Smash Cut Read Free

businessmen.
“And would you also break the news to Ruby?” Doug asked. “She knows something’s up, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her, especially considering the horrible circumstances. You know how much she loved and admired Paul.”
“Yes, I’ll do that.” And I’ll enjoy it , Creighton thought. That was one way to get back at her for sassing him. “Would you like me to go to the morgue with you?”
“Thank you, but no,” Doug said. “I wouldn’t ask that of you.”
“Good. I can’t think of anything worse.” Creighton pretended to ponder it a moment, then shuddered. “Maybe a Carnival cruise.”
    CHAPTER 2

    J ULIE?”
She’d been staring into near space, unaware of the ringing telephones, the busywork being done, the people passing by, the curious looks cast her way. At the sound of her name, she turned, then stood up to greet the man walking toward her. “Doug.”
When Paul’s brother saw the bloodstains on her clothing, he drew up short, the features of his face collapsing with grief. Using the strong-smelling disinfectant soap in the police station ladies’ room, she’d washed her face and neck, her arms and hands, but she hadn’t yet had an opportunity to go home and change clothes.
For Paul’s sake, she and Doug were friendly but never entirely comfortable around each other. But her heart went out to him now. It must have been shocking for him to see his brother’s blood on her, indelible proof of the violent act that had taken his life.
She closed the distance between them, but it was he who reached out and hugged her. Awkwardly. Leaving a wide gap between them. The way a man would hug his brother’s girlfriend.
“I’m sorry, Doug,” she whispered. “You loved him. He loved you. This has to be horrible for you.”
He released her. The shine of tears was in his eyes, but he held himself together admirably, as she would have expected him to. “How are you?” he asked. “Were you hurt?”
She shook her head.
He looked her over, then scrubbed his face with both hands as though to remove the sight of the bloodstains on her clothing.
Standing deferentially apart from her and Doug, allowing them this private moment, were the two detectives who’d introduced themselves to Julie when they arrived at the hotel to investigate the crime scene.
Detective Homer Sanford was a tall black man, wide in the shoulders, having only a slight paunch to give away his age, which Julie guessed was just past forty. He looked like a former football player.
Physically, his partner was his polar opposite. Detective Roberta Kimball stood barely over five feet and tried in vain to camouflage the extra twenty pounds around her middle with a black blazer worn over gray slacks that were stretched tight across her thighs.
The first responders to the Hotel Moultrie had been uniformed policemen from the local Buckhead office. But immediately they’d requested a CSI unit. It and the two homicide investigators had been dispatched from the main police headquarters.
Sanford and Kimball had impressed Julie as being wholly professional but human. At the scene they’d treated her with kid gloves, apologizing numerous times for having to launch their investigation immediately by asking her questions when she was still shell-shocked over the crime that had left Paul dead.
Now, Kimball addressed Doug gently. “Do you need a few extra minutes before we begin, Mr. Wheeler?”
“No, I’m all right.” He said it briskly, as though trying to convince himself.
The detectives had escorted him here straight from the morgue. A distinctive odor clung to the three of them. Julie was still chilled, body and soul, from her visit to that grim domain.
“I hope you don’t mind if Mr. Wheeler listens in while we go over your statement,” Sanford said to her.
“Not at all.” Doug would want to hear her account of the shooting at some point. It might just as well be now.
They entered the violent crimes unit, and Sanford herded them toward a cubicle, apparently his. Julie had guessed