by Molly Harper
Her relationship with Eric had suffered several episodes of tragic dickheadery in the short time she’d known him. What had been a very pleasant encounter that they’d both enjoyed—several times—on one of Frankie’s lost weekends in Atlanta was ruined when Eric was introduced to her as Lake Sackett’s new sheriff. Eric did not appreciate Frankie’s no-nonsense approach to anonymous short-term relationships and was not pleased to find he’d moved to her hometown. He’d proceeded to act like an asshat every time their jobs brought them together. He’d managed to make her feel unattractive, unprofessional, and unwanted without really trying. And when she’d thought they’d finally reached some sort of understanding after resolving Len Huffman’s case, he’d stomped all over it by accusing her of securing her evidence by inappropriately using her connections and natural charms.
Frankie considered herself a nice person, but she would dearly love to see Eric ugly-cry.
The buzzer by the back bay rang, letting Frankie know that a “delivery” was coming into her mortuary. She crossed the gray-tiled room and punched in the key code to electronically open the double doors. Naomi Daniels, the local day-shift paramedic, wheeled a gurney through the sunlit doorway. Poor Bobby Wayne was safely tucked inside a standard-issue black body bag. Frankie’s heart ached for his long-suffering mama.
“Hey, Naomi,” Frankie said, a note of finality in her voice, as if she’d been expecting this delivery.
“Hi, Frankie.” Naomi’s voice was resigned as she handed over the clipboard. Her messy brown hair hung limp around her cherubic face as she bent over the body. “Unresponsive at the scene. No breath, no pulse, cold to the touch. Pretty sure the cause of death is that big ol’ missing spot in the back of his head, but you’d know better than me.”
“Who found him?” Frankie asked, taking the state paperwork that assigned her official stewardship of the body.
“The Clay boys. Poor things skipped school to squirrel hunt and found a dead body for their trouble.”
“Well, they’ll never play hooky again,” Frankie muttered. She checked over the paperwork one last time before signing and handing it back to Naomi. The paramedic used her considerable upper-body strength to transfer the body bag onto Frankie’s central treatment table. Frankie noted that the sheriff hadn’t even offered to help her.
“No, they will not,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “Little Brody Clay threw up so much I thought I was going to have to drop him off at the ER before I brought Bobby Wayne in.” Frankie grimaced. “Sheriff, this sort of thing can be pretty traumatic. You might make sure the boys get referred to the county’s mental health services for follow-up counseling. You’ll have to talk their daddy into it, because Allan Clay doesn’t buy into that sort of thing.”
“Already done,” the sheriff said, his square jaw stiff. “I know my job.”
Frankie pressed her poppy-bright mouth into a thin line, exhaled through her nose, and counted to eight. He didn’t deserve ten.
Naomi saw the grim set of Frankie’s normally cheerful mouth and took a step back. “Okay, then. I’m going to head out. Sheriff, you have my statement. If you need anything else, let me know.”
Sheriff Linden offered her a curt nod and Naomi carefully wheeled her gurney out into the sunlight. As she closed the double doors behind her, she mouthed the words good luck at Frankie.
Frankie took the necessary report forms out of the filing cabinet by her desk. The little Funko Pop! versions of the Avengers, plus half the Lannister family, standing sentinel over her desktop monitor didn’t cheer her up like they normally did. She wanted Eric Linden and his big-city cop attitude out of her workspace, yesterday. He was a condescending ass in a town that had already met its condescending-ass quota. They didn’t need to go importing them from Atlanta.
Frankie cleared her throat and turned carefully on thick-soled sneakers printed in cosmic blues, pinks, and purples. She thought they were a nice complement to the purple and blue streaks in her hair. “Can you explain to me why you think that Mr. Patterson’s death is a homicide?”
The sheriff cleared his throat and several beads of sweat appeared on his brow. “If you would open the body bag, I’ll show you.”
