Terry Odell - Mapleton 01 - Deadly Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

sprays and polishes to cover his snooping, he set to work.
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    Each tick of the old schoolhouse clock on his office wall heightened Gordon’s anxiety. Megan should have been here by now. The Colorado State Patrol would investigate the accident, but he didn’t want to turn over what he’d found before he’d talked to her.
    He buried the tingle of guilt. He wasn’t withholding evidence. Merely…rerouting it. Briefly. And, technically, it wasn’t evidence. Simply something…interesting…in an accident victim’s car.
    When the accident call came in, Mapleton had been first responders. Dave Gilman and Tom Reynolds in the ambulance, and Ed Solomon in a cruiser. Technically the CSP was in charge of traffic accidents, but they were spread thin. Gordon liked to think of himself as a team player, and the troopers had never objected to the help. Gilman had inadvertently left an envelope belonging to the victim in the Mapleton ambulance and had turned it over to Gordon for safekeeping.
    Tires crunched on gravel. He swiveled his chair toward the window and caught the silver gleam of Megan’s car pulling into the lot. It took conscious effort to even his breathing. He slid the envelope into his desk drawer and sorted through Solomon’s photos of the accident scene one more time.
    “He’s expecting me.” Megan’s voice preceded her sneakered footfalls down the corridor. Laurie’s heads up call coincided with a tap on his office door.
    “Thanks,” he said into the phone. He hung up, took a breath. “Come on in.”
    “All right, Gordon, I’m here.” Megan rested her hands on the back of the wooden visitor chair across from Gordon’s desk. “What’s so important?”
    “You know anyone named Karl Franklin?” He blurted it out, no preliminaries. No way for her to anticipate the question, prepare herself. Unless she expected it.
    Her expression was guileless. Her body language agreed. “No. Where should I know him from?”
    He pushed a photo across the desk. “This the guy you saw?”
    Bracing her hands on the edge of the desk, she leaned forward. And jerked away with a gasp. She sank into the chair.
    “You recognize him?” Gordon asked.
    She shook her head. “No. I didn’t expect something quite so…graphic.”
    She’d paled. Gordon rolled his chair back and hurried to her side. “Shit, Megan. I should have prepared you first. I need to find out what you know before the troopers show up, and I blanked out the part where you’re not a cop and used to this. I didn’t think. You want some water?”
    “No, I’m okay. It took me by surprise.” She closed her eyes, took a breath, and gathered her composure before opening them. “It’s not much worse than the crime scene shows. I think what got me is it’s real, not makeup. That I might have seen this guy alive. Is this Karl Franklin?”
    “According to the troopers, yes.”
    “Let me see it again.”
    “You sure?” Had her reaction been to the bloody picture? The body was fresh, nothing grossly mangled. Blood covered the man’s face, and the eyes had the glassy stare of death, but as accident photos went, this one was on the tame side.
    Or did she know the victim and was reacting on a more personal level?
    She sucked in a noisy breath. “If it’s important, I can do it.”
    “Keep thinking of it as a television show.” In school, she’d had a reputation for being open, saying what was on her mind. Now, he saw nothing shifty, nothing deceptive. No red flags. He ignored the twinge of remorse for upsetting her with the picture. But it brought her emotional responses closer to the surface, where he needed them.
    “I never got a good look at his face.” She held the picture as if she were afraid to touch it.
    “Look again, please,” he said. “See if any details about the man you saw come to mind.”
    She nibbled at her lip. “All I saw was the back of his head. Bald on top. He got out of the car, looked my way, then