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Authors: Sandra Parshall

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BOOK: Broken Places
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“I’m not asking for myself,” Taylor protested. A slight edge to his voice and a spark in his eyes, quickly smothered, hinted at the anger he was struggling to control. He gestured at his faded blue shirt and worn khaki pants. “Look at me. Do I look like I care about money? If money meant anything to me personally, I wouldn’t even be in Mason County. I care about the people. They depend on the paper to look out for their interests.”

“All I know is that you came into my house and started threatening me—”

“Threatening you?” Taylor said with a little laugh. “That’s an exaggeration, isn’t it? I’ve just tried to make you see where I stand on…certain things. Things you probably don’t want to talk about in front of your friends.”

Taylor glanced at Rachel, who regarded the two men with fresh interest. Something was going on here that she couldn’t identify, something more than a man asking for a loan that Ben didn’t want to give.

Ben’s gaze jumped from Rachel to Holly to Angie, and the sudden apprehension in his eyes made Rachel all the more curious about the subtext of his exchange with Taylor.

“I’m through talking to you,” Ben said. “You’re leaving right now.”

He grabbed Taylor’s arm and tried to push him out the door. Younger, bigger, and stronger, Ben should have had the advantage, but Taylor caught the door jamb with both hands and held on. His color deepened alarmingly, and Rachel wondered if he had a heart or hypertension problem.

“Ben,” she said, “calm down, please. This is ridiculous.” She wanted to rise and put herself between the two of them, but Sebastian had begun to tremble and she couldn’t abandon him.

Taylor was losing his tenuous self-control. He glared at Ben. “You gave a million dollars to a damned animal shelter, while children right here in Mason County are going hungry—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Angie exclaimed. She stepped up to face Taylor. “Ben gives a lot of money to help children, but he doesn’t brag about what he does the way you do. And he doesn’t steal people’s money like you stole from my mom and dad.”


Stole?
I didn’t steal anything from—”

“That’s enough.” Ben pried Taylor loose from the jamb, shouldered the screen door all the way open, and shoved him out onto the steps.

Rachel gasped when Taylor stumbled backward, windmilling his arms for balance. Ben caught him before he fell, and without pausing he propelled Taylor down the steps and into the yard. As they disappeared around the side of the house, Rachel heard Taylor yelling, “If people knew the truth about you, if they knew what you’ve done—”

Then silence.

Rachel exhaled and willed herself to relax. She’d never seen Taylor act this way before. He had a reputation as a self-righteous do-gooder, but in her few encounters with him she’d found him courteous enough, if exasperatingly persistent. It was Ben’s behavior that worried her, though. He had a right to resent being pressured, but seeing him get physical with Taylor scared her a little. What did he mean when he accused Taylor of threatening him? What was it that Ben didn’t want to talk about in front of her and Angie and Holly?

Rachel noticed for the first time that Holly, sitting on the other side of Sebastian, looked distraught and on the verge of tears. To break the tension, Rachel grinned and said, “Believe me, not all house calls are this exciting.”

Holly managed a weak smile.

Leaning against a post, Angie chewed her bottom lip and watched the yard. When Ben hadn’t returned after a couple of minutes, she said, “I guess he’s just making sure Cam Taylor really leaves this time.”

“I hope so. This little guy needs peace and quiet during his treatment.” Rachel was curious about Angie’s claim that Taylor had stolen money from her parents, but bringing it up again might provoke another outburst of anger. Stroking one of Sebastian’s long ears, Rachel asked, “Are you ever sorry you took this job?”

Angie shook her head. “I love working for Ben. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I really appreciate you helping me get the job.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” From time to time, Rachel had wondered whether being here alone with Ben every day was the best thing for Angie, but it was none of her business. She could only hope the young woman was too levelheaded to fall for her boss.

Ten minutes ticked by with no sign of Ben. “Maybe he’s in the house,” Angie said. “I’ll be right back.”

Rachel was removing the needles from Sebastian’s back when Angie returned. “He’s gone,” she said, frowning. “His car’s not out front.”

Strange, Rachel thought. Had Ben followed Taylor beyond the grounds to make sure he didn’t come back? That really was going too far, in her opinion. And why would Ben leave without telling anybody?

Rachel expected him to turn up any second as she gave Angie instructions for the dog’s care and Holly packed up the equipment, but by the time they left he hadn’t returned.

They were on the driveway, headed for the road, when Holly sighed and said, “His house is so beautiful. I can’t imagine livin’ in a place like that.”

