Shotgun Sheriff--A Western Sheriff Romance of Intrigue

by Delores Fossen

  Livvy threw open the door. “Where’s the mayor?” she demanded.

  “Gone.” Reed hitched his thumb toward the downside of the hill. “Why?”

  Her hands went on her hips, and those ice-blue eyes turned fiery hot. “Because he stole some evidence, that’s why, and I intend to arrest him.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Livvy was in full stride across the yard when the sheriff caught up with her, latched on to her arm, whirled her around and brought her to an abrupt halt.

  “I’m arresting him,” she repeated and tried to throw off his grip.

  She would probably have had better luck wrestling a longhorn to the ground. Despite Sheriff Reed Hardin’s lanky build, the man was strong. And angry. That anger was stamped on his tanned face and in his crisp green eyes.

  “I don’t care if Woody Sadler is your friend.” She tried again to get away from the sheriff’s clamped hand. “He can’t waltz in here and steal evidence that might be pertinent to a murder investigation.”

  “Just hold on.” He pulled out his cell phone from his well-worn Wranglers, scrolled through some numbers and hit the call button. “Woody,” he said when the mayor apparently answered, “you need to get back up here to the cabin right now. We might have a problem.”

  “Might?” Livvy snarled when Sheriff Hardin ended the call. “Oh, we definitely have a problem. Tampering with a crime scene is a third-degree felony.”

  The sheriff dismissed that with a headshake. “Woody’s the mayor, along with being a law-abiding citizen. He didn’t tamper with anything. You said yourself that someone had broken the lock, and Woody didn’t do that.”

  “Well, he obviously isn’t so law-abiding because he walked past crime-scene tape and entered without permission or reason.”

  “He had reason,” Reed mumbled. “He’s worried about Shane. And sometimes worried people do dumb things.” He looked down at the chokehold he had on her arm, mumbled something indistinguishable, and his grip melted away. “What exactly is missing?”

  “A cell phone.” Livvy tried to go after the trespassing mayor again, but Reed stepped in front of her. Worse, her forward momentum sent her slamming right against his chest. Specifically, her breasts against his chest. The man was certainly solid. There were lots of corded muscles in his chest and abs.

  Both of them cursed this time.

  And Livvy shook her head. She shouldn’t be noticing anything that intimate about a man whom she would likely end up at odds with. She shouldn’t be noticing his looks, either. Those eyes. The desperado stubble on his strong square jaw and the tousled coffee-brown hair that made him look as if he’d just crawled out of bed.

  Or off a poster for a Texas cowboy-sheriff.

  It was crystal-clear that he didn’t want her anywhere near the crime scene or his town. Tough. Livvy had been given a job to do, and she never walked away from the job.

  Sherriff Hardin would soon learn that about her.

  By God, she hadn’t fought her way into the Ranger organization to be stonewalled by some local yokels who believed one of their own could do no wrong.

  “What cell phone?” Reed asked.

  Because the adrenaline and anger had caused her breath and mind to race, it took her a moment to answer. First, she glanced at the road and saw the mayor inching his way back up toward them. “One I found in the fireplace when I was going through the front room. You no doubt missed it in the initial search because the ashes were covering it completely. The only reason I found it is because I ran a metal detector over the place to search for any spent shell casings. Then, I photographed it, bagged it and put it on the table. It’s missing.”

  His jaw muscles stirred. “It’s Marcie’s phone?”

  “I don’t know. I showed it to Deputy Spears, and he said he didn’t think it was Shane’s. That means it could be Marcie’s.”

  “Or the killer’s.”

  She was certain her jaw muscles stirred, too. “Need I remind you that you found Deputy Shane Tolbert standing over Marcie’s body, and he had a gun in his hand? Marcie was his estranged lover. I hate to state the obvious, but all the initial evidence indicates that Shane is the killer.”

  Livvy instantly regretted spouting that verdict. It wasn’t her job to get a conviction or jump to conclusions. She was there to gather evidence and find the truth, and she didn’t want anything, including her anger, to get in the way.

