Page 9 of Deputies Under Fire
“Oh, yeah,” Rory confirmed just as the woman’s voice began to pour through the speakers.
“Rory,” she said with a whole lot of rushed breath in just that simple greeting. “I heard about the dead woman. The second one. Both enemies of your father. Am I next?” Diedre blurted. “Is Ike coming after me?”
“There’s no indication of that, Diedre,” Rory commented, but there wasn’t much assurance in his voice. With good reason. Ike might be doing just that. Eliminating some old grudges.
Including the one he’d had with Mellie.
But as a cop, Eden had to look at the whole picture here. And set aside her personal hatred for Ike. A person didn’t just start a killing spree unless there was some kind of trigger. She just wasn’t seeing that.
Not yet, anyway.
But she made a mental note to look into Ike’s finances and health. Getting bad news about those things could sometimes send a person over the edge. Also, with his seventieth birthday coming up, Ike could feel he was running out of time to settle some old scores.
“Have you arrested Ike?” Diedre asked.
“No.” And Rory didn’t add to that. “But if you’re worried about your safety, you should take precautions. Is there a friend or relative you can stay with for a while?”
“Yes,” she said on a sob. “But if you just arrest him, I’ll be safe. All of his enemies will be safe. You have to know Ike’s behind this. Don’t let your family ties blind you to what Ike is.”
Rory groaned and shook his head. If anyone was aware of the kind of man Ike was, it was Rory.
“I’ll let you know if and when Ike is taken into custody,” Rory told the woman. “And I have to go. If you have any immediate issues with a threat, you should contact SAPD since you’re in their jurisdiction.”
“But they can’t arrest him,” Diedre spluttered. “You can.”
“Call SAPD if there’s a threat,” he repeated.
With that, Rory ended the call and dragged in a long, weary breath. Maybe because he hadn’t wanted to deal with the woman who had possibly caused his mother some emotional pain. Of course, there could be many of Ike’s ex-lovers who’d done that.
Rory immediately made a call to someone they knew. Detective Hailey Patterson at SAPD. Eden had worked with her, and he had met her several times when she and Rory had been in one of their on-again cycles.
Hailey’s call went to voice mail, and Rory left a message to let the detective know about Diedre’s concerns for her safety. There wasn’t much SAPD could actually do in situations like this. Not even man power to provide personal security when there hadn’t actually been an attempt to harm Diedre. Still, the woman would be on SAPD’s radar in case something did happen.
“Even if Ike is the killer, I can’t see him going after her,” Eden muttered. “Not when there’s this much attention focused on him.” But then she stopped, and rethought that comment. “Unless he has some kind of urgency to rid the world of people on his bad side.”
Rory didn’t seem the least bit surprised by her last remark, which meant the same idea had likely already occurred to him. “I can’t get access to his medical records, but I’ll have a talk with the housekeepers and Jamie.”
“Jamie,” she repeated. Not a question.
She knew that was Rory’s twelve-year-old cousin, who lived in the main house on the ranch with Ike and her parents. Rory had told her that because of the age difference, he’d always thought of Jamie as his niece, and they were fairly close. It was possible Jamie had seen or heard something that would shed some light on whether or not there’d been a trigger for Ike to start killing.
“Do you think you should try to encourage Jamie and her folks to stay elsewhere?” Eden asked.
“I advised them to do that this morning before I went to your place. But Ike doesn’t consider them enemies. They’d never crossed him. Never butted heads with him over something Ike wanted.”
The way Ike had butted heads with Rory and her.
Good. She was glad the girl and her parents weren’t having to face that kind of ugly wrath.
Eden looked up when the barn came into view and felt exactly what she’d been expecting. That overwhelming sense of dread. It didn’t matter that the barn was no longer cloaked in darkness. Sunshine and a clear sky weren’t going to diminish the eerie feel of the place or lessen her memories of what had gone on there.
As expected, the county CSI van was parked off the trail and in a small clearing beneath some trees, and she saw one of the CSI team, dressed in his white protective jumpsuit, boot covers and gloves. He was stooped down, looking at something on the right side of the barn, but he glanced in their direction when they got out of the cruiser. Eden figured there was at least one other CSI inside.
They made their way to the investigator outside, and as she got closer, she saw it was Lou Garcia, a fairly new CSI. But he had worked the same barn after Mellie’s murder.
“Have you found anything?” Rory immediately asked him.
Lou motioned toward an even smaller trail on the far side of the barn. “We found tire tracks over there, but they werepractically obliterated. Looks like some deer trampled over them. Still, I took a casting so we might come up with something.”
