Page 64 of Never Stay Gone

“Hey.” Dakota squatted next to the El Paso team leader, Darryl. “How’s it goin’?”

“Hell of a scene.” Darryl peered at Dakota through the goggles fitted over his thick-framed glasses. “She put up a good fight.”

“Think you’ll be able to get any DNA from under her fingernails?”

“We might. Looks like it’s fibers right now, but if she got through the shirt anywhere, there’s a chance for skin cells and maybe more.”

“Do me a favor: when you find out, call me direct?” Dakota slipped Darryl his card, trying to hide the pass behind his bent knee.

“I was told to make sure the Big Bend Sheriff’s Department had a copy of everything.”

“Sure, they can have a copy. Give me a head start, though, yeah?”

Darryl’s eyes gave nothing away. He stared at Dakota, blinked, nodded once. Turned back to the clipboard he was writing on.

“Another thing.”

Darryl sighed.

“You happen to find any drugs in the house?”

This time, Darryl pulled off his goggles. He squinted at Dakota, then rose and headed for the master bedroom. He led Dakota through, into the master bathroom.

Two vanities stood kitty-corner from one another. One had makeup and perfume and lotion scattered across the top. The other was bare, nothing but a lonely bar of old hand soap resting on the edge of the sink next to a stack of unused paper cups.

Darryl pulled open the top drawer on Shelly’s vanity and used his pen to lift the lid on a delicate jewelry box. A ballerina popped up, but no tune floated out. Instead, Dakota saw little baggies filled with white powder, all lined up in a row.

“Cocaine,” Dakota said.

“Looks like. I don’t think she’s keeping Alka-Seltzer in unmarked baggies in her jewelry box.”

Shit. Goddamn it.

“Wasn’t her fiancé a sheriff’s deputy?” Darryl asked.

“He didn’t know,” Dakota said quickly.

“Yeah? Hell of a thing, keeping a cocaine stash not four feet from your sheriff deputy fiancé’s sink.”

“He didn’t know,” Dakota repeated, more firmly.

“I’m just saying, what kind of a deputy doesn’t see that his fiancée is using?”

“Ex-fiancée,” Dakota growled. “They broke up. Obviously, they weren’t close.”

“Obviously.” Darryl dropped the lid to the jewelry box and slid shut the bathroom drawer. “I was going to give Sheriff Reed a heads-up before I logged it. Professional courtesy and all, seeing as this is his deputy’s house. A lot of this scene is pointing toward that deputy, and maybe this is connected to that.”

Maybe Heath would use the cocaine to nail Shane to the wall. If murder didn’t work, maybe a drug charge would. How could anyone prove the drugs were Shelly’s?

Or maybe the cocaine would end up lost. Maybe the paperwork would be done later, or never done at all. Maybe no one would ever know that Shelly had drugs stashed in a ballerina jewelry box in her bathroom, right next to where Shane brushed his teeth.

What would Heath do, once he found out? If he hammered Shane, or if he lost the evidence, who was he protecting? “Yeah, let him know. See what he says.”

“And then call you?” Darryl asked, his voice low, almost a whisper.

“Yeah. But do whatever Sheriff Reed says to do.”

Darryl nodded. “Got a lot of work to do still. If we’re done?”