Frankie shook her head. “After the deceased come through my doors, I don’t like to let other people see them until I’ve prettied them up for their services. It’s a little more dignified.”
Eric frowned at her. “Do you understand how police investigations work? This isn’t optional. I’m the sheriff. You’re the coroner. I don’t want to use the phrase ‘chain of command,’ because it’s too damn early and I’ve spent my morning up to my ass cheeks in chiggers. So please, just open the damn bag.”
“I might, if you would explain to me how you could possibly think this is a homicide investigation.”
“The gunshot wound to the head doesn’t seem suspicious to you?” he drawled.
“Not when you consider that Bobby Wayne Patterson drank at least a twelve-pack of Bud Light every day and he was an avid hunter who built his own deer stand about twenty years ago. Also while drunk. And he called the safety on firearms ‘the sissy button.’ So no, when I add all of those factors up . . . I’m not seein’ homicide.”
“Just because the man had a reputation as a drunk doesn’t mean he couldn’t have met with foul play!” the sheriff exclaimed. Frankie noticed that he’d gone oddly pale. “Every case deserves our full attention.”
“I absolutely agree. But how many times have you pulled Bobby Wayne over for DUI in the weeks you’ve worked here?”
Sheriff Linden grimaced, which was answer enough for Frankie. He fumed, “So you’re just going to sign off on it as an accident without even looking into it? Is that how you normally handle things around here, Ms. McCready?”
“No, I’m going to do my due diligence, just like I do with each and every body that comes through my doors. But I’m not going to waste the county’s limited budget on expensive, unnecessary tests when we need to save it just in case there’s an actual murder in our town . . . for the first time in more than twenty years.”
Sheriff Linden glowered at her with those icy green eyes of his and she rolled her own in response. “Okay, do you have pictures of the scene?”
The sheriff took a mini tablet out of an oversize pocket in his cargo pants, tapped in an access code, and handed it to her without looking at the screen. She scrolled through the photos of the body, the deer stand, and the ground surrounding the scene, until she found one that featured the dry-rotted wooden steps Bobby Wayne had nailed into the broad oak tree when he was in high school. Frankie noted that the fifth step up was broken and dangling from the trunk by a loosened nail.
“That broken step’s, what, eight feet off of the ground?” she said, manipulating the screen to zoom in on the step. Sheriff Linden frowned at the screen and nodded. Frankie snapped on a pair of sterile exam gloves.
“Excuse me, Bobby Wayne,” she said in a polite but brisk tone. “I just need to take a quick look.”
“You talk to the dead bodies?” Eric asked.
“I was raised well. Just because they’re not breathin’ doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be polite,” she shot back as she opened the body bag and gently extended Bobby Wayne’s hand. The sheriff took a rather large step back and she showed him the dark brown material packed under Bobby Wayne’s ragged fingernails. “And this looks like tree bark, doesn’t it? And those stains on his sleeves?” Frankie sniffed delicately at the green camo jacket. “Smell a lot like beer.”
The sheriff nodded, his lips going the color of day-old oatmeal. “McCready, don’t sniff the body. I gotta draw a line somewhere.”
“From that height, given the scratches on the tree trunk and the bark under his nails, and what looks like a Bud Light can at the base of the tree, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Bobby Wayne was trying to climb into his rickety old deer stand while holdin’ a beer, because I’m pretty sure Bobby Wayne was born holdin’ a beer. The step gave way under
his foot, he dropped the beer, tried to keep hold of the trunk, but fell onto his back, with his rifle barrel right under the base of his skull, and the rifle went off. It’s a terrible tragedy, but these things happen. Haven’t you ever heard of the Darwin Awards?”
Sheriff Linden shook his head. “How would that even happen?”
Frankie took the sheriff ’s tablet and opened the photos from the crime scene. She noted the way he instinctually turned his eyes away from the images. She tapped the screen. “Bobby Wayne always used his granddaddy’s rifle. He thought it was good luck.”
“Okay.”
