In Safe Hands (Search and Rescue #4)(8)

“This person is dressed all in black and is carrying a very large, tarp-wrapped object over his shoulder.” It was hard to resist adding “body-shaped” to the list of adjectives. “He opens the back of the squad and puts the…object inside.”

“Wait.” Chris frowned. “The deputy was dressed in black?”

“Yep. Did I mention that this was weird?”

“Did you recognize him?”

She shook her head.

“You’re sure it’s a him, though?”

“Yes. Almost a hundred percent sure. Unless you have some really tall and built female deputies?”

“No. There are two women with the department, but I don’t think you could mistake either for a man.”

“Then he was male.”

Although the frown between his eyebrows remained, he waved for her to continue.

“While the guy is putting the object into the back of the SUV, a boot falls out of the bottom of the tarp.”

“A boot?”

“A boot.” As much as she wanted to stay objective, Daisy couldn’t take it anymore. “A boot! From a foot! Which is connected to the possible dead body that this guy was taking somewhere, probably to join the headless guy in Mission Reservoir!”

So much for sounding levelheaded. Daisy shut her mouth with a snap, but the words were out, and she couldn’t suck them back in, no matter how badly she wanted to.

After staring at her for a long moment, Chris took a sip of his coffee. His maddening calm made her want to rip his mug away from him and throw it across the kitchen. Daisy reminded herself that tossing coffee around would not help the goal of making him think she wasn’t crazy.

“A body.”

“Yes.” Since her attempt at a factual retelling was already blown, she figured she might as well tell him everything. “Whatever he was carrying in that tarp was shaped like a person. When he dropped it into the back, it even flopped around like a dead body would.”

“Hmm.”

Chris had on his cop face. He hardly ever used his cop face with her, and Daisy’s chest felt tight. Beneath that mask, was he thinking about what a nut ball she was? She desperately hoped telling him this wouldn’t damage their friendship—any more than it already was, at least. It was just that there was a boot. Surely, Chris would understand the importance of that boot.

“Where’d he go?” he asked, finally ending the silence.

“I’m…um, not sure.” She made a face, not wanting to admit the less-than-brave truth. “He started looking up toward my window, and I was afraid he’d see me, so I kind of jumped back and…well, I tripped.”

“You tripped.” His face was blank, and she really wished he’d stop using that impassive tone of voice with her.

“I tripped,” she growled, narrowing her eyes. Their stare-off continued until Daisy knew she was going to lose—she always did—so she started talking again to distract him. “By the time I got back to the window, he was gone.”

Although he made that aggravating noncommittal sound again, his gaze was thoughtful. He focused on the mug in his hands as if his coffee were a crystal ball.

After waiting for what she felt was a more than sufficient amount of time for him to consider the situation, Daisy couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “So?”

“It was dark.”

It was a statement rather than a question, but she answered anyway. “Yes. The moon was bright when the clouds weren’t covering it, but the streetlights out there are pretty much useless unless someone’s standing directly under one.”

“You’re sure that he wasn’t in uniform?”

“Yes.” She closed her eyes to bring the memory of the scene into better focus before opening them again. “Yes. He was all in black—boots, pants, and coat with the hood up.”

“What’d he look like?” The intensity of his gaze flustered her, making her feel like she was the subject of an interrogation. It was just Chris’s way of asking questions, she told herself, trying to ignore her discomfort and focus on answering.

“I didn’t see his face, and the angle from upstairs makes it hard to judge, but I think he was fairly tall. Not skinny, but the coat made it hard to tell if he was muscular or just chunky. I took a video, but it’s really dark.” Pulling out her phone, she found the video and handed her cell to Chris.

As he watched it, frowning, he asked, “Did you get the squad number off the SUV?”

“No. Sorry.”

“Anything distinctive about the guy? The way he walked or held himself?” Chris held out her cell.

Accepting her phone, she closed her eyes for a moment again, but it didn’t help that time. “No. He was walking through snow and carrying something heavy and dead-body-like, so…oh!” The thought made her bounce, remaining coffee sloshing around in her mug. “The snow! There’ll be footprints!”

Draining his cup, he rinsed it out and left it in the sink. “I’ll check it out.”

Chris pulled on his outerwear and let himself out the interior door. After bolting it behind him, Daisy dashed for her bedroom window. She watched as he headed toward number 304. He took pictures of the tracks on both sides of the building with his phone before circling to the back yard.