Justice at Cardwell Ranch Read Online Free PDF

ordered.
    He didn’t move. He stood stock-still, staring down at the body at his feet. He appeared to be in shock.
    “I said put your hands up,” she ordered again. He blinked and slowly raised his gaze to her, then lifted his hands. Keeping the gun trained on him, she quickly frisked him. “Where is the weapon?” She nudged him with the point of her gun barrel.
    He shook his head. “ I didn’t shoot him.”
    Liza took a step back from him and shone the flashlight beam into the pines. The light didn’t go far in the dense trees and darkness. “Who shot him?”
    “I don’t know.”
    She squatted down to check for a pulse. None. Pulling out her phone, she called for backup and the coroner. When she’d finished, she turned the beam on Jordan again. “You can start by telling me what you’re doing out here.”
    He looked down at the body, then up at her. “You know I didn’t kill him.”
    “How do I know that?”
    True, she hadn’t seen him carrying a rifle, but he could have hidden one in the woods earlier today. But how did he get rid of it so quickly? She would have heard him throw it into the trees.
    “What are you doing here at the falls in the middle of the night?”
    He looked away.
    She began to read him his rights.
    “All right,” he said with a sigh. “You aren’t going to believe me. I was meeting him here.”
    “To buy drugs?”
    “No.” He looked insulted. “It’s a long story.”
    “We seem to have time.” She motioned to a downed tree not far from the body but deep enough in the trees that if the killer was still out there, he wouldn’t have a clear shot.
    Jordan sighed as he sat down, dropping his head in his hands for a few moments. “When I was in high school my best friend hung himself. At least that’s what everyone thought, anyway. I didn’t believe he would do that, but there was no evidence of foul play. Actually, no one believed me when I argued there was no way Tanner would have taken his own life.”
    “People often say that about suicide victims.”
    “Yeah. Well, a few weeks ago, I got a call from…” He looked in the direction of the body, but quickly turned away. “Alex Winslow.”
    “Is that the victim?”
    He nodded. “Alex asked if I was coming back for our twenty-year high-school reunion.”
    “You were? ” She couldn’t help her surprise.
    He gave her an are-you-kidding look. “I told him no. That’s when he mentioned Tanner.”
    “Alex Winslow told you he was looking into Tanner’s death?”
    “Not in so many words. He said something like, ‘Do you ever think about Tanner?’ He sounded like he’d been drinking. At first I just thought it was the booze talking.”
    He told her about the rest of the conversation, apparently quoting Alex as best as he could remember.
    “Man, it would take something to hang yourself,” Alex had said. “Put that noose around your neck and stand there balancing on nothing more than a log stump. One little move… Who would do that unless they were forced to? You know, like at gunpoint or…I don’t know, maybe get tricked into standing up there?”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Just…what if he didn’t do it? What if they killed him?”
    “They? Who?”
    “Don’t listen to me. I’ve had a few too many beers tonight. So, are you sure I can’t talk you into coming to the reunion? Even if I told you I have a theory about Tanner’s death.”
    “What theory?”
    “Come to the reunion. Call me when you get into town and I’ll tell you. Don’t mention this to anyone else. Seriously. I don’t want to end up like poor old Tanner.”
    “That could have just been the alcohol talking,” Liza said when he finished.
    “That’s what I thought, too, until he wanted to meet at the falls after dark. Something had him running scared.”
    “With good reason, apparently. Alex Winslow is a former friend?”
    Jordan nodded.
    “You weren’t just a little suspicious, meeting in the dark at a waterfall?”
    “I