Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Cade and Rus just exchanged a glance.
“How do you know it’s not Whitaker’s ghost?” Cade joked.
Riggs looked his way. “Rain washed away any tracks, but Nadia told me the scratching stopped when the storm came, and my guess is the same as hers. If there was such a thing, ghosts wouldn’t feel rain, so they wouldn’t give any fucks about it.”
“Excellent observation,” Rus muttered.
“Also gotta ask about the Whitaker investigation,” Riggs aimed that directly at Harry.
His friend’s brows went up. “Why?”
“Because Leland Dern was sheriff when that shit went down, and we all know Dern was a waste of space,” Riggs noted.
“The man confessed,” Harry pointed out.
“Yeah, after he hosed down the stables. This being after he blew holes in his wife and brother. Think that did the job, so why’d the guy burn down the stables?”
Harry again didn’t take his eyes off Riggs, and again, Cade and Rus exchanged a glance.
“Rus up to speed about all that shit?” Riggs asked Harry.
But it was Rus who answered.
“Yeah, Nadia Antonov moving to that cabin, Harry filled me in.”
“Being a big FBI guy, how do you feel about that scene?” he asked Rus.
“Can’t say I pulled the case file, Doc,” Rus replied. “Only know what Harry told me, and seeing as a man confessed and turned himself in at the scene, it sounded pretty open and shut.”
“Maybe you should open that file,” Riggs remarked.
“Again, I’ll ask why,” Harry put in. “Everyone involved in that mess is dead.”
“Nadia was at my place last night…”
All the men exchanged glances at that.
Shit.
“…she’s my neighbor, and Ledger is home, so we were getting to know our new neighbor,” he felt forced to explain.
“I thought you two were butting heads,” Harry noted, both observationally and probingly.
“We worked shit out,” Riggs replied impatiently.
“Right,” Harry muttered.
Moving the fuck on.
“And she made the observation that you can’t see Roosevelt’s cabin from any of the windows in my house. A house Lincoln helped design. A house that has a fuckuva lot of windows. And straight up, this morning, I went into every room that faced the lake, and she’s right. Even in the farthest room on the third level, that part of the house is built into a hill, angled away from the cabin, so the windows are positioned toward the other side of the lake. You can’t see anything but Roosevelt’s pier.”
The mood coming from Bohannan had them all looking at him.
“What?” Harry pressed.
“Gotta say, that’s another excellent observation,” Cade said. “Got all my kids living close on our land, though not that close, and I can see all their houses from mine, to the point I had some trees removed around Jace’s place so it wasn’t so secluded. Not that me and Larue spy or anything, but you just keep an eye. And Larue and I both felt off about Jace’s place, until those trees were removed. Further, it isn’t like my boy can’t take care of himself, it’s just a family thing.”
“That’s pretty thin to pull a file on a closed case,” Harry noted.
“Not if you’re a profiler and you got some guy going overkill on murdering his wife and identical twin brother,” Cade returned. “With this new information, gotta admit, it’s hinky, Harry. The wife is already a thing. Though, last I read, eighty percent of female homicides are done by their partner or an ex, so it’s a thing to men like us who would never do it. But an identical twin?” Cade shook his head. “They got a bond. I’ve got a pair of my own, and I’ve read a lot about it. Think it’d take a lot for a man to pull that trigger. And even more to burn his body to ash. From what I understand, and seen with my own eyes with my sons, that would be akin to destroying himself.”
“Which would explain why he entered a fugue state after shooting them and while hosing down the area around the stables and setting them on fire,” Harry threw out.
“Maybe. It’s not like wildfires are common here, though,” Cade retorted. “It’s too wet. That’s going the extra mile, and it takes some synapses firing to think, fire, trees, I just killed my wife and brother, but I don’t want to be responsible for burning down a few acres of forest. If synapses are firing, you aren’t in a fugue state.”
“And again, the man who did it is dead after doing time for the crime. It’s not like I can recharge him,” Harry pointed out. “I couldn’t even do that if he was still alive.”
Riggs knew Harry was thinking about his department and the resources at hand, and not being a lazy ass. That wasn’t Harry’s style.
Still, he was beginning to piss Riggs off.
“Though, you could charge someone if they’re still around, and this guy didn’t do the crime,” Rus piped up.