Carly Bishop - No One But You

“Get back inside, you idiot!” he barked, bellowing again for Fiona as he ran to the porch.

Then Fiona Halsey let herself out of the barn. Her long, dark blond hair hung heavily down her back; tension rode her hard. “Geary, I swear, if you don’t cut it out—”

She never finished the sentence. The siren grew more and more shrill, and she forgot whatever she’d been thinking about the blaring horn and gunfire and Geary’s subsequent bellowing.

Geary had launched himself up onto the porch and out of Matt’s line of vision. “He’s dead, Halsey! Everly’s dead!” he shouted over the shrill noise of the oncoming siren. “What the devil? D’you do this?”

Focused now on her, Matt watched disbelief replace the irritation on her face. His knees stiffened and the cold brought on a shiver. He watched her lips shaping the answer to Geary’s question, Don’t be an ass, Dennis, but what Matt supposed must be the sheriff’s SUV, brakes screeching, turned off the highway and up the country lane. The siren drowned out the sound of her voice.

Belatedly, maybe goaded by the shrill approach, she ran toward the porch herself as Geary’s girlfriend closed herself back into the bunkhouse.

Matt snapped shut his binoculars and shook his head in disbelief over the unlikely speed of the local law enforcement arriving on the scene. Was it the sheriff Everly had been talking to when he was gunned down?

Matt drew a deep, silent breath and faced the crucial decision—stay or go. He had only seconds to conceal himself in a better position to observe what went on, or to head back up the mountainside. He could observe perfectly well from the spot where his horse was tethered, but he wouldn’t be able to hear what was said.

He scanned the gabled roofs of the house, the barn and the bunkhouse, then backed around the length of hedge, keeping his options open for those few seconds as the sheriff’s vehicle slammed to a stop and two men piled out.

The larger of the two, clearly in authority, was Dex Hanifen, the Johnson County sheriff. “Fiona? Geary? What’s going on here?”

His deputy, Crider, scurried up to the porch at the front door where Everly’s body lay collapsed. “Oh, my God, Dex! It’s Kyle! Deader than a doornail.”

Hanifen stared. “No way—”

Crider began to moan, cutting him off. “Yeah, boss. He’s shot in the back. Jeez, Dex, the blood!” He swore, and then gagged and retched and threw up.

Hanifen cut loose a blue streak about contaminating a crime scene and all but flew up the steps and as quickly hurled Crider off the porch. He shouted at Geary, ordering him to his side. “I need some help here.”

The man stalled. “You want me to look around, Dex? I could see—”

“Sure, Geary. I’ve got a moron deputy woofing his cookies in the middle of a crime scene, and I’m dead certain the murderer’s waiting around to be discovered,” Hanifen snarled. “Now get your butt over here and give me a hand with this freaking mess.”

The moment Geary stepped reluctantly forward, Matt moved out. He chose the roof of the barn so that if he slipped, the noise would go unnoticed. He circled around, far outside the perimeter of the yard lights.

At the west end of the barn he climbed onto the paddock fence and gripped the edge of the roof. He swung forward hard and jackknifed his body onto the rooftop, landing with a lot more noise than he’d hoped.

“What the hell was that?” he heard Crider shout.

“The horses, you ninny.” Hanifen’s voice. Wildly grateful for the sheriff’s preoccupied impatience, Matt nevertheless plastered himself to the roof. Scraped raw in the maneuver, his hands felt on fire, but he didn’t move, hardly breathed.

Matt heard Hanifen get on the radio and order in help to seal off, search out and protect the evidence. “And the horses are getting whacked out, so whatever you do, don’t put on the siren.”

Matt gauged his position on the roof and moved crabwise to situate himself before Fiona went back into the stables. He just glimpsed her entering below him as he molded himself to the asphalt shingles to watch what was going on.

Not another five minutes had passed before a second vehicle with the county sheriff’s logo pulled into the yard. If the killer had made any tracks, if the shell casing had been left on the ground, if any number of possible clues to the killer’s identity remained in the drive or yard, Matt thought the sheriff’s crew was doing one hell of a job laying waste to the evidence.

He stayed on the roof growing stiffer, colder and more irritated by the moment for nearly two hours. Photos were taken of Everly’s position when he fell over dead. Hanifen conducted a cursory search of the house and ruled out the necessity of bringing in crime-scene technicians.

The murder, after all, had taken place on the front stoop by a shooter outside the house.

One would think, if one didn’t know better, Matt thought, that the sheriff didn’t give a damn about preserving the integrity of the evidence. Matt had to wonder if there was any percentage at all in staying on the roof, observing, listening.

Then, just as he’d decided to move out, Matt got his payoff. Hanifen and Crider wound up virtually beneath Matt’s position, leaning in against the stable wall, lighting their smokes.

“I’ll bet you anything the princess killed him,” Hanifen’s underling was saying.

“Maybe,” the sheriff returned, “but I’m not taking her in tonight.”

“But—”

“But what?” A cloud of smoke chased the sheriff’s abrupt interruption, wafting upward toward Matt.

“Well, she’s a flight risk for one thing—”

“Oh, stifle it, Crider,” Hanifen snapped. “This is not New York and you are not on NYPD Blue. Fiona Halsey has motive up the ying-yang, she had opportunity, and—”

“And more than enough firepower to arm a small nation, let’s not forget…” Crider trailed off.

Matt could almost feel through his frozen senses the quiet wrath coming off Hanifen. His words dropped out like chunks of glacier. “What firepower would that be?”

Exactly, Matt thought. What firepower? Was Crider blabbing about an armory in existence on the Bar Naught? And one Fiona Halsey knew about?

But Crider cleared his throat and backpedaled like a demon. “You know. Just what’s stashed…in the inside. And Fiona’s gotta have a rifle herself.”

More glacier shedding. “You’re a fool.”

“I know when to keep my mouth shut,” Crider protested.

“Like now?”

“But, Dex, it’s just you and me out here—”

“I don’t ever want to hear a word that even rhymes with ‘firepower’ out of your mouth again. You got that?”

“Yeah,” Crider answered, sullen-voiced.

Hanifen went on. “I don’t want to hear any disrespect in regard to Fiona Halsey, either.”

“You gone all soft on her, Dex?”

“Shut your trap, Crider. That little girl and I go back a long way.”

“She’s not a little girl anymore.” The fool dug his hole deeper. “You gonna just let her get away with it?”

How, Matt thought, did the guy dare taunt Hanifen? But to his utter disbelief, Hanifen let the ridicule go.

“She’s not going to get away with anything.” He tossed his cigar butt into the yard. “Here’s what’s not going to happen. I am not gonna have the whole damned county down on my head for railroading the local princess.”

The first time he met Fiona Halsey face-to-face, Matt found himself staring up the barrel of her cocked, .30-30 lever-action rifle. The Remington was a beauty, powerful enough to fell a moose from several hundred yards out. And it still had the faint acrid scent of burnt gunpowder.