When she was cleaning the layers of dust and grime from the desk, she found writing on the bottom of the middle drawer. The house had been a treasure trove of nice surprises, but this surprise was disturbing. It was also old; too old to do anything about. Still, she intended to speak with Jonas about it and ask him to mention it to Diane Fallon.
Marcella partially pulled out the drawer as she turned on the banker’s lamp on top of the desk. The fluorescent bulb had a second’s delay before the light came on. Just as it brightened, she felt another Lewis-moment shiver and the world went black.
Another bright shining light appeared and Marcella wondered whether she should crawl to it. It shouldn’t be this hard, she thought, as she struggled to move across the floor.
Chapter 1
Diane Fallon parked her car well out of the way alongside the narrow drive. She closed her car door and stood looking at the old farmhouse illuminated by the headlights of a police car and the forensics van already there. Diane was director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History and director of the Rosewood Crime Lab, which was housed in the museum. It was in her role as crime lab director that she was here, but she suspected on this occasion she would be wearing both hats. That was because the house belonged to Dr. Marcella Payden, whom the museum’s archaeology curator, Jonas Briggs, had hired to create a reference collection of prehistoric potsherds for the museum’s archaeology department.
It was an old house, perhaps from the early 1900s, set among trees that looked old enough to be original to the place. The two-story white wooden structure had a blue tin roof and long open porches on the first and second floors that stretched across the front of the house. There was a redbrick chimney on each end. At one end of the house a metal carport contained a light-colored SUV. Large square-cut stones lined the gravel driveway.
The yard was mainly dirt with rock-bordered areas that had once been flower beds. Broken concrete yard ornaments—statuary, fountains, vases—littered the yard. From its appearance, the place could have been an archaeological dig. In reality, it was just an old farmhouse yard containing an odd assortment of disused items.
Diane changed from her heels to comfortable loafers and slipped a flannel shirt over her dark metallic burgundy cocktail dress. She held the shirt tight around her as she walked toward the house to shield herself from the wind, which was becoming chilly.
Neva Hurley and Izzy Wallace were taking their kits from the crime scene van as they spoke with a patrolman. Diane waved to them.
“What do you know?” asked Diane as she got within earshot.
Neva and Izzy were police officers with the Rosewood PD and two of the four crime scene investigators who worked for Diane. Neva was energetic, slim, and in her late twenties. Izzy, the newest member of the crime lab, was a fiftysomething, sturdily built guy. They grinned at her when she approached.
“You know Officer Daughtry?” asked Izzy, with a tilt of his head to indicate the patrolman.
“Diane Fallon,” she said, shaking the officer’s hand.
“Good to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
He seemed a little green.
Must be a rookie
, Diane thought.
“Nice outfit,” said Neva. “I like the way your dress matches the burgundy in the plaid of your shirt. Very lum berjack chic.”
Diane smiled. “I’ve been to a benefit at Bartrum University.”
Neva looked at her watch and up at the sky. It was close to dawn.
Diane gave her a weak smile. “Frank hasn’t given up on teaching me to dance. We went out afterward.”
There was a gust of cool wind and Diane folded her arms across her middle to keep the chill out. She thought she heard the faint ring of wind chimes in the distance. She nodded toward the house.
“David called me about this. What’s going on?”
David Goldstein was assistant director of the crime lab. This evening he was on duty handing out assignments while he worked in the lab.
“David called you?” said Neva. “He didn’t have to. We’ve got it covered. Ol’ Izzy here is doing pretty good.” Neva punched him affectionately in the shoulder. “Rosewood PD said a woman was attacked here earlier tonight.”
“Attacked? She survived?” Diane asked. Her body relaxed.
“Yes, but I don’t know how bad off she is,” said Neva. “The lead detective’s on his way. I think he’s been questioning someone. That’s all I know.”
Neva looked at Patrolman Daughtry as if he might have more information. He shook his head and shrugged.
“I was told to wait here for Detective Hanks,” he said.
Neva squinted, observing Diane. “Is there something special about this case?”
