The Secret Keeper by Dorien Grey Read Free Book Online Page B

gone into the detectives’ backgrounds unless he had a reason.
    “But you’re not so sure they’re right?”
    The waiter came with our food, and we devoted the next few minutes to eating, until Marty said, “Well, unless Howie and Dave decide to consider it a homicide, there’s nothing much I can do. But if you do come across a solid link between Jonathan’s incident and Bement’s death…”
    “Yeah, I definitely do plan to do a little poking around,” I said. “Somebody took a shot at Jonathan, and whether it was accidental or deliberate, I want to know more about it.”
    Marty grinned. “I figured that’s what you’d say.”
    Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d been churning over something Marty had told me when he first described the report on Bement’s death, and suddenly it all gelled.
    “You know,” I began, putting my thoughts into words for the first time, “something about that report on Bement’s death has really bothered me.”
    “What’s that?” 
    “The fact that it supposedly took him two tries to kill himself. The report said he had a contact wound on the skull and residue on his hand, right?”
    “Yeah. So?”
    “Well, if the killer had come up behind him, put the gun directly to his head and fired, it would cause the powder/contact burn at the site of the wound. But in order to get residue on Bement’s hand, the killer would have had to put the gun in Bement’s hand and use it to fire the second shot, the one that went into the wall. That’s why there were two shots—to cinch the suicide theory. And because Bement was ninety, nobody questioned it as they might have done if he were thirty.”
    Marty just sat there staring at me, then slowly raised an index finger to his temple and tapped it. “Good thinking, Detective Hardesty. How many people would have thought of that? If it walks like a duck—I can’t say that’s what happened, but you can bet I’ll have a talk with Garland and Angell.”
    We finished lunch and went our separate ways with promises to keep in touch and let each other know what was going on.
    *
    I stopped at the parking lot across from work to see if the police had been there, and was told they hadn’t, so I went on up to my office to see if I had any phone messages. There was one from Jonathan.
    “Hi, Dick. I’ve got to get back to work but wanted to let you know the police were here and I talked to them. They wanted to know everything about how and where it happened, and I told them. They said people were always shooting off guns in the woods, and it was probably just a stray bullet.
    “When I told them I thought it might have something to do with Mr. Bement’s death, and said I thought I’d been followed the other day, they didn’t seem impressed. Maybe they thought I was just being paranoid. They took down the information and said they’d pass it on to whoever is looking into Mr. Bement’s death, but I don’t know if they will or not. Anyway, we’ll talk when we get home. Oh, and did you call the airline? Bye.”
    Considering that two separate sets of partners were looking into what they all probably considered two separate incidents, it was unlikely they would have the time or the inclination to exchange speculations. I wasn’t overly confident that much would be done.
    I’d had occasion in the past to drive out Woods Road several times and remember noting that the few signs along the way were riddled with bullet holes from being used for target practice. So, I didn’t feel overly confident the police would assume it was anything other than a stray bullet that had hit Jonathan’s truck.
    I waited another half-hour then decided to go back downstairs to check with the parking lot attendant to see if the police had been there yet. As I walked into the lot, I could see an unmarked police car—I don’t know why they don’t mark them, I can spot them a mile away—parked in front of Jonathan’s truck, with one guy standing beside the