“Well, modern firearms have that firing pin block thing that prevents a gun from firing accidentally if it’s dropped.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“Bobby Wayne’s granddaddy’s rifle didn’t have that. So . . . not good luck after all.” When he shot her a disappointed look, she added, “But just to make you feel better, I’ll run tests on the back of Bobby Wayne’s jacket to show the patterns of gunshot residue and determine how the rifle was situated against his back when it was fired. And I’ll send the bullet to the state lab for comparison to his rifle.”
“You can run GSR tests here?” Sheriff Linden asked, eyeing her workspace.
“As I’ve told you before, Sheriff, this is technically the county morgue. There’s no major hospital for fifty miles. I’ve been the county coroner since my uncle, the last coroner, died. I know what I’m doin’.”
“You ran unopposed,” Sheriff Linden shot back, a tiny bit of color returning to his cheeks.
“No one else wanted the job,” she told him. “Because people around here enjoyed dealin’ with Sheriff Rainey about as much as I like dealing with you.”
“Well, that’s hurtful.” He placed his hand over his heart. For the first time since he’d entered the basement, Sheriff Linden offered a hint of a smile and she saw a glimpse of that charming, adventurous soul she’d spent quality naked time with all those nights ago.
“I’m not tryin’ to be hurtful. Just honest.” Frankie carefully tucked Bobby Wayne’s arm back in the bag and zipped it. The sheriff took a deep breath and his shoulders relaxed. Frankie rounded the table and he took several steps back toward Mr. Watts’s table.
“I get that you’re used to murders by the hour, but you’re going to have to pump your brakes just a little bit. This is Lake Sackett. Not every non-natural death is going to be suspicious. Sometimes alcohol and outdoor sports are going to combine in awful, permanent ways.”
“Look, I’m an interim sheriff. I took the job knowing I would only have it until the special election in November. That doesn’t make it any less demoralizing to campaign for the job I have. And difficult, since, as you like to point out at every possible opportunity, I’m an outsider. I have to make a good impression with voters or there’s no hope of me getting elected.” He pinned her with those frank, incredibly dilated green eyes. “Besides, I saw what happened to the last sheriff. I would like to retire without the words ‘gross incompetence’ written on my cake.”
“Well, don’t let your evidence room become a hoarder nightmare and you’ll already be way ahead of Sheriff Rainey.”
Eric wiped at his sweaty brow. “So, what, you’re saying I should relax? Take up a hobby?”
Frankie opened a mini-fridge she kept near her desk and handed him a bottle of water. “No, I’m sayin’ you’re going to burn yourself out if you’re not careful. And you’re going to become the ‘boy who cries murder,’ which will make people laugh at you when you walk into the Rise and Shine. They’ll pretend it’s something else, but it will be you. Not to mention, it doesn’t look great to the tourist trade if every hunting accident and drowning is investigated as the possible work of a serial killer.”
The sheriff sagged against the autopsy table behind him. “You’re right. But for the record, I want to do a good job, not just ’cause I want to be elected, but for my own reasons. I have to do well here.”
“Um, I really appreciate this new level of emotional openness between us, but maybe you shouldn’t touch Mr. Watts like that,” Frankie said, timidly gesturing to the table he was leaning on.
The sheriff turned, saw the covered body on the table, and stumbled away, dragging the sheet with him in his haste. The barest hint of Benjoe Watts’s gray hair became visible. And then Eric Linden did the last thing Frankie would have expected.
His eyes rolled up like window shades and he fainted dead away on the tile floor.
* * *
Chapter 2
* * *
ERIC WOKE UP with a cold cloth on his forehead and Frankie’s hand waving a broken smelling salts capsule under his nose.
Inhaling sharply at the harsh ammonia scent, he blinked at her a few times and a dreamy smile parted his lips. And then his brows drew down hard over his eyes.
“I’m on an embalming table, aren’t I?”
