Save Your Breath (Morgan Dane #6) - Melinda Leigh Page 0,60
call out for Mr. Olander. Your hunches are not enough to get a search warrant.”
“Uh-huh,” Sharp said vaguely. He wasn’t making promises.
“This place is creepy.” Stella followed him around the side of the house. The sun broke through the clouds. “There should be animals. It feels like a ghost farm.”
“It looks like they sold everything that had value.” Sharp used his hand as a visor to block the sunshine. He stopped at the entrance to the barn. The brightness outside made the barn’s interior appear black.
“Mr. Olander!” Stella called through the wide doorway.
One of the barn cats slunk across the opening, giving Sharp and Stella the stink eye as it raced away.
“The barn smells worse than I remember.” Sharp waved a hand in front of his nose. “All I can smell is shit.”
Stella cupped a hand around her mouth. “Mr. Olander, are you here?”
Somewhere in the darkness, wood creaked. Sharp stepped across the threshold, the unreachable spot between his shoulder blades itching in warning.
“We can’t go in without a warrant,” Stella reminded him.
As if he’d forgotten. He hadn’t. He didn’t care. He was never going to find Olivia following the rules.
“What if we think something is wrong?” he asked.
“What could be wrong?”
“I don’t know, but it’s something.” Sharp couldn’t shake the feeling, and he didn’t want to. His survival instincts had saved his ass more than once over the past thirty years.
Yet, the need to know—and to find Olivia—drew him forward. He took one more step. Once out of the direct sunlight, his vision began to adjust to the dimness within. The inside of the barn took shape.
“Sharp,” Stella warned, “I don’t have a warrant.”
“I’m not a cop. I’m a concerned citizen, worried about Mr. Olander.” Sharp ignored Stella’s irritated huff. It was all well and good for him to make excuses. It would be her ass on the line if the situation went sideways. But Sharp didn’t much care.
The barn looked mostly the same as it had that morning. Sharp looked down and saw footprints in the dirt. He thought back to his earlier visit but couldn’t remember if he’d noticed them before. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted, and a primitive alarm clenched his gut. His hand automatically sought his weapon.
Something was definitely wrong. But what?
Another cat shot past, the low streak of its body startling him. A bird flew in the open door and soared up to the rafters. Sharp followed the sound of its wings in the empty space. He scanned the catwalks that spanned the middle of the barn.
And then he saw it. The sight repelled him, a visceral human reaction to death.
From just outside the doorway, Stella called out for Olander again.
“He won’t be responding.” Sharp drew his gun and scanned the big lofty space. Nerves prickled along his skin, raising goose bumps on his arms.
“How do you know?”
Reaching behind him, Sharp pulled Stella into the barn and pointed to the catwalk on the far side of the barn. From it, Mr. Olander was hanging by the neck. The rope had been tossed over the railing and tied off to a support beam. The farmer’s dirty boots dangled several feet above the ground. Had Olander been so depressed he had jumped?
Sharp looked at the fresh footprints in the dirt.
Or had the farmer been pushed?
He approached the body.
“Shit.” Stella pulled her gun. “Any chance he’s alive?”
If there were, they would cut him down and attempt to revive him. If not, they would preserve the scene.
The body faced away from them. Sharp walked in a wide circle, skirting Mr. Olander so he could see the victim’s face. Sharp took in the purple skin and swollen, protruding tongue. “Nope. He’s dead.”
“Suicide?” Stella took out her phone and called for backup.
Sharp zeroed in on Olander’s hands, dangling at his sides. He moved a little closer and took out his phone. Using his flashlight app, he shone light on the corpse. Several of the fingertips were bloody and raw, a few nails torn below the quick. Pulling a pen from his pocket, he used it to lift the cuffs of the farmer’s jacket sleeves. Angry red lines ringed the corpse’s wrists. “His fingernails are torn, and I see ligature marks around his wrists.”
Sharp scanned the ground but didn’t see anything that could have been used to bind the farmer’s hands.
“So a probable no on suicide.” Stella leaned in for a better view. Then she put her back to Sharp’s and scanned their surroundings.