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That was one of the things I loved most about Jack. Deep down he believed in right and wrong, and that good would always triumph over evil. He’d been in the trenches, first in the military and then during his time on the SWAT team, and nothing he’d seen or experienced had clouded his views. Maybe that’s why I’d had such a hard time believing he could really love me. I’d always lived by shades of grey. And maybe I thought he’d eventually get tired of trying to make me the good guy.
Jack drove through a Burger King and ordered us a couple of burgers and something to drink other than coffee. I was feeling a little twitchy, and I realized I’d been living on caffeine since coming back to Bloody Mary. I was feeling full and ready for a nap by the time we parked in front of Doc Randall’s house.
I noticed his lawn was looking a little scruffy and most of the plants in his flowerbeds had long since died. A black Volvo sat in the driveway, and I heard the TV blaring from the front porch.
“Doc Randall,” Jack called out as he banged on the door, pitching his voice louder to compete with the television. “It’s Sheriff Lawson and Doctor Graves.”
We stood there for a few minutes and waited, but no one came to the door.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I said, stepping into the flowerbed so I could look through a window. I peeked into the kitchen and saw an uneaten bowl of soggy cereal and a newspaper on the kitchen table. A half pot of coffee was on the kitchen counter, but there was no sign of Doc Randall.
I described the scene to Jack and we walked back to his cruiser to grab some gloves. Jack looked up as a car passed by, and he waved to Leroy Gherkin. Church had let out, and in a few minutes the street would be busy with traffic as people made their way home to Sunday pot roast. I tossed my coat in the backseat because the temperature was warming up, and also because if we stumbled across a crime scene I wouldn’t have to worry about dragging the coat through blood. I stuck my Beretta in my pants at the small of my back.
“Let’s do this quick,” Jack said as we both put on gloves. “We’ll check it out from the back door.”
Jack’s hand was on his weapon as we made our way behind the house. The backyard wasn’t in any better shape than the front, and it was soggy from the rain.
“Ah, hell,” Jack said. “The grass is tamped down back here. Got a few partial footprints. No blood that I can see though.”
We stepped wide around them, and Jack boosted me up and onto the cement stoop before he jumped across. The storm door was cracked and Jack grabbed the handle to open it wider. When he brought his hand away to knock, I noticed the small smear of blood.
“Jack,” I said, catching his arm. He opened the palm of his hand and there it was—a brownish-red stain against the blue of his glove.
“Shit,” he said, pulling his weapon from the holster. “Stay back.”
“Like hell,” I said, my little Beretta already in my hand. “I’m with you.”
Jack glared at me so the molten chocolate of his eyes darkened to black, and his mouth pinched in a straight line. I could tell he was fighting for control of his temper, and I could tell he was going through the entire argument we’d have in his head before he ever spoke a word. Jack was good about thinking first before he ever opened his mouth. I still needed work in that area.
He must have come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to budge because he said, “Fine. But stay behind me, and for God’s sake don’t shoot me.”
I listened to him mumble something under his breath about unreasonable women, but I blanked it out as his hand turned the doorknob and it opened easily. He pushed it open and we didn’t have to go very far to see we were too late. Death had happened here, and with it came a smell that couldn’t be attributed to anything else.
We stepped carefully around small dots of blood and into a living room crowded with comfortable furniture worn with age. It had the look of a house that had gone too long without a woman’s touch. A thin layer of dust coated dozens of picture frames and knick-knacks, and old newspapers cluttered the coffee table. The house was cut up into several rooms, so it was impossible to stand in one place and see anywhere else.
Jack locked the back door behind us, and I followed behind him as we made a quick circuit of the first floor and then took the stairs to look in the three bedrooms on the second floor. There was no sign of Doc Randall.
Jack holstered his weapon, and I put the safety back on and stuck it back in my pants. We’d seen all we needed to see in the tiny office off the main living room.
“It’s like they lined him up for a firing squad,” I said, looking at the white wall smeared with blood. “At least two of the bullets exited the body and are embedded in the wall. There’ll be flesh embedded with it. Of course, it’s going to be hard to match it with anything considering we don’t have a body.”
Doc Randall’s office was Spartan. A wooden desk was shoved against the wall, but there wasn’t a computer or any papers on the surface. There was a lone bookshelf filled with worn paperbacks and a metal file cabinet.
Doc Randall had been shot standing against the wall. At least I assumed it was Doc Randall. It was easy to see from the blood pattern how the body would have staggered back as the bullets tore through flesh. I could see it clearly in my mind. A frail man slammed back by the shock of the metal ripping into his chest, and then sliding down to the floor in a heap, leaving a smear of blood behind that looked like one of those modern paintings people paid too much money for.
“They hit something vital,” I said, taking a swab of the blood and sealing it in a bag. “There’s too much blood, and you can see the arterial spray there against the adjacent wall and on the carpet.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“If he didn’t have immediate medical attention, then yeah. Even if he’d had immediate attention, his chances wouldn’t have been good.”
“What do you want to bet the murder weapon was a .22? Vaughn had two guns in that safe.”
I sighed. “No bet. I don’t like the game they’re playing.”
“There wasn’t any sign of breaking and entering at the front door or the back,” Jack said.
“He let them in,” I said, nodding.
