Drown Her Sorrows (Bree Taggert) Page 14

  Bree took out her camera and raised it. “Yes. He’s approaching the dumpster. There’s a minivan there, nose out. Paul is parking next to it. He just lowered his window and passed a white envelope into the minivan.”

  “Can you read the license plate of the minivan?” Matt asked.

  “No.” Bree’s camera clicked away. Thunder boomed in the distance, and a gust of wind kicked leaves across the blacktop.

  “How about the driver?”

  “I can see that there’s a man in the van, but there isn’t enough light to see his face.” Bree took more pictures. “I’m using the night-scene setting, but the pictures are going to be dark.” She lowered the camera. “He’s leaving.”

  The transaction had lasted less than two minutes. Paul backed out of the space and drove toward the exit of the complex.

  “Follow Paul or the minivan?” Matt asked.

  “We’ll stick with Paul. He’s our suspect.” Bree held up her camera. “Here’s hoping forensics can brighten these pictures so we can read the minivan’s plate.”

  Matt and Bree both slid down in their seats as Paul drove around the corner and away from them. After Paul’s car turned onto the main road, Matt started the engine and followed. He waited until they were on the road before he turned on the headlights.

  Lightning snaked across the sky, and light rain pelted the windshield, obscuring the view. Matt turned on the wipers and increased his speed until he could just see Paul’s taillights on the road ahead.

  “He’s going home,” Bree said.

  Thunder rumbled, and the rain picked up. Paul’s taillights turned into his driveway. The overhead door rolled up. Paul drove into the garage, and the door rolled back down. A light glowed in the windows that flanked the four bays. Matt returned to the same observation spot they’d used before and turned off the headlights.

  Bree watched through her camera lens. She frowned. “He hasn’t come out of the garage.”

  “Maybe he’s waiting for the storm to pass.”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” All Matt could hear was the drum of rain on the vehicle’s roof.

  Bree tilted her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t know. I thought I heard three cracks.”

  “Like thunder or gunshots?” The hairs on the back of Matt’s neck quivered.

  The rain stopped, and Matt listened intently. He heard nothing but the distant rumble of thunder as the storm moved away. The garage windows went dark, probably the automatic light going off. He scanned Paul’s property. Landscape lighting brightened the front yard to near daylight. “He’s still in the garage, right? In the dark.”

  “Yep.” Bree lowered her camera. “I don’t like it. I have a bad feeling.”

  “Then let’s check it out.”

  “Let me try to call him first.” She tapped on her phone.

  Matt heard the line ring several times, then switch to voice mail.

  “Mr. Beckett, this is Sheriff Taggert. I’d like to make arrangements for you to come to the station for additional questioning. You are welcome to bring your attorney.” She left her number and ended the call. “Let’s go.” She reached behind the seats and pulled out their body armor vests. “Just in case.”

  She handed one to Matt and put on her own. Then she turned off the volume on her radio. Matt slipped into the vest and fastened the Velcro straps. They grabbed flashlights and climbed out of the vehicle. Bree met him behind the Suburban. He opened his cargo hatch and retrieved his rifle. “Just in case.”

  Water dripped from trees as they jogged along the shoulder of the road and down the driveway.

  They approached the dark garage. Sweat gathered under Matt’s vest.

  The long building had four overhead doors, one side door, and two windows on either side of the four bays. Matt jogged to the first window and put his back to the siding next to it. He carefully peered around the window frame. Despite the darkness, he could make out the rough shapes of three vehicles, including Paul’s truck and the Maserati. There wasn’t enough light to see inside the vehicles or into the corners.

  “Do you see Paul?” Bree asked.

  “No.” Matt scanned the building. Nothing moved. Yet goose bumps rose on his arms as a cool, damp breeze swept across the yard.

  “Let me check the other window.” Bree jogged toward the other end of the garage. “Maybe I can get a better view.”

  Pop pop pop.

