Rattlesnake Crossing by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page B

embroidered on his shirt pocket said "Lt. Spaulding"—shook his head. "Somebody said the dead guy was her husband, right?"
    "Ex-husband," Joanna replied.
    "So if she's the killer, her bones'll be the least of her troubles."
    Moments before, Dick Voland had instantly assumed Clyde Philips' death had something to do with domestic violence. Now Lt. Spaulding was making the same assumption. "What makes you say that?" Joanna asked.
    Spaulding shrugged. "Isn't that the way it usually works? Somebody gets murdered and the killer turns out to be either the wife or the husband, or the ex-wife or ex-husband."
    Closing her eyes, Joanna recalled Belle Philips' inane chatter as she headed into the bedroom, as well as her desperate attempts to awaken her presumably sleeping former husband. Was it conceivable that Belle Philips was that accomplished an actress? Could she possibly have murdered Clyde herself and then put on a such a flawless performance when it came to finding his body a day or so later? As far as Joanna was concerned, it didn't seem likely, but still those preconceived notions—backed by statistics—carried a lot of weight. There could be little doubt that when it came time for a homicide investigation, Belle Philips would be a prime suspect.
    "Ex-wives do kill ex-husbands on occasion," Joanna conceded, "but I'm not at all sure that's what happened here."
    Spaulding shrugged once more. "I read a lot of true crime—just for entertainment. And I watch those forensics shows on The Learning Channel. It's kind of a hobby of mine. That's how I know about some of this stuff. I hope we didn't do too much damage to your crime scene, Sheriff Brady. We had a hell of a time lifting her up and out of there."
    "I'm sure it'll be fine," Joanna assured him.
    "I guess we'll be on our way, then," he said. "It looks to me as though the boys have pretty much gathered up all the equipment. I have to keep on their cases to pick up all their stuff—the bandage wrappers, plastic bags, and packaging. Otherwise they just rip 'em and leave 'em.”
    Once the firemen had taken their trucks and left, Joanna made her way back inside the house. She moved gingerly now, careful not to touch anything, even though she knew it was far too late for that. Despite her reassuring comment to Spaulding, she saw at once that damage to the crime scene was considerable.
    For one thing, the entire floor, from the bedroom out through the front door, was covered with literally dozens of grimy footprints—hers included—left behind by dirt that had come up from the crawl space on the soles of shoes and on the firemen's heavy-duty boots. If Clyde Philips had been murdered, and if the murderer had left behind some trace evidence of a footprint, it would be gone now, obliterated by everyone else's tracks.
    Standing in the doorway to the bedroom, fighting off the all-pervasive odor, Joanna was shocked to see that the hole in the floor was much larger than it had been when she left. At first she thought that maybe the firemen had used saws to enlarge the hole in order to facilitate maneuvering the stretcher through it. On closer examination of the jagged-edged break, she realized that more of the floor had given way under the combined weight of several firemen and the two EMTs. What was even more disturbing was the fact that the new breakage in the termite-infested wood had occurred at almost the same spot where Joanna herself had climbed in and out of the crawl space.
    Seeing it now, Joanna realized how very near she had come to falling. Wanting to get to the injured woman, she had crawled down after her without taking the time to call for backup or even to notify 9-1-1. Had the floor collapsed
under her then, both she and Belle might have been trapped in the crawl space for hours before anyone noticed or came to help. Joanna had a cell phone, but she had left it plugged in in the Blazer when she and Belle had gone into the house.
    She was still berating herself for her