Shotgun Sheriff. Delores Fossen

that didn’t mean the deaths weren’t connected. It just meant she didn’t see an immediate link. The only thing that was glaring right now was Deputy Shane Tolbert’s involvement in this and his sheriff’s need to defend him.

      Livvy started the walk down the hill to look for that missing phone. Thankfully, it was silver and should stand out among the foliage. And then she remembered the note in her pocket with the cell number on it. She took out her own phone and punched in the numbers to call the cell so it would ring.

      She heard nothing.

      Just in case it was buried beneath debris or something, she continued down the hill, listening for it.

      Reed followed her, of course.

      Livvy would have preferred to do this search alone because the sheriff was turning out to be more than a nuisance. He was a distraction. Livvy blamed that on his too-good looks and her stupid fantasies about cowboys. She’d obviously watched too many Westerns growing up, and she reminded herself that in almost all cases the fantasy was much hotter than the reality.

      She glanced at Reed again and mentally added maybe not in this case.

      In those great-fitting jeans and equally great-fitting blue shirt, he certainly looked as if he could compete with a fantasy or two.

      When she felt her cheeks flush, Livvy quickly got her mind on something else—the job. It was obvious that the missing cell wasn’t ringing so she ended the call and put her own cell back in her pocket. Instead of listening for the phone, she’d just have to hope that the mayor had turned it off but still tossed it in a place where she could spot it.

      “The mayor’s not guilty,” Reed tried again. “And neither is Shane.”

      She made a sound of disagreement. “Maybe there was no GSR on his hands because Shane wore gloves when he shot her,” she pointed out. Though Livvy was certain Reed had already considered that.

      “There were no gloves found at the scene.”

      She had an answer for that as well. “He could have discarded them and then hit himself over the head to make it look as if he’d been set up.”

      “Then he would have had to change his clothes, too, because there was no GSR on his shirt, jeans, belt, watch, badge, holster or boots.”

      “You tested all those items for gunshot residue?”

      “Yeah, I did,” he snapped. “This might be a small town, Sergeant Hutton, but we’re not idiots. Shane and I have both taken workshops on crime-scene processing, and we keep GSR test kits in the office.”

      It sounded as if Sheriff Hardin had been thorough, but she would reserve judgment on whether he’d learned enough in those workshops.

      “But Shane was holding the murder weapon, right?” Livvy clarified.

      “Appears to have been, but it wasn’t his gun. He says he has no idea who it belongs to. The bullet taken from Marcie’s body is on the way to the lab for comparison, and we’re still searching the databases to try to figure out the owner of the gun.”

      Good. She’d call soon and press for those results and the plaster castings of the footprints. Because the sooner she finished this crime scene, the sooner she could get out of here and head back to Austin. She didn’t mind small towns, had even grown up in one, but this small town—and its sheriff—could soon get to her.

      Livvy continued to visually comb the right side of the path, and when they got to the bottom, they started back up while she examined the opposite side. There was no sign of a silver phone.

      Mercy.

      She didn’t want to explain to her boss how she’d let possible crucial evidence disappear from a crime scene that she was working. She had to find that phone or else pray the cell records could be accessed.

      “What about the blood spatter in the cabin?” Reed asked, grabbing her attention again.

      “I’m not finished processing the scene yet.” In fact, she’d barely started though she had already spent nearly an hour inside. She had hours more, maybe days, of work ahead of her. Those footprint castings had taken priority because they could have been erased with just a light rain. “But in my cursory check, I didn’t see any spatter, only the blood pool on the floor. Since Marcie was shot at point-blank range, that doesn’t surprise me. Why? Did you find blood spatter?”

      “No. But if Shane’s account is true about someone clubbing him over the back of the head, then there might be some. He already had a head injury, and it had been aggravated with what looked like a second blow. But the wood’s dark-colored, and I didn’t want to spray the place with Luminol since I read it can sometimes alter small droplets. Judging from the wound on Shane’s head, we’d be looking for a very small amount because the gash was only about an inch across.”

      She glanced at him and hoped she didn’t look too surprised. Most non-CSI-trained authorities would have hosed down the place with Luminol, the chemical to detect the presence of biological fluids, and would have indeed compromised the pattern by causing the blood to run. That in turn, could compromise critical evidence.

      “What?” he asked.

      Livvy walked ahead of him, up the steps and onto the porch and went inside the cabin. “Nothing.”

      “Something,” Reed corrected, following her. He shut the door and turned on the overhead lights. “You’d dismissed me as just a small-town sheriff.”

      “No.” She shrugged. “Okay, maybe. Sorry.”

      “Don’t be. I dismissed you, too.”

      Since her back was to him, she smiled. For a moment. “Still do?”

      “Not because of your skill. You seem to know what you’re doing. But I’m concerned you won’t do everything possible to clear Shane’s name.”

      “And I’m concerned you’ll do anything to clear it.”

      He made a sound of agreement that rumbled deep in his throat. “I can live with a stalemate if I know you’ll be objective.”

      The man certainly did know how to make her feel guilty. And defensive. “The evidence is objective, and my interpretation of it will be, too. Don’t worry. I’ll check for that blood spatter in just a minute.”

      Riled now about the nerve he’d hit, she grabbed a folder from her equipment bag. “First though, I’d like to know if it wasn’t Woody Sadler, then who might have compromised the crime scene and stolen the phone.” She slapped the folder on the dining table and opened it. Inside were short bios of persons of any possible interest in this case.

      Reed’s bio was there on top, and Livvy had already studied it.

      He was thirty-two, had never been married and had been the sheriff of Comanche Creek for eight years. Before that, he’d been a deputy. His father, also sheriff, had been killed in the line of duty when Reed was seven. Reed’s mother had fallen apart after her husband’s murder and had spent the rest of her short life in and out of mental institutions before committing suicide. And the man who’d raised Reed after that was none other than the mayor, Woody Sadler.

      She could be objective about the evidence, but she seriously doubted that Reed could ever be impartial about the man who’d raised him.

      Livvy moved Reed’s bio aside. The mayor’s. And Shane’s. “Who would be bold or stupid enough to walk into this cabin and take a phone with me and your deputy only yards away?”

      Reed thumbed through the pages, extracted one and handed it to her. “Jonah Becker. He’s the rancher Marcie was supposed to testify against. He probably wouldn’t have done this himself, but he could have hired someone if he thought that phone would link him in any way to Marcie.”

      Yes. Jonah Becker was a possibility. Reed added the bio for Jonah’s son. And Jerry Collier, the man who ran the Comanche Creek Land Office. Then Billy