  The sound of glass shards hitting the concrete followed the gunshots.

  Matt dropped to the ground behind a landscape boulder. He lifted his rifle but couldn’t shoot back without knowing where his bullets would go or who they could strike. Fifteen feet away, Bree hit the grass. When Matt looked over, she wasn’t moving.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Where is Matt?

  Pain roared through Bree’s left arm. She lay still, playing dead, moving only her eyeballs as she searched for him. In her peripheral vision, she saw him hunkered down behind a big rock. He had the rifle pointed at the garage.

  He’s all right.

  Bree scanned the garage but saw no signs of the shooter. Without moving, she looked for cover. She didn’t want the shooter to know she was alive until she found a barrier. About ten feet away, a big oak tree blotted out the night sky. The trunk was two or three feet in diameter.

  That’ll do.

  She exhaled hard. Her heart kicked against her ribs, her pulse rushing in her ears. She needed to move. Her position out in the open was too vulnerable. She took a deep breath, cradled her injured arm to her ribs, and rolled behind the tree. To protect the majority of her body, she scrambled into a sitting position and put her back to the trunk. She drew her gun and waited for gunshots in response to her movement. When the night remained silent, she reached for her phone with her left hand. More pain shot through her arm, and the wet warmth of fresh blood soaked her sleeve. She froze. After setting her gun in her lap, she used her right hand to turn on her radio, report shots fired, and request backup.

  Thankfully, a unit was nearby. ETA five minutes.

  Call complete, she exchanged the radio for her gun again. Weapon in hand, she peered around the tree and scanned the building. The shots had come through the window from inside the garage. Was he—or she—still inside?

  Or had the shooter moved into a new position—one with a better shot at Bree or Matt?

  She looked for movement but saw nothing. The broken window was dark and empty. She checked her watch. Four minutes until backup arrived. The flood of adrenaline had dulled the pain. Sweat rolled down the middle of her back and soaked her shirt under her duty belt. Cool air gusted over her, and she shivered. Hopefully she was just cold and not going into shock. While she’d been lying on the ground, water from the rain had soaked through her uniform pants.

  The shooter could still be in the building.

  She glanced at her phone, then returned her attention to the building.

  ETA three minutes.

  Still no sign of the shooter.

  Bree kept watch. She marked off the seconds by the echo of her heartbeat in her wound. As long as she and Matt kept their heads down, they’d be OK until backup arrived.

  Matt zigzagged across the grass, the movement startling her.

  Her heart punched into her throat.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  He scrambled up next to her. He stayed low and kept the tree between him and the shooter, but he was partially exposed. He held his rifle across his lap and kept it aimed at the garage.

  “You should have stayed where you were!” she said in a harsh whisper.

  “You’re shot.”

  “I know. I don’t want you to be shot too.” Bree glanced at her arm. Blood saturated her sleeve to the elbow. Her arm continued to pulse with an adrenaline-dulled throb. She looked him over. “You’re OK?”

  “Yes.” Matt’s face was pale and drawn. “Can you watch the building?”

  “Yes.” She craned
her head around the tree. “Did you see the shooter?”

  “No.” He set down the rifle and ripped open her sleeve.

  Bree kept her eye on the garage, but she saw nothing. Then again, she hadn’t seen the shooter before he shot her either. “He could be anywhere.”

  “I don’t have anything to bandage this with.” He ripped off the rest of her sleeve, folded it, and pressed it to the wound. “Hold this.” He removed one of his bootlaces and tied it around her arm. “The wound isn’t that deep—a straight furrow—but you need to hold still. You’re making it bleed more.”

  “Backup should be here in a minute. Until then, we have to sit tight. I won’t bleed to death in the next couple of minutes.” But Bree felt a fresh rush of blood from her wound soak the makeshift bandage.

  “You might if you don’t keep still.” Matt’s voice was grim.

  Bree tucked her thumb into her duty belt to immobilize her arm.

