DEAD CERTAIN

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  DEAD CERTAIN

  Carla Cassidy

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

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  Prologue

  ^»

  She crouched on a wooden support beam beneath the bridge that spanned the Cherokee River. Although it was after midnight, the full moon overhead splashed down a silvery light that danced on the river water below.

  Shiny water, she thought. Shiny, treacherous water. For Cherokee Native Americans water was sacred, used for cleansing and purifying. It had been the presence of this river that had led her people to this area of Oklahoma many years before.

  For her, the river no longer signified anything but death. Fourteen months ago, in a freak accident, her husband had lost control of his car and slammed through the wooden guard rail of the old bridge. He'd plunged to his death in the river below. At the moment his life had left his body, all will to live had left hers as well.

  Every Saturday night when she got off work she came here. She climbed up the wooden support beams until she was high over the river, and stared at the water below.

  Beneath the bridge the river was at its most fierce, with speed and depth and powerful whirlpools that rarely spit up a survivor.

  If she released her hold on the support beam over her head and leaned forward just a little bit, she would fall. The river would accept her into its depths, and she would be rejoined with the man she loved.

  Jimmy, her heart cried. If she just let go and leaned forward, she and her husband would walk hand in hand through the spirit world for eternity.

  "Just let go," a voice whispered in her head. "That's all you have to do … let go." But even as the voice whispered seductively in her ear, her hand tightened its grip on the overhead support.

  A sob caught in her throat as she realized she couldn't release her grip on the beam. Her heart desperately wanted to, but she simply couldn't let go. She didn't understand. All her hopes, all her dreams had drowned along with Jimmy. She had no reason to live.

  Once again she stared down at the river, finding the moonlit water hypnotic. Jimmy. Jimmy. Tension ebbed away from her body as she continued to gaze at the water below. Her grip on the beam loosened as her fingers began to relax their hold. Just let go. Just let go.

  At that moment her cell phone jangled from its resting place inside her pocket. Instantly her fingers tightened once again around the support.

  Who would be calling her now? It wouldn't be anyone from the station; they would use her radio. Who else would be calling at this hour of the night? With her free hand she wrestled the cellular from her pocket and answered.

  "Get out to Mom and Dad's place as fast as you can." The familiar male voice radiated urgency.

  "What's going on?" she asked.

  "Just get here."

  Her brother disconnected the call, and a chill of foreboding chased down her spine. What was going on at her parents' house at this time of night?

  Carefully, Homicide Detective Savannah Tallfeather climbed down the wooden beams beneath the bridge. She would not be joining her husband on this night.

  She wasn't sure if she was relieved or devastated by the fact that once again she was walking away. She'd have to wait for another time to join her husband in the water she thought of as the river of no return.

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  Chapter 1

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  She saw the floodlights before she got to the house. They lit up the night sky as if announcing the arrival of a carnival to the town of Cherokee Corners. Savannah stepped on her gas pedal, knowing it wasn't carnival lights that strobed the sky over her parents' ranch house. It was police lights.

  What was going on? She groaned, wondering if her parents' had gotten into one of their legendary fights and some passerby or well-meaning neighbor had called out the entire police force.

  Even as the thought flew through her head, she dismissed it as the house came into view. Something had definitely happened, and it wasn't just a noisy spat between her parents.

  Police cars lined the driveway and floodlights hit the house from every angle. Her heart smashed into her rib cage as she saw one of her fellow officers cordoning off the porch with bright-yellow crime-scene tape.

  She parked and was out of the car almost before it stopped running. She raced toward the house, vaguely aware that neighbors had begun to gather around the perimeter of the scene.

  As a homicide cop she knew the scent of death, knew how the scent permeated the air at a homicide scene. She didn't smell death as she reached the edge of the yard, but before she could get any closer, she saw her brother, Clay, talking with Chief of Police Glen Cleberg.

  She hurried to the two men, instantly aware that her brother was as angry as she'd ever seen him. His handsome, sculptured features were a mask of barely suppressed rage, and his black eyes glittered with a fierceness she'd never seen before.

  "I'm the best crime-scene investigator you have, Chief," he said, his voice deep and filled with urgency. "You've got to let me in."

  "Dammit, Clay. I told you no and I mean no."

  "What's going on?" Savannah asked looking at her brother. "What's happened?" Her heart thudded painfully as she turned her gaze to her boss.

  "Dad's been taken to the hospital. He was attacked." Grim lines bracketed Clay's mouth as he spoke.

  "What do you mean … attacked? Where's Mom?" Savannah tried not to panic, but something in Clay's dark eyes and in the fact that Glen didn't quite meet her gaze filled her with fear. "Where's Mom?" she repeated.

  "Savannah … at the moment we aren't sure what we've got here," Glen said and stared for a long moment at the house where officers were going in and out as they performed their duties. "Apparently John Newman stopped by here about a half an hour ago. The front door was open and he knocked but nobody answered. He could hear the television on, saw that your parents' car was in the driveway and so he knocked again."

