The Scent of Murder (A Veronica Shade Thriller Book 2) by Patrick Logan

Author:Patrick Logan [Logan, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pathological Ink
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

“What have we got?” Sheriff Steve Burns asked as he stepped into the makeshift control room.

“No ‘good morning, Crouch’? No ‘I missed you, good buddy’? You know what? I bet that hot piece of ass detective, what’s her face, brings her fat partner a double mocha latte every morning. I don’t even get a hello. Doesn’t seem fair.”

It took all of Steve’s willpower not to reach out and throttle the man. It wasn’t just what Lieutenant Crouch said, but the way he looked when he said it.

The knowing smirk on the man’s thick lips nearly set the sheriff off.

He’d seen them together, all right. Crouch had spotted Veronica and Steve on the street after dinner. And now the man was pushing Steve’s buttons, just like he did back in the day when they’d both been Staties.

Thankfully, physical violence wasn’t necessary… yet. A scathing look was sufficient to silence the much bigger man.

Deputy Marcus McVeigh was also in the control room. It seemed that wherever Lieutenant Crouch was, Bear County’s Chief Deputy wasn’t far behind.

Steve wasn’t sure what to make of this. McVeigh had diffused one toxic interaction between himself and the Statie, but Steve wasn’t sure that the man didn’t have ulterior motives.

If McVeigh wasn’t positioning himself to be the next Sheriff of Bear County, then he had to be the most altruistic person alive.

And Steve wasn’t even sure he believed in altruism.

“Lieutenant Crouch was just showing me the map of the locations where the girls’ corpses were found.”

McVeigh stepped aside and waved a hand over a large table, upon which sat a printed map spanning three over-sized sheets of paper.

Steve looked from McVeigh to Crouch.

The smirk had returned to the State Trooper’s face.

What are you still doing here, anyway? We don’t need your help. We know it’s a fucking bear that mauled the corpse.

“Right—show me.”

To Lieutenant Phil Crouch’s credit, the map that he’d printed and then annotated was incredibly detailed.

It included the locations of the bodies in Hilltona Forest, as McVeigh had just indicated, but there was more to it than that: Shooter’s Lounge was also identified, as well as Kelsey and Megan’s homes. Even Rob Pinkerton’s place was on the map.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Steve said after scanning the map several times. “Both Kelsey and Megan had their cars on the night they went missing, right?”

“The bouncer saw Kelsey get into her car and drive off,” McVeigh confirmed. “Megan’s friends said the same.”

“Alone?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“So, how the hell did they get from here,” Steve pointed at Shooter’s, then ran his finger to Hilltona, “to here? Especially, when they live in the complete opposite direction.”

Shooter’s was almost exactly halfway between where the girls lived and the forest where their bodies had been discovered.

“Maybe they were carjacked,” Crouch suggested with a shrug.

Steve considered this.

“But there are cameras here, here, and here.” Steve indicated several large intersections on the map that the girls would have logically passed through had they gone straight home. “As well as a red-light camera here. But we’ve already gone through the footage—they didn’t pass through any of them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.