Page 16 of Out to Get Her
Everything pointed to natural causes, but nothing about this scene looked natural.
A knock on Erin’s door sent her out of the room, and Samantha took the opportunity to examine the body further. She felt around his head for lumps. Checked his torso under his shirt for signs of blood or wounds she might have missed. Then she examined his neck. No bruising there either.
Heart attack probably, if she had to guess at this point.
As Samantha released his head, her fingers grazed the skin along the sides of his neck, and she froze.
“It’s just Zach from down the road!” Erin shouted from the front door.
Samantha leaned her head closer, studying where her finger had alerted her to something mildly suspicious.
There.
She squinted at the raised spot that could easily have been mistaken for a pimple or a bug bite. Except it had a tiny hole in the center and lacked the redness of a bug bite.
Crap.
Her brain went into overdrive, running through all the implications of that tiny spot on the man’s neck.
She pulled out her radio once again and made the request she’d been hoping to avoid.
“Hey, Connie. Sam again. We’re going to need the parish team out here.”
* * *
“Excuse me,” Erin said as she stood in the bathroom doorway, peering at Samantha talking into that blasted radio. “What does ‘need the parish team’ mean?”
Was this small-town lingo she’d forgotten or was it some kind of cop speak? Either way, Erin wanted to know what the ever-loving-heck was about to go downin her house.
Zach pushed against her back and peered over her shoulder. “Whoa. ThatisPaul. He’s for real dead, huh?”
Samantha stood with her hands up as she walked toward them, pushing them out with an invisible wall. Her tight ponytail, the one that had looked super cute the day before, seemed extra tight and way less cute at the moment. Her dark eyes had carried a softness to them before, but now her vision was laser-focused. “We all need to go outside. Please.”
“Fine.” Erin shrugged Zach off and stepped backwards into the hallway. “But you didn’t answer my question. What’s this parish team business?”
She didnotlike being kept in the dark. On anything. Much less on the matter of a dead jerk in her house.
“No, I meanoutside the house.” Samantha practically growled as she herded them down the hallway. “And don’t touch anything.”
“Jeez. Fine.” Erin turned around and gave Zach a shove toward the door when he tried to peek in the bathroom again. Then she froze.Don’t touch anything. Realization dawned on her. “Shit, did someone kill him?”
The thought of one intruder dying in Grandpa’s house was enough of a shock. Buttwointruders? One amurderer???
“Wait, someone killed Paul?” Zach’s voice rose in pitch with each word.
“I can’t tell you anything for sure right now except we all need to step outside for a while.”
“Who’s the team from parish?” Erin asked. “Does that mean more cops in my house?”
Samantha pointed at the front door and followed them onto the porch just as an Etta cop car approached down the long gravel driveway, a cloud of limestone dust flanking it. “A team from the St. Dufour Parish Sheriff’s Department is on their way. They have facilities and personnel to handle a case like this.”
“Facilities?”
“For evidence. And analysis,” Samantha said. “They might need to bring in the State Police, though. That’ll be their call.”
Samantha seemed calm. Jarringly calm, from Erin’s point of view.
She’d half expected to witness some kind of pissing contest over the body. But Samantha didn’t look ready for a fight. She just looked like a woman doing her job, as if this was the equivalent of filling out a spreadsheet.
