Ramona Richards - House of Secrets

“Nothing,” said Rivers. “All clear, although the study has been partially ransacked. Looks like the search might have been interrupted, but if anyone was here, he’s long gone.”

June shook her head. “I know he was still here. I could hear him in the study. Did you check the tunnel?”

The three men stared at June, and Ray stiffened. “What tunnel?”

Ray held the flashlight in his left hand, shoulder level and pointed slightly down. The earthen tunnel in front of him soaked up the light, and the air smelled acrid and moldy, reminding Ray of a flooded riverbank after a hard rain. Ray ran the beam of his light back and forth across the floor of the narrow tunnel. Behind him, his chief deputy, Daniel Rivers, searched the walls.

Daniel paused to examine a lump, which turned out to be the end of a tree root. “I can’t believe there’s a tunnel under the parsonage.”

“By now, I suspect we’re out under the backyard. A lot of houses this old have secret rooms and passages, but not usually tunnels.”

“An escape route for slaves, maybe?”

Ray paused and ran his light over one of the wooden support arches to check its strength. “I doubt it. This house wasn’t built until around 1900. June told me once that the original builder had been seriously paranoid about fire. Since the only entrance is from the second floor, I’d say he built it from a fear of fire or intruders.”

Daniel cleared his throat. “You think she did it?”

Ray, trying desperately to forget the feelings he had for his number-one suspect, resumed his examination of the floor. “She’s your sister-in-law. What do you think?”

Daniel, who’d married June’s sister April less than a year ago, paused a moment. “No.”

“Why not?”

“June likes a good argument, and she likes to win, but she’s worked hard over the years to leave behind the street kid that she was. She wouldn’t resort to violence. She’s so in control most days, I forget she’s not from a privileged background. April once said June lived with violence so long that she abhorred it. They both do. June might yell, but she’d never lift a hand to hurt anyone.” Daniel sniffed, then coughed. “Besides, she kept referring to Pastor Gallagher in the present tense, as if he were still alive. Plus, the blood pattern on her clothes is all wrong.”

Ray smiled grimly, glad Daniel couldn’t see the flash of pride in his face. Daniel got better at his job every day. “How so?”

“The killer would have blood on him in streaks and smudges from the attack. June looked like she’d wallowed in it. Plus the footprints on the back porch don’t match the ones that skidded through the blood. So there were at least two people in that kitchen. June and whoever made the prints.”

“Maybe three, if the set leading away from—” Ray froze, his light focused on something on the ground.

Daniel came to his side, on alert. “What did you find?”

Ray nodded toward the floor, then they both squatted, examining the small white button that seemed to glitter in the light. A tiny piece of navy-blue fabric still clung to it, and both had a distinctive red smear on them.

“Strange place to lose a button.”

Ray shined his light farther down the tunnel, where it illuminated a pile of plaid cloth. Red streaks had soaked the navy-blue and dark green squares. “Not if you were jerking your shirt off.”

Daniel stood. “I’ll send Gage down with the crime-scene kit.”

“Good.”

Ray pulled his handcuffs from his belt and placed them carefully next to the button, so it would be easier to find. Standing, he shined his light back toward the house, noticing how distinct his and Daniel’s footprints were in the earth. He noticed other prints that seemed recent as well, and he skirted them as he turned back and made his way deeper into the tunnel, toward the shirt.

Using his pen, Ray prodded at the thick flannel until he found the collar. The shirt was a man’s extra large, which made it useless for judging the suspect’s size. Small shirts are only worn by small people, but large shirts are popular with all sizes of folks. The dirt ring around the collar meant that the shirt could be old—and filled with DNA. Two dark smears on the cloth bore an unmistakable resemblance to tobacco juice.

Ray replaced the pen in his pocket and stood again, his mind turning over a hundred possibilities. He ignored the relief he felt at finding some possible evidence that pointed away from June. Tobacco stains didn’t exactly narrow the suspect pool much—Bell County remained tobacco country and there were as many fields of the bright, wide-leafed plants around here as there were of corn and soybeans—but it might not be a bad place to start looking. Especially if it could help clear the name of the woman he could not get off his mind. The woman who just wanted to be “friends.”

The scuff of shoes on dirt made Ray look up, and he shined his light down the tunnel behind him, expecting to see Daniel and his lone crime-scene investigator, Jeff Gage, heading his way. Instead, the beam of his flashlight faded away into the darkness.

Then the scuffing sounded again, now clearly from the opposite direction. Ray drew his pistol and swung around, dropping to a crouch.

June perched on the outside edge of the carefully placed kitchen chair, tense and weary. Her foot bounced nervously, the white crime-scene suit she now wore crinkling and crunching with every movement. Before he and Daniel had headed off to explore the tunnel, Ray had given her the suit and insisted she exchange her bloody clothes for the Tyvek coverall. He also pulled a chair from the far side of the room and told her to sit there once her clothes were in evidence bags. He placed it where every officer on the premises could see her. For her safety, he’d said.