  They couldn’t retreat. There was no cover between them and their vehicle.

  The seconds ticked by. Bree’s wound pulsed.

  Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

  It seemed longer than a minute before sirens approached. The first sheriff’s department vehicle pulled into the driveway. Deputy Oscar was behind the wheel. He caught sight of Bree and Matt and drove his vehicle across the grass toward them. He angled his car between them and the garage. Crouching, Matt opened the rear vehicle door and helped Bree inside. Then Oscar drove them back to Matt’s SUV.

  Bree summed up the shooting while Matt retrieved his first aid kit. He covered her wound with gauze and applied a proper bandage. “That should keep you from dripping on the crime scene.” As soon as Matt tied off the bandage, he picked up his rifle.

  Another deputy arrived.

  “Oscar, do you have binoculars?” Bree asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Oscar brought them from his vehicle.

  Bree looked through them at the garage. She saw no sign of movement.

  Is the shooter still in there?

  She pointed to Matt. “We’ll circle around the garage.” She turned to the deputies. “You two take the front entrance.”

  They split up.

  Matt and Bree jogged in an arc, giving the garage a wide berth.

  “You probably shouldn’t be running,” he said.

  “Probably not.” Bree shrugged. She wasn’t accustomed to being in a leadership position. Sending others to do the more dangerous tasks while she waited in a safe place felt unnatural. It was her instinct to take on the riskier jobs herself.

  They moved from tree to tree until they rounded the side of the building. No motion or sound came from inside. Bree lifted the binoculars again and spotted a pane of glass leaning against the siding. “Shooter went into the garage through the side window.”

  “Let me guess,” Matt said. “The glass is removed.”

  “Yep.” Bree lowered the binoculars.

  She used her radio to check in with the deputies. “All still clear out front?”

  Oscar answered, “Affirmative.”

  “Let’s get closer.” Matt led the way, zigzagging through the trees to the corner of the building.

  Bree gave her deputies the command to advance, pocketed the binoculars, and pulled out her weapon.

  Matt put his back to the wall while Bree crouched under the window, the cut-away glass at her feet. He led with the rifle and peered around the window frame. He swept the beam of a flashlight around the garage. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “The shooter probably took off right after he shot me.” Sweat dripped down Bree’s spine. White pain radiated through her arm, and nausea swirled in her belly. Adrenaline overload was leaving her shaky and sweating.

  “You all right?” Matt asked.

  “Yeah.” She swallowed.

  “Hold on. I do see something. There’s a man lying on the floor.”

  “Beckett?”

  “Don’t know,” Matt said. “I can’t see his face.”

  She rose onto her toes and looked over the windowsill. Exchanging her weapon for her flashlight, she scanned the garage. Nothing moved in the two beams sweeping around the area. The Maserati sedan and a Porsche 911 Carrera shared the space with Paul’s pickup. Bree moved her flashlight. A shadow on the ground caught her attention.

  “I see him.” She squinted. “Next to the Maserati.”

  She relayed their location and gave the command for her deputies to enter through the front door. The door opened and two more lights appeared in the garage. One deputy reached for the wall and flipped a switch. Overhead lights brightened the darkness. The two deputies worked as a team to check in and around each vehicle.

  “Clear,” Oscar called out as he holstered his weapon.

  Bree led the way around to the front of the building. The garage was one big open space. Beckett’s vehicles filled three bays. In the remaining quarter of the garage, a workbench lined the wall.

  Matt walked around the Maserati. “It’s Paul Beckett.”

  Bree went around the front of the vehicle.

  On the other side of the sleek sedan, Paul Beckett lay sprawled next to the driver’s door in a small puddle of blood.

  Bree almost rushed to the man’s side and stopped short. There was no need to check his pulse. He was clearly gone, and she couldn’t risk contaminating the scene with her own blood. Paul’s empty blue eyes stared up at the ceiling. In the center of his blue polo shirt with a Beckett Construction logo were three large red splotches.