Rachel shook her head, bemused. When the court released Holly’s windfall inheritance, the legacy would include a house as grand as Ben’s, but she’d sworn never to live in it. Too many bad associations. In all seriousness, Holly had suggested the place was haunted by her dead aunt.
Grandma says when somebody dies a bad death in a house, their spirit never leaves it.
For now, Holly seemed content to stay in Rachel’s four-room cottage on the McKendrick horse farm, where she’d lived since starting work at Rachel’s veterinary clinic months earlier.

Turning onto the road, Rachel wondered again where Ben had gone. Something about this situation gave her the creeps. To distract herself as much as Holly, she said, “I’ll tell you a secret—Frank’s going to be in
Furballs
, starting about a month from now.”

“Oh, wow!” Holly exclaimed. “Frank’s gonna be a star!”

Rachel smiled at the thought of her battered one-eared cat, rescued from a Dumpster, transformed into a celebrity. “He’d better not let it go to his head. If he develops a taste for caviar, he’s out of luck.”

As Rachel drove toward Mountainview, where her vet clinic was located, Holly chattered on about possible storylines for Frank’s fictional life. Rachel tried to listen, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Ben, and she hoped to see him drive past any minute, on his way home.

Holly’s voice trailed off when they approached an old blue car in the middle of the road.

“That’s Cam Taylor’s car,” Rachel said. “Maybe he had a breakdown.”

“I sure hope we don’t have to give him a ride back to town.”

When Rachel pulled up behind the car, she realized it wasn’t occupied. The driver’s door hung open several inches. “What on earth? Do you see him anywhere?”

They glanced around at the woods on both sides. Nothing but trees.

“He might’ve gone lookin’ for help,” Holly said.

“If he has a cell phone, he could have called.”

“Maybe he’s back in the woods,” Holly said, “you know, answerin’ a call of nature. But why wouldn’t he pull over, instead of…”

Rachel stared at the empty car, the open door, and full-blown dread seized her. She swung around Taylor’s car and parked on the gravel berm. “You stay here,” she told Holly. “I just want to take a look around.”

She got out and jumped over the drainage ditch, her pants legs brushing against the Queen Anne’s lace blooming there. A strip of land about ten feet deep, thick with weeds and wildflowers and vines, separated the road from the woods. Spotting a patch of poison ivy, Rachel hesitated to wade farther through the vegetation. She paused, pulled off her sunglasses, and squinted into the gloom under the trees.

A movement snagged her attention. She caught a glimpse of color, no more than a hundred feet in, before it vanished behind a tree. Light blue. The faded shirt Cam Taylor was wearing. Relief washed through her, and she opened her mouth to call out and ask if he was okay, but stopped herself. Of course he was okay. He was probably peeing against a tree and wouldn’t welcome her intrusion.

Taylor came into view again—his back, his hair, one gesticulating hand. Although Rachel couldn’t see another person, she heard two voices now, rising and falling. Taylor’s was the only one she recognized. The other remained so indistinct that she couldn’t have said whether it was a man or a woman. Only a few of Taylor’s words carried clearly. “…don’t have the nerve…dare you.” He was arguing with someone. Why here? Why in the woods?

Taylor moved, and she lost sight of him among the trees.

Rachel didn’t want to get involved in this.
Sliding her sunglasses back on, she turned toward the road and her vehicle.

The crack of a gunshot made her spin around. Another shot rang out. Rachel dropped to her knees, ducked her head and covered it with her arms.

She waited, her heart thudding, her mouth dry. The birds had gone silent. Over the sound of her own raspy breath, she heard a thrashing noise, like somebody running through the undergrowth. A squirrel chittered furiously. Then she heard a car start somewhere in the distance.

A touch on Rachel’s shoulder made her flinch.

“You okay?” Holly crouched beside Rachel, her eyes wide with alarm. “Did somebody shoot at you?”

“No, not at me. Get back in the car,” Rachel said. “Call 911. Call Tom.”

“You call him.” Holly stood. “Come on. We need to leave here right now.”

Rachel scanned the woods as she rose, trying to pick out the light blue of Taylor’s shirt in the forest of green and brown. He could be lying on the ground, bleeding to death. “I think somebody shot Cam Taylor,” she said. “I have to see if I can help him.”

“No!” Holly gripped Rachel’s arm with both hands and tried to pull her away. “You’re not goin’ in there with somebody that’s got a gun!”

Rachel twisted her arm free. “Whoever did it is gone.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t be—”

“I heard him leaving. Holly, go back to the car. Call Tom. Tell him to send an ambulance. Right now!”

