“I think he’s sick of working in the field and likes making me do the crawling around.I’m not complaining.It’s a living.To be fair, he has seemed a bit under the weather lately.Having him down here coughing on everything wouldn’t exactly be good forensic work.”
Arnold glanced down at the blood and looked away again.He never had the stomach for this sort of work.
Connor stepped closer, stopping short of the chair and the body.“What do we have?”
“We know who it is, Chief… But I’ll stick to the book.Warren Holt, male, fifty-one,” Matt said.“Single gunshot wound near the left temple.Exit’s at the back right of the cranium.Weapon on the floor by the rear wall.Revolver.Haven’t handled it yet except to photograph its position.We’ll check it for prints and DNA, ballistics to match the bullet we pulled out of the wall.”
Connor looked toward the wall.The gun lay near the baseboard, half in shadow.
“Any sign of forced entry?”
Arnold cleared his throat.“Tom said the door was unlocked.”
Matt nodded in agreement."No damage I can see.The kitchen window's latched from the inside.Back door's shut, but the latch barely holds."
Arnold stepped closer, then caught himself and stayed behind Connor.“You wonder what he was thinking.”
Connor looked at something underneath Warren’s bloodied face.“What’s that?A letter?”
“I haven’t removed it yet,” Matt said.“But as far as I can tell, it’s unmarked.Blank.There is an envelope with his name typed on it.”
Connor studied Warren’s body again.
The head position.The arm.The paper.The typed envelope.The chair.The gun too far away.Most of all, Connor knew Warren.None of this made sense.
“This isn’t a suicide.”
Arnold’s eyebrows lifted.“How can you tell?”
Connor pointed toward the sheet beneath Warren’s hand.“Paper in front of him is blank.People usually shoot themselvesafterthey write the note, Arnold.”
Matt’s face held the slightest hint of a smirk.“Usually.”
Arnold leaned in to see.“Could’ve changed his mind about writing it.”
“Then why leave the paper there?Why print his own name on the envelope?”Connor said.“And why come here with a deer in the back like you had unfinished business?Warren would never let a good hunt go to waste.He’d have dressed that deer first and then done this, and even then, he was too stubborn to harm himself.”
“The angle does seem off,” Matt observed.“It’s possible someone shot him and then hoped we’d think it was a suicide.The blank page is strange.Unless he was playing Junior Spy and used disappearing ink.”
Connor gave him a stern look.“This isn’t the morning for cute, Price.”
Matt lifted both hands.
“But you do agree it’s suspicious?”Connor asked.
Matt moved around the table slowly.“Dr.Blethan will need to examine the trajectory properly.But from what I can see, the angle and placement could be consistent with someone shooting him from the side as he turned to look at them.Entry point’s unusual for self-inflicted.Not impossible.Just wrong enough that I wouldn’t call it a suicide just yet.”
“The gun seems a bit far, too?”
"That's possible."Matt glanced toward the revolver."Bodies can convulse even after a gunshot to the head.He could have thrown it over there.But still, given the angle, it's certainly not cut and dried."
Connor swallowed.“Warren wouldn’t do this.This is a murder.I know it.”
“It sure could be,” Matt said.“But I don’t think we’ll know until later.Warren could have decided he’d had enough and…”
“No,” Connor snapped.“I know what’s going on.”
Connor could feel it.A horror.An anger filling up inside of him that, if he wasn't careful, could consume him.It had always been there.Ever since he was a kid, in some way, becoming Sheriff was a way to quell that anger; to make him more congenial to the world.But deep down, he knew.It only took the wrong thing to release that type of rage.