  He finally looked at her and in his eyes she saw a sadness that frightened her. "When he still didn't get an answer, he decided to go inside. He found your father in his recliner. It was obvious he'd been hit over the head with something and was in bad shape. He called for help, then went in search of your mother."

  Savannah's hand flew to her mouth as tears burned her eyes. "Oh, God … is she … is she dead?"

  "They can't find her, Silver Star," Clay said.

  The fact that he'd used her Cherokee name indicated just how upset her brother was. "What do you mean, they can't find her? She's got to be here." Savannah felt as if she'd been thrust into a puzzle and none of the pieces she'd been handed made any sense at all.

  "Look, I'll let you both know what's going on when we know what's going on," Glen said impatiently. "In the meantime I want you both to stay out of the way and let us do what we need to do." He pointed to Savannah's car. "Sit there and I'll have somebody brief you as soon as we have any more information."

  Clay let his feelings be known by cursing soundly beneath his breath as he walked beside Savannah to her car. At that moment another car squealed into the driveway. It was their sister, Breanna, and her new husband, Adam.

  Savannah listened as Clay filled them in with the brief information they had learned so far. "What about Dad?" she asked when he'd told them what little he knew.

  "From what Glen told me he was alive when they took him out of here by ambulance. But I'm not leaving here until they find out where Mom is." He frowned and looked at the house. "And they are absolutely destroying vital information by allowing in so many officers."

  "Why don't we go to the hospital and check on Dad," Breanna suggested. "You tw
o stay here and call us the minute you hear anything about Mom."

  Savannah touched her sister's arm. "Call me on my cell and tell me how Dad is doing."

  Breanna nodded, and she and Adam took off. Savannah turned back to the house, her heart still pounding an irregular rhythm. Everything felt surreal—the lights, her fellow officers, the crime-scene tape flapping in the mid-June night breeze. It all felt like a terrible dream.

  What could have happened? Who could have hurt her father? Had it been a robbery? If so, then where in God's name was their mother?

  It felt odd to stand on the periphery of a crime scene as a bystander. Even more odd and frightening was the fact that the crime scene was the house where she'd grown up, where her parents lived.

  "I can't just sit around here and do nothing," Clay said, interrupting her thoughts. "I'm going to check the outbuildings."

  "I'll go with you," she said, needing to do something, anything constructive.

  She was grateful nobody tried to stop them as they walked around the house and toward the barn at the back of the property. She had a feeling Clay wouldn't hesitate to deck anyone who tried to get in their way.

  Savannah felt as if she'd jumped off the bridge and entered water so deep it clogged her brain, making rational thought impossible.

  Somebody had hurt their father … and their mother was missing. Her brain worked to wrap around the situation but found it impossible to comprehend.

  It didn't take long for them to check the barn, which was used mostly as a storage area for Native American artifacts. Rita Birdsong James worked at the Cherokee Cultural Center at the edge of town and had slowly taken over the barn as a place to keep items for the center.

  It was when they were searching the shed that Savannah's cell phone rang and she answered to hear Breanna at the other end of the line.

  "It's not good, Savannah," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "Dad received several severe blows to the back of his head. The doctor isn't sure about the possibility of brain damage, and Dad is in a coma. What's up there? Have they found Mom?"

  "No … nothing. They aren't telling us anything, Bree." For the first time the full awareness of the gravity of the situation hit Savannah.

  Their father was in a coma and their mother was missing. She sank down on a bale of hay, tears suddenly blurring her vision. "Bree, I'm coming to the hospital. There's nothing I can do here. Glen won't let us anywhere near the house. Maybe Dad will wake up and be able to tell us what happened."

  "I'll stay here," Clay said a moment later after she'd hung up with Breanna and brother and sister were walking back toward the house.

  "Come with me to the hospital, Clay. Right now Dad needs us there." She somehow felt it was important that they all be together, in the same place. She felt as if her family was slipping through her fingers and what she needed was to hang on tightly to them all.

  Clay raked a hand through his thick dark hair, uncertainty twisting his handsome features. He stared at the house, tension radiating from him, the same tension that whipped through her. "What in the hell happened here tonight?"

  "I don't know, Clay." She placed a hand on his muscular forearm. "But it's obvious we're out of the loop here at the moment. Come with me to the hospital. Right now we don't know where Mom is, but we know that Dad needs us." She was half-afraid that if he remained here he would do something to get himself thrown off the police force.

  "All right," he replied. "I'll just check in with the chief and I'll meet you there."

  As Savannah headed for her car, she noticed the crowd of neighbors and the curious had grown despite the fact that it was the middle of the night.

  She recognized the Marshalls, her parents' nearest neighbors. Their house was some distance away, but they both stood by their car, worried expressions on their lined faces. Familiar faces everywhere, and they all seemed to be watching her as she made her way to her car.

