Lawman With A Cause. Delores Fossen

Even though the doctor was stitching up her shoulder, she was leaning closer to Egan. No doubt trying to hear Court’s every word. When he finished the call, Egan would give her the condensed version, but first he wanted to try to process it himself.

      “Cause of death?” Egan asked Court.

      “Two gunshot wounds to the head. No stippling.”

      Hell.

      Stippling happened when particles of gunpowder embedded into the skin. Since it wasn’t on the victim, Egan knew she probably hadn’t been shot at point-blank range. That meant, she might have still been alive while she was in the truck. Might.

      Egan dreaded this next question, but he had to know. “Did the victim have any organs missing?”

      Court blurted out a single word of bad profanity. “No. Not that I can see. Why would you think that?”

      “I’ll fill you in when you’re back here.” No way did Egan want to get into this over the phone, but it was a relief that the woman seemed to be intact. “Were there exit wounds on the body?” Egan asked.

      “No. The bullets are still in her.”

      As grisly as that sounded, that was actually a good thing. “I want ballistics done ASAP,” Egan reminded his brother.

      Though a reminder really wasn’t necessary. Court was already well aware that was one answer they had to have right away.

      “I’ll get it,” Court assured him. “You do know, though, that even if the shot came from your gun, or Jordan’s, this was an accident? From everything you told me, both of you were aiming at the driver, who was shooting at you. You didn’t even know there was a passenger in the vehicle.”

      Yeah, he knew that in his head. But his gut was having a lot of trouble with it. If the woman had died from his bullet, then the bottom line was that he’d been the one to kill her.

      “Also, I’ve made some calls about the truck the gunman was driving,” Egan continued a moment later. “It had to be custom since the windshield was bullet resistant and the front end had been reinforced. We might get lucky and find out who ordered a vehicle like that.”

      “I can help you with that when I get back to the office,” Court answered. “Might not be for a while, though, since we want to process Jordan’s vehicle, too. How is she, by the way?” Court asked after a pause.

      She had a lot less blood on her than when Egan had first seen her, but she had that stark look in her eyes. The one that told him she was dealing with a serious adrenaline crash and was maybe in shock.

      “Jordan’s, well, Jordan,” Egan settled for saying. Stubborn and driven. Not necessarily a good combination.

      “She really should be in the hospital,” Dr. Lucy Madison said to Egan the moment he was finished with his call.

      Dr. Madison had been working at McCall Canyon Hospital since Egan was a boy. She knew her stuff. And she was right. Jordan should be in the hospital, but when she’d repeatedly refused, Egan had brought her to the sheriff’s office instead and called Dr. Madison to come and check her out.

      “I’d rather not be at the hospital with a killer on the loose,” Jordan grumbled.

      It wasn’t her first grumble about that, either, and Egan could definitely see her side of it. Jordan was a former cop and hadn’t been able to stop the attack, and this thug could just come walking into the hospital to finish what he’d started. At least Egan could control who came in and out of the sheriff’s office, and the gunman would have to be plenty stupid to come into a building with cops.

      “Will she be okay?” Egan asked Dr. Madison. It wasn’t a general kind of question, though. He needed to know how soon he could move her to a safe location so he could get on with this investigation.

      “I think she’ll be all right,” the doc answered. “I’d still like to run some tests, but if it’s absolutely necessary for her to be here, it can wait.”

      “It’s necessary,” Jordan assured her.

      Dr. Madison made a suit-yourself sound and gathered up her things. “I’ll call in a script for some pain meds, but something tells me you won’t be taking them.”

      Jordan looked at her. “I won’t be.” And there wasn’t a shred of doubt in her voice.

      The doctor sighed. “Well, just take some over-the-counter stuff if it gets too bad. You’ll have a doozy of a headache for a day or two.”

      Egan figured from the way Jordan kept wincing that it’d gone well past the doozy stage. Still, he didn’t press it. But he would when the doctor was finally out of his office.

      “I will need my immunosuppressant meds, though,” Jordan told the doctor. “They’re at my place in San Antonio, but I haven’t had my dose today.”

      “Immunosuppressant?” Egan asked.

      Jordan dodged his gaze. “For the kidney transplant.” She gave the name of the drugs to the doctor.

      Dr. Madison nodded. “I’ll get you a new script. Will she be here for the next hour or so?” she asked Egan. “Because if so, I can have the pharmacy deliver it to her. Jordan really shouldn’t miss taking it even for a day. It could cause her body to reject the donor kidney.”

      Egan wasn’t sure he’d wanted to know that. It was always hard to think of Jordan having part of Shanna inside her. If that part died, it’d be a little like losing Shanna all over again. That probably didn’t make sense to most people, which was why Egan kept it to himself.

      “Jordan will be here for a while,” Egan assured the doctor. Just how long “a while” was, though, he wouldn’t know until he’d learned more about what was going on.

      “Tell me about the other two living recipients,” Egan said to Jordan once the doctor had left.

      Jordan had already given him the names—Tori Judd and Irene Adair—and while Egan had been making some calls, he’d done internet searches on them, but he hadn’t pulled up much. Irene Adair didn’t even have a driver’s license so there was no DMV photo on her. He had gotten a look at a photo of Tori, but Egan didn’t know if she was a match to the dead woman or not.

      Jordan drew in a deep breath and moved from the corner of his desk where she’d been sitting to the chair across from him. “I have computer files on both of them, but I honestly don’t know if one of them is the dead woman. There was too much blood for me to get a good look at her face.”

      Ditto. But what he had been able to see would be etched in his mind forever. So would some of the details that were eating away at him. “I’m not sure our attacker had enough time to wrap her in a blanket before he dumped her out of the truck.”

      “Yes.” Jordan said it so quickly that she’d probably given it some thought. But then she lifted her shoulder. “Unless she’d already had the blanket draped around her.” She winced again. Hesitated. “Did the woman have a missing heart or pancreas?”

      “No.”

      Egan saw the same relief in her eyes that he’d felt when Court had told him that. Like him, the relief didn’t last long.

      “It’s possible the gunman had the woman on the seat next to him,” Jordan said, “and he pushed her out only after she’d been shot.”

      Egan had considered that, too. That was why they needed to find the driver of that truck so he could shed some light on this.

      “How long before we have ballistics?” she asked.

      Egan nearly told her there was no “we” in this investigation, but there was. Whether he liked it or not, and he didn’t, Jordan and he were in this together.

      “As soon as the ME can get the bullet out of the Jane Doe, Court can do the comparison with our guns.”

      Egan