Cat's Claw (A Pecan Springs Mystery)

flown to Cozumel for a weekend. But they’d never been able to hang out all morning in bed together, swatting at mosquitoes while the sun climbed high over the live oak trees. Or fish for their breakfast together, and eat fresh-caught bass with fried eggs and ketchup-soaked hash browns and then tumble back into bed for as long as they liked, without a single peep from their pagers. Bliss. Sheer bliss. But both Sheila and Blackie were realists. They knew that bliss never lasts forever, which maybe just made it sweeter.
    Sheila reached for another stack of papers, scrawled her name at the bottom (she’d gotten very good at that), then glanced at her watch. Nearly five o’clock. By this time, Blackie was landing in El Paso, which left her on her own for the evening. She looked around the office, seeing that everything was in place. She disliked personal clutter, so there was nothing but books, cop magazines, and stacks of computer printouts on the gray metal bookshelves; the map of Pecan Springs and the surrounding county on the wall; the computer and a plastic philodendron on the desk. No plants to water, no doodads to dust, only the minimum number of framed certificates and diplomas on the wall. It didn’t look like a woman’s office at all. Sheila had learned a long time ago that the officers in her command were more comfortable that way. Policing was a man’s world, and she had gotten into the habit of hiding her femininity as much as she could. It wasn’t always easy, because there was no changing her light voice or the way she looked, although the unisex uniform and clunky duty boots helped. She was glad she hadn’t gotten into law enforcement back in the days when policewomen were required to dress like airline attendants in tight skirts, three-inch heels, perky bow ties, and little caps—all designed to emphasize their femaleness.
    Impatiently, she swept the rest of the papers into her briefcase andsnapped it shut. If Timms’ surrender had taken place as scheduled, she hadn’t gotten the word. But she didn’t have to hang around here and wait. Bartlett would call her cell phone when it happened. She was picking up her briefcase when the phone rang on the desk. She reached for it, expecting to hear about the arrest.
    It wasn’t Bartlett. It was the dispatch supervisor, Mary Lou Parker, with a 10-87, a dead body report that had just come in on a 9-1-1 call. White male, apparent gun suicide, according to the patrol sergeant who was first at the scene. Detective Bartlett had been notified and was on his way.
    The call from Dispatch was routine. Sheila had asked to be immediately notified on all 10-87s, but unless there was a special reason for her to be there, she didn’t usually go to the scene. That was Hardin’s job. She looked at her watch again, thinking that he had probably already left for Rockport.
    “Is Deputy Chief Hardin still around?” she asked, just in case.
    “He’s ten-seven,” Dispatch replied, “about fifteen minutes ago. Want me to ask him to come back, ma’am?”
    “Negative.” No need to call Hardin back—he’d earned his time off. “Where’s this ten-eighty-seven, Mary Lou? I’ll take it.”
    Dispatch read off the address. When Sheila heard it, she was startled. She jotted it down, although she didn’t have to. She knew exactly where it was.
    “Let Detective Bartlett know I’m ten-seventy-six,” she said.
    A 10-76 was the code for officer in route. The address was on Pecan, Ruby Wilcox’s street, and the 10-87 was three doors down from Ruby’s, at 1117 Pecan—and directly across the alley from the house where Sheila and Blackie had been living since they got married.
    It seemed that one of her neighbors had killed himself.

Chapter Three

    Pecan Springs was a small town, and nothing was very far away from anywhere else. Sheila could have been at the location on Pecan in five minutes, maybe less, if she’d put on both the lights and the siren. But there wasn’t any hurry on a suicide. She’d give Bartlett plenty of time to do his preliminary work. She’d just drop in and take a quick look, then head home—conveniently, right across the alley.
    Sheila stopped at the small outbuilding where the K-9 Search and Rescue Unit was housed, and where Rambo, her Rottweiler, spent his day with a kennel mate, a white German shepherd named Opal that belonged to the SAR coordinator, Martha Meacham. The unit was new and still under development, but Martha—a tall,