Page 259 of Secrets Hidden In The Glass

She nodded.

A solid hour passed while Nate waited for bodies to be zipped into bags and transported before he was able to get back to his searching. He took his time, eventually making his way to the shelves along the back wall, his shoulders tensing when he found two cans of bold blue spray paint tucked in a corner—one unopened and the other mostly empty. He took pictures and bagged the items, wondering if the Fitzgeralds’ tools would turn up among the clutter. He kept his hunt for further evidence methodical, eventually coming to the large Craftsman toolbox. He opened and shut several drawers, not finding what he was looking for until he pulled on the last one and uncovered a black duffel buried under dozens of old rags. He took more pictures and set it on the floor, then unzipped the bag to discover two hammers, several wrenches, and a screwdriver set. “You son of a bitch,” he muttered, trying to puzzle this whole situation into making sense.

“Nate,” Denny called from the doorway.

He looked over his shoulder. “How did things look?”

“All right.” He shrugged. “Sort of messy, but his stuff looks like it’s where it belongs. His coin collection and that chunk of gold he has on his fireplace mantel are still there. Nothing was ransacked or anything, but I don’t know why it would be if we’re dealing with a suicide. It’s all on tape.”

“Thanks. Why don’t you head back into town? Lock up the video camera in the cabinets, then go over and take Shawn’s place at the animal clinic so he can get home before his shift starts.”

“Nobody’s going to be sleeping tonight.”

Nate sighed. “No, but I want to give him the option.”

“Sure thing.”

Nate waited for Denny to leave, took more pictures, then bagged up the duffel, setting the contents in the box with the rest of the items that needed to go back to the office. As finished as he could be for now, he headed for the door, glancing at the blood pooled on the floor before he shut off the light and locked up, walking to the cruiser parked at the end of the driveway.

Mac rolled down his window.

“I want you keeping your eyes open. No one’s allowed here on the property. No one except me—not the mayor or our town council members. Not even Matthew. This is my scene. I’ll send Shawn over to relieve you when his shift starts in a couple of hours.”

“Okay.”

Nate drove to the station and brought the box to the interview room. He locked away the items he’d gathered and left again, on his way to Matthew’s first then to Michelle’s to watch them perform their unpleasant tasks. There were dozens of things to do—witness statements to read, the pictures he’d taken that would need developing and studied. He wanted to compare Bob’s handwriting samples to the note, even though Matthew was confident that they were dealing with a suicide. Everything added up fairly neatly. The note and gun, the spray paint cans and stolen tools. So why was his gut screaming that the scene he’d just left wasn’t quite what it seemed?

~~~~

Nate shut himself in his office after one hell of a long morning. He took off his jacket and tossed it to the couch as he sat down in his chair and closed his eyes. “Shit,” he whispered, opening his eyes again when his mind flashed back to Bob lying on Matthew’s metal table in the clinic’s small basement morgue. Death was a fairly rare occurrence on the island, but it had happened in spades today. Nate wasn’t particularly squeamish. He’d seen his fair share of corpses over the years, and his training at the police academy had required him to attend a couple of autopsies, but this had been different—a man he’d considered a friend.

Matthew’s exam had been routine and straightforward. After an hour in the sterile, chilly space, taking several samples to send off to the lab on the mainland, Sanderson’s respected physician and coroner had officially concluded that Bob Tillerson’s death was the result of a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. And Nate didn’t have much room to argue. Except his instincts wouldn’t allow him to agree. Something about the case still wasn’t jibing for him. “Shit,” he muttered again as he gained his feet and headed down to the interrogation room, where Mac sat at the table with the sealed suicide note in one hand and the handwriting samples they’d collected in the other. “What do you think?” Nate asked, closing the door behind him.

“I think they match.” Mac set the papers down and adjusted his reading glasses. “I’m no handwriting expert, but I’m telling you Bob wrote this. He makes his cursive I’s with a little tail on the end—capital and lowercase.” Mac pointed to examples on both of the pieces of paper, illustrating his findings. “And his apostrophes are more dots than lines.”

Nate rubbed at the back of his neck, unable to disagree. “Looks pretty similar.”

“I’d say identical.”

Nate nodded. “Yeah.”

Mac put the papers back among their catalogued evidence and pulled off his gloves. “Did you talk to Jeremy?”

Nate nodded again. After leaving Michelle’s office, he’d met with his deputies to debrief and fill them in on the case before he headed over to the hardware store to ask Jeremy about the spray paint he’d found in Bob’s garage. Jeremy had confirmed that he sold Bob two cans of Larkspur Blue in late September for personal boat repairs, but when Nate had taken the time to drive back out to Bob’s property, he hadn’t been able to find any evidence that work had been done on the small fishing vessel resting on stacks of cinderblocks in the backyard. “He bought the paint to touch up some spots on that old skiff of his.”

“There you go.”

Nate shook his head. “Bob never got around to making anything happen. I looked. And Jeremy’s records are showing that he hasn’t sold any other cans of the same blue for over two years.”

Mac sighed. “I don’t want to believe it, Nate. Any of this. Bob’s one of my good friends, but if one of those cans is almost empty and no work’s been done on the skiff, how can we say that paint didn’t end up on the Johnstons’ shed door? And what about Randy’s tools?”

The same questions Nate had been asking himself for almost two hours. “We’re not done with this investigation by any means.”

Mac nodded this time.

Nate folded his arms as he leaned his ass against the table, studying the pallid tinge to his undersheriff’s cheeks. “When was the last time you took a break?”

Mac rubbed his eyes. “Probably around the same time you did.”