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stammered, “D-don’t touch anything.”
Sam almost growled …
“What do you think I am, an idiot?”
What kind of cop didn’t know better than to be careful around this kind of a crime scene?
But she looked up at Dominic and saw that he was still pale and trembling.
What if he faints? she thought.
She pointed to a nearby armchair and said, “Sit down, Dom.”
Dominic mutely did as he was told.
Sam wondered …
Has he ever seen a dead body before?
Her own experiences were limited to the open-casket funerals of her grandparents. Of course, this was completely different. Even so, Sam felt strangely calm and under control—almost as if she’d been preparing to deal with something like this for a long time.
Dominic obviously wasn’t feeling the same way.
She peered closely at the wound in Ogden’s forehead. It looked a little bit like that big sinkhole that had collapsed under a country road near Rushville last year—a weird, gaping cavity that didn’t belong there.
Weirder still, the skin seemed to be intact—not torn, but stretched into the exact shape of the object that had bashed against it.
It took only a moment for Sam to realize what that object must have been.
She said to Dominic, “Somebody hit him with a hammer.”
Apparently feeling less squeamish now, Dominic got up from the chair and knelt beside Sam and looked closely at the corpse.
“How do you know it was a hammer?” he asked.
Half-realizing it sounded like a sick joke, Sam said …
“I know my tools.”
In fact, it was true. When she was a little girl, her dad taught her more about tools than most of the boys in town learned in their whole lives. And the indentation of Ogden’s wound was the exact shape of the round tip of a perfectly ordinary hammer.
The wound was too big to be made by, say, a ball peen hammer.
Besides, it would have taken a heavier hammer to strike such a deadly single blow.
A claw hammer or a rip hammer, she figured. One or the other.
She said to Dominic, “I wonder how the killer got in here.”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” Dominic said. “Ogden didn’t bother to lock his front door much, even when he was gone. He sometimes left it wide open at nights. You know how the folks who live here along the waterfront drive are—dumb and trusting.”
Sam found it sad to hear the words “dumb” and “trusting” in the same sentence like that.
Why shouldn’t folks be able to leave their houses unlocked in a town like Rushville?
There’d been no violent crime here for years.
Well, they won’t be so trusting now, she thought.
Sam said, “The question is, who did this?”
Dominic shrugged and said, “Whoever it was, Ogden sure as hell looks like he was taken by surprise.”
Studying the wild look on the corpse’s face, Sam silently agreed.
Dominic added, “My guess is it was a total stranger, not somebody from around here. I mean, Ogden was mean, but nobody in town hated him that much. And nobody around here’s got the makings of a killer. It was probably some drifter who’s already come and gone. We’ll be damned lucky to catch him.”
The thought made Sam’s stomach sink.
They couldn’t let something like this just happen right here in Rushville.
We just can’t.
Besides, she had a strong suspicion that Dominic was wrong.
The killer wasn’t just some drifter passing through.
Ogden had been murdered by someone who lived right around here.
For one thing, Sam knew for a fact that this wasn’t the first time something had happened right here in Rushville.
But she also knew that now was no time to start speculating.
She said to Dominic, “You call Chief Crane. I’ll call the county medical examiner.”
Dominic nodded and took out his cell phone.
Before she reached for hers, Sam wiped some sweat off her brow.
It was already getting to be a hot day …
And it’s going to get a whole lot hotter.
CHAPTER TWO
Riley Paige took a long, deep breath of the cool ocean air.
She was sitting on the high porch of a beach house where she, her boyfriend Blaine, and their three teenaged daughters had already spent a week. Down on the wide sandy beach, more summer vacationers were scattered about and others were out in the water. Riley could see April, Jilly, and Crystal playing in the surf. There was a lifeguard on duty, but even so, Riley was glad she had a good view of the girls.
Blaine was lounging in the wicker recliner next to her.
He said, “So are you glad you accepted my invitation to come out here?”
Riley squeezed his hand and said, “Very glad. I could really get used to this.”
“I certainly hope so,” Blaine said, squeezing her hand back. “When was the last time you took a vacation like this?”
The question took Riley slightly aback.
“I really have no idea,” she said. “Years, I guess.”
“Well, you’ve got some catching up to do,” Blaine said.
Riley smiled and thought …
Yeah, and another whole week to do it in.
They’d all had a wonderful time so far. A well-to-do friend of Blaine’s had offered him the use of his place at Sandbridge Beach for two weeks in August. When Blaine invited them to go along, Riley had realized that she owed it to April and Jilly to spend more time away from work, having fun with them.
Now she thought …
I owed it to myself, too.
Maybe, if she got enough practice in this summer, she’d even get used to pampering herself.
When they’d arrived, Riley had been startled at how elegant this place was, an attractive house raised on pilings and with a wonderful view of the beach from this porch. There was even an outdoor pool in the back.
They’d gotten here just in time to celebrate April’s sixteenth birthday. Riley and the girls had spent that day shopping fifteen miles away in Virginia Beach, and they’d visited the aquarium there. Since then they’d barely left this place—and the girls seemed to be anything but bored.
Blaine gently let go of Riley’s hand and got up from his chair.
Riley grumbled, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
“To finish getting dinner ready,” Blaine said. Then with an impish grin he added, “Unless you’d rather go out to eat.”
Riley laughed at his little joke. Blaine owned a quality restaurant back in Fredericksburg, and he himself was a master chef. He’d been making wonderful seafood dinners ever since they’d gotten here.
“That’s out of the question,” Riley said. “Now go straight to the kitchen and get to work.”
“OK, boss,” Blaine said.
He gave her a quick kiss and went on inside. Riley watched the girls romping in the surf for a few moments, then started to feel a little restless and