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“Yo, it’s not locked,” he said lowly.
That surprised me. This guy lived in the middle of nowhere, which was even more reason to lock his damn door.
Not to mention the people he was involved with. My father, for instance.
“Go quietly.”
He nodded, turning the doorknob slowly. There was a faint squeak, muffled by the TV. We stepped into a round mudroom, able to see all the way down a hall leading to where the sound was coming from.
Callum took the lead. I shut the door and followed behind him, scanning the kitchen and dining area off to our left. Everything had a well-polished vintage look to it. You could tell that whoever lived here had done well for themselves. Well enough that they wouldn’t forget to lock up at night. I knew something wasn’t right. My lifestyle gave me a certain awareness of things and shit being off was one of them.
At the end of the hall the space expanded into a living area and the staircase that led upstairs.
As per usual, my instincts didn’t disappoint.
“Oh, this fucking sucks. He’s already dead.” Callum lowered his gun and walked around to the front of the sofa, nudging Martin’s body with his boot. I knew he was genuinely disappointed. Callum lived for the kill, whereas I did it as a necessary part of my job. He had a thing for taking lives. Giving him the opportunity to make a mess of someone was like telling a kid Christmas had come early.
I went to stand beside him, studying Martin’s lopsided corpse. He had already gone stiff, which meant he’d been dead a couple of hours.
“Man, look at him,” Callum laughed.
“He definitely pissed someone off,” I agreed. “Someone other than my father.”
I noted the bruising on his throat and the blood splattered all over what had once been a beige sofa.
“What are you thinking?” Callum asked.
I took another look at Martin’s face. Both sides were swollen and damn near disfigured. His left cheek had been split open entirely, leaving a gaping gash. And his head. The upper temple had been smashed in, exposing a piece of his skull.
Stepping backward, I turned slowly so that I could take in the room. “There.” I pointed to a bag of golf clubs that were propped against the side of an entertainment center.
“Set of twelve,” Callum stated.
“Exactly. And as you see there’s only eleven.” I gestured towards the front door. “That’s not locked either. No sign of a struggle. Whoever got here before us, he knew em. Trusted them enough to let them in his house and not expect to be killed.”
“Who, though? Look at him, bro.”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
“Well, someone it was clearly someone that wasn’t happy with Mr. Reedsy. Wife maybe? She’s obviously not here.”
The person responsible for this made sure he felt death breathing down the back of his neck. Bashing his head was how the suffering ended, not how it began. The way he’d been beaten guaranteed internal bleeding. As he bled out externally, he would have begun to lose oxygen, at the same time his lungs filling with blood.
I glanced at a picture of him and his wife hanging on the wall and shook my head. “Nah, not her. She’s either dead upstairs somewhere or hasn’t been home yet, for whatever reason. Legacy Falls is a small town, we’ll figure it out. In the meantime, look for a laptop and some kind of flash drive. Let’s try not to be here when wifey comes home.”
Callum took upstairs, I took down.
Ten minutes into searching I found an office that ran off the dining room. Sitting right out in the open on what I assumed was Martin’s desk, was a laptop.
A few quick keystrokes confirmed it was password protected. Since hacking was Tripp’s area of expertise digging through it would have to wait. I crouched and unplugged its power cord, pausing when I heard the engine of a car coming up the driveway.
I pushed down the face of the screen and moved back towards the kitchen. The sound of a door slamming shut had me pressing my back against the wall.
Callum’s boots thudded against the stairs, him returning to the living room.
When I heard someone enter the same way we had, I knew Mrs. Reedsy had finally arrived. She breezed right past the dining room, not so much as glancing inside. I suppose I couldn’t fault her for that. Not too many people expected strangers to be inside their home. She was dragging a suitcase behind her, which explained why she’d been gone long enough for her husband to turn into a statue of rigor mortis.
Her scream cut off Callum’s casual greeting. Seeing Martin’s disfigured form, and my cousin waiting on the stairs sent her running in the direction she’d come from, abandoning her suitcase. Brown eyes damn near popped out of their sockets when I moved from the dining room to block her path.
