Read Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) for Free Online

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    Living room, neat. Kitchen, neat. Guest bathroom, very neat. Guest bedroom, very neat.
    Master bedroom door closed. And locked.
    Trinity banged on the door. “Scott? You all right?”
    She put her ear to the door and listened but didn’t hear the shower running. If it had been running, she would have heard it. And by now, she was uneasy enough to really need confirmation that Scott wasn’t here, and if he wasn’t here, she damned well needed to know where he was.
    She looked at the door handle, then stood on tiptoes and felt along the top ledge of the door frame, producing the odd little hooked emergency key designed mostly for situations in which young children locked themselves in bathrooms or bedrooms and didn’t yet know how to unlock the doors.
    Trinity was able to unlock the door easily. But for some reason she could never explain afterward, she didn’t just barge in. She turned the door handle and pushed the door open.
    She thought later how odd it was that after all his impatience, Braden sat just behind her in the hallway and never tried to go into the bedroom.
    Trinity took one step in. She didn’t need to go any farther to see what there was to see. The bedroom was neat, bed made, everything in its place. Except for Scott. Dressed for his morning run, he was lying in an oddly twisted position on the rug at the foot of his bed. His head was turned, and his open eyes seemed to be staring straight at Trinity.
    Except that they weren’t, because Scott was dead.
    —
     
    DR. RICHARD BEESON was hovering around retirement age but refused to give up medicine completely; being the coroner for Crystal County suited him. It was, mostly, an easy job, respectfully bagging up folks after accidents and helping morticians carefully wrap elderly “retirement home” residents in pristine white sheets for their trip to the mortuary.
    He’d never handled a murder before. And he wasn’t too proud to share that information with Sheriff Trinity Nichols—whom he had delivered with his own hands thirty-odd years ago.
    “I don’t see what he died of, Trinity. Body temp and rigor indicate he’s been dead no more than an hour. It was sudden, but he just had a complete physical with a stress test; his heart was in great shape, and so were his arteries. Told me he smoked a joint now and then, but that was it as far as recreational drugs went. I don’t think he lied to me about that.”
    Trinity nodded. “He liked wine, but it was about taste, not getting drunk. Didn’t like losing control.”
Unless it was for effect, for show. He could fake losing control with the best of them.
    Unaware of her silent musings, Doc Beeson nodded in turn. “No health issues showed up in his physical, so I’m stumped. His head’s at an odd angle though not extreme, but seems to me if he’d fallen somehow, at least that rug would have a wrinkle or two in it.”
    Trinity wasn’t tempted to laugh. “I thought the same thing, Doc. You’ll do the autopsy?”
    He grimaced, which didn’t really change the expression of his thin, craggy face. “Man, I hate doing posts on people I delivered. Haven’t had to many times, ’specially considering how many babies I delivered over the years.”
    “But you’ll do his autopsy.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do it. Dammit. Meantime, I’ll get out of the way so Lexie and Doug can do their jobs.” He looked at her directly. “I know you got them trained special as crime scene technicians; you think Scott was murdered?”
    Trinity chose her words carefully, even knowing with absolute certainty that Beeson was the soul of discretion. “I think that if you find something other than an accident or a natural death in the autopsy, I want all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.”
    “Guess I’d feel the same in your place. I’ll wait out in the living room.”
    “Thanks, Doc.”
    Lexie Adams and Douglas Payne, who had been standing silently just inside the door holding their