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Riley spotted the deputy’s cruiser parked outside her home, waiting. She sidled up to the patrol car’s back bumper. As she shifted into park, a deputy yanked her door open. The shadow cast by his Stetson smudged his features—except his crafty brown eyes. They glittered in the artificial gloom.
“Riley Reid?”
She stood and extended her hand.
“I’m Deputy Nick Monson.”
Riley jerked her hand back. Monson’s jaw jutted forward.
Crap! He knows I recognized his name.
“Sorry.” Riley cradled her right hand in her left. “Didn’t mean to flinch. I had a recent run-in with an eight-hundred-pound motorcycle. There isn’t a spot on my body that doesn’t hurt.”
The muscular deputy stood a head taller than her. He removed his hat to swipe a handkerchief across his sweaty forehead. Gray shot through receding brown hair, and shoe-leather skin bunched around his eyes. Early fifties?
He replaced his hat. “Call me Nick. This here’s Deputy Carl Brens.”
She nodded a greeting, and Deputy Carl mumbled, “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” He looked younger than most BRU students and innocent. Don’t be fooled. Carl could be dirty, too.
“Let’s get this over with.” She took off at a near trot, eager to return to work and escape the dirty deputy. “Is a crime scene unit coming?”
“The techs are en route. Should be here any second,” Nick replied.
“Should we wait?”
“Nah, we won’t touch nothing.”
“Fine.” She unlocked her front door and positioned her body to shield the house alarm keypad while she entered her code.
“Was your alarm on Wednesday?” Nick asked, clearly the talker in the twosome.
“Yes.” Don’t volunteer any more than you have to. “The bedroom’s upstairs.”
Riley led the way. She planted herself in the hall and motioned the deputies inside. “I’ve seen it. Look in the bathroom, too.”
The officers stopped at the threshold to survey the bedlam.
“Shee-it,” Deputy Carl swore. “Sorry, ma’am.” He ducked his head at Riley.
Nick stayed mute, but Riley caught the hint of a smile before he parked his lips in neutral. She steeled herself to study the manufactured chaos anew. The simulated blood had browned and separated. Today the shredded underwear struck her as childish rather than frightening.
Could this be John Hunter’s work?
Odd. She was willing to consider John a party to murder, yet balked at believing he’d do this. Even if his affection was bogus, what did shredding her underwear gain him?
And how could John have entered without triggering the alarm? She’d never given him a key, much less her security code. If it wasn’t John’s handiwork, whose?
From the hall, she watched the deputies jot notes as they strolled through the bedroom and studied the lipsticked mirror.
“Looks like a pissed-off boyfriend.” Nick smirked. “You sure you and this Wolf fella aren’t heating up the sheets?” He flaunted a suggestive sneer.
She refused to take the bait. “As I told Sheriff Hendricks, I hardly know Dr. Valdes.” She turned on her heel and walked away, assuming they’d follow. “Anything else you want to see?”
“Yeah, so long as we’re here, give us a nickel tour and tell us if anything’s out a whack.”
“Sure.” Riley made a point of checking her watch. “I’m in a bit of a time crunch. Could you call the techs—”
The doorbell rang, and she rushed to welcome the two-person CSI crew. She knew the newcomers, and was relieved one was female. While she wasn’t naïve enough to believe a lady cop couldn’t be dirty, she couldn’t imagine Nick recruiting a female accomplice.
After a short conference, the CSI techs scurried toward the bedroom, and Nick asked Riley to continue her busman’s tour. She strode from living room to kitchen, the officers hustling in her wake. She sighed. “I see nothing amiss.”
Nick motioned toward a door. “Where’s that lead?”
Riley frowned. “The cellar. I forgot. I keep that door closed. Yesterday it was open when I came home. I started downstairs to investigate, but the light was burned out. Then I got distracted.”
She grabbed a replacement bulb from a cupboard and walked briskly to the cellar entry. “I’ll replace the bulb, and we can take a quick look. Not much down there.”
She swung the basement door wide. The kitchen fluorescents did little to brighten the cave-like darkness. She ran her hand along the wall to the switch plate to verify the switch was off. She didn’t like to screw in a bulb with the electricity on.
Riley started down the steps to the wall sconce five stairs below.
“Miz Reid, I’ll be glad to change that for you,” Deputy Carl offered. She swiveled to answer him. “Thanks but—”
Her left foot crashed through a tread and her ankle buckled. She swung her arms like a high-wire walker flailing the air to regain balance.
Scrambling for purchase on the railing, she dropped the bulb. A splinter from the wood railing thrust into her palm. She yelped. Her hands clawed the air as her center of gravity shifted. An unplanned back dive.
Glass tinkled. Her tender ribs banged against unyielding wood. She bumped down the stairs like a bundle of laundry on an oversized washboard. Her skull bounced against one tread, then another . . . and another. The pale square of light from the kitchen shimmied and shrank.
Riley ached all over. Her eyelids felt like bowling balls, too heavy to lift.
“Hey, Nick, should I call for an...an ... ambulance?”
They didn’t know she’d regained consciousness. She decided to keep it that way. She eased her eyelids open a fraction. Through a fringe of lashes, she spotted Nick mucking about near her water heater.
“She’s breathing,” Nick told Carl. “Just got the air knocked out of her.”
“Maybe she’s got a concussion...”
Her cheek throbbed against the damp floor. Skewed sideways, her gaze tracked Nick’s flashlight as if it were a magnet. The deputy’s gloved hand dropped a tiny object. Riley followed its short fall. The object danced in the flashlight’s beam for a heartbeat. What was it?
Riley had no doubt. He was planting bogus evidence.
Time to make an appearance.
She moaned theatrically. Didn’t take much acting. She fingered a rapidly growing goose egg on the back of her head. The movement didn’t leave her nauseous. If she had a concussion, it was slight. Nice self-diagnosis, Doctor Reid.
“Take it easy.” Carl squatted next to her. “Should we call a doctor?”
“No.” She levered herself to a sitting position. “I’ll be fine. What happened?”
“Someone doesn’t like you.” Nick’s comment didn’t answer her question.
The deputy walked toward her, swinging his flashlight like a pendulum. He stood over her, aiming the flashlight in her eyes. She batted it away.
“Someone sawed through a stair tread from the bottom up so it would give just right,” Nick said.
The deputy flicked his flashlight toward the water heater. “Your admirer hit the disconnect switch for your water heater. Guess he figured you’d investigate and plop into another kind of hot water.”
Nick shifted his beam to his young protégé. “Carl, look around the water heater while I help Miz Reid to her feet.”
Carl obeyed. When he reached the water heater, he pulled a string to activate the bare bulb overhead. Dust motes swirled in a yellow cone of light. He knelt to examine the disconnect switch.
“Should we ask the techs to dust for prints?” His attention shifted to the floor. “Hey, here’s a button. Think her attacker lost it?”
Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he lifted the stray object. Riley felt certain it came from one of Wolf’s jackets. The manufactured evidence confirmed her faith in her lover. But it didn’t solve her problem. How to prove Wolf’s innocence and trap John Hunter and Deputy Monson?
I can’t do it alone. And I can’t let more people die.