“Marcella Payden is an adjunct professor of archaeology at Bartrum and a consultant for the museum,” said Diane.
“Oh,” said Neva. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
The crunch of gravel and two blinding headlights heralded an approaching car. Diane stepped closer to the van with Izzy, Neva, and the patrolman, and they watched the car pull in behind the police car.
Detective Hanks
, she thought. She recognized him, but she hadn’t worked with him before. He took a step in their direction just as gunfire cut the ground at his feet.
Chapter 2
Loud bursts of gunfire exploded one after another. Diane ducked beside the van, pulling Neva down with her.
“What the hell?” she heard Izzy shout, ducking for cover himself.
The shots were coming from the woods beyond the drive where they were parked. Bullets dug out plugs of dirt from the ground. One ricocheted off a rock and hit the van; some hit the piles of lawn sculpture; others flew over their heads. The gunman didn’t seem to be aiming at anything in particular, or he was aiming at everything. It sounded to Diane like a rifle, but she wasn’t an expert on guns.
Izzy, his gun out, eased to the rear of the van. Neva took out her gun and followed him. Patrolman Daughtry moved toward the front of the vehicle and peeked out at the dark woods. A bullet struck the side of the van and he pulled back.
“Shit,” he hissed. “Hey, you crazy son of a bitch, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Lay down your gun and come out with your hands—”
His reply was cut short by a hail of bullets.
Keeping low, Diane climbed into the van through the sliding side door. She crawled to the driver’s seat and cut off the inside lamp and the headlights. As she called for backup on her cell phone, a bullet zinged through the driver’s window and exited on the passenger side. Diane jumped and hit her elbow on the gearshift.
“Diane, you hurt?” called Neva and Izzy together.
“Fine. Just startled—and pissed.” Diane crawled out of the van, cursing herself for being in a cocktail dress.
What kind of idiot comes to a crime scene in fancy dress?
Kneeling on the ground, she could see that Detective Hanks was down. Because of the positions of the parked vehicles in the drive, he was open to the woods when he got out of the car.
“Hanks is down,” Diane said. “Keep the shooter occupied long enough for me to get him to cover.”
“What?” said Izzy. “Well, hell.”
He fired in the direction of the shooter. Daughtry fired a couple of shots blindly across the hood of the van in the general direction from which the bullets seemed to be coming.
Diane dashed out in the open to Hanks, only a few feet away. He was already struggling to his feet just as she reached him. She slipped an arm around his waist and helped him take cover beside the patrol car. A bullet would have to go through the van and the police vehicle to get to him. It was a safe place to wait.
Diane examined the wound in his thigh by what little illumination his headlights provided to their position. It was bleeding, but blood wasn’t pulsing out, nor was it profuse. The bullet hadn’t hit his femoral artery. It had only nicked him.
“My leg is fine. It’s my shoulder,” he said. “Damn it. I fell and landed on my bad shoulder. Who the hell is that?”
“I don’t know,” said Diane. “Is your shoulder out of joint?”
Hanks rolled his shoulder, stretched his arm across his chest, and rolled the shoulder again, wincing the whole time. “No. Just hurts like hell. I’m fine. What’s this about?” He stood halfway and peered over the hood of the police car.
“I have no idea. I just got here,” said Diane.
“How’s Hanks?” shouted Izzy.
“I’m fine. Just mad as hell,” he shouted back.
“Backup should be here soon,” said Diane.
Diane eased the police car door open, intending to turn off the headlights and use the radio as a link to the police who were on their way. As she reached to cut the lights, she thought she saw a shadow cross a window of the house. It was quick, just a roundish shape passing one of the lower windows.
“That’s why the random shots,” she whispered.
She cut the lights. Now only light from the first-quarter moon illuminated the area. At least the shooter would have a harder time targeting them.
“What are you talking about?” said Hanks.
He was shifting his weight, trying to look around the patrol car toward Neva and Izzy at the van.
“They’re trying to keep us pinned down. Someone is in the house,” she said. “That’s why they’re just spraying bullets around, not targeting anything in particular.”
Hanks looked over at her sharply, then turned his head toward the house. “Now? There’s someone in the house now?”
