Page 29 of Bone Echo

“How long were you gone?”

She hesitated, uncertain. “Two hours?”

Backup arrived, sirens screaming. Jack led her away from the door so the team would have easy access. They quickly went to work in the garage, photographing the scene then tagging and bagging.

When the bloody hammer went into the bag, Dudley recoiled at the idea of someone using it to bludgeon his brother. Or had his brother used it to bludgeon someone else, and then run?

Blood spatter went up the walls, consistent with a bludgeoning. But then...

“We’ve got tissue clinging to the teeth of the skill saw.”

This was a nightmare. When he spotted bone dust on the floor, horror took hold of him and wouldn’t let go. There was no way his older brother was capable of using a hammer against another human being, let alone a skill saw. Charlie was the kindest, most giving man he’d ever known. He had sacrificed his future so Dudley could go to the police academy, make something of himself, lift himself out of the nightmare of poverty and drunkenness they had both endured growing up.

The frightful discoveries continued. Blood encrusted a carving knife, the hatchet Charlie used to chop down smaller trees on his property that would later become a spindle or a piece of molding, and the toolbox with all manner of screwdrivers, chisels. and wire cutters. A pair of bloody goggles lay near the table where his recent work lay, unfinished.

The plastic coverings over Dudley’s shoes turned red and slick as he helped process the scene.Slaughterscreamed through his mind. This was not just a murder scene; it was a house of horrors where his brother had been brutally slaughtered. He didn’t need forensic results to tell him that.

But why? Everybody loved Charlie. He had no enemies.

His gaze swung to his sister-in-law, Laura, the woman Charlie adored. She had appeared so suddenly in his life, and so late, none of them knew much about her. Not really.

Charlie had met her three years ago at the only social for singles he had ever attended. He was thirty-seven years old at the time and had given up that he would ever find someone to love on his own. Laura, a quiet redhead, had been sitting in the corner of the community center by herself. Not dancing. Not socializing. Charlie sat down beside her and they spent the rest of the evening talking.

She had just moved to Memphis from Little Rock, Arkansas, an orphan with no family, who had lived in various foster homes until she was eighteen. Then she had made her way in the world waiting tables and cleaning houses until she finally got enough money to go to beauty school. She was proud of being a licensed hair stylist, and she was excited about working in a bigger salon and meeting new people.

Was she sweet?Yes.Was she kind and soft-spoken.Yes.Did she love Charlie?Yes, it appeared so.

His mantra with his partner Jack whispered through Dudley’s mind.You can’t trust what you think you see.

He and his wife and two small children had been at Charlie’s wedding, but Laura didn’t have a soul there. Not even a friend. Was she who she claimed to be? Could she have fooled him and his brother, both?

She stood in the front yard about a hundred feet from the garage, composed now, hugging herself and rocking slightly back and forth on her Converse sneakers. Dudley felt a twinge of guilt. He should comfort her. Charlie would want it.

But what he knew, what he saw, held him in place.

The last rays of sunset cast an orange light over her, so she appeared to be standing in the middle of a fire. She watched every move inside the workshop as if she were cataloging it for future reference. There were no tears, no signs of the high emotion of the woman who had made a frantic phone call to the Memphis Police Department.

Her shoes were bloody, and so was the hem of her khaki slacks. She’d left tracks near the kitchen door and one bloody handprint on the wall nearby. She’d wiped her bloody hands along her face at the hairline and on her white blouse and the sides of her slacks.

Dudley’s heart constricted. This was a murder scene, and his sister-in-law was the prime suspect.

CHAPTER THREE

Memphis Police Department

Laura Finnegan Stephens, still wearing her blood-stained clothes, sat in the interrogation room waiting to elaborate on the sketchy details she had given police at the scene. Her hands were in her lap, her face was a perfect blank. She was so erect and unmoving, she might have been a robot.

Dudley and his partner stood on the other side of the one-way mirror, watching her.

“She hasn’t moved in five minutes,” Jack said. “Is she always like this?”

“She’s quiet, but I’ve never had any reason, and not much occasion, to study her. Charlie…” He choked up, almost lost it. “We got together every now and then for beers. No wives. You already know this.” When Jack wasn’t off with some hot young chick, he was always there to share a beer. Easy going and fun, a respite from Dudley’s increasingly stressful home-life.

If Jack was surprised by Dudley’s sparse social life, especially where his brother was concerned, he didn’t show it. He barelyknew Gloria Jean. She hated being a cop’s wife and kept contact with his partner and cohorts to a bare minimum.

She would have scoffed at the idea of having beer with them. Her excuse for everything was,I’m too busy with the girls.At ages five and seven, theywerea handful, but still… it seemed his wife couldtrytounderstand the pressures of his work.

He didn’t have a clue whether Laura would have joined them. It was always just him and his brother, best friends all their lives.

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