by Leigh, Lora
He stared around again and shook his head. Hell, Joe and Jaime had been tight. Fraternal twins rather than identical, but still, damned close in looks and with each other. The girls loved them. Young, old, or married, it didn’t make a difference. The Walker twins were laid-back, easygoing, laughing, and as thick as thieves. Poke at one brother and you might as well poke at the other. And yes, they were known to fight over their women, but never in a serious way.
This just didn’t make sense.
“Forensics is pulling up, coroner is behind him. Looks like the new chief of police is here to oversee how you’re usin’ his boys,” Gene announced mockingly as Zeke stepped toward the open door and moved to the rickety front porch before heading toward the driveway.
Alex Jansen pulled in behind the forensic team and the coroner. The new chief of police was ex-military and damned sharp.
Zeke held up his hand, stopping the forensic team as Alex strode toward him. There was still the slightest limp in Alex’s stride from a wound received during a mission in the Special Forces before he took over the job of chief of police, but the limp was growing less noticeable.
Dressed in a short-sleeved dark blue shirt, jeans, and boots, Alex looked like exactly what he was. An animal prowling in a man’s body.
“Zeke.” Alex extended his hand, his gray eyes concerned. “We got problems out here?”
“Seems I might have.” Zeke pushed his hat back on his head as he stared around the sunlit meadow the Walker mobile home sat within. “Walk in here with me. I need another set of eyes. We go as far as the door and that should be enough to keep from messing up your boys’ area.”
Alex nodded and followed behind him as Zeke led the way back to the trailer and then stood aside as Alex stepped into the doorway. Zeke didn’t talk. Instead, he stood by the doorway, staring at the scene again.
“Immaculate,” Alex murmured, and Zeke knew Alex wasn’t talking about the state of the habitation but rather the scene of the death itself. “No apparent hesitation on the shooter’s part. Walked in, aimed, and shot. Jaime didn’t fight, and neither did Joe.” He turned to Zeke. “Any sign of drugs?”
Zeke shrugged. “I’m leaving that call up to your boys and the coroner. I’m ordering an autopsy just to be sure. The rest.” He just shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right, Alex.”
Alex stared around again, his arms crossing over his chest, eyes narrowed. “No,” he finally said slowly, carefully. “It doesn’t feel right, but sometimes, it doesn’t.”
And there wasn’t a damned thing you could do about it, either, Zeke finished silently. It wouldn’t be the first time someone had died in this county and the answers weren’t there, and it wouldn’t be the last. But this one was closer, it was more personal, despite the distance he tried to keep between himself and Rogue Walker, cousin to the two dead twins.
He moved back as Alex stepped outside and stared around the overgrown clearing. The Walkers’ home sat in a small valley surrounded by oak, pine, elm, and dogwood. It was the end of April and spring was making itself known with a vengeance. It was already seventy, the sun beating down with blazing strength and heating the land around them.
“Let’s get out of the way then.” Alex sighed as they moved from the porch. “Forensics will do their job, see if they can get any answers for you.”
Zeke almost breathed a sigh of relief. Alex’s predecessor would cry and moan for weeks when he had to loan out the forensics team to the county.
“Thanks for the loan, Alex,” he stated, watching his own words, his own responses. Alex knew the same thing Zeke did. This was a murder, straight and simple, committed by a particular man, in a very particular manner.
“Need any help with this?” Alex asked as they moved back to the parked vehicles.
Zeke shook his head, aware of Gene trailing them now.
“Not yet. I’ll keep you up-to-date on it though. Gene said there was rumor the boys were fighting at the bar the other night. I’ll head out there later and talk to Rogue.”
Alex paused and stared back at Zeke, amusement suddenly gleaming in his eyes. “She’s helping Janey at the restaurant,” he informed Zeke then. “Haven’t you been picking her up lately?”
