Page 65 of Shadows Reel

As quickly as he could, Joe jogged back to his truck and dug out a heavy crowbar from the gear box in the bed and returned to the front door. He jammed the blade of the tool in between the door and doorframe above the locked handle and wrenched it hard. The lock broke with aclunkand the door swung inward about a foot until it stopped. He pushed on it and it gave a little,but he could tell by the feel of it that the door was blocked by Lola herself. If he forced it open, he’d slide her across the floor. If she was already injured, he didn’t want to compound it by shoving her around.

Joe tossed the crowbar off the porch and wedged his head through the opening.

She was on her back and the bottom of the door was touching the top of her head. Her face, which was directly below him, was pale and waxy and her hands were balled up into tiny fists. Her eyes were closed and there was what appeared to be a neat round bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. Her glasses were askew on her face. He couldn’t see any blood on the floor.

Joe dropped to his haunches on the porch and withdrew his head from the opening. He reached in and around the door and pressed his fingertips to the skin on her neck below her jawline. She was cool and stiff to the touch. There was no pulse.

“Oh no...” he moaned aloud.

Another body of an elderly local. Another crime scene.

He stood up and fished his cell phone out of his breast pocket and speed-dialed Sheriff Tibbs directly.

“Joe?” Tibbs said. “We’re right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I know and I’m sorry.”

“I really don’t have any updates from the Kizer case.”

“That’s not why I’m calling, Sheriff. There’s been another murder. This time it’s our neighbor, Lola Lowry. I just found her body in her trailer and it looks like she was shot in the head last night or really early this morning.”

“Oh no.”

“That’s what I said.”

“OnThanksgiving?”

“Unfortunately. She was supposed to come to our house today. When she didn’t, Marybeth asked me to check on her. That’s how I found her.”

Tibbs was quiet. Joe could hear the tinkling of utensils in the background as well as the play-by-play call of the Dallas game.

“Text me the address,” Tibbs said wearily. “I’ll call Steck, Bass, and Norwood so I can ruin their holiday as well.”

“Sorry again,” Joe said.

“Can’t you just stay home and mind your own business?” Tibbs asked with sudden heat. “Every time you go out, you create another goddamn headache for me and my department.”

Joe punched off without responding.

Then he called Marybeth with the bad news and ruinedherholiday.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Northern Lights

Several hours later, Joe sat outside his home at dusk in a rocking chair with a blanket on his lap and his twelve-gauge Remington Wingmaster shotgun across his thighs. Daisy was at his feet. He smoked a cigar and sipped on a tumbler of bourbon and water and watched errant strobes of red and blue lights flash across the tops of the trees in the direction of Lola Lowry’s trailer as sheriff’s department vehicles came and went.

The news about Lola had cast a definite pall on the festivities inside, although no one had yet left. He’d described what he found at the scene to hushed silence. His daughters, Liv, and Marybeth speculated on what had happened and what was going on around them. Two murders in two days in Twelve Sleep County was a remarkable and unwelcome development. Fong Chan quietly followed the discussion with wide eyes, suggestingthat she couldn’t quite believe what a barbaric environment her sweet friend Lucy had come from.

Even though there were law enforcement vehicles on the access road, Joe kept a close eye on the wall of trees to the east in the direction of the county road. If the gargoyle that Marybeth saw that morning came creeping back, he was ready for him.

Joe had informed Sheriff Tibbs when he met him at the crime scene about the gargoyle, as well as the two men parked on the side of the county road he’d encountered the night before. He’d described the men—what he could see of them—and said the driver had heavy features that could be described as “gargoyle-like.” And he’d given a description of the SUV with Colorado plates.

Tibbs had taken down the information in a notebook, but in a dismissive and cursory fashion, Joe thought. As if Joe’s tip was just another item designed to complicate matters.

All Joe knew about the cause of death was Gary Norwood’s initial proclamation that it “wasn’t a gunshot wound.” The hole in her forehead had been caused by a sharp weapon yet to be determined.

That poor old lady, Joe thought. She was now the primary focus of a literal locked-room mystery scenario. Who could have killed her and how had the bad guy gotten into her trailer? And what was the motivation?

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