“Um, Tess— it’s okay if I call you Tess, right?”
She shrugged helplessly. Her gaze flickered toward his shoulder. A damp patch lingered there. The man was wearing the badge of her breakdown. He could call her whatever the hell he wanted. “That's fine.”
“Good. There's something I want to tell you, Tess. It doesn’t have any bearing on the case or anything but, well… Sheriff De Angelis, she’s just my boss. There’s nothing going on between us. I mean, just in case you were wondering. Not that you were. It’s just, after the bar last night—”
“Forget about it.”
He couldn't. “It's just that the sheriff, she’s—”
“You’re a good man, Deputy. Mason,” she corrected when he began to protest. A small, shy grin splashed across her face for an instant. “Don’t worry about me. No matter how tough she is, I won’t forget how kind you’ve been. How helpful. I promise, I won’t
hold you accountable for the actions of your superior. I’ll be fine. I just want to answer her questions and lay down. Maybe then, when I wake up, this will all be some horrible dream.”
As Tess bent to undo her seatbelt, Mason leaned back in his seat, one hand rubbing his chin.
Kind? Helpful? That wasn’t it at all. But if that’s what she had to tell herself, he could accept that. She’d just lost her husband. He knew that. He also knew that, technically, he was no longer poaching. He couldn’t steal a man’s wife when that man was dead.
It was a terrible thought. Mason was ashamed of even having it. Didn’t make it any less true.
8
Lucas was sewing Sullivan back up when he heard the door behind him open. Knowing who was looming made him take his time on the final few stitches.
There was only one person who treated his office as their own and, still raw from their encounter at the inn, he wasn’t sure he was ready to face Caitlin again so soon.
But that was Luc speaking. Dr. De Angelis knew that he had to be professional and do his job. And part of that job was addressing the lead investigator on the case.
Even if she was his ex-wife.
She’d gotten rid of those ridiculous sunglasses. Her hat was gone, her red hair lanky and flat against her head. She clutched a shiny maroon thermos to her chest. She sniffed, sneezed and scowled. “God, it stinks in here. I hate this fridge.”
It was a closet-sized morgue, barely bigger than a freezer really and just as cold. He could never understand why she always seems surprised whenever she had to meet him down here. At least she’d remembered and worn her uniform jacket this time.
He nodded at her. “You look tired, Caity. Third cup of coffee?”
Caitlin glanced at the thermos in her hand as if unsure how it got there. “I don’t know. It might be my fourth at this point. I lost track.”
“Be careful. Next thing I know, you’ll be the one on my slab.”
“Ha ha. Funny.” Now that she noticed her coffee, she unscrewed the top and took a healthy gulp. “Let’s focus on the one stiff we got. I’ve given you a couple of hours down here with him. Did you find anything new?”
He shook his head. “Nothing that contradicts my initial findings.”
Quickly, he ran down a list of Jack’s injuries, all of them consistent with homicidal strangulation. The only thing missing was some sign that Sullivan fought back. Though he flirted with the idea that this could possibly be suicidal strangulation, he dismissed the idea immediately. There was no evidence that anything else was used to tighten the rope except a pair of hands. If Sullivan did it to himself, the rope would’ve gone slack when he first lost consciousness. He wouldn’t have died. The corpse with the fresh Y-cut proved otherwise. Which meant someone else had to be involved.
“I’ve already bagged and tagged the rope for you, in case you need it for a match, or maybe you can get some prints off of it. I’m also going to take samples from his body anyway, send them out for testing. As soon as all that’s done, we can release the body. I don’t know about you, but I always feel better when I know the freezer’s empty.”
She nodded. If Luc said there wasn’t anything else he could do with Sullivan’s body, she believed him. “Let me know when you’re finished. I’ll sit down with the wife again and find out what she wants to do.”
Lucas yanked off his gloves one by one, balling them up and tossing them in the hazardous waste bucket. As he went over to the sink and started to wash his hands, he turned to look over his shoulder at Caitlin. “How’d that go? How’s the fair missus holding up?”
“As well as can be expected. I left her at the station with Wil. I finally had to send Sly home to get a couple hours down after he finished up in the inn. I need everyone in tiptop shape if we got some murderer on the loose.” She paused, took another sip. “Mase buzzed me as I was heading over here.”
“Asking about the widow?”
“Yup.”
Lucas turned the sink off, grabbed a towel. “He seems very fond of Mrs. Sullivan. Are you sure this is the first time they’ve ever met?”