Zeke lifted his hand and rubbed at the back of his neck. Rogue was a sore spot with him; it was one of the reasons he hated finding Joe and Jaime as he had. Those boys were favorites of hers, and damned if someone wasn’t going to start wondering if Zeke was spending precious county money because of the rumors that were drifting through town that the sheriff and the bar owner were sniffing around each other.
“Not lately,” he finally admitted. “The warmer nights, she’s been riding her Harley in.” That didn’t mean he didn’t check up on the leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding hellion as often as he found time to do so.
Hell, he hated admitting that he missed those late night calls, just as he came off duty, requesting a ride from the restaurant where she was helping Alex’s lover back to the bar she owned. The woman was a managerial whiz kid, yet she had come here as a high school mathematics teacher five years before.
She was an enigma to him. She messed his head up every damned chance she had, and he wasn’t a man that liked having to question parts of himself that he had never questioned before. He’d made a decision before he returned to Kentucky, and now he had no choice but to stick with it. Until this was finished, there was no time for the emotions Rogue Walker inspired in him. There was no time for love.
And what the hell was he doing thinking about love? He was eleven years older than the spritely little hellion and ages older in experience. The last thing he needed was to allow his heart to get mixed up in the roller-coaster ride he’d have with her.
“Let me know if you need any help then.” Alex nodded. “Rogue works tonight and then the next two afternoons at the restaurant if you’re wondering about her schedule.”
A mocking smile tilted Alex’s lips as Zeke stared back at him silently. He didn’t have a damned word to say to that.
When Janey had opened the restaurant to six nights rather than four, Rogue had signed on to help her with it until she could find a dependable manager.
Alex chuckled, moved to his car, and slid inside before putting the vehicle in gear and driving off. Turning, Zeke surveyed the vehicles in the meadow and watched as his deputy loped back to him.
“Coroner is ready to collect the bodies and forensics is ready to release them. You ready?” There was the slightest sarcasm to Gene’s voice.
“Tone down the sarcasm, Gene, you’re pissing me off,” Zeke told him. “If you have a problem with how I run my office, then say so up front.”
Gene’s lips tightened as he glared back at Zeke. “You’re turning into an asshole, Zeke,” he accused him. “You’re throwing away good taxpayer money on a cut-and-dried case of murder-suicide. You act like those Walkers are scions of the county and you have proof of murder.”
“They’re citizens of this county, and they paid their tax dollars,” Zeke informed him. “I figure we can allot a certain amount of it on making certain what happened here; what do you think?”
Gene was one twitch of the lip shy of a sneer. “Well, you obviously don’t need me here wasting my time, too. I’ll head back to the office while you oversee this.”
“You’ll head out on patrol,” Zeke told him softly. “I have this to take care of. File your report before you go off duty, and I’ll check it over when I come in later.”
Gene’s blue eyes glittered for the barest second with calculation. “Gonna go question that Walker girl? She’s family to this rat trash, Zeke.”
“Another word and you’re going to regret it,” Zeke snapped. “Haul your ass out of here and get on patrol. I don’t need your advice or your opinion on the Walkers or this investigation.”
“Murder-suicide doesn’t constitute an investigation,” Gene argued, his face flushing beneath the hot spring sunlight. “Son of a bitch, Zeke. Just ’cause you have a thing fo
r Rogue Walker don’t mean her family ain’t still gutter shit.”
A thing for Rogue Walker. There it was, that knowledge that obviously someone had mistaken his friendship with Rogue for something more than what it was. Simple friendship, he told himself.
So why the hell was he forcing himself to hold back, to keep from curling his fists and plowing them into his deputy’s sneering face?
“You need to take a few days off,” Zeke said carefully. “Several actually. Until you can rein in your mouth, Gene. I’ll file the papers when I get back to the office. Maybe, in a few days, we can discuss your problems with how I run my department and my life and whether or not you can keep your damned nose out of it.”
Otherwise, the man was going to be sporting a broken nose. Before he could follow through with that thought, Zeke strode away from his deputy and headed to the trailer, where the coroner was having the bodies removed.
