Murder in the Smokies - By Paula Graves Page 0,69
get under her skin again, against all good sense, and she had a feeling she’d be paying for that mistake for the rest of her life.
Because he still had one foot out of town, especially now that the case he’d come to investigate had more or less been solved.
It wouldn’t be long before the rest of him followed.
* * *
“ALL DONE.” THE E.R. doctor stitching the cut on Sutton’s upper arm was young, female and impossibly cheery. Antoine had convinced Ivy to let an ambulance take her to River Bend Medical Center in Knoxville. Sutton had followed in his truck, but since nobody in the emergency department would let him see Ivy until they’d finished examining her, he had given in and let them patch up his wound while he waited.
Seth had disappeared at some point before the police arrived. Sutton supposed he hadn’t wanted any unnecessary encounters with the law. He was curious about the other man’s reaction to Mark Bramlett’s death—Seth had looked downright distraught when he realized Bramlett wouldn’t be able to answer any of his questions about Rachel Davenport.
What the hell was going on there? Sutton doubted Rachel Davenport even knew who Seth Hammond was. He was just some guy who worked in the fleet garage. If she ran into him more than once or twice a week, it would probably be a fluke. So why did he care who had hired Bramlett to kill the people around her? Was it simply because someone had tried to hire Seth to do it himself?
Another mystery, he thought, his lips curving slightly as the doctor finished applying a bandage over his stitches. Another excuse to stick around Bitterwood a little bit longer.
Maybe even for good.
His cell phone rang, drawing a furrowed brow from the doctor. “We really don’t want people using their cells in the examining area.”
He looked at the display. Jesse Cooper. He’d already missed three calls from his boss. What was one more? He pocketed the phone and smiled at the doctor, who smiled back with approval. “I can go now?”
“Follow up with your own doctor in a few days.”
He left the small emergency bay and went looking for Ivy. A nurse shooed him back out to the waiting area, where he ran into Antoine.
“Have you seen her yet?” he asked as Sutton sat down in the chair beside him and pulled out his phone.
“Not yet. Should we worry that it’s taking so long?”
“I don’t know.” Antoine’s brow furrowed deeply. “She said she didn’t lose consciousness, but no way in hell Bramlett hustles her into the truck without a fight unless she was at least a little woozy.”
That was Sutton’s worry, as well. Head wounds were unpredictable. Little bumps on the head could lead to lethal brain bleeds. To distract himself from his worry, he asked, “Anything new on Bramlett’s motives?”
While Sutton had been undergoing questions from the police before he’d been released to seek treatment for his arm, nobody in the Bitterwood Police Department had seemed willing to speculate about why a friendly, seemingly good-natured businessman had decided to take a contract killing job and pursue it with such apparent zest. In fact, based on some of the early hostility he’d faced until all the facts settled into place, it seemed the police were more inclined to see him as the suspect and Bramlett as the victim.
“I got an interesting report from the Nashville police right before I got the call about Ivy’s abduction,” Antoine told him, lowering his voice. Sutton supposed that, technically, Antoine shouldn’t be sharing information with a civilian. But Sutton didn’t feel like just any old civilian. He’d come close to losing Ivy at the point of Mark Bramlett’s knife. He wanted to know how he’d hidden his murderous side so long.
“Interesting how?” he asked.
“Until last year, the Nashville P.D. was looking for a serial killer who’d been killing women in their own homes. They think the killer stalked his victims, figured out when they’d be alone at night and attacked when they had been asleep in bed for a few hours.”
“Let me guess. Bramlett spent some time in Nashville.”
“Lived there until his uncle died and left him the nursery here in Bitterwood. He moved here a year ago—”
“And the Nashville murders stopped?”
“Looks that way. Nashville thinks they may be able to match his DNA if Bramlett’s their killer. I’ve already arranged for TBI to handle the evidence transfer.”
“These murders here in Bitterwood weren’t random serial killings,” Sutton said firmly. “Whoever