“What’s this?” The word was small, and faint, as if it had been written in pencil and erased. A word they weren’t meant to see. Sam brought the letter closer, letting the late afternoon sunlight play on the page.
“It’s a name. Lauren. And something else. I can’t make it out. It’s like he wrote it, then erased it. It’s barely an indentation.”
She held it up to the light. “I think it says ‘Look out for Lauren.’”
“Who the hell is Lauren?”
Sam met his eyes. “I have no idea.”
“Shit. I’m sorry, guys, but I gotta go.” Fletcher turned to Xander. “You’ll be back tonight?”
“Late, yes. Don’t worry, man. I’ve got her.”
“I’ll run the name, see if anything pops. Keep in touch.” Fletcher nodded once, then went out the front door. Sam heard some low words. His car engine turned over and he drove away, the gravel crunching under his tires. Thor barked once in farewell, and the forest grew quiet.
Davidson was waiting for them on the porch.
“Ready? You want to ride with me?”
Xander shook his head. “We’ll follow you.”
“Suit yourself. It’s about a thirty-minute ride. We’re heading toward the city, then south a piece. Stay close so I don’t lose you.”
He got behind the wheel, and before he put on his sunglasses, Sam saw him stare angrily toward the hills.
Whoever was nosing around the case, she had the distinct impression Davidson knew exactly where to find him.
Chapter
22
THE ROAD OUT of Lynchburg followed a path the locals called Doo-Doo Highway, an odiferous few minutes past the waste treatment plant. The temperature had risen, waves of heat dancing up from the asphalt, and the miasma bled in through the Jeep’s doors. Thor whined once, and Sam simply took a huge gasp of breath and plugged her nose.
Xander started to laugh. “You look rather miserable.”
“And why aren’t you?”
“I am, but I’ve smelled worse.”
“I have, too. No reason to be heroic about it.”
They topped the hill. “It’s safe now. You can breathe.”
She dragged in a lungful of air. It was sticky and hot, but it didn’t stink. “Not sure I’m in love with central Virginia in the summer.”
“It’s better down by the river. There’s a breeze.”
Davidson flashed his brake lights twice to get their attention, then turned off the road into an unmarked drive. He started a series of switchback turns that led up the side of a mountain.
“Where is this guy going?” Xander asked.
“Well, if the Scarrons are as rich as he says, they’ll have put the house on easily defensible land. Right?”
“Never start a land war in Asia, or Lynchburg?” he asked with a wry smile.
“Something like that. I’m assuming we’re dealing with seriously old money. Scarron Oil’s been around awhile.”
“It’s his wife’s place, though. Her family might not be rich.”
“If it’s the person I’m thinking about, her maiden name is Dawson, and she’s richer than dirt,” Sam said.
“You know her?”
“Know of her. There was a Town & Country profile on her a while back. She’s younger than her husband by about two decades. Trophy wife.”
“Are you going to mention this to Davidson?”
“What, that I read an article on her years ago? It’s hardly worth mentioning. She’s a designer, interiors and textiles. Has her own line of fabrics. They’re a bit like Brunschwig & Fils. Too busy and bright for me, you know how simple I like things. So family money, husband’s money and her own very successful business. Yes, Ellie Dawson Scarron is filthy rich. I’d be watching out for a moat.”
That got another laugh out of him, and she relaxed against the seat, let the breeze move her hair off her face. Thor put his head on her shoulder and she stroked his ears. They could be out for a Sunday drive instead of barreling headlong into a murder investigation.
* * *
Ellie Scarron did not live in a castle with a moat. But the place was indecently large, ornate, a magnificent modern straight out of the school of Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was a series of rectangular boxes nestled into the side of the mountain with lots of glass, and a massive double front door that looked as though it was made from the trunk of a redwood.
Xander pulled the Jeep into the curved drive and shifted into neutral. “Funny. The old money’s in the modern palace and the funeral home is in Tara.”
Davidson waved for them to join him. Sam didn’t move, just stared at the house. After a moment, she put her hand on the door handle. “Come on. Let’s get this over with and get back to D.C.”
Xander immediately went on alert. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. This place doesn’t feel right.”
She didn’t want to tell him she smelled blood, and fear, and more. Evil. Something wrong, and wicked. It was ridiculous. She was just being jumpy. They were off the beaten path with a cop neither of them trusted, and she was missing Fletcher. Xander wasn’t carrying, not on his person, at least that she could see. His concealed carry permit didn’t extend to Virginia, but she knew he had weapons in the Jeep. He’d never go anywhere without them.
She glanced over at him. He was watching her, tensed, hands curving around an invisible M-4.
She smiled. “It’s okay. I’m being spooky. Let’s go.”
He was darkly silent, but gestured for her to go ahead of him. They joined Davidson on the glazed cement, and together the three of them climbed the fifteen steps to the doors.
Sam cast a discreet glance behind them, just in case someone, or something, was there. She saw nothing but the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains, hazy and mysterious, butted up against the green farm fields. The effect was beautiful, a study in contrasts: the ephemeral mountains against the tangible land. She imagined the sunsets up here must be spectacular.