Rachel set off into the woods.

The tree canopy closed over her, shutting out the sun. She stuffed her sunglasses into her shirt pocket and pushed on. Slapping aside drooping vines, stumbling over fallen tree branches, she felt like a walking target.

He’s gone,
she told herself.
The shooter’s gone.

Please, God, let him be gone.

Why hadn’t she listened to Holly? She didn’t even like Cam Taylor. It was nuts to risk her safety for him.

He’s hurt, bleeding; he needs me.

She found Taylor on the ground under an oak tree. He’d collapsed at an odd angle, coming to rest with his right leg twisted under him, his left arm flung up over his face. Blood soaked the front of his shirt.

Feeling exposed and vulnerable, Rachel pivoted in a circle, searching for movement among the trees. She saw no one lurking in the woods, no sign anyone else had been there except for a path of trampled vegetation leading away.

Rachel bent over Taylor, but the stench of fresh blood and feces and urine made her gag and draw back. Flies already buzzed over the body, drawn by the odors. Rachel waved them away. They didn’t disperse, but rose to circle above Cam Taylor, waiting, like tiny planes in a holding pattern.

If there was any chance he was alive, that she could help him, she had to try. Holding her breath, Rachel knelt beside him. Pressing her fingertips to one side of his neck, then the other, she searched for a pulse.

He felt warm to her touch, as warm as life, and as still as death.

Chapter Two

Captain Tom Bridger batted a swarm of flies away from the body while Sergeant Dennis Murray crouched and shot a last batch of pictures.

Tom wasn’t surprised Cam Taylor had ended up shot to death in the woods. Toss a rock anywhere in Mason County and you’d hit somebody with a grudge against him. Just as many would praise and defend him, though. Few would take the middle ground where Taylor was concerned.

Dennis glanced up at Tom. “What next?”

“Nothing that I can see.” Tom pulled a handkerchief from his uniform pocket and mopped a trickle of sweat off his forehead. Humidity and perspiration glued his thick black hair to his scalp like a helmet and made him speculate on whether baldness might be a blessing. “Whoever did this knew how to cover his tracks. It looks like an ambush.”

Tom and four other sheriff’s deputies had combed the woods and dense undergrowth around the body and found nothing—no spent shells, no fibers, no hairs. The woods lay between two parallel paved roads, with a narrow dirt road through the trees connecting them, and the shooter had left a path of trampled vegetation between the body and the dirt road. That was probably where he’d parked his vehicle, out of sight but close enough for Rachel to hear it leaving. The dry, hard-packed ground hadn’t yielded so much as a footprint or tire print. Tom had sent a couple of men to search the pavement and ditches on the far side of the woods, but he’d be surprised if they found anything useful there. Their best hope lay in turning up somebody who’d seen Taylor and his killer on the road. Deputies were already knocking on every door in the area in search of a witness.

Rising, Dennis let the camera drop against his chest on its strap and adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “You think it was the cartoonist?”

“We’ll start with him, but anybody could have been following Taylor around, waiting for an opportunity. Look, you stay with the body. I’ll tell Rachel and Holly they can go for now. No point in keeping them out here.”

Tom threaded his way back through the woods, swatting gnats and watching for snakes in the tangle of weeds and vines underfoot. On the road, yellow crime scene tape marked off Taylor’s car and the pavement and shoulder around it. A few yards away, Rachel leaned against her vehicle, arms folded and head down.

When she looked up at his approach, her bleak expression made Tom wish he could pull her into his arms, say something that might blunt the horror of what she’d seen. But this wasn’t the time or place. He touched her shoulder instead. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Rachel said, a tremor in her voice. “How long does he have to lie in the woods like that, with flies all over him?”

“Gretchen Lauter’s on her way. She has to see him before he’s moved, but it won’t be long.” Dr. Lauter, Mason County’s part-time medical examiner, had been summoned from the clinic where she saw Medicaid patients on Fridays.

“What an awful way to die. I didn’t like Cam Taylor, but I never would have wished this on him.”

“I expect to hear a lot of people say the same thing.” But at least one person would only be telling a half-truth.

“Do you think somebody was waiting here for him?” Rachel asked. “Flagged him down and made him get out of his car?”

“Possibly,” Tom said. “This was a perfect spot for it. There’s so little traffic on this road, we probably wouldn’t have known about the shooting for hours if you and Holly hadn’t come along. But I don’t want to start guessing. Right now I need to talk to Hern. He’s not back at his house and he’s not answering his cell phone. Do you have any idea where he could have disappeared to?”

