. The Walkers’ home sat in a small valley surrounded by oak, pine, elm, and dogwood. It was the end of April and spring was making itself known with a vengeance. It was already seventy, the sun beating down with blazing strength and heating the land around them.
“Let’s get out of the way then. ” Alex sighed as they moved from the porch. “Forensics will do their job, see if they can get any answers for you. ”
Zeke almost breathed a sigh of relief. Alex’s predecessor would cry and moan for weeks when he had to loan out the forensics team to the county.
“Thanks for the loan, Alex,” he stated, watching his own words, his own responses.
Alex knew the same thing Zeke did. This was a murder, straight and simple, committed by a particular man, in a very particular manner.
“Need any help with this?” Alex asked as they moved back to the parked vehicles.
Zeke shook his head, aware of Gene trailing them now.
“Not yet. I’ll keep you up-to-date on it though. Gene said there was rumor the boys were fighting at the bar the other night. I’ll head out there later and talk to Rogue. ”
Alex paused and stared back at Zeke, amusement suddenly gleaming in his eyes. “She’s helping Janey at the restaurant,” he informed Zeke then. “Haven’t you been picking her up lately?”
Zeke lifted his hand and rubbed at the back of his neck. Rogue was a sore spot with him; it was one of the reasons he hated finding Joe and Jaime as he had. Those boys were favorites of hers, and damned if someone wasn’t going to start wondering if Zeke was spending precious county money because of the rumors that were drifting through town that the sheriff and the bar owner were sniffing around each other.
“Not lately,” he finally admitted. “The warmer nights, she’s been riding her Harley in. ”
That didn’t mean he didn’t check up on the leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding hellion as often as he found time to do so.