Davidson rang a bell, and waited. Nothing. He jabbed the button again, and they heard the singsong bells, not a traditional ding-dong, but a deeper sound, like the gong of a church bell. Hell, it probably was. Sam hadn’t seen a bell tower when they drove up, but these people probably had their very own Quasimodo in the backyard, swinging from a rope.
Davidson was knocking on the door now, loudly, and the bangs from the bold brass lion-faced knocker echoed through the house. He shielded his eyes and looked in through the thin strip of decorative glass running the length of the ten-foot door. There was a matching one on the left, and Xander leaned in to do the same.
Davidson stood back. “This is strange. I called her on my way over to let her know we were coming to talk to her. She sounded upbeat, offered to make us some lemonade. I can see through to the garage behind the house. Her car’s parked out there. She’s here, or she was ten minutes ago.”
Sam didn’t hesitate. “Exigent circumstances. We have to go in.”
“I can’t break into her house.”
“You can, and you will. Something is terribly wrong, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Let me just call her again. Hang on.” He pulled out his cell phone.
Sam could hear the phone ring inside the house. Once, twice, three times.
Davidson frowned and hung up. “Let me get on the horn, get some more folks out here.”
“While you’re wasting time, I’m going in.”
Davidson put a meaty hand on her shoulder. “I can’t let you do that, Dr. Owens.”
“Then charge me with breaking and entering.”
She ignored his curse and put her hand on the oversize doorknob. It twisted easily in her fingers. “See, it’s unlocked.” She turned the knob and the door clicked open. It swung in silently.
The house was quiet, too quiet.
“Mrs. Scarron? Are you home?”
Nothing.
Davidson was clearly struggling with his conscience. Sam rolled her eyes and entered the house, Xander on her heels.
She hadn’t been imagining it. The meaty scent of copper hung in the air like a fog.
Blood.
Chapter
23
FIVE STEPS LED down to a sunken living room. Sam saw Ellie Scarron twisted on the floor, a pool of burgundy under her head.
Davidson yelled, “Jesus, don’t touch her. Get back up here and don’t touch anything. This is a crime scene.”
She ignored Davidson, rushed down the stairs and knelt by the woman. Scarron’s eyes were open, unseeing, staring upward. Sam avoided the carotid; there was a thin loop of wire around the woman’s neck, cutting deep into the flesh. Instead she picked up Scarron’s limp wrist. Her body hadn’t begun to cool into inertness yet; the killer hadn’t been gone long.
She was about to release the wrist when she felt a tiny bit of pressure, the weakest bump against her fingers. A pulse, thready and indistinct. Sam launched herself into CPR, hands intertwined, pushing hard on the woman’s chest.
“She’s alive, she’s alive! Get an ambulance out here. Xander, come here and stabilize her neck for me. She can’t breathe. We need to clear an airway for her.”
The men jumped into action. They were both professionals, able to handle an emergency situation without second-guessing or arguing.
Sam took one look at the damaged tissue around the victim’s neck and knew there was no safe way to intubate her. As Sam got her heart beating in a more regular rhythm, blood began to slowly pulse from the wound in her neck. Sam felt around the wire and pressed her fingers into the base of the woman’s throat, then nodded to herself. There. She could do it.
Xander knelt by the woman’s head, grabbed it with both hands. He’d been on enough battlefields to recognize what Sam was about to do.
“You’re going to trache her?”
“I have to. Keep her head still, tell her she’ll be okay. Put pressure on her carotid, not enough to knock her out, but keep that blood flow down. She’s tachycardic. Watch her pulse. I’ll be right back.”
Sam rushed toward the kitchen, grabbed a paring knife from a block on the counter and looked around for something to use as an airway. A straw, a pen, something, anything hollow.
Come on, come on, come on. You’re running out of time.
There. The plants on the windowsill had decorative glass watering bulbs inserted into their soil. She snatched one, cleanly cracked it against the edge of the stainless-steel sink. The head broke off with a clatter. She turned on the hot water and allowed it run through the tube. Thoughts of infection raced through her mind, but there was no time to properly sterilize the glass. She took off back for the living room, skidded to a stop by the butler’s pantry and its crystal decanters. She pulled the stopper out of the closest and doused the glass rod in spirits. It smelled like a very good single malt, which was heartening: it was pure alcohol. She brought the decanter with her.
The preparations hadn’t taken more than a minute. Back on her knees next to Ellie Scarron, she noted the woman’s skin beginning to blue. Hurry, Sam, hurry. She would save her, damn it. The woman had been lying on the floor bleeding out while Davidson screwed around outside.
She had one brief dark thought. At least June Davidson hadn’t tried to kill Scarron himself, but he’d had plenty of time to call someone to get out here and take care of things.
She splashed the Scotch on the woman’s exposed throat, then expertly pushed the knife through the skin at the base of her very small laryngeal prominence, going hard through the surprisingly tough cricothyroid membrane and into the trachea. The woman didn’t move, didn’t wince.
