Crossfire Creek by Melissa F. Miller

Author:Melissa F. Miller [Miller, Melissa F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940759449
Publisher: Brown Street Books

11

Pat stood in the middle of the clearing where Demetrius Costa had died and squinted at the ground. There’d been no rain since the murder, and he could still see the rusty blood stains in the dirt, but only because he knew where to look.

He turned and surveyed the area. He hadn’t had the chance to interview Marlene Glasser personally. He’d been way out on Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia investigating a tip about an alleged loggerhead sea turtle poaching ring when Park Ranger Luke Painter had called to let the Atlantic Field Office know a local criminal had been killed in his park.

Pat was up next on the board, so he drew the case. Unfortunately, by the time he wrapped up the poaching matter, ferried back to the mainland, and made the seven-hour-plus drive from St. Mary’s to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it was after four in the morning. When he knocked on Marlene Glasser’s door at sunrise, no one had answered. The crap-for-brains local police chief had scared off his only witness and given her a twelve-hour head start.

Luke felt responsible for the fact that the Glasser woman had bolted, but, in the moment, Pat knew he’d have made the same call that Luke had made. The park ranger had stayed with the body and secured the area to prevent local law enforcement from contaminating the scene and to ensure the chain of custody remained intact with regard to the evidence.

It was the right decision. It was always the right decision to safeguard the scene. If the local PD screwed up the crime scene, rendering evidence inadmissible or destroying it outright, your case was dead in the water. A local witness, who lived an eight-minute drive away, she’d be available any time. Or so the thinking went.

Who could have predicted the aptly-named Dick Wagner would’ve spooked the Glasser woman so badly? Not Luke, and not Pat.

He sighed. None of this changed the current reality that without someone to identify Costa’s murderer, his case was destined for a cold case file. He should have told Luke to request backup to secure the scene until he could get there and get himself over to the Glasser house to sit on the witness.

Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Or, as his dear old dad would say, what’s done is done, now what do you intend to do, son?

He scratched his nose, lost in thought, then walked up the hill to the stand of trees that Marlene Glasser said she’d hidden behind to watch the murder go down. Chief Wagner said the woman claimed not to have seen the shooter’s face. He shimmed into the tight copse of trees and looked down on the picnic area.

He was up on a hill looking down at the scene from a distance of no more than twenty feet. From this vantage point, even in fading light, even from behind the cover of trees, Marlene Glasser had enjoyed, for lack of a better word, a front row seat to the murder of Demetrius Costa.

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