Frankie nodded, her purple-and blue-streaked ponytail bobbing over her ear in a jaunty fashion that seemed obscenely out of place. Eric yelped and launched himself off the slab. His boots skidded on the tile and he landed in a heap on the floor.
Despite her general lack of damns about Eric, she understood a good panic faint. She’d had them off and on for years—usually while she was waiting on test results from her physicals or felt some pain that didn’t feel normal for a woman in her mid-twenties. On the rare occasion when she’d done it in front of her parents, she’d played it off as low blood sugar and long hours. Still, waking up on the floor, not knowing how you’d gotten there and how long you’d been there, was scary and humiliating. She was willing to cease hostilities until Eric was on his feet. A battle of wits was no fun with the unarmed.
“I wanted you to be more comfortable while I worked. Besides, I could hardly lift your heavy butt all the way over to the elevator,” she huffed. “I only got you this far because the table lowers all the way to the floor.”
“The table . . . where you embalm people.”
“Oh, calm down, it’s disinfected at least three times a day,” she said, slapping his bottle of water into his hand. “So, you’ve got an aversion to dead bodies. A way-more-serious-than-the-average-person’s aversion. I should have noticed before, at the Huffman drowning site, when you refused to make eye contact with, well, anybody. But I thought you were just being a jerk.”
“It’s a long story. I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped. Frankie raised her hands in a defensive pose. “Fine. I did GSR tests on the back of Bobby Wayne’s jacket while you were ‘nappin’.’ ” She made sarcastic air-quote fingers. “In my professional opinion, the pattern looks pretty consistent with someone who was lying on top of a rifle when it fired, but I’m sure you’ll want to send it along to the state lab to confirm.” He cocked his head to the side and his eyes narrowed.
“You let me stay unconscious on an embalming table while you ran forensic tests?”
“It was only a few minutes. And I wanted to wake you up with good news,” she said with a cheeky grin. “Well, that’s not true, I wanted to wake you up with the news that I was right and you were wrong. But it’s basically the same thing.”
“What the—what?” he spluttered.
She placed a large evidence envelope in his hands. “Bobby Wayne’s jacket. Scrapings from under his fingernails. I’ll send you the blood alcohol content results, plus photos of the wound and the bullet as soon as I remove it.”
“There is something very wrong with you.”
“You’re not the first one to say so,” she said cheerfully, though his words stung a bit, even in his low honeyed-whiskey tones. “But gettin’ back to the subject we were discussin’ before you took your little floor nap, yes, I do think you need to relax a little bit and take up a hobby. Preferably one that gets you out of the house and into the community, so people see you as an actual person with feelings, instead of a cyborg sent from the future to accuse innocent people of murder.”
“Let me g
uess, you’re going to recommend I take up fishin’?”
“What’s wrong with fishin’?”
“It’s just a little self-interested to recommend I take up fishin’ when your family runs the local bait shop.”
“You aren’t one of those outdoor superstore guys, are you?”
“No, I’m just not that into fishing,” he said, shrugging. Frankie scoffed.
“I wouldn’t tell anyone here that.”
“I told you I’ll get a handle on it. A little trust wouldn’t hurt this uncomfortable workin’ dynamic we have going.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll stop expressing concern for your wellbeing.”
“Can you tell me where Margot’s office is?” he asked. “I’m supposed to give her some reports about emergencies and incidents at the Founders’ Festival. I tried telling her there were none, but she said she wants me to fill out a form and give some sort of sworn blood oath for a report to the county commissioners.”
Frankie frowned at the tone of . . . intrigue in Eric’s voice. She swallowed thickly. She’d given this guy some of the best . . . hours . . . of her life, and he wanted her to draw him a map to Margot’s office? She’d never envied Margot her polished good looks, the always-smooth blond hair and the kind of skin that came only from good genes and fancy spas. But now, seeing her former hookup showing interest in her cousin, Frankie kind of wanted to shave Margot’s head. She would feel bad afterward and apologize, but still, she wanted to do it.