Page 9 of Silent Ridge

I call the sheriff. “Are you still on scene?”

“I was catching up with Mindy,” he says. “Have you already got something?”

I feel a little bad. When I tell him what Perkins left out of her story, he’s going to kick himself for not asking. When I tell him what she left out, he’s going to give her hell. She’s just an old woman who got caught up in something way out of her comfort zone. She thought she was doing a good thing. She is old enough to know that no good deed goes unpunished.

“Someone needs to come to Mrs. Perkins’s house and fingerprint her.”

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah,” I say. “She forgot to tell you that she went inside the house. Her dog did too. Here’s the Twitter version of what she told me. She smelled something bad and hadn’t seen Monique for a couple of days. She didn’t talk to Monique but just saw her coming home last Thursday. She and Monique weren’t good friends because Monique wanted to keep to herself. She hadn’t seen or spoken to Monique since and thought maybe she was sick. When she smelled the rot from the street, she went up to the house. She knocked but the door was unlatched and it came open. She opened the door and nearly threw up. She still thought maybe it was the smell of vomit from Monique being sick, and so she went inside.”

“She saw the body?” Tony asks.

I tell him no. “However, she said she saw something hanging from the shower and got out of there. Her dog lapped up some of the blood before she could pull him away.”

“Damn it.”

I can see the expression on his face. It could be—as it was meant to be now—frightening.

“If you talk to her, try not to yell.”

“I’ll get her… and her little dog too,” he says, and I have to chuckle. At least he’s got a sense of humor about this mess.

“Have Mindy call me,” I say.

“She’s right here.”

A beat later Mindy comes on the line. “Hey you. You’re like a black cloud. But you keep me in business. We got another nut case here, don’t we?”

She’s joking but she doesn’t know how right she is. Everywhere I go, trouble follows close behind.

“Looks like it,” I say.

“We found a recent snapshot of you on the bed. Do you think the victim took it?”

“I don’t think so. Sheriff told me where he found it and it sounds like it was left that way deliberately.”

“That’s what I think too.”

“The killer left your picture behind. Stalker maybe?”

More than one, I think.

“Right. I can’t get a date but I can get a stalker.” I try to make light of it. I don’t want anyone to start protecting me. I can take care of myself. I can take care of whoever this is. My way.

“Sheriff called your partner and gave her the information on the victim. Knowing Ronnie, she’s got a stack of papers for you when you get back to the office.”

She’s not my partner. She’s a reserve deputy.

“She’s good like that,” I say.

“Well, what do you need first? The house or the perimeter?” she asks. “We haven’t finished inside the house, and Jerry just took the body. I can tell you what I found outside.”

It must have been a task to collect the body.

“Zip. No sign anyone came in from the trees behind the house. I checked the windows and the ground under them. No way of telling if anyone was looking in a window, but there are no pry marks. Same with the doors. The front door is unlocked. No sign of a forced entry. I looked from the street and from the trees and there isn’t a good angle to see if anyone was upstairs. Also, there are room-darkening shades in both the master and guest bedrooms. The guest bedroom shades are closed. The master bedroom you saw.”

“Signs of a struggle?” I ask.

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