Sanctuary Lost WITSEC Town Series Book 1

by Lisa Phillips

  “Right.” That was why there was a cut on his forehead and a bruise the size of a football on the back of his shoulder. Still, John wasn’t sure this was totally about him and not also in part about Bolton’s feelings over whatever it was that had happened to him.

  He was going to have to read up on that later. “Have you considered talking to someone about your pent-up frustration for authority figures? I hear there’s a shrink in town.”

  Bolton’s chest shook, which in anyone else might have amounted to actual laughter. “Ah, so you’re the hand-holding, hug-your-fellow-man type then?”

  “Not hardly.” John stuck his hands in his pockets. “I just have enough issues to know when I’m staring at them.” The man wasn’t going to respect John’s sob story of Alphonz or his associates looking for revenge. “Just looking for somewhere quiet to raise my boy.”

  “Dude, you picked the wrong town if you’re lookin’ for a quiet life.” Bolton’s lips twitched and he almost smiled. Almost.

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  The door flung open. One of the two kids John had seen on the street rushed in, winded, with snot dripping onto his upper lip. “She’s dead. We found her.” He sucked in a breath. “She’s dead.”

  **

  The street behind the Meeting House on the south side of Main looked much like the street behind the sheriff’s office. The rear of the buildings faced a row of residential houses. John half-expected the dead woman to be the same woman he’d seen in the barn. He checked his watch as they jogged to where the second of the pair he’d seen stood. The boy’s hands shook and he made gagging sounds.

  10:05 p.m.

  “Okay, here’s close enough.” John held out his arm to stop the group who’d run with him from the Meeting House a ways back from the body.

  None of them should be here with him. But did they listen? His repeated attempts to get them to remain at the meeting house were ignored. He hardly needed an audience for this.

  John motioned to the kid. “Step this way, please.”

  The guy stumbled to them.

  “Did you check to make sure she’s dead?” John could see her, sprawled at the bottom of a wall. He could also see the blood. When the guy turned greener, John looked at the crowd who’d followed. “No one goes closer than this.”

  The major general shoved to the front. “I’ll take care of her. This woman needs to be treated with respect.”

  “And with all due respect to you, this is my job.”

  “You only just arrived. That hardly makes you one of us.”

  “Perhaps that’s a good thing. Since it makes me impartial.” He waited but the Major General didn’t say more. John turned to Bolton. “No one goes closer than this.” He motioned to the two guys who discovered the body. “They don’t leave and they don’t talk to anyone either. Not even each other.”

  For a second Bolton looked like he was going to refuse, but he nodded. John looked around, scanning the area as his brain worked through everything that needed to be done.

  “I need someone to find Deputy Palmer.” Matthias’ brother, Diego, broke away from the crowd and sprinted down the street. John turned to Bolton, who stood at the front of the crowd staring at the body. “I’ll need the doctor, unless there’s a medical examiner in town. I also need to know if there are any retired cops, a judge, a district attorney. Anyone like that.” He took a breath. “I’m going to need all the resources available.”

  Bolton nodded and turned to one of his guys. “March, go get Simmons. Bring him to the sheriff’s office. Oh, and start a pot of coffee.” Bolton sighed. “It’s going to be a long night.”

  “Simmons?”

  “Former superior court judge.”

  “Justice Anthony Simmons?”

  “That’d be him.”

  Great. That guy was pushing ninety years ago when an angry protestor bombed his office, killing five people and declaring war on the Supreme Court and Simmons in particular. John scratched the side of his head and the scab from Alphonz’s guy’s gun-butt.

  He’d figured witness protection when Simmons disappeared, only showing up again to testify against the eco-terrorist. The rest of the group had tried to kill him. But no one had ever been killed while under the protection of WITSEC. At least not if they followed the rules.

  John strode to the body. Her blonde hair was matted with dirt. Face down on the ground, she was tucked against the side of the building as though someone tried to make her as inconspicuous as possible. Her white pants and red blouse were smeared with dirt. She could be any number of the blonde women he’d met the past two days.

  He made his way back to the group. “If I’m going to process this scene, I’ll need to run by the sheriff’s office.” For supplies and coffee.

  Bolton’s eyes flicked to settle on John. “Get what you need. I’ll maintain the scene.”

  He should just ask the man if he’d been a cop. No one else talked like that other than people in the business, wannabes and true crime fans. So which was Bolton Farrera?

  John crossed the street to the back of the sheriff’s office, trailed by another set of footsteps. He glanced back and saw Matthias behind him. “Need something?”

  “Not me, but if you’re going to be up all night working do you want me to hang out in case Pat wakes up?”

  John stopped at the back door. “Actually that would be great.” Too bad nice people always weirded him out. No one was that selfless. Because John had never met anyone who started out nice and stayed that way, instead of revealing an ulterior motive. Could he trust this guy with his son? Everything so far said yes. But was it enough to go on?

  “I can take him to my mom’s for breakfast, if you’re still busy, or sleeping or whatever. He can meet my nephews and then Pat’ll know kids his own age he can play with.”