  She stopped to talk to nobody, having nothing to say, no way to assure anyone of anything. She got into her car and started the engine and that's when she noticed him … a stranger on the edge of the crowd.

  He stood taller than most of the rest of the people, and his gaze was fixed on the house. With a cop's training, she took in his appearance before backing out of the driveway.

  He was good-looking, with dark-brown hair and facial features that radiated intensity. People stood in front of him, making it impossible for her to see his build. A traveler who'd seen the lights and action, she thought as she pulled away from the ranch.

  Or a perpetrator watching the aftermath of his actions, her seasoned cop brain thought. She knew it was not unusual for the criminal to watch the unfolding drama, to even become involved in the investigation of the crime they committed.

  Surely one of the officers would take names and question the people who had arrived to see what was going on. It was standard procedure.

  Besides, she couldn't think about the investigation. Despite the fact that her years as a homicide detective had seasoned her to maintain a certain amount of emotional distance, her training and experience seemed to have left her the moment she'd pulled up to the house.

  As she sped toward the hospital, she desperately sought that emotional distance, but her hands trembled and her chest felt heavy and a sickness she'd never felt before permeated every pore of her body.

  Where was her mother? Was her father going to be all right? What on earth had happened? She stepped on the gas pedal, fear consuming her from the inside out.

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  Riley Frazier stood staring at the house where the bright-yellow tape contrasted with the beige house paint and hunter-green shutters and trim. The sight brought back painful memories of another crime at another house years before. As he stared at the house, snatches of conversation drifted toward him.

  "…can't find Rita."

  "…heard his head was bashed in."

  "…you know they fight a lot…"

  He listened with interest as the people around him speculated on what had happened to Rita and Thomas James. He wouldn't draw any conclusions until he heard the official word on what had happened at the sprawling, attractive ranch house.

  It was possible he was here on yet another wild-goose chase. Certainly over the past two years he'd been on many. But when he'd heard the initial report of what was going on from a reporter friend in Cherokee Corners, he'd left his home in Sycamore Ridge and driven like a bat out of hell to get here.

  It was possible what he was watching was the investigation of a domestic dispute gone bad, or a botched robbery attempt. It was possible it had nothing to do with what had happened to his parents two years ago.

  The overbright floodlights, the swirling cherry police lights and the yellow crime-scene tape brought back nightmarish memories. The sight of his father's dead body sprawled in the middle of the living room floor still haunted him … along with all the questions the crime had produced.

  That's why he was here, looking for answers to a crime nobody cared about anymore but him. This might be a wild-goose chase, but in the past two years his life had become a series of wild-goose chases.

  His information had told him that there were three James siblings, and he suspected he'd driven up in time to see the three huddled together with the chief of police. The man and two women he'd seen had looked like siblings.

  All had been of Native American heritage, with rich black hair and finely sculptured features. His source had even given him their names—Clay, Breanna and Savannah—and told him that each of them worked in some aspect of law enforcement.

  He'd watched as one of the women and a man had left together. Then had watched as the second woman left. Finally the man he thought was Clay James got into a car and took off as well.

  Riley suspected they were probably headed to the hospital where their father had been taken. He waited around until the police began to attempt to disperse the crowd and he saw the police chief leave, then he got into his car and h
eaded into the small city of Cherokee Corners.

  The quickest way to find out what had happened at the James ranch was to speak to one of the children. It was too late for any of the details to get into the morning paper, and the police wouldn't be talking to anyone until they spoke to the family members.

  He had a feeling if he wanted information, the hospital would be the place to get it. He didn't want speculation and rumor. He wanted facts, and he had a feeling the only way to get facts sooner rather than later was to go introduce himself to the James siblings.

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  The nightmare continued. Savannah sat in the hospital waiting room wondering when they would have some answers, when any of this would make sense.

  Clay paced the floor, looking as if he would gladly take off the head of anyone who got in his way. Breanna sat next to Adam, their hands clasped together.

  Savannah had been there for almost two hours, and the doctor had yet to come out and speak to them. There had been no word on their mother's whereabouts and nothing concrete from the investigation itself.

  Savannah wished she had somebody's hand to hold or that she could generate the kind of anger that seemed to be sustaining Clay. Instead she was left with a disquieting numbness.

  They weren't alone in the waiting room. Saturday nights always brought an influx of people to the emergency room in the only hospital in town.

  As Dr. Miles Watkins, their family physician, came into the room they converged on him like a single unit. He held up his hands to still their barrage of questions. "I don't have a lot to tell you," he said when they all fell quiet.

  "Your father has suffered massive trauma to the back of his head. We can't be sure of the extent of any brain damage at the moment. Our main concern has been to stabilize him. At the moment his vital signs are fair, but he's currently in a coma. I've called in a neurologist from Tulsa. He'll be here sometime tomorrow. In the meantime my recommendation to all of you is to go home. There's nothing you can do here." He sighed wearily, then added. "Go home and pray."