  Bree studied the puddle of blood. Still wet, it glistened. “He was shot while we were watching the house from down the road.”

  She scanned the concrete and workbench, looking for a gun. The surfaces were clear. Beckett hadn’t shot himself. Nor had he shot Bree.

  Where did the shooter go?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “We need to clear the rest of the property,” Bree said.

  Matt pointed to her crudely bandaged arm. “You need to get that taken care of.”

  “I will.” But first she’d assess the scene.

  They went outside and surveyed their surroundings. The parking area spanned the distance between the house and garage. At least an acre of lush, tree-dotted lawn surrounded the two buildings. The grass faded to a meadow with thicker woods in the distance. She saw nothing alive other than a couple of bats flying over the tennis court. An owl hooted in the distance. Tires grated as another deputy’s vehicle arrived.

  “Not many places to hide out here,” Bree said. “Not until you hit the woods.”

  She assessed the distance. A shooter would need a sniper rifle to be a threat from there. “We didn’t see the shooter come or go. They must have come through the meadow.”

  Matt pulled out his cell phone. “Looking at my map app, I see a road on the other side of those woods.”

  Bree examined the ground. “No footprints.”

  She turned and sized up the house. It had to be six thousand square feet. Paul’s wife had left him, and their kids were at college. But she couldn’t assume the house was empty.

  Bree assigned one deputy to secure the garage and begin a crime scene log, making a record of everyone who entered the scene. She, Matt, and the two additional deputies went to the front of the house. The door was locked. She could see through a narrow pane of glass next to the door. There was no one in the foyer.

  Bree pressed the doorbell. A chime sounded inside.

  No answer. She rang the bell again, then knocked hard on the door and called out, “Sheriff’s department!”

  Nothing.

  “We’re coming in,” Bree yelled.

  She broke one of the panes with the butt of her gun, reached in, and unlocked the dead bolt. Weapons drawn, they filed into the house. A staircase curved up one side of the foyer. Bree motioned for the deputies to take the second floor.

  Bree and Matt moved left into a formal living room. They went through the doorway and swept their weapons from corner to corner.

  “Cl
ear.” Bree pivoted on her heel.

  They crossed the foyer into the dining room and repeated the process.

  Matt put his back to the wall. “Clear.”

  Bree led the way down the hall to a kitchen and great room bigger than the entire first floor of her house. Sleek and modern, the rooms were light on furniture and knickknacks. A marble fireplace took center stage. Across the back of the house, wide windows and two french doors showcased the views of the lawn, meadow, and woods behind the house. The kitchen island was a white marble slab the size of Bree’s barn door.

  She opened a door and found a massive pantry. Matt checked a closet. They made their way through the kitchen to the laundry room and a half bath. Retreating from the kitchen, they went down a short hallway on the other side of the great room. On one side, a home office held a desk and a wall of bookcases. Farther down the hall were a bedroom and a full bath. No one was hiding in the closets.

  Footsteps on the stairs brought them back to the foyer.

  “Upstairs is clear,” the deputy said.

  “Let’s go outside.” Bree led the way back out into the warm evening.

  Paul’s death allowed them to conduct a search for a killer or a potential additional victim, but proper procedure needed to be followed in order to look for and collect evidence.

  Two more sheriff’s vehicles arrived. Todd stepped out of his cruiser. Matt returned the AR-15 to his Suburban and retrieved Bree’s camera. She assigned two deputies to search the perimeter of the property and waved for Todd to follow her to the garage. On the way, she phoned the medical examiner’s office and the county forensics department.

  Bree gave Todd a quick update. “We need a search warrant for the Beckett residence.”

  Typing with both thumbs, he took notes on his phone. “No offense, ma’am, but maybe you should go to the ER?”

  “I will as soon as I speak with the ME.” Bree swallowed another rush of nausea. With the adrenaline fading, she was moving on sheer stubbornness at this point. “She’s on the way.”