Page 8 of What We May Be

Chapter Three

The sun had barely been up an hour when Charlie parked in front of the HU Equestrian Center. The middle barn of the large complex was swarming with police officers and crime scene techs. Thankfully, the only van in the lot so far was the medical examiner’s. No press on the scene yet, thank fuck. But in a town Hanover’s size, it was only a matter of time, and once the reporters caught wind, city hall would too, and Charlie’s day would be shot to hell.

She and her team needed to work fast. She stretched to the glove box, grabbed her weapon and badge, clipped them to her belt, and shoved open the car door with a booted foot.

“Deputy Henby,” Officer Sylvan greeted as she entered through the open barn door.

“Morning, Wally.” Wallace had been her brother’s partner and was a friend of the family. Shortly after the funeral, he’d come to her and asked not to be immediately repartnered. He’d needed some recovery time, and HPD had needed a new local affairs liaison, which included dealing with HU and campus security. “Keep it locked down out here for us?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a nod. “Let me know if you need anything.”

She joined Detective Diego Perez where he stood next to one of the barn stalls. “What’ve we got?” Dispatch had given her the basics, but she wanted to hear it from the officers on the scene.

“Professor Jefferson Marshall. Distinguished member of the faculty at HU.”

Hanging by a noose from the barn rafters, his face so swollen it was hardly recognizable, Professor Marshall looked far from distinguished.

“He was found like that by one of the stable hands,” Diego said as the crime scene techs loosened the noose and lowered Marshall into a body bag. “Last person here yesterday closed up around nine. Time of death looks to be between then and five this morning.”

“We’ll let your wife be the judge of that.” Diego was married to the county ME, who was also one of Charlie’s best friends.

“Maggie’s dropping the hellions off at my mom’s. She’ll meet us at the morgue.”

“I won’t tell her you called your kids that,” Charlie said as she snapped on a pair of gloves.

“Me?” Diego splayed a hand over his chest. “Those are her words. Direct quote.”

Charlie didn’t doubt it, that Maggie would say such a thing or that she and Diego, two fiery individuals, would have equally fiery children. They came by it honestly.

“Got something,” said the tech peering into Marshall’s mouth. Using a pair of forceps, he extricated a rolled strip of paper and held it up for Charlie.

She took the tiny piece of paper and carefully unfurled the scroll, revealing the strangest suicide note—handwritten in red, block letters—she’d ever read:

#1 – A PLAGUE UPON YOU, MURDERERS, TRAITORS ALL!

One word caught her attention, making her heart pound and transforming the scene from merely disturbing to potentially dangerous.

“Move away from the body,” she ordered and took several steps back herself. She raised her voice so everyone working the scene could hear. “We’ve got a quarantine situation. Shut the doors and call the biohazard team.”

A stunned moment of silence and a shouted “Now” later, Wallace kicked into action and swung the barn doors closed, plunging them into darkness.

* * *

By late afternoon, the only piece of good news Charlie had received all day was the all-clear earlier that morning from the biohazard team. No toxins or pathogens were found at the scene, but neither were any more clues. The body, the barn, and the surrounding areas were all clean.

She’d left the Equestrian Center at noon, then spent the next two hours working the phones with Wallace to deal with city hall, HU, and the local press, who’d finally gotten wind of Professor Marshall’s death. After escaping that hell, Charlie had made another pass at the crime scene, recentering herself in the process of picking apart the stable. Aside from evidence that the bale lift had been used to lever the professor to the upper level, something anyone would need to use to haul him up there, she’d found nothing more on her second look around.

She hoped Maggie would be more successful. Cause of death—hanging—appeared obvious, but underlying toxicity, pinpricks, or the like would be critical in ruling the death a suicide or murder. There was the note, but the professor’s son, an FBI cyber agent who worked out of The Hague, insisted to Charlie on a call midday that it would be very unlike his father to commit suicide. Granted, father and son were estranged—perhaps Agent Marshall didn’t know Professor Marshall that well anymore—but everything Charlie personally knew about Jefferson Marshall, everything she’d also heard from others she or her officers had talked to that day, confirmed as much. Still, until evidence to the contrary came to light, suicide remained on the table along with murder.

She was back at her desk, combing through interviews and reports, when a commotion at the front of the station distracted her. Through her office window, she spotted Trevor towering above the crowd, and then a moment later, Annie appeared, her face as dusty as her and Trevor’s purple-and-white uniforms.

“Ten and oh!” she shouted to the cheers of some and the groans of others.

Hanover had an active municipal softball league, the teams fielded from the HU staff and various governmental departments. The HU team had two ringers—Trevor, a CWS champion, and Annie, a former softball pitcher for UNC. They were going to be hell on HPD when they faced off in the league playoffs next month.

Charlie met Annie just outside her office. “I expected nothing less with you on the mound and Trevor catching.” She looped an arm around her sister’s shoulders, ignoring the dirt and sweat and hugging Annie to her side. She was proud of them both, but more than that, she was so relieved her sister was smiling and talking to her again. It had been a rough six weeks since their brother’s and father’s deaths, a rough month since their funeral, but they seemed to be coming out the other side of it, and Annie seemed to be on the way to forgiving her, even if Charlie would never forgive herself. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

“Jaylen’s wishing he’d missed it too.” Annie snickered at the officer who joined them, an umpire’s mask dangling from his fingertips. Sweat dappled his short, cropped hair and an indented strip from the mask’s band darkened his forehead above his brown eyes. The teams rotated officiating duties, a few players from a third team providing the line judges and umps for the two teams playing. Jaylen had filled in at the last second for Wallace, who’d remained trapped in the barn with Charlie.

---