Page 107 of Buried Too Deep

Cora heard a low whine as SodaPop leaned in harder. Good girl, she thought, so glad that Phin had the support. He’d paled and sweat had broken out across his brow.

The scene of the murder. That’s what he’s thinking about.

He hadn’t been okay that night, but he hadn’t spiraled. She hoped he wouldn’t now. He was visibly struggling.

“You’re right, Phin,” Burke said. “He shot Hughes with the gun from Jack Elliot’s murder, put the glove on Hughes’s hand, then put the gun in the dead man’s hand. He was really careful.”

Phin was breathing in deep measured breaths. “Not that careful. There was also the smudge of blood on the trunk lid. So, working backward, the killer touched the trunk as he was leaving. Couldn’t have been when he got there or his hand wouldn’t have been bloody yet. Hughes was only wearing one glove, so what about its mate?”

“Killer was wearing it,” Molly said. “Were there any fingerprints on the trunk, Detective?”

“Only the victim’s and his wife’s. What are you thinking, Mr. Bishop?”

Phin was frowning, his lips moving, but no sound came out. He looked up and seemed taken aback that everyone was watching him. “Um…sometimes I work backward from the end when I’m planning to build something.”

Stone smiled at him. “Or reading a book.”

Cora faked a gasp. “You read the last page first?”

That seemed to break Phin’s tension. “Sometimes,” he said, his smile almost shy.

Cora wanted to kiss him again but contented herself with being his anchor should he need her. “So what happened at the end?”

“He touched the trunk,” Phin said, “and left a smear of blood, but no prints. The smudge was at the base of the trunk lid, not the top. Like he’d touched it when the trunk was open, or he used that hand to open it.”

“He got something out of the trunk,” Val said quietly. “Detective, was the victim missing any clothes from his closet? Was any luggage gone?”

“It appears that some clothes were missing. Empty drawers, a lot of empty hangers in his closet. We found a suitcase in his wife’s closet, but no luggage in the victim’s closet or anywhere else in the house. But there was nothing in the trunk.”

“The killer took it,” Phin said, his breathing no longer labored. “He grabbed whatever it was. Maybe a suitcase, maybe something else. Then he touched the car with the other hand, leaving no prints, just blood. The hand that left the blood smear was also gloved.”

“Was it heavy?” Delores asked. “The suitcase? If it was, he might have needed the support of the car. Otherwise, he would have grabbed the top of the trunk lid to slam it down.”

“Or he might be small,” Molly mused. “Or older. So…let’s do this from front to back now. The killer arrives. I assume he had the laptops with him, since they were clearly meant to implicate Hughes in their theft. But we know it wasn’t Hughes who stole them and shot Joy, because our intruder was much bigger than Hughes.”

Val took up the story. “He gets in the car, probably in the back seat. Waits for Hughes to come out. Whatever the killer took from the trunk later was either already there or Hughes put it there while the killer waited. Hughes gets into the car, his killer—wearing gloves—shoots him. There’s going to be blood and brain matter everywhere. Some of it had to get on the killer.”

Phin’s swallow was audible, but his voice didn’t waver. “It got on both gloves for sure. The killer takes off one glove and puts it on Hughes. Puts the gun in his hand.”

“He only needs the one glove for the gunshot residue test,” Burke said. “If the killer wore the glove to shoot Hughes, you might find his DNA inside the glove.

“We got some skin cells,” Clancy said. “Lab’s testing them.”

“Okay.” Phin was nodding. “The killer gets out of the car, opens the trunk, then reaches for whatever he took. Was Hughes’s wife’s clothing also missing?”

Clancy shook his head. “According to her sister, no. Her clothes and shoes all seemed to be there.”

“So Hughes didn’t plan to take her,” Burke said. “When was the wife killed, Detective?”

“It’s not clear, exactly. ME says cause of death is suffocation. Lab found her saliva on the pillow on her husband’s side of the bed.”

Phin frowned. “The killer was so careful to make sure Hughes was wearing a glove with gunshot residue. Leaving the wife’s murder weapon behind doesn’t sound right.”

“Didn’t sound right to me, either,” Clancy said. “I’m wondering if the same person killed both Medford Hughes and his wife. She was an addict. There are track marks all over her arms and the inside of her thighs. Recent. She was also a gambling addict, according to her sister. The sister first thought that Medford snapped and killed her, then killed himself. When I told her that he might have been murdered, she was shocked. She had no idea who’d want him dead. Said he worked a lot. Volunteered at their church and took care of his wife after she’d shoot up. Tried to get her help, but it didn’t take. The sister said she’d been ready for a visit from the cops for years, telling her that her sister was dead. She just figured it would be from a drug overdose.”

“Why would Medford get scared enough to run?” Antoine asked. “Unless he’d been asked to process the stolen laptops. He did have his own network administration business. Breaking a password might have been in his skill set.”

Cora frowned. “I want to know why the killer kept the gun that killed my father. For twenty-three years, he kept the gun.”

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