It was a damned shame, Zeke thought. Those two boys, as wild as they were, weren’t the murder-suicide type. For the most part, Walkers were just ornery. Not lazy so much as fun loving and laid-back. They played hard, worked as much as they had to, and had fun. They weren’t troublemakers, and they weren’t violent. But they were valuable sources on a silent investigation that was still ongoing. And they had been murdered.
“Sheriff.” The coroner, Jay Adams, nodded as Zeke stepped up to him. “I’ll autopsy, just to be sure drugs didn’t play a part, but it looks pretty conclusive in there.”
Jay was middle-aged with a full shock of bright gray hair and thick gray brows. His weathered face was creased with laugh lines and his hazel eyes were somber. He’d been coroner as long as Zeke had been sheriff, and he was damned good at his job.
“I appreciate it, Jay.” Zeke nodded as he watched the assistants load the bodies into the coroner’s hearse.
“Think we need to pull in the coroner’s investigator from the city?” Jay asked then. “We could transport to their facilities. I could get you more information.”
Zeke crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed at his jaw for long moments before nodding. “I’ll clear it through the chief.” Alex wouldn’t argue the decision; he knew as well as Zeke did what they were looking at. “Transport to their facilities and see what we can get.”
“Your gut is working on this one, huh?” Jay grunted. “Hate it when it does that, Zeke. Means we’re gonna end up squabbling with city hall. You know how they like to mess with things.”
“Yeah, I know,” Zeke breathed out roughly, wishing he could trust Jay, that he could discuss his suspicions with the older man. “But like you said, my gut is burning, Jay, and I don’t like it.”
“Eh. That looked a little suspicious to me anyway.” Jay suddenly grinned. “Hell, you know a body just ain’t gonna sit there when someone jumps in the room with a gun. And you know, between here and town, I’m sure I’ll consider the fact that something doesn’t look right about those wounds. They can’t naysay me like they can you.”
Favor given, favor owed. “You got it, Jay.” He clapped the other man on the shoulder. “Let me know how I can return the favor. I’ll be waiting on your report.”
“I’ll try to be quick about it,” Jay drawled. “Helps though when the city coroner happens to be your daughter, huh?”
“That doesn’t hurt a bit,” Zeke agreed with a small chuckle before turning his attention back to the mobile home.
He’d wait until forensics cleared out before going through it himself and feeling the area. Not just investigating it, but feeling it, just to be certain it was the work of the same man that had committed countless other murders in the county over the past twenty-odd years.
Maybe it was him more than the case that had him reluctant to leave and begin the investigation, he thought as the forensics team began to file out. This case meant going to Rogue when he hadn’t seen her in over a month, hell, nearly two months. Not since the warmer spring air had descended on the mountains and she had started riding the Harley to the restaurant. And he hated admitting that he missed those few nights a week he had been driving her back to the bar each night. Missed her teasing and her laughter when he had no right to it.
He wasn’t looking forward to telling her about Joe and Jaime. He didn’t like lying to Rogue, and he had no choice but to hide certain information from her. Information such as the fact that her cousins had been gathering information for him and Homeland Security special agent Timothy Cranston. Information such as the fact that he knew to the soles of his feet that the boys had been murdered by the same man that had killed Zeke’s wife and his father. The same man that Homeland Security has been searching for since the arrest and deaths of Dayle Mackay and Nadine Grace.
The man known only as the exterminator. The backbone of the Freedom League. A man that killed without conscience, without mercy, and without a trace.
TWO
Murder-suicide?
It wasn’t possible.
Rogue sat in a back corner of her bar, stared at the dancers, the drinkers, the bikers, and the good ole country boys and girls that filled the establishment she simply called the Bar. That was what it was. Just a bar. A dance hall. A place to drink. It was the place Nadine Grace and Dayle Mackay’s lackey had drugged her drink almost five years before.
The pieces she had put together over the years suggested the couple in the photos had helped her home. So nice of them. Then they proceeded to let Nadine and Dayle into her home where those pictures had been taken.
