Killing Time Read online

  Carly nodded. “He’s inside,” she said, falling into step beside Knox as he strode toward the house. “When he didn’t show up at his office, his secretary called but didn’t get an answer. She tried his cell phone, and when she didn’t get an answer on it, either, she called Mrs. Allen, who, incidentally, is in Louisville visiting friends. Mrs. Allen reported that she’d talked to Mr. Allen first thing this morning, and he hadn’t mentioned anything to her about having to go anywhere before going to the office. The secretary was afraid maybe he’d had a heart attack, so she called the department and I was dispatched out here to check on him.”

  “You found him?” Knox asked sharply.

  “Yes, sir. First thing, I checked the garage, and his car is still in there. I knocked on the door but no one answered.” She pulled out her notepad and glanced at it. “This was at oh-nine-eighteen. The front door is locked. I tried both the back door and the sliding glass doors on the deck, but they also are locked.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I didn’t, sir. No one has. I came back around front and tried looking through the windows. He’s lying on his stomach in the middle of the living room floor.”

  “Possible heart attack?”

  “No, sir. He has a spear in his back.”

  “A spear?” Knox echoed, startled and not at all certain he’d understood.

  “Yes, sir. I estimate its length at roughly five feet.”

  They went up the steps together. The house was one of those newer houses built to make it look old, with a wide porch wrapping around two sides. The wood was painted white, and the shutters on either side of the tall windows were a neat dark blue. The porch itself was painted a medium gray, and looking down, Knox plainly saw one set of footprints on the planks. He pointed, and Carly said, “Mine.”

  There were no other prints. Not many people came to the front door, then. Taylor and his wife would normally have entered and left through the garage; because they were outside city limits, their mail was delivered by a rural carrier who put the mail in a box on the side of the road, instead of bringing it to the house.

  Carly directed him to the bank of windows on the left. The curtains were partially drawn, so he stepped to the side and looked in. The porch provided shade, and the lights were on inside; he didn’t have to press his face to the glass to see. A man lay prone on the living room carpet, his head turned toward them and—by God, it really was a spear in his back. A fucking spear.

  Taylor Allen’s eyes were open and fixed, and blood had run from his open mouth and pooled around his head. He lay in that particular boneless manner that was achieved only in death.

  Knox had seen people killed by pistol, rifle, and shotgun; he’d seen people who had been run over by car, pickup truck, tractor, motorcycle, and big semis. He’d seen people who had been sliced and diced by a variety of sharp objects, from a pocket knife to a chain saw. This, however, was a first. “Not many people use spears nowadays,” he said pensively.

  Carly gave an abrupt cough, turning her back while she covered her mouth with her hand.

  “You okay?” he asked, not really paying attention to her while he studied the scene in the living room. “If you have to puke, go out in the yard.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said in a muffled voice. “I mean, I’m okay. Just had a tickle in my throat.”

  Absently he fished in his pocket, came up with a cough drop he’d been carrying around since winter and could never think to throw away when he was emptying his pockets, and held it out to her. She coughed some more as she took it from him, the sound stifled as she tried to control it.

  Nothing looked disturbed inside, from what he could see. No lamps were overturned; the furniture all seemed to be in place. For all the world it looked as if Taylor Allen had been caught unawares by a spear-throwing intruder—who could still be inside, though that was unlikely. The locked doors didn’t necessarily mean anything; most doors could be locked by turning a lock or depressing a button, then shutting the door as you left.

  Boyd Ray came hustling up, carrying a tackle box of his gear. “Whatcha got?” he said as he puffed up the steps.

  “A clean scene,” Knox replied, stepping back. “No one’s been inside.”

  Boyd’s red, perspiring face lit up. “No shit. Well, hallelujah. Let’s see what I can find.” Not often did a forensics team find an untouched scene; usually it was already contaminated by the responding officers, or family members, or even well-meaning neighbors.

  Giving Boyd time to collect his evidence wouldn’t make Taylor Allen any less dead. Knox withdrew to the other side of the road and let Boyd work.

  Collecting evidence was a painstaking process. Smooth surfaces were dusted for prints, photos were taken, tweezers were used to pluck tiny pieces of paper or cloth or other material out of the grass. Boyd made several circuits of the house, looking for footprints, tire prints in the driveway, anything he could photograph, lift, or otherwise preserve. The summer day grew hotter. Eastern Kentucky was usually cooler than the rest of the state, because of the mountainous terrain, but today the temperature had to be at least ninety.

  Finally Boyd signaled he was finished with the outside, as he carried some of his gear to his van. Knox and one of his investigators, Roger Dee Franklin, tried to finesse all the door locks but were unable to get them open. The sliding glass doors had been secured with a safety bar. Finally, in frustration, Knox called for the heavy battering ram they used to knock down doors. He selected the back door for their entrance, as it was the farthest from the crime scene, and let the boys do their job. When the back door was reduced to separate pieces hanging lopsidedly on the hinges, he and Roger Dee, along with Boyd, stepped into the house.

  The first thing Knox noticed was that the door had been locked with a sturdy dead bolt.

  Ditto the front door. The dead bolt there was even bigger. The sliding doors were out because there was no way to fix the security bar in place from outside.

  But the house was empty. An efficient search revealed that the only person inside, other than themselves, was the victim.

  “How in hell?” Roger Dee muttered to himself. “All the doors are locked, and no one else is here. Don’t tell me Mr. Allen speared himself.”

  “The garage,” Knox said. “The garage door opener is probably missing from the car. Make sure Boyd dusts the car for prints.” That was the only logical way for the killer to exit; he could then lower the garage door and the house was locked up tight. It was an excellent delaying tactic.

  Roger Dee left, and returned to say, “No opener that I can see, but the car is one of the new ones with the garage door opener built in. He probably didn’t have a separate remote.”

  “Bet he did. We’ll find out from his wife. Most people don’t go to the bother of programming the built-in openers when they’ve got the remote right there anyway. By the way, has Mrs. Allen been contacted?”

  “A couple of friends are driving her home.”

  “She probably hasn’t realized yet that she can’t stay here. Make certain she’s intercepted, and taken to a motel.” Whenever someone was murdered, in the absence of glaring evidence to the contrary, Knox automatically suspected the spouse. He couldn’t quite see the trophy wife doing the deed with a spear, but stranger things had happened. Until he checked out her alibi, she was a suspect.

  He wandered through the house, seeing what he could see. A single coffee cup sat in the sink, along with a cereal bowl and a lone spoon. Breakfast for one, indicating that Taylor Allen had either been alone or merely eaten alone. Knox looked in the trash and saw the package for a microwave dinner, along with the black plastic container that still contained a few bites of what looked like broccoli. A wrapper from a candy bar lay on top of that.

  Upstairs, only one side of the bed had been slept in. The bed was made up, after a fashion: the custom-made bedspread had been pulled up over the pillows, but the bed was nice and smooth on one side, and sort of lumpy where the sheet hadn’