“Come on, Ellie. Stay with me. I’ve got you. You can’t die on me. I won’t let you.” As she talked, Sam used her finger to hold the opening apart, then gingerly placed the tube in the trachea. She pulled the skin together tight against the base of the tube, blew into it a few times, used the other to feel for a pulse and waited for the air to begin moving into Ellie Scarron’s lungs.
Sam heard a slight whistle, realized her own eyes were closed. She opened them in time to see Ellie close hers, not in death, but in a deep unconsciousness.
Xander whispered, “You did it.”
Sam blew out a breath of relief. “She’s alive for now. Davidson, we need to get her transferred to the hospital quickly. They’ll need to do a proper tracheostomy and get this wire out of her neck.”
Davidson said, “They’re two minutes out. Damn, woman, that was impressive. You brought her back from the grave.”
She had. Ellie’s pulse was bumping along merrily now that she wasn’t hypoxic anymore, and the color was coming back to her face.
Davidson squatted down next to them. “When will she be able to talk, to tell us what happened?”
Sam shook her head. “It’s too early to tell. She may never regain consciousness. There may be permanent damage to her vocal box. The wire is cutting through the skin there. I was careful as I could be, but I wasn’t gentle. It could have made things worse.”
“You were amazing. She’s lucky you were here. Whoever tried to kill her couldn’t have been more than five minutes ahead of us. Thank God we decided to head up here.” He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, then went up the stairs to the foyer.
Sam met Xander’s eyes. He was still holding Ellie’s head straight so the field tracheostomy wouldn’t dislodge. She spoke quietly so Davidson wouldn’t hear.
“Whoever tried to kill her used the same M.O. as Benedict’s killer.”
He nodded. “Clearly someone is trying to make sure we don’t find out about Savage’s world. They’re killing off everyone who’s had anything to do with him.”
“Worse than that. You see what’s happening, right? They’re killing off people connected to the will. Keep your hands on her. I’ll be right back.” Sam stood and went to Davidson, who was waiting by the front door for the ambulance. She could hear the thin wail of the siren coming from the base of the mountain.
She looked at her hands and realized she was covered in blood. Davidson looked down at her, and silently handed her his handkerchief.
She wiped her hands on it, watching the white stain red.
His voice was shaky and she realized he was fighting back tears. Her estimation of him went up a few notches. He swiped at his eyes.
“I’m getting pissed off now. Ellie is a good friend of mine. What the hell is going on around here?”
Sam resisted the urge to touch his arm, to comfort him. He was clearly upset, his chest rising and falling quickly as he struggled to maintain control. Maybe she’d misjudged him. Maybe he was a good man, a solid, trustworthy man. Maybe her own issues were clouding her judgment. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d only been delaying them, pushing them off the trail, reluctantly allowing them to be a part of the investigation. A small-town cop not wanting to be manhandled by the system, or a methodical one who didn’t jump to conclusions?
Or was this about her? Had she been so twisted by the events of the past few years in Nashville that she saw the bad in people immediately, instead of the good? Her inherent distrust of mankind, driven by years opposite the working end of a scalpel, trying to figure out why people did such horrible things to one another?
“I don’t know. We need to be cautious, and you need to find out who tried to kill Ellie Scarron. The attacker had to know we were headed here, and scrambled to murder her before we arrived. My God, another minute or two of us standing around dithering about whether she was home or not and he would have succeeded. Who did you tell? Who knew we were coming here?”
He held himself so still she wondered if he’d heard her. He finally d
ragged in a breath and sighed. “I made three calls on the way up here. One to Ellie herself, to tell her we were fifteen minutes out, one to a friend in the service to check out your boyfriend there and one to Mac Picker, to check what time his partners were coming back tonight.”
“Picker. All roads seem to lead to Benedict’s law offices, don’t they?”
His voice was cold and hard. “They certainly do.”
The ambulance lumbered over the crest of the hill and pulled to a stop in front of the house. Two EMTs spilled out, began gathering their gear. Sam shouted to them, “I had to do an emergency trache on Mrs. Scarron. You’ll need to stabilize the surgical field, too. It’s a little messy.”
One of the EMTs raised a hand in acknowledgment. Sam went inside, got a thumbs-up from Xander, who was helping the EMTs, had a glance at her patient, who continued to cling to life, if barely, then went into the kitchen to wash the blood from her hands.
Chapter
24
Metropolitan Police
Criminal Investigative Division–Homicide Section
Washington, D.C.
CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG STOOD at the front of the room with two FBI agents—a man and a woman. They both were fit but looked drawn and gray, which told Fletcher more than he wanted. The woman was young, pretty, athletic, her dark hair drawn back in a ponytail, and she was frowning at a BlackBerry. The man, forties, blond hair high and tight and horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a teacher instead of an agent, conversed quietly with Armstrong.
Fletcher slipped into his chair at 6:15 p.m., out of breath from his two-and-a-half-hour tear through the Virginia countryside and the mad dash across town to the run-down morgue that housed the OCME. He’d found Nocek and dropped off the cooler with the samples from Savage’s autopsy, then rushed downtown to Metro headquarters.
When Shadows Fall Page 11
