Triple Shot by Sandra Balzo

question.’
    ‘Could she have been injured, but not realizing how badly? You know, internal bleeding?’
    ‘The brain or skull, you mean? Not likely. The deceased bled out, but somewhere else.’ He sagged down onto the couch.
    ‘You look exhausted. Did you get any sleep last night?’
    Pavlik ran his hand through his curly hair. ‘Not much. The other two killings were real estate agents working alone. I was leaning toward someone with a grudge.’
    ‘Some kind of vendetta?’ I sat down next to him, thinking how melodramatic it all sounded for Brookhills.
    ‘A lot of people have lost their homes, Maggy. They’re angry, and the closest “messenger” around is probably a realtor.’
    As in ‘don’t kill the messenger’. Except someone had.
    But I knew Pavlik was right about feelings running high. One of our customers had bought a house at foreclosure, only to have it nearly destroyed by the original homeowner. Sad on both counts – the people who lost their home, but also my young customer. He’d finally scraped enough money together to buy a house, only to put thousands more into it to repair the damage.
    Everybody loses.
    I said, ‘Angry and frustrated, I understand, but . . . killing your real estate agent?’
    ‘Real estate agents, bankers, the person who’s buying your house out from under you. When you’ve lost everything . . .’
    ‘. . . you have nothing left to lose,’ I finished for him. ‘You said you were leaning toward someone with a grudge. Have you changed your mind?’
    ‘Only in the number of people who might be involved.’ Pavlik stood back up, the frustration exhibited by his restlessness getting the better of him. ‘This killing is different, though. Blunt force trauma to the back of the head instead of a bullet through the temple.’
    ‘Two different methods, two different killers?’ I mulled it over. ‘But the methods are similar in that the attacker had to be close-in. Didn’t you tell me there was stippling?’
    Stippling – almost a tattoo on and under the skin caused by the unburned gunpowder of a shot at close-range. I might not know pistols from revolvers, but I did watch crime-scene TV.
    ‘Some irregular stippling on both gunshot victims. Almost like something had blocked part of it.’
    ‘Another attacker, maybe holding the victim?’
    ‘Perhaps, Sherlock,’ Pavlik said, with the ghost of a grin. ‘But if you see someone with weird powder burns, call me. No heroics.’
    Since I’m about as far from hero material as you can get, I agreed. Mostly I take chances because I’m scared witless. ‘So an accomplice would explain the odd stippling, as well as the variation in method.’
    ‘Not to mention moving the body. It likely took two people. Brigid Ferndale wasn’t a big woman, but . . . well, she was a dead weight, in the very literal sense of the term.’
    I gave a shiver and Pavlik pulled me close. ‘I have to get back to work.’
    I hung on. ‘Be careful.’
    ‘I could say the same to you,’ he murmured in my hair. ‘I don’t like it when bodies are found around people I care for.’
    ‘You and me both. Though we probably should be used to it by now.’
    Pavlik put one hand on each of my shoulders and held me at arms’ length, so he could see my face. ‘Understand one thing, Maggy. I will never get “used to” your being in danger.’
    ‘But I’m not in danger. You said yourself that Brigid wasn’t killed in the depot.’ Pavlik towering a half-foot over me, I tried to stand on tiptoes to kiss him.
    He wouldn’t let me. ‘Someone moved the corpse here for a reason.’
    ‘Understood.’ The concept, if not the reason that he was talking about.
    Pavlik kissed me properly before letting me go. ‘I have to go look for a primary crime scene. With a blood pool.’
    Lovely image. ‘How will you find it, though? Thanks to the economy, there have to be hundreds – if not thousands – of empty properties in the county.’
    He shrugged. ‘We might