  “Shane said he didn’t kill her,” Reed explained. His voice was calm enough, but not his eyes. Everything else about him was unruffled except for those intense green eyes. They were warrior eyes. “He said Marcie called him and asked him to meet her at the cabin. The moment he stepped inside, someone hit him over the head, and he fell on the floor. When he came to, Marcie was dead and someone had put a gun in his hand.”

  Yes, she’d already heard the summary of Shane’s statement from Deputy Kirby Spears. Livvy intended to study the interrogation carefully, especially since Reed had been the one to question the suspect.

  Talk about a conflict of interest.

  Still, in a small town like Comanche Creek, Reed probably hadn’t had an alternative, especially since the on-scene Ranger, Lieutenant Colter, had been called back to the office. If Reed hadn’t questioned Shane, then it would have been left to his junior deputy, Kirby, who was greener than the Hill Country’s spring foliage.

  The mayor finally made his way toward them and stopped a few feet away. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where’s the cell phone that I’d bagged and tagged?” Livvy asked, not waiting for Reed to respond.

  Woody Sadler first looked at Reed. Then, her. “I have no idea. I didn’t take it.”

  “Then you won’t mind proving that to me. Show me your pockets.”

  Woody hesitated, until Reed gave him a nod. It wasn’t exactly a cooperative nod, either, and the accompanying grumble had a get-this-over-with tone to it.

  The mayor pulled out a wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and a handkerchief and keys from the front ones. No cell phone, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t taken it. The man had had at least ten minutes to discard it along the way up or down the hill to his vehicle.

  “Taking the cell won’t help your friend’s cause,” she pointed out. “I already phoned in the number, and it’ll be traced.”

  Woody lifted his shoulder. “Good. Because maybe what you learn about that phone will get Shane out of jail. He didn’t kill Marcie.”

  Reed stared at her. “Can the mayor go now, or do you intend to strip-search him?”

  Livvy ignored that swipe and glanced down at Woody’s snakeskin boots. “You wear about a size eleven.” She turned her attention to Reed. “And so do you. That looks to be about the size of the footprints that I took casts of over in the brush.”

  “So?” Woody challenged.

  “So, the location of those prints means that someone could have waited there for Marcie to arrive. They could be the footprints of the killer. Or the killer’s accomplice if he had one. Sheriff Hardin would have had reason to be out here, but what about you? Before this morning, were you here at the cabin in the past forty-eight hours?”

  “No.” The mayor’s answer was quick and confident.

  Livvy didn’t intend to take his word for it.

  “You can go now,” Reed told the mayor.

  Woody slid his hat back on, tossed her a glare and delivered his parting shot from over his shoulder as he walked away. “You might do to remember that Reed is the law in Comanche Creek.”

  Livvy could have reminded him that she was there on orders from the governor, but instead she took out her binoculars from her field bag and watched Woody’s exit. If he stopped to pick up a discarded cell phone, she would arrest him on the spot.

  “He didn’t take that phone,” Reed insisted.

  “Then who did?”

  “The real killer. He could have done it while Kirby and you were casting the footprints.”

  “The real killer,” she repeated. “An
d exactly who would that be?”

  “Someone that Marcie got involved with in the past two years when she was missing and presumed dead.”

  Livvy couldn’t discount that. After all, Marcie had faked her own death so she wouldn’t have to testify against a powerful local rancher who’d been accused of bribing officials in order to purchase land that the Comanche community considered their own. The rancher, Jonah Becker, who also owned this cabin, could have silenced Marcie when she returned from the grave.

  Or maybe the killer was someone who’d been furious that Marcie hadn’t gone through with her testimony two years ago. There were several people who could have wanted the woman dead, but Shane was the one who’d been found standing over her body.

  “See? He didn’t take the cell phone,” Reed grumbled when the mayor didn’t stop along the path to retrieve anything he might have discarded. The mayor got into a shiny fire-engine-red gas-guzzler of a truck and sped away, the massive tires kicking up a spray of mud and gravel.

