Meredith Fletcher - Vendetta

Not trusting her voice, Marion nodded.

“Those are tiny burns from the muzzleflashes of the murder weapon. When you hold a firearm close enough, when you shoot, it’ll cause those.”

“I’ve seen them before,” Marion said hoarsely.

“Really? Where?” Shetterly seemed immediately interested.

“In classes on physical evidence. Never—” Marion’s voice broke. She sipped a quick breath. “Never in person before.”

Shetterly nodded. “Burns like these generally mean the murder was personal.”

Marion seized on that. “You think Marker knew his killer?”

“I’ve got near a lifetime spent working things like this,” Shetterly said. “Somebody kills this close up, it’s because there’s a lot of emotion involved.”

“It also means the killer wanted to make sure the job was done,” Keller added.

“Was Marker awake when she killed him?” Marion asked.

“That’s hard to answer.” Shetterly moved his face within inches of the dead man’s. He used a stainless steel forceps to sift through the wreckage. The physician breathed out smoke and the gray vapor flushed across the torn and broken flesh. “If he was awake, she didn’t allow him to sit up.”

“How do you know?”

Shetterly slid the dead man’s head over to reveal the ragged mattress below. “I expect we’ll find the bullets in the floor below.”

Marion’s stomach flipped a little. “How many times did she shoot him?”

Keller answered that. “When we took the .357 Magnum off her, all the rounds had been fired.”

Grateful for the chance to turn away from the corpse, Marion looked at the sheriff. “How many rounds does the pistol hold?” She thought she knew, but she wasn’t certain. She didn’t like to assume.

“Six.”

She fired six rounds into a man’s face at point-blank range. Marion tried to imagine what would drive someone to do something like that. She had no idea.

“I think he was awake for a moment,” Shetterly said. “But only just.”

Marion swiveled back to the physician. “Why?”

Lifting the dead man’s left arm, Shetterly indicated the torn flesh across the knuckles. “Those tears are fresh. I think he managed to hit his killer before she killed him.”

Leaning down, Marion took pictures of the damage that showed on the knuckles. Light glinted from the military ring the dead man wore. “You’re sure this is recent?”

“Yeah. There’s no sign of clotting or scabs. He hit her, then she killed him. There was no time for the healing to begin.”

Marion shifted her attention back to Keller. “Does the woman have any marks to corroborate this?”

Keller touched his left temple. “Here. You can see the bruising and scratches. Probably from the ring.”

“There’s something else,” Shetterly said.

“What?”

Shetterly pointed to the dead man’s chest. Marker had gone to bed shirtless. The physician traced a muddy print on the lifeless flesh with his forefinger. “It was raining when the woman arrived.”

“What is that?” Marion asked. Then, just before Shetterly answered, she recognized it.

“That,” Shetterly said, “is a muddy footprint.” He looked up at Keller, who had come over to join them. “I spotted this after you went outside. Thought you’d like to see it.”

“Can we get a print off it?” Keller asked.

“Take pictures of this,” Shetterly said. “Then take pictures of the bottom of the shoes that woman has on. It’s almost as good as fingerprints.”

“She put her foot on him?” Marion asked.

Shetterly nodded. “I think so.”

“Why?”

The medical examiner took glasses from a shirt pocket, slipped them on and examined the muddy print. “Looks like she used her foot to hold Marker down while she shot him. He knew it was coming. She made sure of that.”

“Do we know what Marker was doing here?” Marion stood outside the motel room while Shetterly and his assistant took care of the body.

“No.” Keller smoked and watched the rain pouring from the eave.

Marion glanced at her wristwatch. Almost an hour had passed since her arrival. It had only seemed like minutes. The death smell clung to her and she couldn’t wait to get home to shampoo the stench out of her hair.

“There is the connection to the Ellis family,” she said. “We could follow up on that.”

Keller nodded. “Got that penciled in. But folks like the Ellises don’t live the same lives you and I do, Counselor. The air’s a mite more rarified where they are.”

Marion knew that. Phoenix tended toward a city of absolutes. Rich and poor families lived there, but they seldom interacted.

“Even if we do get a chance to interview them, they’re not going to tell us any more than they want us to know.”

“Personal experience, Sheriff?” Marion asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” Keller hesitated a moment. “Brian Ellis may have come home from Vietnam as a returning prisoner of war and a military hero of sorts, but he didn’t leave here that way.”

“What do you mean?”

Keller shook his head. “I already said too much. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

Marion decided to let the comment pass but she made a mental note to have a look at whatever the D.A.’s office had on Brian Ellis. “Where’s the woman?”

Keller nodded toward the sheriff’s office cars. “I’ve got her in one of the cars. Maybe Marker got lucky with that punch before she blasted him. She was out on her feet, more or less. She was walking back along the parking lot when the first cars arrived. If we’d been another couple minutes later—” He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “We might have missed her.”

“I want to see her.”

Marion followed Keller’s broad back to one of the nearest sheriff’s cruisers. Rain pelted her in fat drops. The rainfall was abnormal for the time of year, but the weather sometimes did strange things due to the White Tank mountain range.

They stopped at the car and Keller nodded to the deputies standing guard. The man put his hand on his sidearm and gingerly opened the door.

“You’ll want to be careful, Cap’n,” the young deputy said. “She fights something fierce. Jonesy is at the hospital getting his ear stitched up where she bit him. Got to wonder if he needs his rabies vaccination, too.”

They’re afraid of her, Marion realized. That surprised her. She hadn’t seen men afraid of women very often. Or if they were, they’d given no indication of it.

The woman sat in the backseat with her hands cuffed behind her back. Her dark chestnut hair cascaded across her shoulders. Her profile was strong. Pale skin picked up the lights from the motel parking lot. Even seated she looked taller than average and extremely athletic.

She ignored them as they stared at her. The effort reminded Marion of the wild animals that had gotten trapped in the attic of her family home. She and her dad had once had to relocate a whole family of raccoons. They’d used live cages to capture them. While caged, the raccoons had pointedly ignored them in the same manner as this woman. But when the cage was rattled, they attacked immediately. Marion suspected the same would hold true of the woman in the back of the sheriff’s car.

“I’m Marion Hart,” Marion said. She felt guilty simply staring at the woman. Despite what she’d done, she wasn’t a zoo animal.

The woman ignored Marion and kept her gaze locked on the front windshield.

“I’m with the district attorney’s office,” Marion said.

Slowly the woman turned her head and looked at Marion. Deep blue eyes gleamed like daggers in the pale light waxing over the motel parking lot. They were cold and devoid of emotion.

“Prove it,” the woman challenged. Her voice was flat and harsh. There was a nasal quality that made Marion immediately think she was from somewhere back East.