Page 39 of Lone Star Witness

“Stephanie’s office,” he explained, and then the colonel motioned toward a room just up the hall. “My office. I was in there when I heard the arguing.”

“You stated that you believe you heard your wife, Sonny, Annalisa, Carlyle Hutton, and your wife’s assistant, Julian Randall. Is that correct?” Angel asked. Again, that was pure cop in both tone and expression.

“I think that’s who I heard,” the colonel said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure of much of anything. That’s why I needed to come here.”

Angel made a sound to indicate he wasn’t especially happy about the colonel’s uncertainty, and he took out a pair of thin latex gloves and a small flashlight from one of the pockets of his black cargo pants.

“This has a blue light that’ll detect blood and other bodily fluids,” Angel explained while he gloved up. “I don’t want to spray Luminol since it can sometimes smear or obscure spatter. If the light shows anything, then I’ll leave the Luminol and such to the CSIs.”

Angel tried to open the door to Stephanie’s office, but it was locked, prompting him to look at the colonel.

“It’s not usually locked, but I have a spare key in my desk,” the colonel said, turning to head in that direction.

Angel stepped in front of him. “I’ll go with you to make you nothing else is… disturbed. Depending on what we find, the CSIs might want to examine the bottle you drank from the night you think you might have witnessed a murder. Of course, the chain of custody on that is basically screwed up to hell and back by now, but I don’t want anything we do here to add to the screwup.”

“It’s not usually locked,” Jace repeated in a mutter, stepping closer and looking at the back portion of the doorknob. A portion Angel likely hadn’t touched with his gloved hand when he’d tried to open it. “There’s some fine dust which makes me think this door hasn’t been opened in a while.”

That would make sense if Stephanie hadn’t wanted anyone in there. But who was the anyone she would have wanted to keep out? Her husband was at Patriot’s Retreat, and they didn’t have family living with them.

“Even if Stephanie or someone had cleaned the room,” Jace went on. “There’d still be evidence of bloodshed. It’s next to impossible to cover up a crime scene so that nothing can be detected.”

At the sound of footsteps, they turned as Angel and the colonel came back to the office. With a key this time. Angel had it, and he used it to open the door. He didn’t go inside right away, though. He stood there for several moments, his gaze sweeping around the room.

“Was that tarp there the last time you were in here?” Angel asked the colonel.

Rosa stepped forward, looking in at the paint-splotched cloth covering a good portion of the floor. “No. That looks like a tarp that was in the garage. We had some painting done a couple of months ago, and the work crew left it behind.”

Angel nodded at the explanation, leaned down and eased back a corner of the cloth. And then he cursed.

The profanity rippled through the small gathering, and it took Marise a moment to get into a position so she could look over Angel’s shoulder.

“Holy shit,” she muttered when she saw the blood.

They wouldn’t need a blue light or Luminol for this because the blood was right there on the floor. It was dried and brown colored now, but it covered nearly every inch of the large rug that Angel had exposed.

He lifted more of the tarp, and there was more blood. Way too much of it for some kind of household accident. This was the spot where someone had likely bled out.

“Hell,” the colonel said, and he sounded and looked in shock. “I didn’t imagine it. It was real.”

“Appears that way,” Angel agreed, taking out his phone. “I’m calling this in, but I do have to wonder why your wife didn’t at least attempt to clean it up. Certainly, she’d know when the body was found that she’d be a person of interest.”

The comment had no sooner left his mouth when Marise caught a whiff of something.

Gasoline.

She turned to see a stream of the liquid snaking down the hall toward them. Marise got just a glimpse of it when she heard another sound.

The strike of a match.

And the fire erupted right in front of them.

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Chapter Thirteen

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Slade took hold of Marise, pushing her into the still-open doorway of Stephanie’s office. The fire eating its way toward them wasn’t exactly an inferno, not yet anyway, but it was taking up the entire hallway.

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