  “Okay.” John unlocked the door and they went in. He should have thought of that. But for some reason John assumed Pat being here with him would be enough. He must have had friends at school and in his neighborhood and he’d need that here, too. “There’s a couch and TV upstairs and someone stocked the fridge.”

  “That’d be my mom. She likes to make everyone feel welcome when they get here.”

  And yet she wasn’t on the “welcoming committee” as Betty Collins had called it. The unassuming way Olympia had made their first days better meant a whole lot more.

  “Tell her I said thanks.”

  Matthias grinned. “Sure thing.”

  “Make yourself at home. If I’m not here, leave a note when you go to breakfast.”

  John pulled open cabinets in the office, searching for anything that looked like stuff he’d need to process a murder scene—tweezers, police tape, gloves, evidence bags. A body bag. He pulled a duffel bag from the shelf above a rail where someone had hung vests and winter coats and unzipped it. “Bingo.”

  Still, he needed his camera.

  Matthias was still standing at the bottom of the apartment stairs.

  “You need something else?”

  “Well…” He ran a hand through his scruffy black hair. “I don’t know where you’re at with all this, but if it comes time tomorrow is it okay if Pat comes to church with my family?”

  That was all? The young man looked nervous. John turned back to his bag. “That’s fine. Just call me on the radio if you guys need anything.”

  “Okay, cool. I’m going to head up.”

  John followed him up and dug out the camera he’d packed just because he always used the thing to take pictures of Pat. That was years ago now, but it wasn’t like he could’ve upgraded his ancient phone to one with a camera. It wouldn’t even work here.

  Pat was still sleeping soundly, so John wrote him a note about Matthias but not the dead body and left it on the other pillow.

  Matthias barely glanced up from his shoot-em-up movie when John slung the bag over his shoulder and headed out again. If he was done with the scene by morning, he’d probably need a break. There
wasn’t much of a better way to contrast death than with church. He understood the fundamentals of religion. Although why God needed to die and come back to life didn’t make much sense. Couldn’t He just could poof whatever and do what He needed?

  John blew out a breath as he walked. The night air wasn’t too cool and when he got back to the scene, Bolton was holding the crowd back. John dumped the bag and cordoned off the area with police tape and the help of two street lamps and a rusted ladder on the corner of the building. The area was huge but he didn’t have anything else to use to hold up the tape. And since this was his first murder investigation, he didn’t want to make the area too small and miss something.

  He looked at Bolton. “Is the doctor here yet?”

  “On his way.”

  “Anyone else? Palmer?”

  Bolton turned so his back was to the group all straining to see the body. “Not yet.”

  John moved closer and lowered his voice. “Any idea who it is?”

  Bolton shook his head. “Can’t tell from here. Not from the back of the head.”

  “I’ll call you over when the doctor gets here and we flip her.” John dug in the bag for his camera.

  “What happened to her?” It was the woman from the command center who’d looked like she belonged at the Pentagon. “Who would cause an accident like this and then leave?”

  “I want to know why she was out on Battle Night. She’s wearing bright colors, so she wasn’t part of it.” Hal frowned in the direction of the woman. “Maybe she bumped into someone coming around a corner and hit her head.”

  The major general planted his feet, hip width apart. “Clearly she was up to something. Check for paint. If there isn’t any on her then it’ll be clear no one involved with Battle Night was the cause of this. She probably just had a heart attack or something. Terribly tragic, but nothing to get all fussed about.”

  “We’ll have to wait to draw any conclusions.” John gripped the camera in his hands. “There isn’t much you all can do, unless you have some prior training processing a crime scene.”

  At least two of them gasped.

  “You think its murder?” The woman covered her mouth.

  “This was just a horrible tragedy. Like I said.” The major general shook his head. “There’s no need to get all riled up now. We’ve still got a team C to rustle up.”

  “Speaking of which, why don’t you do that?” John didn’t care what the reason was. He didn’t need an audience for his first real case as a sheriff. Dan looked about as happy about all this as Bolton. John headed over to him. “Any way I can get some floodlights or such to light this place? It’s pretty dark to work.”

  The farmer tore his eyes from the body. “I’ll rouse Shelby and Aaron. See if the theater company has stage lights we can use.”

  “Thanks.” He turned to Bolton and handed him a notebook and pen. “I want a list of their names and then a record of everyone who comes and goes. Then get them to go home.” John motioned to the two who’d found the dead woman. “They don’t leave.”

  “Right you are, boss.” There was humor in Bolton’s eyes.

  John didn’t think this was a man anyone had ever ordered to do anything, but now wasn’t the time to mince words. Not when he was likely looking at a murder investigation in a close community of people fiercely protective of their privacy.

  “You think its murder?”

  “Not for sure until we get her turned and figure out what happened.” John nodded. “But it could—”

  A golf cart turned the corner travelling fast, followed by another immediately behind it. The doctor and his wife hopped off the first, the mayor from the second. The ranch hand who fetched the doctor jumped from his perch on the back of the mayor’s cart and jogged over behind them. He opened his mouth, but the mayor started yelling.

  “Betty!”

  He started to run to the body but John grabbed him. The older man fell to his knees.

