by Debra Webb
She’d been so pleased with the new techniques she’d learned, she’d wanted to show them off. Billy had smiled through it all no matter that he’d walked with a bit of a hitch for a day or two.
“I’m certain you can, Ro, but I don’t want you getting yourself hurt or worse because you’re too hardheaded to listen to reason. Besides, how well you can fire your weapon is only relevant if you’re carrying it.”
She opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, but then snapped it shut. How could she argue with his logic? Didn’t matter. This wasn’t about what he wanted, or what he felt was best. This was about what she understood with complete certainty. Her worries weren’t about a protection detail per se, it was the fact that her and Billy’s friendship would make Julian want to hurt him in particular.
But that argument wouldn’t change Billy’s mind; it would only make him more determined. Rather than pursue the debate, she squared her shoulders and announced, “I should see if Mr. Smith needs any assistance.” She gave him her back and headed for the stairs.
“I’m not going to change my mind, Ro.” Billy followed her. “Like I said, I have an obligation to protect the citizens of this town whether they have sense enough to recognize they need protecting or not. It’s my sworn duty, so don’t waste your time trying to persuade me to see this any other way.”
Rowan didn’t waste her breath arguing with him. He had a valid point. In her experience, it was best to table the issue and move on.
By the time the locksmith had installed new locks, including dead bolts on both the private residence doors and the same but with different keys on the first-floor entries, Billy’s patience had run out.
Rowan paid Mr. Smith and he left, none too soon for his liking judging by his uncomfortable expression. Most folks were uneasy working in a funeral home.
“Have a nice day, Billy.” Rowan headed for the front door, ready to see her old friend out as well before he could relaunch the debate regarding her protection.
“Not so fast, Ro.” He flattened a hand on the door and leaned against it. “We’re going to settle this right now.”
She moved her head from side to side. “It’s already settled. There is nothing else to discuss.”
He drew in a big breath. “You are the—”
Whatever he planned to say was cut off by the sound of his cell phone. Reluctantly, he answered it. “Brannigan,” he growled.
As he listened, Rowan turned and headed back to the stairs. She had things to do. She could argue with Billy another time. Not that she intended to be swayed into changing her mind. His protection was as important to her as hers was to him.
“Be right there.”
She didn’t look back. He could lock the door behind him.
“Juanita Wilburn found her brother’s body in his yard. I’d like you to go with me to have a look, Ro.”
She hesitated. She’d almost made it to the landing. “Burt’s your coroner. Not me.” Billy didn’t need her to go. He wanted her to go so he could continue trying to change her mind. And so he could keep an eye on her. She recognized the pattern.
“I know Burt’s the coroner,” he said, his voice softer now. “But after what happened with Mrs. Phillips, I feel like I need a second set of eyes on any bodies that turn up under unusual circumstances.”
She still didn’t turn around. “What happened to Mr. Wilburn?” If she was thinking of the right man, he wasn’t much older than her. Appeared physically fit the last time she saw him, but there was always the chance he had a heart attack or maybe a stroke. Could have been cancer or an accident of some sort. Life was just full of unpleasant and deadly surprises.
“The dispatcher wasn’t sure. Juanita was pretty upset. She kept talking about his right arm being chewed off.”
Rowan frowned, turned back to look at Billy despite her best intentions. “When was the last time you had a bear mauling?” Or maybe it was a coyote. They were far more prevalent in the area than bears and they could do serious damage under the right circumstances.
Billy thought about her question for a second. “Not since we were in middle school and Teddy Winger’s daddy had his leg chewed on by that black bear with the cub.”
Rowan descended the stairs. She had her cell. She didn’t really need her purse or anything more than the key. “I guess we’ll know when we’ve had a look.”
He gave her a nod. “I’ll pull out of the parking lot and then sneak in around back so you don’t have to deal with the folks out front.”
She paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Thanks.”
He slipped on his hat and smiled. “Thank you. I appreciate the help.”
Twelve
Logan Wilburn’s farm was on Lynchburg Road only a few miles outside Winchester proper but still within the city limits. He was forty-five, had been married once to a woman he met while he was in the military, but had no children. His ex-wife had moved back to Kansas after the divorce. His only sibling, a sister named Juanita, was in the house with the officer taking her report. She had stated over and over that if she’d told him once, she’d told him a thousand times to be careful with that damned commercial-sized chipper. It was too big and too dangerous, in her opinion.
Rowan didn’t really know Logan but his sister was another story. Juanita was on the cleaning team that took care of the funeral home. She was one of the newer members of the team but she’d worked for Rowan’s father for two or three years if Rowan recalled accurately. Most of the others had been on the team since she was a child. Like her father always said, working at a funeral home provided a certain level of job security. People appreciated the safety net of knowing they weren’t likely to be laid off.