“I’m not certain, but I thought I saw someone inside the house.” Diane stared at the windows again, squinting, as if that would give her better night vision.
The shooter fired two more shots that dinged off the detective’s vehicle and a tree beyond the car. Diane listened for the distant sound of sirens. She heard none.
“I’m going to ease over in the direction of the house,” she said. “Do you have a second gun?”
Hanks lifted his pant leg and gave her the Chief’s Special he had strapped around his ankle.
Diane weighed the gun in her hand. It wasn’t a particularly heavy gun, and she was strong, but it felt heavy in her hand, as if its lethal potential had a weight all its own. She didn’t particularly like guns, but it would be foolish to be without one now.
She put her cell in her shirt pocket and moved a couple of steps in the direction of the house and woods, away from the shooter.
“I’ll go with you,” Hanks said.
“I’m just going to watch,” she said. “I have my cell phone to keep in touch. If there’s someone in the house, I can tell backup when they come.”
“Fine. I’m still going with you.”
Hanks stood halfway, keeping the vehicle between him and the shooter. He leaned with his good side against the car.
“Are you sure you can walk?” asked Diane.
“My leg was just grazed and my shoulder’s been worse. I’m fine,” he said. “I’m thinking I’d like to get inside the house and see if I can spot the shooter from the second-floor windows.”
Diane didn’t think that was such a good idea, but she didn’t say anything immediately. She called Neva on her cell and, speaking in a whisper, told her what she and Hanks were going to do.
“Gotcha,” said Neva. “We’ll be here at the OK Corral hanging out.”
“Backup will be here soon,” said Diane. She listened again for distant sirens, but still heard none.
“If we stay near the trees and outbuildings,” said Diane, “I don’t think the shooter will be able to see us.”
She hesitated a moment. She had been trying to make nice with the detectives ever since Izzy told her they thought she interfered in their investigations a bit too often. But Hanks was about to interfere with her crime scene.
“Detective Hanks,” she whispered, hoping a soft voice would make her words sound soft as well, “if you go into the house, you will contaminate the crime scene.”
“That’s not the priority right now. We have a shooter and maybe someone in the house,” he said.
Diane stared at him a moment, weighing how to respond. Hanks was maybe in his late thirties, she guessed. His sandy hair was roughed up by his fall. She couldn’t read his expression in the dark and she didn’t know very much about him. He was new to the department. And he wasn’t making a good impression on her.
“Backup will be here any moment,” she said. “You’re bleeding, your arm’s hurt, and there may be someone on the second floor—who is armed.”
“And if there is, I’ll nail his butt to the wall. Come on, if you’re coming.” Hanks rose to his feet, keeping his head down.
Diane’s plan of simple reconnaissance had turned into something that she really thought was a bad idea. But even in the dark she could see the tight set of his face.
Well, damn
.
“If you are determined to go in,” she said, “take Officer Daughtry inside with you. He has more police training than I have for that kind of thing. I’ll watch your backs from outside the house. We don’t know how many may be in the house and we don’t know whether they have more friends than just the shooter out in the woods. Izzy and Neva can keep an eye on the front door from where they are.”
She glanced at the house. It looked more foreboding than it had just five minutes ago. In the darkness without the headlights shining on it, she could barely make it out. It was a shadowy giant looming in the night and Diane didn’t really want to approach it.
Hanks stared at Diane a moment, nodded, and called for Daughtry to come over. Diane watched the patrolman race the few feet between them in a half-crouched position and dive next to them beside his car. Diane thought he was a little too dramatic. Daughtry looked wide-eyed and just a little scared—and he seemed very young. Diane called Neva again and updated her on the plan as Hanks gave the policeman a quick briefing.
Diane was satisfied to let the two of them take the lead. With Hanks wounded and Daughtry looking rather green behind the ears, she didn’t want them behind her with guns. As they crept among the large grove of ancient pecan trees, Diane heard Izzy trying to talk the shooter down, and getting only gunfire for his trouble. From the direction of the shots, the shooter seemed to be moving about.