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Of course, she didn’t think that Branson had offed the girl because she spiked his drink, but she was still going to have to question him all the same. Riley let her sound it out as he washed her and then himself, and it was only after she was dressed herself that Celia realized he too had thrown on a pair of jeans and a sweater to combat the night air.
“Where are you going? You don’t need to come with me.”
“Are you crazy? It’s dark out there, and there are hardly any streetlights in this town.”
“Try none.”
“Exactly!” Riley grabbed his keys from the nightstand and shoved his feet into a pair of boots.
“But Riley...” She was about to tell him she didn’t need a babysitter, but he cut her off.
“You want to argue or get to work? Your choice.”
“You do know I’m going to have to be there for a while, right. What do you plan to do? Just hang around the station until I’m done?”
“No, I’m going to follow you into work, make sure you get there safe, and then head back home.”
Celia knew she wasn’t about to win this one, so she gave up and grabbed her purse, and jogged down the stairs behind him. In the SUV, she called Pete on the way and tried not to speed her way into town with Riley on her ass. She made it to the inn and waved him off before heading inside.
She could hear the din of voices coming from the second floor of the two-hundred-year-old building that was left pretty much in its original condition with a few repairs over the years but had remained pretty much the same structure. She’d admired the place when she first moved into town and had stayed here for a couple of nights while the little house she’d rented had been made ready. The old-world charm kind of reminded her of Riley’s farm and fit in well with the general ambiance of the picturesque town.
She saw Branson lingering in the hallway outside a room door while a middle-aged woman sat on the floor rocking back and forth, sniffling. “What have you got for me, Branson?”
“Right, I was in my room down the hall when I heard the screams. I came out and found her, the proprietor’s wife wailing in the hallway. She couldn’t talk, could only point into the room. I barely stepped inside, and that’s when I saw her, Bridgette, with a gaping wound to her neck and blood everywhere. I checked for a pulse; I had to, it’s the job, even though it was obvious that she was gone. The body was still warm, though, so it’s a fresh kill.”
Branson sighed at the remembered sight and carried on. He’d seen more than his fair share of murders in his day, but it never gets easier. He had his moments in the last few hours where he wanted to kick the girl’s ass for what she’d tried to do to him, but he didn’t think she deserved to be damn near decapitated for her crime.
“I know because of the circumstances; you’re going to need to know where I was. You can have tech check my laptop; I was on Skype with my family, helping my kid with his homework. I had a ten-minute call with my lieutenant before that about the case and when I expect to be back with the suspects according to the extradition notice.”
“Thanks for that Branson, I’ll have them get with you as soon as I’m done here just to clear things for the books.” Celia put on her gloves and stepped into the room just as Pete and the crime scene techs arrived. “Geez, Sparks, another one. What the hell?” Celia took the jesting from the head of the crime scene unit in stride. It’s been a running joke since the second murder that she might be good for business but bad for the town, seeing as how they hadn’t had a murder in half a century before she showed up.
She got to work examining the body, which didn’t take much; it was very obvious what had killed the young woman. From the condition of the room, it appeared that she’d just walked in, started tossing her clothes on the bed, maybe getting ready for a shower. She wasn’t too far from the door, so either the attack happened there, or she’d tried making her way out, but from the way the body had fallen, she was leaning more towards the former.
There was a lot of blood spatter but no drag marks, and if Branson had done this, he would be covered in blood. The killer had gone for the jugular, which would’ve made blood shoot into the air like Old Faithful. Branson’s hair hadn’t been wet when she spoke with him in the hallway, and his clothes looked wrinkled like he’d been wearing them all day.