Wilburn’s body lay near the barn, right next to the large wood chipping machine Juanita blamed for her brother’s death. According to his sister’s statement, the victim had gathered up all the fallen limbs from last week’s wind and rainstorms and decided he would run them through the machine, turning them into mulch. Based on the lividity and advanced stage of rigor mortis, Burt and Rowan had agreed that he likely died late yesterday evening, obviously before dark. Surely no one in his right mind would have been operating a piece of equipment like this one at night. Rowan hadn’t noticed any exterior lighting that would have allowed otherwise.
“Based on what I’m seeing,” Burt said, standing back and looking at the scene once more, “he put in a limb and for some reason his hand went with it and the pull of the damned thing dragged him on into the machine.” He shook his head. “Probably kept grinding and gnawing away at his shoulder until his whole arm was just gone. Pure adrenaline probably propelled his body up and back, and then he collapsed right where his sister found him.”
Rowan crouched down and studied the way the body was crumpled and where his head lay on the handful of bricks piled on the ground. His prone position had required that the coroner turn him over to get a better look at any other injuries. Beyond the raw flesh and raggedly sheared off muscles and tendons where his arm had once been, there was a gash on his forehead where he’d hit the bricks. Next to the bricks was a larger mound of rocks. Since he had placed bricks and rocks around his trees to hold the mulch he’d spread previously, she assumed these were for that same purpose.
“But he doesn’t appear to have rolled or flopped when he fell and hit the brick. It seems to me his body would have rolled or seized rather than just fallen onto one spot and stayed put,” Rowan countered.
“Fair point,” Burt allowed. “There most likely would have been some twitching and jerking.”
She scanned the ground, already covered in a thick carpet of grass, for any signs of a struggle or any other suggestion that something was amiss. Much of the blood was in and around the machine, covering a small scattering of freshly shredded mulch. A good deal more had leaked onto the grass from the hole left by his missing arm. There were no obvious
indications of a struggle anywhere near the body. Maybe she was working too hard to make this about murder rather than a simple, unfortunate accident. She had worked homicides for half a dozen years. Seeing the worst one human could do to another had a tendency to make one skeptical.
Billy squatted next to her. “What feels off to me is that he set this thing up in the grass rather than in that hard packed dirt over there closer to the barn. I would think having it next to the barn would have made for an easier cleanup after the chipping was done.” He surveyed the bloody area around the machine. “I can’t see him bothering with the few limbs that would have generated this small scattering of mulch, and I sure don’t see a larger pile those few came from.”
“I wondered about that, too,” Burt agreed. He scratched at his head and peered at the positioning of the gas-operated machine and the lack of fallen limbs ready to feed into it. “Doesn’t seem too practical and Logan was a practical man. He was always one to plan things out to accomplish the most work in the least amount of time.”
Rowan had considered this, as well. Not that she knew Wilburn the way the others did, but the scene just didn’t make sense from a practical standpoint. Wilburn’s lawn suggested he took pride in maintaining it. Setting up a piece of gas-burning equipment on that lush, green lawn seemed wrong. She picked up one of the rocks. The grass was nonexistent beneath it and the dirt had indented from its weight. She did the same with a brick. Obviously the bricks had been in the spot for quite some time, as well. Maybe for a future landscaping project.
She took a breath and bit the bullet. “Let’s assume for a moment that someone hit him on the head with one of these bricks.”
“I’m thinking it would have taken a hell of a blow to kill him with that brick considering the skin is barely broken and the strike was on the top of the forehead, one of the hardest parts of the skull.”
Rowan nodded. “I can’t disagree with you there, Burt.” Then she played devil’s advocate. “It’s possible he fell, bumped his head and when he got back up to finish his work, he felt dizzy and fell into the chipper.”
Billy was the one shaking his head then. “Unless he was unconscious or completely disabled, he would have tried to yank his arm back, right?”
The coroner pushed his glasses up his nose and studied the position of the chipping machine. “And he would have flopped around, trying to get loose. His movements would have made the machine move or maybe even turn over. Surely there would be grass flattened down or rutted out from his movements.”
“Unless he was already unconscious,” Rowan said, drawing them to the conclusion she had reached, “that’s exactly what he would have done.”
Billy stared at her for a moment. “You’re saying you’re convinced this wasn’t an accident?”
“I’m saying let’s walk around a little more and see if we find anything that suggests one way or the other.”
“Like wood chips from where he’s done this before?” Burt offered.
“Or a pile of limbs he’d gathered,” Billy suggested.
Rowan smiled. “Exactly. And beer cans or bottles that might imply he had been drinking and accidentally fell into the chipper.” Of course, blood tests would rule out or confirm that possibility, but this entire scene felt wrong to her. It spoke of staging rather than a simple accident.
They spread out and walked about the yard, paying extra attention to the area inside and around the barn. Burt was the one to find the signs of a previous chipping endeavor on the far side of the barn.
Lucky Ledbetter, Burt’s assistant, along with the second of the two officers who answered the 911 call, whose name Rowan did not know, stood by and watched curiously while the three of them went about this exercise. They found no other signs of foul play or of a struggle. And no waiting pile of limbs.
