Read Defiled: The Sequel to Nailed Featuring John Tall Wolf (A Ron Ketchum Mystery Book 2) for Free Online

asked for and got a moment in a private room.
    Sonny was sure there were all sorts of things tucked into safekeeping at the bank. Most of it had to be ordinary stuff. Life insurance policies. Deeds. Passports.
    Not that a few customers wouldn’t hide bundles of cash from their spouses, business partners or the government.
    He’d bet, though, he was the only one stashing his kind of treasure. He opened the attaché case he’d brought with him to the bank. The glow of the object inside made his heart race. That was foolish, he knew. In terms of sheer monetary value, he’d had bigger paydays. He’d walked away from a job with stacks of hundred dollar bills it took two hands to hold.
    But when it came to an honest-to-God, heart-squeezing thrill, you just couldn’t beat a nugget of pure gold that was bigger than your fist, and Sonny had quite a pair of meat hooks.
    He picked up the nugget. Felt heavier than the twenty ounces the digital scale had shown. That morning’s price of gold was $1,768 an ounce. The value of the nugget at that moment was $35,360. But no dollar amount could measure the way the nugget made Sonny feel. He turned it this way and that. There was no angle at which light struck it that it didn’t gleam, and no two surfaces that shone the same way. He could spend hours just looking at it.
    Fucking thing was hypnotic.
    Best of all, he felt certain there was more to be had.
     
    Ron Ketchum told John Tall Wolf, “You can come closer, if you want.”
    The special agent stepped up next to Ron. Regarded the mortal remains of Hale Tibbot.
    “Anything in particular strike you?” Ron asked.
    “Unless the body was positioned post mortem, the man died looking out his window. He’s still in rigor mortis. My opinion is he died right the way he is. There was a full moon last night. If it was shining down on the lake out there, it must have been quite a sight.”
    “Enough to keep him from hearing somebody sneak up behind him?”
    “Sure,” Tall Wolf said. “Some people can get lost in staring at the moon, and other people can move without making a sound.”
    Ron wondered if the BIA man was referring to Indians being good at skulking.
    Recovering bigot that he was, he knew better than to ask.
    He simply said, “There’s something wrong here. The whole scene is too damn neat. The guy bled out but all the blood was sopped up. You cover the puncture wound in the guy’s neck with some makeup, put a little bronzer on his face, give his eyes a squirt of moisturizer, you’d think he was still alive.”
    “Maybe,” Tall Wolf said, “if the guy was known for a ramrod posture even while sitting.”
    “Huh,” Ron said. “Hadn’t noticed that. Didn’t know him well enough to say if he sat tall or slumped down.”
    “Maybe he was pulled up into that position. Somebody stuck him so neatly, it’d make sense that the killer held him just so. Make the target area easily accessible. If the killer went in helter-skelter, he might have stuck the victim in the throat. Painful but not necessarily fatal. Might have missed the neck altogether and broken the point of his weapon on the jaw or clavicle.”
    Ron thought about that. Seemed sensible to him but …
    He leaned over Tibbot’s body, looked for any sign of bruising on his face or neck.
    “There are no marks to indicate the killer grabbed him first,” Ron said.
    “Yeah, but he got into some kind of tussle. Look at his right hand.”
    Ron squatted for a look. Two knuckles were swollen. The skin was split and traces of blood were visible. “He got a good shot in at someone. If it was the killer, though, there should be some of that guy’s blood around. But my crime scene man didn’t find anything.”
    “The mystery deepens,” Tall Wolf said. “Another thing? Your victim didn’t foul his pants.”
    Ron sniffed the air, said, “No urine or feces.”
    “Could mean the killer waited until he saw the man use his bathroom before he acted.”
    Even in L.A., where