Page 172 of Taken Away

Sheriff Burke Scott stood at the front of the room, a crime-scene photo pinned to the dry-erase board behind him.

Luke Hale, Scout Wilson, and Sara Parker sat around the scarred laminate table, notebooks open.

“It wasn’t a burglary,” Burke said, looking from one deputy to the next.

Silence settled over the room.

“Bennett filled in a few blanks this morning. Mabel wasn’t obsessive about locking the house. Sometimes she did. Sometimes she didn’t. People came and went around that property all day long. Employees. Vendors. Neighbors. She trusted the people around her.”

He tapped the photograph with the end of his marker.

“She figured she had all the security she needed.”

Scout frowned.

“Moose.”

Burke nodded.

“Exactly.”

A few heads turned as Ruger, stretched out beside Baker’s chair in the corner of the room, lifted his head before settling back onto his paws.

Burke glanced down at the German Shepherd.

"People hear 'guard dog' and assume every dog reacts the same."

He shook his head.

"They don't."

He scratched behind Ruger’s ear absentmindedly.

“Ruger here is a trained police K-9. If I tell him someone is a threat, he’ll put himself between me and danger without hesitation.”

His gaze shifted back to the room.

“Moose wasn’t trained like that. He protected Mabel because he loved her.”

The room grew quiet.

“If somebody wanted Mabel Blackwood dead, the first thing they had to do was separate her from the one thing in that house willing to die protecting her.”

Luke leaned forward.

“You think they locked him outside?”

“Maybe.”

Burke shrugged.

“Maybe they called him outside. Maybe they shut the door behind him. Maybe they distracted him long enough to get upstairs.”

He paused.

“I don’t know.”

His eyes hardened.