“If the blow to his head was enough to rattle him,” Billy began when they had returned to where the body and the chipper waited, “then maybe while he was rattled or unconscious the perp rolled that machine over here, fired it up and stuck his arm into it to finish him off and make it look like an accident.” Before Burt could protest, Billy added, “If the blow to his head didn’t do the job, he may have forced him at gunpoint.”
“But why would anyone want to do that?” Burt asked with a shake of his head. “Logan didn’t have money lying around. He used the same bank I do. We often talked about the dropping interest rates. And as far as I know he’s never been in any sort of trouble.”
Rowan folded her arms over her chest and looked from one to the other. “Maybe he had an insurance policy? He may have been murdered for the farm or over some sort of dispute. Or for a piece of information he possessed that mattered to the person who killed him.”
Billy pushed his hat up his forehead, a classic tell that he was having a hard time swallowing her theory. “Do you have a suspect in mind? Like maybe his sister who’s in there all torn up over finding her brother dead?”
He knew she didn’t have a specific suspect. Rowan had been gone for years. She had no idea if Logan Wilburn had any enemies and she certainly had no way of knowing whether or not he and his sister were on good terms. But the story was the same in Winchester as it was in Nashville: desperate people did desperate things and there was always a motive. They only had to find it.
“I do.” Rowan jerked her head toward the actual murder weapon—the chipper. “Your killer is the person who shut this thing off once the man was dead.” She shrugged. “This is a big, commercial-grade machine. Unless it was shut off—and we know Logan Wilburn didn’t turn it off—it would have continued running until the gas tank was empty. The gas tank is not empty. I checked.”
Billy’s gaze narrowed. For about five seconds it was so quiet Rowan could hear the old barn groaning in the slight breeze.
Burt was the first of the two to lean forward and check the gas level in the tank. “I’ll be damned.” He turned to Billy. “She’s right.”
Half an hour later Burt and Lucky had taken the body away, crime scene techs had begun collecting evidence and Juanita Wilburn, confused and shaken, had been questioned again and then driven home to await news.
* * *
The drive back into Winchester was quiet. Rowan imagined Billy was working on his speech for persuading her to allow him to stay close, particularly at night.
Finally, she saved him the effort. “I do not want you sleeping outside the funeral home again tonight.”
More of that silence lingered for a few blocks.
“Ro, you need to let me do my job. Let me make the decisions where the safety of the citizens of my town, including you, is concerned. Addington’s determination to get to you isn’t only affecting you.”
How could she argue with that point? A man was dead—Officer Damon Miller had died for no other reason than the fact that he was assigned to protect her. “I’m okay with a protection detail. But you cannot be a part of it and it would be better if they tried to stay out of sight. Julian won’t get close if the risk to his continued freedom is too great.”
Billy glanced at her. “You want him to get close?”
Rowan bit her lips together until the frustrated response she wanted to hurl at him passed. “I want him close enough to catch. Yes. If that means putting myself at some measure of risk, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
The announcement was obviously not what Billy wanted to hear.
Before he could launch a rebuttal they were back at the funeral home. Thankfully the reporters were gone but there was one dark sedan in the lot and a man waiting at the entrance.
“This day just gets better and better,” Billy grumbled.
Rowan sighed. Billy was right. FBI Agent Josh Dressler. She was still furious at him for allowing the agent from Quantico, Ike Lancaster, to give her such a hard time.
“I thought he was coming to my office this afternoon.” Billy park
ed, renewed frustration evident in his movements.
“Maybe your office told him you were here.”
“Maybe.” Billy got out of his truck. He came around to open her door.
Rowan climbed out and suddenly felt underdressed. During her years at the Metro Nashville Police Department, Dressler had always been the liaison between MNPD and the FBI’s field office there. She had never attended a meeting with him while wearing jeans and a T. She elbowed aside the thought and made a decision that she would not allow her manner of dress to put her at a disadvantage.
“Dr. DuPont.” Dressler’s smile was as charming as ever. He removed his sunglasses and tucked them into his jacket pocket.
“I’m sorry you had to wait, Josh.” She joined him at the door and shoved the key into the lock. “You should have told us what time you were arriving.”
He gave her a wink. “Then you might have had an excuse for being unavailable.”
She laughed and opened the lobby door, then hitched her head toward the man standing on the other side of her. “Perhaps you can have your meeting with Chief Brannigan at the same time as the one with me. After all, transparency is crucial in this case, wouldn’t you say?”
“Of course. Of course.” The two shook hands and followed her inside.
“Would you like water or coffee?” It was past lunchtime. Maybe she should order something to be delivered. God knew everything in her fridge had proved inedible. She really would have to go shopping again soon.
“No, thanks. I had lunch at a little place in Tullahoma.” Dressler smiled.
Rowan had forgotten how blinding his smile could be. The man would be the perfect model for toothpaste commercials. “This way,” she said. “We can talk in my office.”
When she’d settled behind her desk and the two men had taken seats on the other side, she turned to the agent. “How is the search for Addington going? Did his wife have any earth-shattering insights?”