  “Betty!”

  Chapter 7

  Harriet Fenton hung back with the mayor, looking shell-shocked at the death of her friend. Was it really Betty Collins lying there? John and the doctor went to the body. “So you’re the medical examiner as well as the town’s doctor.”

  The doctor nodded; his face somber. “I have authorization to perform the duties of coroner, medical examiner and town doctor. Complicated surgery has to be done at the air force hospital. I can stabilize trauma and they’ll be airlifted out. We have a trained midwife, but I perform C-sections and I sign death certificates for everyone in town.”

  “Well, I appreciate you doing this. Especially given Mrs. Collins is a friend of yours.” He gave the man a second and then said, “Are you going to be okay?”

  The doctor stopped and faced him. “There’s no one else in this town who even comes close to having the skills or the grace to deal with this.”

  “Very well.”

  They kept walking.

  Dan had shown up with stage lights just after the mayor’s outburst and set them up to illuminate the body and the surrounding area. John watched the ground as he walked, looking for anything that might be helpful. Either of them stepping on something in their paper booties wasn’t going to be helpful. Never mind John had absolutely no clue how he was supposed to run the tests that should be run on whatever evidence he collected.

  It was as good as being a wild west sheriff before there was any technology to test blood or collected materials, or even finger print analysis done with more than the human eye and a magnifying glass. How many of the old marshals from years ago wound up getting a wrong idea and sentencing an innocent man to death? John was going to have to be very careful, even given the fact he was impartial compared with the rest of the residents of this town. It would be easy to be swayed by the force of their opinion.

  He glanced over at the huddled crowd growing larger by the minute. Who knew what secrets they protected? They didn’t even seem to comprehend Betty could just as easily have been murdered, assuming instead it had been an accident.

  John drew his sketch. He took pictures from all angles and then they turned her. The dead body was Betty Collins. He took more pictures, concentrating on the blood stained front of her shirt, while the doctor closed her eyes with the fingers of his gloves. John took more pictures of the area. There didn’t appear to be anything here—just dirty concrete and the body. No murder weapon, despite the blood on her torso. It was just the rear of a building; street, walls and a collection of trash cans that would have to be sorted through. His nose couldn’t tell if the raw smell was the scene or the garbage.

  John glanced back at the mayor. Harriet Fenton clutched his arm as though trying to hold him up lest he dissolve into grief. Her face was perfectly set in a painful grimace so pronounced he could see it even from this distance.

  John stepped back from the body and let the doctor get to work. Killing always turned his stomach, more than natural passing. It was like all the emotion spent at the time of death—from both the killer and the victim—was imprinted on what was left. What lay there was a shell which used to be a person, one who had been loved and full of life.

  John walked up and down, scanning the road. When he passed the doctor, he said, “What can you tell me about her?”

  The doctor kept his eyes on his task but spoke in a low voice that matched John’s question. “Betty is the welcome coordinator, which you probably know. She’s met everyone in town. Generally happy. Liked. She hangs out with my wife, Harriet.” His eyes flicked aside to where she stood with the mayor. There was something there that looked a lot like disapproval. “Although apparently not as much as I’d previously thought. But that’s women for you. Smiling sweetly, and when your back is turned they’re off giving it to someone else.”

  John didn’t nod, even despite the suspicions he’d had regarding his own marriage. The truth hadn’t been necessary, not when what he had known was bad enough.

  Doctor Fenton sighed. “We get a new residen
t maybe once every eighteen months, so Betty wasn’t all that busy. Although she does like to stick her nose in social stuff and organize the crap out of things which didn’t need overcomplicating in the first place.”

  “Anyone obvious you think might dislike her?”

  “Just the usual tension with some people who don’t like how she does things. But we try not to ruffle each other’s feathers if you know what I mean. We all have to live here. But enough to murder her?” He shrugged.

  “I have to interview the boys who found her, so I’ll leave you to it.”

  The doctor gently pulled what looked like a meat thermometer out of Betty’s stomach and made a notation on his clipboard. “Sounds good.”

  John went back to Bolton. “Any word on Palmer yet?”

  “My guy isn’t back.” He motioned to the body with his chin. “What’s the verdict?”

  “That would require a trial.”

  Bolton huffed. “You know what I mean.”

  Maybe the guy wasn’t former law enforcement. “I’m only at the beginning of my investigation. As soon as I have any answers I’m sure it will be all over town before you can say, ‘damage control.’”

  John strode to the two men who’d found the body. “Masks off boys. Tell me your names.”

  “I’m Sam. This is Bill.” They were both spindly. Their revealed faces were dotted with acne and the smeared remnants of their team letter.

  John indicated Bill with his finger. “Stay here while I talk with Sam.”

  The kid nodded, relieved. John walked with Sam until they were several feet away. “Talk me through what happened, how you found the body.”

  “We just came around the corner and there she was.” He sucked in a breath. “We’d been around this way twenty minutes before and nothing. This time, there she was. Just lying there. You don’t see stuff like that outside of the movies.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the area?”

  “I dunno. It was dark.”

  John gave him a minute. “But?”