Page 187 of The Woman By the Lake

FORTY

Emphasis On The Criminal Mind

Riggs

He was standing in the observation room with Cade, Jess and Jace watching Sharon Swindell in an interview room clam up after what the men had reported to him when he’d shown, and what he’d seen himself for the last half hour.

Not saying much for the two hours they had her in there, outside pointing fingers at anyone but herself.

She’d just lawyered up on Harry and Rus, when suddenly, everyone in the interview room turned their heads at a knock on the door.

Harry called out at the knock, Wade swung his torso in and said, “You’ll want to go speak to who’s waiting in Conference Room A, sir.”

“Give her her phone call, then book her for criminal trespass, criminal menacing, stalking, attempted burglary and accessory to murder. We’ll start with that, until I can prove whether or not she’s the one who pulled the trigger, twice, then forced arsenic down a man’s throat,” Harry said to Wade as he and Rus got out of their seats and left the room.

Riggs smiled massively at the expression they’d left on Sharon Swindell’s face, because they’d been pressing her hard about what she was doing on Riggs’s land, what she was looking for, if she was involved in a fifteen-year conspiracy to scare people away from his lake, and if that was true, why.

But they hadn’t mentioned murder.

Wade went in the room, and Riggs, Cade, Jace and Jess turned to each other.

“Harry sure knows how to have the last word,” Jace muttered.

That was when they all smiled at each other.

The door to the observation room opened and Harry was there.

“Cade, Doc, with me,” he said.

Then he disappeared.

They all looked at each other again, before Cade and Riggs walked out.

Harry was following Polly, his assistant and overall mom to the department (and half the town) down the hall, and they followed him.

They hit the main bullpen and headed through it to one of two conference rooms at the back, both of them having one wall of windows, the one that faced the bullpen.

And in one of them stood a tall, straight, handsome man with sandy-brown hair and the unmistakable look of a Whitaker.

A man Riggs had seen in town years before, when he was still a boy.

Rus was already in with him.

Harry didn’t look back, but Cade and Riggs exchanged glances before they hit the room.

Rus closed the door behind them and dropped the blinds.

“Dr. Truman Whitaker?” Harry asked.

The man jerked up his chin and cast his intelligent hazel eyes through the rest of them.

“I’m Sheriff Harry Moran. You’ve met Lieutenant Zachariah Lazarus, my chief deputy. This is Cade Bohannan, former FBI. And Andrew Riggs, who lives in your old house and is one of the victims in this scenario. You can ask for him to leave, but considering all that’s happened to him and his family, and that he had to get out of his bed at three in the morning to chase your brother and your uncle’s old assistant through his woods tonight, it’s unorthodox, but I believe he’s earned the right to stay.”

Truman Whitaker gave Riggs a once-over before he looked him dead in the eye and surprisingly said, “I agree.”

“Let’s have a seat, then. Coffee. Water?” Harry offered.

“I had coffee at the hospital,” Truman told him, pulling out a chair and folding into it.

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