As much as he didn’t want to think ill of Gina, she certainly had a reason to dislike the lead trainer.
“Gina, can you tell me what happened?”
She didn’t acknowledge him but kept rocking, her gaze locked on something only she could see. He gently touched her shoulder.
She started and scrambled away from him. “No, please, no,” she cried and curled into a tight ball.
He backed away, giving her space. “Gina, I’m not here to hurt you.”
She raised her teary gaze to meet his. She blinked as the glazed fog lifted. “Oh, Shane. We’re not safe. He’s here. He found me.”
A knot in his chest tightened. He? “Who are you afraid of?”
A visible tremor ran over her. “My twin brother, Tim.”
“Wait, you have a twin?” He’d had no idea.
“Yes. Two years ago he escaped police custody in Mesa and disappeared.” She rubbed at her temples. “I moved to Desert Valley to hide from him. I had hoped he wouldn’t find me here. But he has. And now...”
Concern arced through Shane. They had an escaped criminal on the loose. Gina’s twin brother. Had he killed Veronica thinking he’d shot his sister? Or was this a contrived story to cover Gina’s crime? Was there really a brother, much less a twin? He didn’t know her well enough to know if she had a sibling. “What happened to Veronica?”
“I’m not sure. I found her like this. I checked for a pulse.” She looked away. “There isn’t one.”
He winced. She’d already contaminated the scene—if she wasn’t the perpetrator. “Don’t touch anything else or move again until the chief arrives, okay?”
She nodded on a shuddering breath.
“Why do you think your brother killed Veronica?” Shane asked her.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She stared up at him. “He came here looking for me and instead found Veronica. He killed her out of rage because I wasn’t here.”
“You didn’t see it happen?” Though her explanation was plausible, there were holes. “How would he know where you work?”
“I don’t know. He’s smart.”
“But you don’t work here anymore, right?”
“What?” Her voice held a note of confusion.
“Didn’t Veronica put you on indefinite probation?” It had been a spectacle. Veronica had turned her mean streak onto Gina yesterday right in front of the newest class of graduated rookies. Veronica had loudly and very publicly claimed Gina had used the wrong training technique and declared Gina was on probation indefinitely.
Shane had attempted to talk to Gina after the incident because he’d felt bad for the pretty trainer, but she’d hurried home and he hadn’t seen her until now.
Gina’s shoulder rose and fell. “She did. But in typical Veronica fashion, she called me this morning to apologize.”
“That’s surprising,” he said. “She didn’t strike me as someone who would own her mistakes easily.”
One side of Gina’s mouth curled. “Oh, it wasn’t a humble gesture. She does this almost every session. She gets mad for some perceived infraction and makes a scene.” Gina blew out a breath. “Veronica needed me to return to the center to process the intake of three new German shepherd puppies donated by Marian Foxcroft.”
“So you were here today.”
“Yes. This morning.” She wiped her forearm across her forehead. “I would have been at the training center this evening if I hadn’t already committed to serving at the community church’s Saturday-night potluck dinner.”
He hadn’t known she attended church. He hadn’t seen her there these past few Sundays. “Do you mean the church’s singles’ potluck?”
She nodded.
For some reason the idea of her mingling with other singles rubbed him wrong. Which was so out of left field and inappropriate at the moment. Irritated at himself, he pushed the thought aside to focus on Gina.
Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. He hated seeing her cry. Yet there was a jaded part of him that wondered if the tears were real. Were they a ploy to gain his sympathy?
“Veronica wasn’t pleased that I couldn’t be here tonight,” she said. “But she agreed to microchip the new puppies and expected me to take over their care and training first thing on Monday morning.”
However, that didn’t explain how Gina came to be here now. Something about her story felt off.
The sounds of Desert Valley Police Department’s finest arriving drew Shane’s attention. Since the station was so close, several officers came on foot while the chief of police and the lone K-9 officer of the department drove to the training center.
“Is that...?” Louise Donaldson, the first officer to reach the scene, clamped a hand over her mouth and turned away.
Officer Dennis Marlton put a hand on her back and bowed his head as if the sight were too much to bear.
Officer Ken Bucks staggered back several steps. Though it was too dark to see his expression, Shane imagined that seeing an acquaintance murdered like this must be a shock, to say the least.
The last murder victim in the community of Desert Valley had been the wife of K-9 officer Ryder Hayes five years ago. A murder that had never been solved.
Shane glanced at Ryder, his face hidden in shadows created by the many flashlight beams directed toward the victim. Sitting at Ryder’s side was his canine partner, a handsome yellow Lab named Titus. Shane had seen the pair around but hadn’t really had a reason to interact with the Desert Valley Police Department’s only official K-9 officer.
Chief Earl Jones, a tall, imposing seventy-year-old man with thick graying hair, knelt beside Veronica and checked for a pulse, apparently to confirm Shane’s pronouncement that the master trainer was dead.
When he lifted his head, tears shone in his gray eyes. He stood, his hands fisted at his side. He was clearly struggling to contain his grief and anger. “Who did this?”
“Gina believes her brother, Tim Perry, did,” Shane said, noting that Gina hadn’t moved, just as he’d instructed her. “She didn’t see it happen, though. I haven’t asked her how she came to be here tonight.”
“Hmm, her brother, huh?” Earl scrubbed a hand over his jaw.
“Apparently he’s a wanted criminal in Mesa,” Shane added. Did the chief know Gina had a brother who was in trouble with the law? Or had she kept that information hidden? The thought made him wonder what else she could be hiding. Was Gina capable of murder? Was the story about her brother a convenient way to deflect blame?
“All