She could see them as well. She watched as Jeff Gage went to his patrol cruiser and returned with the crime-scene kit, beginning his work on the body. Photographs, diagrams and evidence bags. He’d placed brown paper bags around David’s hands, and for the first time June saw the defensive wounds on her pastor’s arms.

You fought back. Good for you. Tears stung June’s eyes again as she realized that there was no forced entry. David must have let them in—he must have known his attackers. Her stomach knotted as a sense of betrayal shot through her. How could anyone…? June pressed her fingers to her lips, fighting a wave of grief.

When JR first took over here at Gospel Immanuel Chapel in tiny White Hills, Tennessee, the congregation had barely numbered one hundred. She and JR had worked hard to build the church, and within a year, JR had needed an assistant and an associate pastor. He’d hired Kitty Parker as his assistant and David Gallagher as his associate pastor, for his knowledge of scripture, charisma in the pulpit and genuine love of people. After JR’s death, David became the senior pastor. Over the past three years of his tenure in that role, David had grown the church even more, and he knew every member by name and their problems and their hopes.

June shifted in her chair, her heart aching for David. You were a good shepherd. Did you know them? Were they friends?

David had either let his attacker in…or the killer had come in through the tunnel.

Not many folks knew about that underground passageway in and out of the house. In fact, when she and JR had started the renovation of the parsonage the year before he’d died, the entrance on the second floor had been sealed. The contractor told her it had probably been closed off for at least twenty years, since the house had been empty for more than ten years. And the previous owners had known nothing about a tunnel.

JR had found the tunnel fascinating, even though the dark passageway was little more than a deep ditch that had been covered over with railroad ties and sod. It let out at the spring house. Although deep enough for a man to stand up in, only two feet or so of dirt and wood separated it from the expanse of grass that grew fresh and even across the backyard. JR had insisted on having the tunnel inspected for safety. They’d never really used it except for the time they had left the house that way in order to sneak away undetected by the neighbors for a romantic three days in Gulf Shores. A pretend adventure that still made June smile.

A rhythmic thudding on the main stairway of the house made June turn, and she stood as Daniel entered the kitchen. “Where’s Ray?”

“Still down there.” He motioned for Gage to follow him. “Bring your kit.”

“What did you find?” June asked, taking a step toward her brother-in-law.

“Later. Stay here.” He waited as Gage repacked the kit. As they turned to go, two muffled thumps echoed from somewhere deep in the house. They looked at each other, puzzled, as two more thumps sounded, like a car backfiring in some far distant place.

Gage recognized it first. “That’s gunfire!”

Ray Taylor’s ears rang, and his head throbbed with an almost blinding pain. Blue and white dots danced angrily before his eyes, and a spreading dampness on the left side of his skull slid through his hair and down his neck. Ray clenched his jaw and sank heavily against the wall of the tunnel, sliding to a sitting position.

When he’d swung around, only his instinct to crouch and weave to the right had kept him alive. A bright spotlight flashed suddenly, blinding him, and one of the shots that followed went wild, while the other grazed the left side of his head instead of hitting him square in the chest. He’d returned two quick shots, and the intruder had dropped the spotlight and fled out of the tunnel. The bouncing stream of light from the abandoned spot had illuminated the attacker’s path out of the tunnel but nothing about his identity. Definitely a man, a slender, wiry one, but otherwise Ray had seen only shadows among the flashing dots in his eyes.

He pressed his left hand against his wound and took two deep breaths, holding each for several seconds before releasing them slowly. His right hand still held his pistol in a crushing grip, but both hands now shook furiously. Adrenaline seared through him, and anger that he had not been able to follow the intruder made his stomach roil. But blinded, deafened by gunshots and bleeding, Ray knew he’d be more of a target than aggressor. He tried to radio Daniel, but the signal wouldn’t penetrate the earth and wood overhead.

Ray squeezed his eyes tightly shut, waiting for the blue and white sparks to dissipate and his ears to clear. As they did, he could hear the frantic thuds of shoes on the narrow ladder leading from the parsonage’s second floor. Hidden behind a sliding panel in one of the hallway closets, the solid wooden ladder had been built into one side of a thin shaft between the walls, exiting into the tunnel through the home’s foundation.

One by one, five of his officers cleared the ladder and rushed in his direction, led by Daniel Rivers. The streams of gold from their flashlights bounced around the tunnel like out-of-control basketballs. “Slow down!” Ray commanded.

Daniel reached him first, shining his light on Ray’s head. “What happened?” he asked, digging a handkerchief out of his pocket. He peeled Ray’s hand away from the wound and pressed the cloth tightly against it.

Ray filled them in, then instructed Gage and the others to continue the search down the tunnel. He pointed at the big handheld spot, which still shined its penetrating light down the tunnel. “Use gloves. Take that with you. He’s long gone now, but go slow. Look for any sign that I hit the guy.”