“He hasn’t disa—” Rachel broke off, her eyes widening with sudden alarm. “What if something’s happened to him too? If he was following Cam Taylor—”

“We don’t have any reason to think anything’s happened to Hern. He’ll probably turn up anytime now.” Tom believed Rachel had given him a truthful account of the argument between Hern and Taylor, but had done it reluctantly, not wanting to make Hern look bad. Or was he imagining that? Tom had been trying to interpret her relationship with Hern, or Hernandez, or whatever his name was, since the man had moved to Mason County three months earlier.

“Why don’t you and Holly go home?” he said. “Cancel the rest of your appointments, don’t try to go back to work. Somebody’ll call you later about coming by headquarters to give your statements. Where’d Holly go, anyway?”

Rachel pointed up the road. Holly and her boyfriend, Deputy Brandon Connelly, walked aimlessly, the sandy-haired young man’s arm around her shoulders.

“She’s very upset. She didn’t see the body, but just knowing what happened and hearing the shots…” Rachel’s voice wavered and she covered her face with her hands. “I keep wondering if I could have prevented it somehow.”

“None of this is your fault.” To hell with propriety. Tom pulled Rachel into a tight hug. Her arms closed around him and she pressed her face against his shoulder. Stroking her silky auburn hair, Tom said, “I’m sorry you had to see him. I know it’s hard to get something like that out of your mind.”

He felt Rachel draw deep breaths, calming herself. When she pulled back, he kissed her forehead and released her. “Let me get Holly over here. I want to talk to both of you before you leave.”

Tom whistled to catch Brandon and Holly’s attention, and summoned them with a wave. When they joined him and Rachel, Holly’s eyes were puffy from crying, and Tom felt a pang of almost paternal sympathy for the girl. From the day he’d met her he’d had a soft spot for Holly. She was a sweet kid, but aside from that, the two of them were among the few people left in Mason County who were recognizable as Melungeon—mixed race, with skin color showing strains of Native American, possibly black, and Portuguese or Turkish. With their soot-black hair and dusky complexions, they would always stand out in this overwhelmingly white mountain community in southwestern Virginia.

“For now,” Tom said, “I don’t want either of you to tell anybody what you saw or heard. You didn’t hear the shots, you didn’t see the body. Tell everybody you were driving along, you saw Taylor’s car abandoned on the road but you didn’t see him anywhere. You waited to see if he’d show up, and when he didn’t, you called 911. Okay?”

Rachel nodded agreement, but Holly asked, “Why do you want us to lie?”

Tom didn’t enjoy scaring the girl, but she had to understand the importance of protecting herself. “The killer is still out there, and we don’t know who he is.”

“Right,” Brandon put in, and Tom allowed him to play the voice of authority for his girlfriend. “See, if the killer finds out you were here when the shots were fired, he might think you saw him. He’d be afraid you could identify him.”

“Oh,” Holly said, her voice falling to a whisper.

“I’ll have to let Joanna know that Cam Taylor’s dead,” Rachel said. “She’s been friends with the Taylors a long time.”

“Watch what you say,” Tom told her, “and ask her not to talk to Meredith Taylor until I’ve had a chance to get out there.” He wanted to be the first to see the new widow’s reaction to the news.

Brandon gave Holly a quick kiss before the girl climbed into Rachel’s vehicle. Tom opened Rachel’s door, but he caught her hand before she got in. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t want you to talk to Hern about anything that happened today.”

Rachel pulled her hand from his. “You can’t possibly think Ben killed him.”

“I didn’t say I did. You’re both witnesses to Taylor’s behavior and movements before he was killed, and I can’t have you discussing what happened and distorting each other’s memories. Promise me you won’t talk to Hern until I give the all-clear.”

She sighed and nodded. “I understand.”

A few minutes after they left, Gretchen Lauter arrived in her silver Prius, followed by a hearse from a local funeral home. When she finished with the body, deputies would bag it and load it in the hearse for transport to the state medical examiner’s morgue in Roanoke, where the autopsy would be performed.

Gretchen struggled out of her little car, a wince betraying pain in her knees, and banged her head on the door frame. “Crap,” she muttered, her fingers feeling through salt-and-pepper curls for the sore spot.

Tom knew better than to say anything, but he had a feeling Gretchen’s arthritis made her regret giving up her boat-sized gas guzzler. He busied himself with collecting a body bag from the teenage boy driving the hearse.

“All right,” Gretchen said, straightening the hem of her short-sleeved jacket, “where is the poor bastard?”

