The Riesling Retribution Read Online Free PDF

country and signing up for the army. Two years later he came home from Afghanistan with a Purple Heart and a Silver Star he didn’t want to talk about and joined the sheriff’s office. By the time he made detective and got assigned to Narcotics, he’d picked up another award for bravery. A year ago he moved to Homicide.
    “You won’t need a search warrant,” I said to Mathis. “You’re welcome to do whatever you need to do.”
    Fontana joined us. “Noland and the ME are coming. Also a crime scene guy, but that’s it for now. Everyone else is busy handling tornado stuff,” he told Mathis. To me he said, “Thanks, but Biggie, here, likes to do things by the book, so we’ll be getting that search warrant just the same. Saves a lot of headaches down the line, especially if we have to go to court.”
    Biggie. I’d bet money that’s not what his mother named him. But I wasn’t going to object if Mathis wanted to dot his i’s and cross his t’s by getting a search warrant, so I nodded in agreement.
    “Do you have any idea how long he’s been here?” I asked.
    “Long enough to change the terrain,” Fontana said. “See how much greener the grass is around here? And that indentation where the ground has collapsed? You’d see it pretty good if you looked down from above—if you knew what you were looking for.”
    He did an air sketch with his finger indicating where the earth seemed to have settled. “If that other bone belongs to this body, the remains could be pretty scattered. A grave needs to be at least six feet deep so an animal won’t dig it up. This one looks like it’s no more than two feet.”
    Mathis stood up and I heard the joints in his knees crack. “You’re quite sure you have no idea who this might be, Ms. Montgomery? An old family feud, maybe? Ever hear anyone talk about something like that? How about any skeletons in the closet?” He smiled with his eyes as he peeled off his gloves, but if there had been a wall, I would have been pinned to it. “No pun intended.”
    I tried to meet his gaze. “We wouldn’t be normal if we didn’t have our share of problems and a few family secrets, but I can tell you for sure that there are no skeletons in the closet that would lead anyone to kill someone, if that’s what you mean.”
    Mathis kept that laser vision trained on me and I did my best to project self-assured confidence.
    “We own five hundred acres, Deputy Mathis. It’s a lot of land. Whoever did this, a complete stranger, could have come and gone without anyone ever seeing him or her.”
    Mathis nodded, but the expression on his face said he’d heard that one a million times before.
    “We’re certainly going to check that out,” he said. “And I appreciate your cooperation.”
    “We need to rope off the crime scene,” Fontana said. “That means you and any of your employees, and that dog, have to stay away from the area until our investigation is finished.”
    “Do you have any idea how long that might take?” I asked.
    Mathis tucked his gloves in his pocket. “As long as it takes. Two, three days. Maybe longer. Depends what we find.”
    “After all this time what could you possibly find?” I asked. “Surely it’s been too long?”
    “You’d be surprised,” Mathis said. “Locard’s principle doesn’t usually let me down.”
    I took the bait. “What’s that?”
    “A killer always leaves something at the scene of a crime or else takes something away with him.”
    “Always?”
    He nodded. “Always. That’s why it’s Locard’s principle. Make no mistake, Ms. Montgomery. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, if this turns out to be a homicide. So if there’s anything else you want to tell us, now would be a good time.”

CHAPTER 4
    “Do I need a lawyer?” I asked.
    When had the dynamics shifted, transforming me from a helpful public citizen to someone trying to spin what Mathis seemed to imply was an improbable tale: that I really had no idea how a