Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(53)

Joe glanced at the game. Dallas was now down by sixteen. But he really didn’t care.

He sat up. “Okay.”

“Thank you, Joe.”



* * *



—

With Daisy on his heels, Joe walked to his pickup and out through the front gate. The day had warmed into the fifties and the clouds had parted over the Bighorns. It was a remarkably temperate Thanksgiving Day.

Sunlight streamed through cloud holes to bathe sections of the timber in bronze light. A golden eagle hovered in place over the tops of the trees to the north, looking for mice in the undergrowth.

He opened the passenger door and Daisy bounded in. It was less than a five-minute drive from Joe’s house to Lola’s trailer. For once, the cow moose wasn’t there to block his progress. He’d fooled her, he thought, by mixing up his routine. She was prepared to interfere with him at dawn and after dusk as he came home, but she wasn’t ready to lumber out on the road when he was driving from his house in the midafternoon.

He became concerned when he saw that Lola’s older-model white SUV was parked behind her trailer. She hadn’t driven into town. The porch light was on over the metal front door as well, which was unusual. Lola was a stickler for not “wasting electricity.”

Joe left Daisy in the cab. He didn’t want his dog barking at Lola’s cat.

He rapped hard on her front door. “Lola? It’s Joe. Are you in there?”

There was a faint muffled sound from inside. The audio was from her television.

He knocked again. “Lola?”

There was no response. He tried the door handle. Locked.

Since there wasn’t a window or peephole in the trailer door, Joe moved to the right side of her wooden porch and leaned over the railing so he could see inside her front room from a window that he knew looked in on her living room. Her blinds were open.

He could see images flickering across the screen of her television. The back of her couch was to him, but he couldn’t see her head above the top of it. Her cat was curled up on the armrest of a recliner and it eyed him coldly.

“Lola?” he said while rapping on the glass.

Nothing.

Then, almost out of his angle of vision to his left, he saw her shoes. They were heavy orthopedic shoes and her feet were in them. Lola was on her back on the floor and her legs were splayed out on the linoleum. Joe couldn’t see Lola’s upper torso from where he was on the porch.

Her legs weren’t moving.

As quickly as he could, Joe jogged back to his truck and dug out a heavy crowbar from the gear box in the bed and returned to the front door. He jammed the blade of the tool in between the door and doorframe above the locked handle and wrenched it hard. The lock broke with a clunk and the door swung inward about a foot until it stopped. He pushed on it and it gave a little, but he could tell by the feel of it that the door was blocked by Lola herself. If he forced it open, he’d slide her across the floor. If she was already injured, he didn’t want to compound it by shoving her around.

Joe tossed the crowbar off the porch and wedged his head through the opening.

She was on her back and the bottom of the door was touching the top of her head. Her face, which was directly below him, was pale and waxy and her hands were balled up into tiny fists. Her eyes were closed and there was what appeared to be a neat round bullet hole in the middle of her forehead. Her glasses were askew on her face. He couldn’t see any blood on the floor.

Joe dropped to his haunches on the porch and withdrew his head from the opening. He reached in and around the door and pressed his fingertips to the skin on her neck below her jawline. She was cool and stiff to the touch. There was no pulse.

“Oh no . . .” he moaned aloud.

Another body of an elderly local. Another crime scene.

He stood up and fished his cell phone out of his breast pocket and speed-dialed Sheriff Tibbs directly.

“Joe?” Tibbs said. “We’re right in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner.”

“I know and I’m sorry.”

“I really don’t have any updates from the Kizer case.”

“That’s not why I’m calling, Sheriff. There’s been another murder. This time it’s our neighbor, Lola Lowry. I just found her body in her trailer and it looks like she was shot in the head last night or really early this morning.”

“Oh no.”

“That’s what I said.”

“On Thanksgiving?”

“Unfortunately. She was supposed to come to our house today. When she didn’t, Marybeth asked me to check on her. That’s how I found her.”

Tibbs was quiet. Joe could hear the tinkling of utensils in the background as well as the play-by-play call of the Dallas game.

“Text me the address,” Tibbs said wearily. “I’ll call Steck, Bass, and Norwood so I can ruin their holiday as well.”

“Sorry again,” Joe said.

“Can’t you just stay home and mind your own business?” Tibbs asked with sudden heat. “Every time you go out, you create another goddamn headache for me and my department.”

Joe punched off without responding.

Then he called Marybeth with the bad news and ruined her holiday.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


    Northern Lights