Page 30 of Beyond Her Reach (Bree Taggert #10)

Bree pulled to the curb thirty minutes after receiving the call. The address was fifteen miles outside of town on a narrow, quiet country road.

Her belly cramped with the memory of Kelly Gibson’s brutalized body. Bree took a deep breath and used a few seconds to prepare herself for another vicious crime scene. The decades of her career, finding body after body, investigating murder after murder, were taking a cumulative toll.

In the passenger seat, Matt appeared to be doing the same. He stared at the house for a few seconds, then exhaled hard through his mouth. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Bree knew not to hesitate any longer. Better to rip off the Band-Aid than drag out the dread of it. They climbed out of the SUV and stood shoulder to shoulder in the street.

The house was a small cottage type, with a yard surrounded by a split rail fence in need of repairs. Fields and meadows surrounded the property. The bones of an old barn stood well behind the house. The property had likely been a farm at one time.

“The nearest neighbor is a mile down the road,” Matt said.

There were no neighbors nearby to hear a scream. Though if Zucco’s description of the murder was similar to the Gibson case, there wouldn’t have been much screaming, since Kelly had died or been rendered unconscious quickly. Mercifully, Bree hoped this poor person hadn’t suffered long either.

In winter, the front flower beds looked forlorn.

A few straggly weeds pushed through the bare earth, their tendrils extending across the ground like fingers grasping the edge of a precipice.

Lights glowed in most of the windows. A Toyota Camry was parked in the single-vehicle driveway.

A Ford Escape sat at the curb next to the mailbox.

The porch steps creaked as they climbed onto the porch. The door gaped an inch. Zucco opened the door wider, her face locked in a grim deadpan. The hairs on the back of Bree’s neck lifted as she crossed the threshold into the warmer living room.

“Do we know the identity of the victim?” Bree took in the homey space, full of worn furniture likely collected from yard sales and thrift shops. Books crammed a full wall of built-in shelves. End tables held more stacks of titles.

Zucco glanced down at her notepad. “The victim is Janet Hargrave. Identified by her roommate, Alice Miller, who found the body when she returned from a business trip.”

“She was certain the victim was dead?” Matt asked.

“There’s no question,” Zucco said, her voice strained.

Bree could hear quiet sobbing from the back of the house. She kept her voice low. “The roommate?”

Zucco nodded. “It’s brutal. She’s not coping very well.”

Who would?

Bree resisted the pity that filled her, but damn. Sometimes it was near impossible to remain completely objective.

“Where’s the body?” Matt asked, the hoarseness in his voice clearly stemming from more than lack of sleep.

“Home office.” Zucco inclined her head toward a doorway.

“Stay with the roommate,” Bree said to Zucco, then headed for the doorway. She needed to talk to the woman, but first, she wanted to see the body without any preconceived ideas. The additional emotional pressure of the woman’s grief wouldn’t help either.

With Matt at her back, Bree stopped at the doorway and peered into the home office.

She was immediately grateful for his solid presence.

Even without physically touching, they supported each other through an invisible connection.

She’d seen scores of dead bodies, but she would never be immune.

In fact, since she’d lost her sister to murder and taken over raising Luke and Kayla, she’d softened.

Death affected her more now that she knew what it was like to love and to lose.

With her own grief never far behind her, she felt the survivors’ pain acutely.

When she’d lived alone, resisting human and familial attachments like a disease, compartmentalizing had been easier.

Then again, maybe she hadn’t compartmentalized her reactions as much as she’d repressed them.

Now that she was in therapy, she realized those scenes had left marks she’d simply refused to confront.

Her therapist said she’d probably been heading for a breakdown, but at the time, the numbness had provided its own sort of empty comfort.

The roommate’s crying broke through her internal debate.

A bloody and violent scene was disturbing enough to her, a seasoned law enforcement officer.

To a civilian, the sight would be traumatizing on a life-altering scale.

Bree blocked out the sound of grief and viewed the scene with all the detachment she could summon, which admittedly wasn’t much.

In the back of her mind, she wondered if a time would come when she could no longer do the job effectively—if there was a maximum amount of horror a person could process before it was simply too much.

A petite woman was sprawled out on the hardwood floor.

Next to the body, a black mesh office chair lay on its side, wheels up.

