Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

The door to Sheriff Callahan’s office opened at that moment, and the older man leaned out, looking like he’d just endured a very uncomfortable dental procedure minus the Novocain.

When he spotted Lola Rodriguez, his level of discomfort seemed to ratchet up about a hundred degrees.  His face actually twisted.

There were no poker championships foreseeable in this man’s future.

“Deputy Harding?”

Uh-oh.  His tone and stance indicated that this was not news he wanted Casey’s mother to hear, and foreboding speared through Clay.  Damn.  He’d hoped for one, just one happy ending.

“Yes, Sir?”  Josh excused himself from Lola’s watchful presence, stepping toward his boss’s office.  The older man pulled him inside, and after several tense minutes Harding departed the office, slipped past Lola and headed toward Clay.

“Something’s happened?” Clay prompted.

Josh exhaled on a pensive nod.  “Another deputy, Purdy, just radioed in.  He spotted a car parked along Greenwood Road – late model, dark blue BMW.  He radioed for backup, as it fit the description of our man’s transportation, and then proceeded to approach the car.”

Okay.  Harding was giving him the long, drawn out version of the story, which meant that he wasn’t anxious to deliver the punch line.  Clay’s hopes for a happy ending dropped to nil. “And?”

“The driver of the car didn’t respond to his requests to put his hands up where he could see him, and after Purdy drew even with the car, weapon drawn, he understood why.”

This time Clay didn’t prompt him.  He simply waited for Josh to work his way to it.

“The man couldn’t respond to any requests because half his head was missing.  But his large, white, muscular body was intact.”

Shit.

Clay uncrossed his arms and ran his fingers through his hair.  He’d been afraid that something like this would happen.  The other perp had been pushed past the point of breaking.

“Deputy Purdy said there appeared to be powder on his hands, from the weapon.”

“Suicide?”  Clay thought that highly unlikely.

“That’s the big question.  If you wouldn’t mind, we need you at the crime scene.  Agent O’Connell and Deputy Jones are on their way there, along with the coroner.”

“Of course.”  Clay stepped over to Kim’s laptop, which he’d temporarily requisitioned, to shut it down.

“What do you think this means?”  Harding cleared his throat.  “You know, for Casey?”

Nothing good, Clay thought, as he punched the final command into the computer.

Nothing good.

THE man was even more repulsive in death than he had been in life, all that pale, milky skin like molten wax in the brutal heat.

Despite the fact that the driver’s side window had been lowered – a convenient way to make it more difficult to trace the bullet’s trajectory – the car’s interior felt like the inside of a crematory. And smelled worse.

What was left of their kidnapper, and Clay had no doubt this was their kidnapper, was slumped in the driver’s seat, head lolling to the left.

Or rather, half a head lolling to the left.

Clay waved away the ever present flies, the tiny vultures of human carrion, and steeled himself against the smell as he climbed into the steel inferno.

The man wore loose fitting cargo shorts, and conversely, a blue, long-sleeved dress shirt.  Buttoned wrong. Like he’d been in a hurry to run out the door so he could kill himself.

What was left of his head was bald as a cue ball, shaved razor close within the last day, maybe the last several hours.  There was indeed powder on his right hand, and a twenty-two caliber weapon on the seat.

Kind of a wimpy little gun for such a big, macho man.

Of course, it was the kind of weapon that was easy to hide.  And just as deadly as a forty caliber from a short distance.

Everything Clay saw backed up his supposition.  This guy had not been the one to pull the trigger.  Not the first time, anyway.

Clay intuited that the killer had fired a second shot, placing their man’s finger on the trigger, in an attempt to feign suicide.  He almost certainly killed the man from a short distance, close enough to do the job but far enough away to prevent him from fighting back.  Because going up against a guy this size would be stupid.

And perp number two was not stupid.

He could have drugged him, or otherwise incapacitated him, and then used this man’s own finger on the trigger for the fatal shot.  But he almost certainly hadn’t done that.  He’d wanted to see the other man’s expression – that oh, shit moment when he knew he was going to die – because his partner had failed him for the last time.

And he wanted him to know it, to feel his own folly.  To accept his responsibility for his fate.

Passing blame. Like his accomplice, the remaining perp needed to pass blame to others.

The fact that the incident with the dead girl in Atlanta hadn’t brought this about sooner suggested that he either needed this man, or this man meant something to him.  Maybe both.  He’d given him another chance, and he’d blown it.  So he’d blown the guy away.  More specifically, he’d blown the guy’s stupid head off.

Poetic justice.

“What are you thinking?” Kim asked as she approached the grisly scene.

“No way he did this to himself.”

She nodded her agreement, stepping back as Clay pulled himself from the car.  “Some kind of decoy?” she mused, pushing one lose curl behind her ear.

“Some kind,” Clay agreed.  “The car we’re looking for.  The man we’re looking for.   The only thing missing is the silver platter.  But our guy’s smart enough to realize we wouldn’t buy the suicide angle for long.  There are too many things that just don’t fit that tidy little scenario, including a notable lack of blood spatter inside the car.”

“They won’t rule it officially, you know, until the ME completes the autopsy.  There’s just enough physical evidence to make it look like suicide’s possible, and the behavioral discrepancies don’t hold as much water.”

“I know it and you