  “He could be planning to come back for it later,” Livvy commented. But probably not. He would have known that she would search the area.

  “Instead of focusing on Woody Sadler,” Reed continued, “how about taking a look at the evidence inside the cabin? Because naming Shane as the primary suspect just doesn’t add up.”

  Ah, she’d wondered how long it would take to get to this subject. “How do you figure that?”

  “For one thing, I swabbed Shane’s hands, and there was no gunshot residue. Plus, this case might be bigger than just Shane and Marcie. You might not have heard, but a few days ago there were some other bodies that turned up at the Comanche burial grounds.”

  “I heard,” she said. “I also heard their eyes were sealed with red paint and ochre clay. In other words, a Native American ritual. There’s nothing Native American or ritualistic about this murder.”

  Still, that didn’t mean the deaths weren’t connected. It just meant she didn’t see an immediate link. The only thing that was glaring right now was Deputy Shane Tolbert’s involvement in this and his sheriff’s need to defend him.

  Livvy started the walk down the hill to look for that missing phone. Thankfully, it was silver and should stand out among the foliage. And then she remembered the note in her pocket with the cell number on it. She took out her own phone and punched in the numbers to call the cell so it would ring.

  She heard nothing.

  Just in case it was buried beneath debris or something, she continued down the hill, listening for it.

  Reed followed her, of course.

  Livvy would have preferred to do this search alone because the sheriff was turning out to be more than a nuisance. He was a distraction. Livvy blamed that on his too-good looks and her stupid fantasies about cowboys. She’d obviously watched too many Westerns growing up, and she reminded herself that in almost all cases the fantasy was much hotter than the reality.

  She glanced at Reed again and mentally added maybe not in this case.

  In those great-fitting jeans and equally great-fitting blue shirt, he certainly looked as if he could compete with a fantasy or two.

  When she felt her cheeks flush, Livvy quickly got her mind on something else—the job. It was obvious that the missing cell wasn’t ringing so she ended the call and put her own cell back in her pocket. Instead of listening for the phone, she’d just have to hope that the mayor had turned it off but still tossed it in a place where she could spot it.

  “The mayor’s not guilty,” Reed tried again. “And neither is Shane.”

  She made a sound of disagreement. “Maybe there was no GSR on his hands because Shane wore gloves when he shot her,” she pointed out. Though Livvy was certain Reed had already considered that.

  “There were no gloves found at the scene.”

  She had an answer for that as well. “He could have discarded them and then hit himself over the head to make it look as if he’d been set up.”

  “Then he would have had to change his clothes, too, because there was no GSR on his shirt, jeans, belt, watch, badge, holster or boots.”

  “You tested all those items for gunshot residue?”

  “Yeah, I did,” he snapped. “This might be a small town, Sergeant Hutton, but we’re not idiots. Shane and I have both taken workshops on crime-scene processing, and we keep GSR test kits in the office.”

  It sounded as if Sheriff Hardin had been thorough, but she would reserve judgment on whether he’d learned enough in those workshops.

  “But Shane was holding the murder weapon, right?” Livvy clarified.

  “Appears to have been, but it wasn’t his gun. He says he has no idea who it belongs to. The bullet taken from Marcie’s body is on the way to the lab for comparison, and we’re still searching the databases to try to figure out the owner of the gun.”

  Good. She’d call soon and press for those results and the plaster castings of the footprints. Because the sooner she finished this crime scene, the sooner she could get out of here and head back to Austin. She didn’t mind small towns, had even grown up in one, but this small town—and its sheriff—could soon get to her.

  Livvy continued to visually comb the right side of the path, and when they got to the bottom, they started back up while she examined the opposite side. There was no sign of a silver phone.

  Mercy.

  She didn’t want to explain to her boss how she’d let possible crucial evidence disappear from a crime scene that she was working. She had to find that phone or else pray the cell records could be accessed.