The throat injury was devastating. The wound gaped like a second mouth.

To Bree’s nonmedical eye, the slash looked deeper than Kelly’s.

The blood puddle beneath the victim’s head was shaped like the state of Florida.

Blood had also sprayed onto the desk. Dried blood matted her short blond hair.

A pair of over-the-ear headphones lay a few feet from the body.

Bree had not wanted to ever see a sight as terrible as Kelly Gibson’s murder scene ever again, but here she was. Bile crept up her throat. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and exhaled through pursed lips.

Get it together. You couldn’t have prevented this. In the absence of a crystal ball, Bree had no way to predict Kelly’s murderer would strike again. But the shiver of déjà vu that passed up her spine doubted the assertion.

When she opened her eyes again, she exchanged a look with Matt. His brows rose, and his mouth flattened. Without speaking, she knew he was seeing the same thing she was. Woman home alone. Killed with a slash to the throat.

Janet’s murder echoed Kelly Gibson’s.

With an eye on her boots, Bree took two strides into the room. She didn’t want to disturb evidence or step in any bits of gore.

With equal care about his foot placement, Matt stepped up with her. He pointed to the laptop, open on the desk, where a screensaver played a slideshow of stock images. “My guess is that she was working. Someone came up behind her.”

Just like Kelly.

Bree envisioned it. The desk faced the wall. “Yes. Her back would have been to the door.”

Matt inhaled. “No heavy scent of decomp. She wasn’t killed that long ago.”

“But the blood there”—Bree pointed to the victim’s head—“is dry.” The death wasn’t that fresh. “But she died recently enough that the ME should be able to give us a tight PMI.”

Matt pointed to a dark bay window on the same wall as the door. The glass reflected their own images back at them. “With the lights on, she wouldn’t have been able to see someone outside.”

“But she would have been visible to anyone on the street,” Bree added.

“I’ll call the ME and forensics.” She turned away from the horror and left the room.

Through the living room window, she spotted a news van at the curb.

Someone had been monitoring their police scanner.

She needed a minute but could never say so, not at the scene.

If a comment suggesting the sheriff couldn’t handle her job leaked to the press, Bree would never win a reelection.

Especially as a woman, she couldn’t show weakness.

She composed her game face. She was in charge, and she’d better look capable and confident every time she donned her uniform.

“I’ll check the doors for signs of forced entry.” Matt backtracked out of the room.

Bree stepped outside to make her calls. The cold night air refreshed her lungs. The smell of death inside might be faint, but it lingered in the nostrils.

The house wasn’t big, and Bree found her way back to the kitchen, where Zucco was babysitting Janet’s roommate.

A wheelie carry-on was parked next to the kitchen island, a baby-blue puffy jacket draped over the handle.

A small black purse and key fob had been tossed on the granite countertop.

A woman in her late thirties sat on a stool.

Hunched over, she hugged her midsection and cried.

Tears streaked her face. Her blue eyes were red and devastated.

Zucco gestured. “This is Alice Miller, Janet’s roommate.”

Alice was tall and slim, with shoulder-length auburn hair. Her jeans, sweater, and white tennis shoes were clean, with no blood streaks or specks. Bree glanced down at Alice’s hands, twisted in her lap. Also clean. No blood under the nails.

Bree sat on the stool next to her. “Hey, Alice.”

Alice sniffed and looked up. She swiped a hand across one red, swollen eye and forced words out between sobs. “She was my best friend.”

“I’m very sorry this happened.” Bree glanced at the suitcase. “Where were you?”

“I was in Orlando for the last week. I had a business conference and stayed to visit with my brother for a couple of days.” Alice shuddered.

“My flight was delayed. I landed in Albany a little before midnight and drove home. I sensed something was wrong right away because the door was open, but I was so tired I brushed off the feeling.”

“Was the door unlocked or open?” Bree asked.

“Unlocked and open about an inch,” Alice said.

“But you went inside?”

Alice nodded. “I didn’t listen to my gut. I thought maybe Janet had just put out the trash or something and the door didn’t catch. The light in her office was on. She can be really focused when she’s on a project.”

“What did she do for a living?”

“Technical writing. She’s working on a human resources manual.” Alice stubbornly stuck with the present tense when talking about Janet.

“Who did she work for?”