She had identified the couple within a year. Her father’s friend Jonesy had quietly taken care of making certain that particular couple never came to Somerset again. Something about a drug buy that the police had received a tip on, and a hell of a long sentence for both of them. But her father hadn’t found out, as far as Rogue knew. Of course, Jonesy, her father’s friend and then Rogue’s, had promised her he would make sure her father didn’t know. How he had managed it, she didn’t know. She was just thankful he had.
And the Bar was home now. She owned it. Her father had owned it before her, his last tie to the county that had seen him as nothing but white trash. They saw her as something even less, she sometimes thought. Like they saw the rest of the Walker clan, like Joe and Jaime.
Running a scarlet fingernail around the lip of the whisky glass in front of her, she tried to beat down the knowledge that here, in this county, the name Walker was, as her father had warned her, well less than sterling. Shiftless was one description. Thieves and gutter trash was another. But Rogue knew her family. Family like Joe and Jaime. They had been filled with laughter, charm. They had a sense of fun inside them that didn’t correlate to the nine-to-five lifestyle others held so highly.
Jaime was steady in his friendships, his laughter. He liked to get drunk and raise a little hell on Saturday nights, and he loved women. Joe had been just like him. Neither of the two men had a cruel or mean bone in their bodies. They weren’t conniving and they had never stolen a thing in their lives.
And now, they were gone.
She had been at the hospital when their sister, Lisa, had told Grandmother Walker that the boys were dead. A light had gone out in the old woman’s eyes.
“Hey, Rogue.”
Her head lifted at the sound of her bartender’s voice at her side. Lifting her gaze, she met Jonesy’s compassionate look.
Jonesy eased his burly body into the seat beside her, his hazel eyes somber as he watched her.
She liked Danny “Jonesy” Jones. A biker with a heart of gold, a mean-assed temper, and a head like a brick. An accident had cut back on his cycling and given him a limp, but he was still as tough and as no-nonsense as he had been when she first met him five years ago.
“Kent watching the bar?” She looked over to the long teak counter filled with customers.
“Kent and that new girl, Lea. She’s a good ’tender.”
Rogue nodded. Lifting her shot glass she tossed back the aged whisky, let her lashes flutter at the burn, then placed
the glass back on the scarred table.
“Got a call,” he told her then. “Alex Jansen’s fiancée. Said to tell you the sheriff is heading this way. She’s worried ’bout you. Asked that you call her tonight.”
See, that was the problem with friends, they wanted to know every damned thing. Where your head was, where it was going, what you were thinking, and what you were feeling. She’d made the mistake of making friends with Janey Mackay and her sister-in-law, Chaya, last year. Big mistake. Never mess with Mackays, she reminded herself.
“I’ll call her back later.” She shrugged.
“Sheriff will be here soon.” His thick forearms crossed on top of the table. “Zeke ain’t no man’s fool, Rogue. Or no woman’s. If he’s askin’ questions, then something’s wrong.”
She shook her head at that. “No. He’s just making sure. He’s anal like that, Jonesy.”
She poured herself another drink, sipped at the liquid this time, and stared into the full dance floor. Normally, she would have been out there herself, dancing, laughing, pretending. Always pretending.
“They were good boys, Rogue.” He patted her hand awkwardly and scowled down at her. “You did your best for them, girl, even when I told you they were gonna come to a bad end with all their womanizing. You can’t ask more than that from yourself. Whatever happened up there with them, it’s not on your shoulders.”
Maybe she hadn’t done enough. Joe and Jaime with their laughter and their devil-may-care attitudes. Maybe she had missed something, been too busy, too self-involved to see something that could have saved them.
She couldn’t figure it out. She just couldn’t make it make sense. That was why she was sitting here at a dark table staring into the smoky atmosphere of her bar rather than scandalizing the county as a hostess at the most exclusive and notorious restaurant in the town, Mackay’s. She was here instead, hiding, hiding from the false condolences and the questions she knew she would receive elsewhere.