Broken Places Read Online Free PDF Page B

know, Captain, I don’t think so. I’m not going to answer any more questions until I have a lawyer with me.”
    He turned away without waiting for a response and opened his car door.
    “That’s your right,” Tom said, “but you’re making a mistake.”
    Hern shook his head. “No, I’m not.”
    Tom was watching him drive away when Gretchen Lauter emerged from the woods, followed by Dennis and a second deputy carrying Taylor between them in the body bag.
    Tom had finished here and would leave without a single scrap of physical evidence. All he had to go on were Rachel’s story of the argument between Hern and Taylor and Hern’s lack of an alibi. Until the M.E. in Roanoke cut the slugs out of Taylor’s body, Tom wouldn’t even know for sure what kind of gun killed him.
    He would question Hern again later, but next he had to talk to Taylor’s wife and try to figure out whether she was an innocent grieving widow or a prime suspect.
    Chapter Three

    Rachel drove up the farm road, past fields where American saddlebred horses of every color grazed in the shade of pecan and oak trees. She hated bringing news of a murder to this peaceful setting, dreaded interrupting Joanna’s pleasant routine to tell her that her long-time friend lay dead in the woods a few miles away.
    She spotted Joanna in a paddock next to the stable, holding a young chestnut mare’s reins while one of the trainers hefted a saddle onto the horse’s back. Joanna’s golden retriever, Nan, sat outside the rail fence, surrounded by a gaggle of geese that included Penny, the gray goose Holly had brought to the farm as a pet and allowed to join the flock. Nan jumped up and wagged her tail when she saw Rachel and Holly.
    Rachel braked and powered down the passenger window.
    “Hey, girls,” Joanna called. Shading her eyes with one hand, she walked over to the fence. She’d pulled her strawberry blond hair back in a ponytail, which might have looked silly on any other woman in her fifties but suited Joanna’s youthful face and figure. “What are you doing home so early? Playing hooky?”
    “I need to talk to you,” Rachel said. “It’s important. Could you come over to the house with us?”
    Joanna frowned, but she didn’t ask any questions. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
    Rachel drove on to the cottage at the end of the farm road, a few hundred feet beyond the stable, where she and Holly lived. Holly, who had been silent since they’d left the murder scene, opened the passenger door but spoke before she got out. “I don’t want to talk about what happened. Is it okay if I just go on up to my room?”
    “Of course. You don’t have to ask my permission. But remember, we have to go in later and give statements. We don’t have a choice about that.”
    Holly screwed up her face as if she were about to burst into tears again. “I should’ve just told Mr. Taylor I’d give him the money. He was real good to Grandma and me when we had that flood a few years ago. He checked on us every single day, and he was ready to help us get out if we needed to. And now look how I treated him. If I’d promised him the money, then maybe he wouldn’t have been over there this morning and he’d still be alive.”
    “Oh, Holly, you can’t blame yourself for—”
    Holly jumped out and ran to the house.
    As Joanna’s SUV pulled into the driveway, Rachel mounted the steps to the front porch to get out of the sun. She wished she could get the image of Cam Taylor’s dead body out of her head. She wished she could stop wondering how Ben would explain his absence to Tom.
    Ben hadn’t killed Taylor. He wouldn’t do such a crazy thing. Yet Rachel couldn’t shake the fear that Tom would focus on Ben as a suspect.
    Joanna let Nan out and pointed toward an oak tree. “Stay there,” she ordered. The dog ambled over to the tree and dropped onto her belly in the shade. Joanna paused at the bottom of the steps and looked up at Rachel. “You’re scaring me,