Read Separate from the World for Free Online

tone of his voice, Branden surmised that he was not happy right then with his wife.
    Leaving Niell in charge of Eddie Hunt-Myers, Branden came up behind the sheriff, who was saying, “Look, Missy, I need to know if this was really a suicide. I think he killed her, but you tell me.”
    Taggert gave no reply that Branden could hear, and Robertson backed out of the doorway as the door was pushed closed from the other side.
    Holmes County Coroner and Medical Examiner Melissa Taggert was a striking woman several years younger than her husband and Branden. Her soft brown hair was usually done up in a bun so she could wear an autopsy cap over it. Though considerably more slender than her husband, Missy was strongly and solidly built, and when she didn’t like his intrusions on her work, she just pushed him back through the door, saying, “Bruce, you’re gonna have to let me work.” Thus Sheriff Robertson found himself in the hallway.
    Robertson got himself turned around and spotted Branden. “I’m not real happy about getting run off your college up there, Mike.”
    Branden nodded. He appreciated the reasons for the sheriff’s ire, but he squared up to his friend. “You had to leave, Bruce. Aidan Newhouse was going to provoke you. That’s what he does. He craves attention, especially from the law. Since Vietnam, he’s been looking for excuses to march again. I know he’s made a pest of himself at the courthouse, leading his students against the Iraq war. If you’d stayed there, you would have had a hundred people shouting at ‘the pigs’ in no time at all.”
    Robertson acknowledged the point and seemed to deflate in front of the professor. In a calmer tone, he said to Branden, “I’ve sent Dan Wilsher and Pat Lance back up there in plainclothes. That bell tower needs a look.”
    Branden nodded approval. He noted with relief that he was starting to think clearly again. “What has Eddie told you?”
    Robertson scowled. “Says they were on the tower all night. Then he broke up with her this morning, and she threw herself off the tower, on account of it.”
    “You don’t believe him?” Branden asked.
    “I’ll wait to hear from Dan and Pat. If there was a quarrel, the top of that bell tower might have some evidence of it.”
    “I know these two, Bruce,” Branden said. “They’re my students. They were in my classes. They were in love. Eddie could no more have hurt Cathy Billett than he could have stopped his own heart.”
    Saying this, Branden found himself sorting through his thoughts, even as he confronted his sorrow. He realized that Eddie’s confession had given him a better reason to move forward than anything else could have. These were his students. He knew them. “Eddie thinks he’s responsible, but he did not kill her, Bruce,” he added. “He hasn’t got the capacity.”
    Robertson stared back at the professor for a long couple of seconds and said, “Like I said, Mike. Dan and Pat are up there now. I’ll wait to hear what they have to say.”
    Branden smiled. This was high diplomacy for the gruff sheriff. Whatever he told Robertson now would fall on deaf ears. Robertson was walled off and tunnel sighted. The professor decided to change the subject.
    “I don’t know Pat Lance,” Branden said.
    “I hired her in November, after Kessler officially retired. Dan Wilsher is chief deputy now.”
    “What’s her background?”
    “Pat Lance? She’s an investigator/criminalist. Out of the Air National Guard, over in Mansfield. Came back from Iraq last summer.”
    “And you’re using her as a simple deputy? Not as a detective?”
    “She can move onto a desk when she’s earned a stripe or two.”
    “She any good?”
    Robertson nodded. “She’s military, Mike. You know I like that.”
    “What I meant was, is she too good to use in a cruiser?”
    “She can start like everyone else. If she wants better, she knows she has to show me something.”
    “Did you explain it to her in those terms,