  “What about the blood spatter in the cabin?” Reed asked, grabbing her attention again.

  “I’m not finished processing the scene yet.” In fact, she’d barely started though she had already spent nearly an hour inside. She had hours more, maybe days, of work ahead of her. Those footprint castings had taken priority because they could have been erased with just a light rain. “But in my cursory check, I didn’t see any spatter, only the blood pool on the floor. Since Marcie was shot at point-blank range, that doesn’t surprise me. Why? Did you find blood spatter?”

  “No. But if Shane’s account is true about someone clubbing him over the back of the head, then there might be some. He already had a head injury, and it had been aggravated with what looked like a second blow. But the wood’s dark-colored, and I didn’t want to spray the place with Luminol since I read it can sometimes alter small droplets. Judging from the wound on Shane’s head, we’d be looking for a very small amount because the gash was only about an inch across.”

  She glanced at him and hoped she didn’t look too surprised. Most non-CSI-trained authorities would have hosed down the place with Luminol, the chemical to detect the presence of biological fluids, and would have indeed compromised the pattern by causing the blood to run. That in turn, could compromise critical evidence.

  “What?” he asked.

  Livvy walked ahead of him, up the steps and onto the porch and went inside the cabin. “Nothing.”

  “Something,” Reed corrected, following her. He shut the door and turned on the overhead lights. “You’d dismissed me as just a small-town sheriff.”

  “No.” She shrugged. “Okay, maybe. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I dismissed you, too.”

  Since her back was to him, she smiled. For a moment. “Still do?”

  “Not because of your skill. You seem to know what you’re doing. But I’m concerned you won’t do everything possible to clear Shane’s name.”

  “And I’m concerned you’ll do anything to clear it.”

  He made a sound of agreement that rumbled deep in his throat. “I can live with a stalemate if I know you’ll be objective.”

  The man certainly did know how to make her feel guilty. And defensive. “The evidence is objective, and my interpretation of it will be, too. Don’t worry. I’ll check for that blood spatter in just a minute.”

  Riled now about the nerve he’d hit, she grabbed a folder from her equipment bag.
“First though, I’d like to know if it wasn’t Woody Sadler, then who might have compromised the crime scene and stolen the phone.” She slapped the folder on the dining table and opened it. Inside were short bios of persons of any possible interest in this case.

  Reed’s bio was there on top, and Livvy had already studied it.

  He was thirty-two, had never been married and had been the sheriff of Comanche Creek for eight years. Before that, he’d been a deputy. His father, also sheriff, had been killed in the line of duty when Reed was seven. Reed’s mother had fallen apart after her husband’s murder and had spent the rest of her short life in and out of mental institutions before committing suicide. And the man who’d raised Reed after that was none other than the mayor, Woody Sadler.

  She could be objective about the evidence, but she seriously doubted that Reed could ever be impartial about the man who’d raised him.

  Livvy moved Reed’s bio aside. The mayor’s. And Shane’s. “Who would be bold or stupid enough to walk into this cabin and take a phone with me and your deputy only yards away?”

  Reed thumbed through the pages, extracted one and handed it to her. “Jonah Becker. He’s the rancher Marcie was supposed to testify against. He probably wouldn’t have done this himself, but he could have hired someone if he thought that phone would link him in any way to Marcie.”

  Yes. Jonah Becker was a possibility. Reed added the bio for Jonah’s son. And Jerry Collier, the man who ran the Comanche Creek Land Office. Then Billy Whitley, a city official. The final bio that Reed included was for Shane’s father, Ben Tolbert. He was another strong possibility since he might want to protect his son.

  “I’ll question all of them,” Reed promised.

  “And I’ll be there when you do,” Livvy added. She heard the irritation in his under-the-breath grumble, but she ignored him, took the handheld UV lamp from her bag and put on a pair of monochromatic glasses.

  “Shane said he was here when he was hit.” Reed pointed to the area in front of the fireplace. It was only about three feet from where Marcie’s body had been discovered.