Blood Will Tell by Jean Lorrah Page A

later I wasn't eligible, because I was a cop, a pro, by then. I've been in police competitions since the Olympics, which is fine. What's not so fine is having the nuts come after you, as if you were one of the gunslingers in the Old West. I'm not a quick-draw artist. I'm a crack shot with a rifle, that's all."
    “That's enough, I should think. I'm sorry if I reopened old wounds."
    “No, it's okay,” she told him. “Most of the crackpots showed up when I first became a cop, when people still remembered the Olympic medal. It's old news now."
    “Not to me. I'm impressed."
    She suspected that there wasn't a whole lot in life that impressed him.
    The phone rang. “Let the machine pick up,” said Brandy.
    But she had the kind of machine that allowed her to screen calls. “Brandy, it's Church. Call me when you get in, Kid. It's not news to help you sleep, but I don't want you to hear it on TV."
    With an apologetic look at Martin, Brandy snatched up the phone. “I'm here, Church. What's happened?"
    “A shooting,” he replied. “Damnedest thing. Rand and Paschall took the Andersons to the jail in Paducah—only they never showed up. Their car was just found, run into a ditch on the Kirtney Road. All four occupants are dead, shot in the head."
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    Chapter Four—Cop Killer
    When cops were murdered, no police department would rest until the killer was caught. At the next morning's briefing, Brandy studied photos of the crime scene in disbelief.
    The preliminary report confirmed the pictures: no sign of a struggle. The prisoners in back and the policemen in the front seat smiled serenely, appearing pleasantly asleep except for the wounds in their foreheads. Chase Anderson's uninjured left hand was still manacled to his wife's right. The officers’ guns were in their holsters.
    Each victim had a single entry wound in the forehead; the exit wounds had blown off the backs of their heads.
    “The car is being examined this morning,” Chief Benton reported. “We assume that the victims were out cold from carbon monoxide or some other agent before they were shot."
    “What were they doing on the Kirtney Road?” asked Phillips. “That's no way to go to Paducah."
    “We don't know,” replied Benton. “We don't know much of anything yet, except that four people were shot at close range without putting up a struggle."
    Brandy stared again at the photos. “This is gonna sound strange,” she said, “but they're all in exactly the same position, wearing exactly the same expression, as Professor Land was when he died last week."
    “Jesus, Mather, will you give it up?” asked the chief. “That case is closed. This case is open and ugly as an exit wound. You can find out why they were on the wrong road."
    Brandy gritted her teeth. The least important aspect of the investigation—or the least likely to afford results.
    Except—she got some. Prisoner transport was the result of state legislation that set new requirements for county jails, but provided no funds to help counties comply with them. The old and poorly designed jail in Murphy had first been reduced to a forty-eight-hour holding facility, and then to a twelve-hour one. When prisoners couldn't be bailed out at once, it could require two transports per day. There had been griping about inconvenience, the expense of paying other communities to keep Callahan County prisoners—but no one had thought of the potential for ambush.
    County sheriff's deputies usually transported prisoners, but yesterday one county car had blown a water pump, just when a late summer grass fire had half the county mounties aiding the Fire and Rescue Squad. When the sheriff asked Chief Benton to have his own people do the transport, there had been no dearth of volunteers for the overtime.
    The State Police and the County Sheriff were part of the investigation. Because of the fire, most of the county cars had been far from Murphy, but a few maintained patrols. Both a state trooper and a county