Tom filled her in as they trekked through the woods. “Two shots to the chest at close range. Right through the heart, looks like. We know the time of death—11:15. But we’re keeping that quiet for now.” He explained his concern for Rachel and Holly’s safety.

When Tom and Gretchen reached Taylor’s body, Dennis was flapping his hands in a vain attempt to beat off the buzzing flies.

“Don’t waste your energy,” Gretchen told him, pulling on latex gloves. “They’ll get at him no matter what we do.”

She looked down at the dead man for a long moment, and Tom sensed she was making a mental adjustment, reclassifying Cam Taylor from decades-long acquaintance to murder victim. Then she stooped and began a brisk examination, leaning in to study the chest wounds, lifting Taylor’s eyelids, prying open his mouth. Tom stood back to distance himself from the urine and feces stench that rose off the corpse like a miasma, intensified by the heat.

“Let’s turn him,” Gretchen told Tom. Which meant
you
turn him.

Tom rolled the body face-down. “No exit wound.”

“The slugs might be lodged in his heart,” Gretchen said. “Did you find the casings?”

“No. The shooter cleaned up after himself.”

Gretchen stood, grimacing and clutching one knee for a second. “Has Meredith been notified?”

Tom shook his head. “I’ll drive out there and tell her.”

“I suppose you have to consider her a suspect.”

“The spouse is always a suspect.”

“Well, I can’t believe she had anything to do with this. Are you going to call Lindsay?”

Gretchen’s gaze searched Tom’s face with a curiosity that made him avert his eyes. “I’ll let her mother tell her,” he said.

Why hadn’t it occurred to him before now that Cam’s death would bring the Taylors’ daughter back home? Lindsay would stay with her mother through the funeral, at least. Tom hadn’t seen Lindsay since the Christmas holidays, and their chance meeting on Main Street in Mountainview had been awkward for both of them. But now her father’s murder would be her only concern. Lindsay wouldn’t have the time or inclination to think about Tom and their failed romance.

“Hey, boss,” Brandon yelled from the road. “Here comes our man.”

Tom jogged through the woods as fast as the undergrowth allowed. When he reached the road, Brandon had already stopped Ben Hern in his black Jaguar. Tom took a minute to wipe sweat from his face with his handkerchief before he approached.

Hern had powered down his window and was craning his neck to see up ahead. “What’s going on?” he asked Tom.

“You don’t know?”

“Know what? Is that Cam Taylor’s car? Has there been an accident?”

“Step out of your vehicle, please.” Tom rested one hand on the butt of his pistol.

“What? What’s happening here?”

“Step out of the vehicle, please. Now.”

“Why?”

Tom didn’t answer, but met Hern’s exasperation with a calm stare.

Finally Hern sighed heavily and cut his engine. Under his breath, he uttered something in Spanish that didn’t sound complimentary.

The big man unfolded himself from the low-slung Jaguar with a fluid grace that made Tom think of a powerful cat rising to its feet. Tom couldn’t even imagine himself in a car like this, and he’d probably be as awkward getting out of it as Gretchen had been when she’d exited her Prius. But in his early thirties, Tom wouldn’t have arthritis to blame.

Hern slammed his door shut. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“Cameron Taylor’s body is lying in the woods over there. As far as I can tell right now, you were the last person to see him.”

“His body?” Hern’s bewildered glance flicked from Taylor’s car to the trees. “Are you saying he’s dead?”

His confusion seemed genuine enough, Tom thought, but he’d had plenty of time to rehearse what he would say and do when confronted with Taylor’s death. Watching Hern’s face, Tom said, “He was murdered.”

Hern’s mouth fell open, and for a few seconds he said nothing. Then he scrubbed a hand across his face and said, “How? Who—”

“Rachel found his car sitting empty on the road and called 911.”

Hern winced. “
Ay, Dios mio.
Where is Rachel? Is she upset?”

“Turn around and lean your hands on the vehicle,” Tom said.

“Excuse me?”

“I said turn around.”

Hern looked so incredulous that Tom expected him to balk. That wouldn’t be a problem, with Brandon standing by to help ensure cooperation, but in the end Hern threw up his hands and faced the car. “Go ahead, have your fun, if you think it’s necessary.”

Tom patted him down, feeling nothing but hard muscle under his black jeans and black tee shirt. The guy was in fantastic shape, probably worked out an hour or two a day. Tom had more than a little trouble seeing him as an artist who made his living—an enviable living—by drawing cartoons about his cat and dog.

BOOK: Broken Places
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