“Cat? No,” she said. “Must have been more than a little disturbance. Half the sheriff’s department is here. And since I’m having to turn visitors away, it would help if I could tell them why.”
“I’m afraid it might frighten them instead. Someone shot at me last night when I came back to Mount Locust for a file.”
“You’re kidding.” The volunteer’s voice dropped. “Who was it?”
“It was too dark to see. I just hope whoever it was doesn’t come back.” Emma poured the dry food in the bowl she’d bought.
“Do you think it was someone messing with that machine that came yesterday?”
“No, the intruder was fooling around with one of the backhoes.”
“You think someone was trying to steal it?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t want to destroy evidence, so we didn’t look around last night. I’m going now to check on the GPR machine and see if the sheriff has discovered anything.” She stopped at the door. “If I’m still with the sheriff when the GPR operator arrives, send him on up the hill.”
After Emma shut the door, she rattled the bowl of dry food.
“Come here, kitty,” she crooned, setting the bowl against the wall on the back side of the building. Almost immediately, the tabby rounded the far corner and made a beeline for her. Emma’s relief surprised her.
“There you are,” she said as the cat wound around her ankles. She didn’t want to forget to take the little thing home at the end of the day, but hopefully tonight no one would be shooting at her. She knelt and stroked the cat’s back. “You’re not very old. And we have to get you fattened up, but right now I have work to do,” she said and set out for the inn, leaving Suzy to her eating.
The sun felt good in the fifty-degree weather as she walked to the inn. Maybe they would have a return of warmer weather. Voices came from the back side of the cabin, and she climbed the steps and walked through the dogtrot to the back porch, where she caught sight of Trey.
Rats. She’d hoped he would not be here. Emma was tired of repeating that she only wanted to be friends. Just as she started to backpedal, he looked up.
“Emma,” he said with a nod.
“Did you find the bullet?” she asked.
“Yes. Judging from the position, even if you’d been standing on the porch, it would have missed you. Way too high.”
Trey was being extremely professional. She saw the reason why when Nate Rawlings stepped around the corner of the house with Sam and two more deputies. She recognized the older one. Martha Cooper was the first female hired by the Adams County Sheriff’s Department and had to be getting close to retirement age. Emma didn’t recognize the freckle-faced redhead holding a metal detector. “Good morning, Martha,” she said and nodded. “Sheriff.”
“Morning.” He nodded toward the deputy with red hair. “I don’t think you’ve met Chris Wilson. He’s from Vicksburg and is our unofficial photographer-slash-deputy.”
She exchanged nods with the young deputy and then turned back to the sheriff. “Have you discovered anything?”
“Nothing new, just the hole by the backhoe. Do you know why anyone would be digging around the slave cemetery?”
That had puzzled her last night. “No. Any type of excavation here at Mount Locust is strictly forbidden.”
“That’s what I thought,” Nate said. “I’d like you to take me through what happened again, this time showing me your movements.”
His request wasn’t unexpected, and Emma had been rehearsing the events in her mind. While the sheriff opened the recorder app on his smartphone, she glanced at Sam, and the memory of his arms wrapping around her last night rocked her heart. Why was she torturing herself this way? Shuttering her thoughts, Emma focused on Nate and took him through her actions, ending with jumping off the porch.
“Then I crawled to the woods there,” she said, and walked the path she’d taken. Scuffled leaves helped retrace her steps as the men followed.
“This is where I hid,” she said when they reached the live oak with limbs that dipped down to the ground. A curtain of moss swayed in the light northerly breeze.
“He wasn’t trying to be quiet,” she said, remembering the heavy footsteps. “He fired at me again, and there should be a bullet in one of these trees. Then I heard the sirens. That’s when he took off.”
“Do you think it could have been more than one person?”
She thought a minute. “There was really no way I could tell.”
The sheriff shut off the recorder and motioned to Chris, who was holding the metal detector. “Let’s see if we can find that bullet.”
He raised it, sweeping up and down the nearby tree trunks. When it went from silent to full sound midway up the trunk of a basswood tree, he stopped. “Should be here.”
After a brief search, Sam found the bullet embedded a good eighteen inches higher than Emma’s five-foot-three height.
“Either your shooter was a bad shot or he didn’t mean to hit you,” Sam said. “This is twice he fired over your head.”
“So he was just trying to scare me?” If so, he’d done a good job.
“Or scare you off.” Nate ran his hand over his short hair. “Get a trajectory on the bullet,” he said to Martha.
“Trey’s still using the laser kit,” she replied.
“Budget cuts.” The sheriff spat the words out. “Don’t see how the county expects us to do our job without the proper tools.” He turned to Sam. “Don’t suppose you have one?”
Sam shook his head. “We have the same problem. I don’t even have one trajectory kit.”
The sheriff shook his head. “Might as well see what Trey’s found. Tie a ribbon around the tree, and then see if you can find any cartridges with the metal detector.”
Martha and Chris stayed behind while Emma, Sam, and Nate trekked back to the inn, where Trey was finishing up his work. Her gaze followed the white line that stretched from the post to a tree two hundred feet away.
“You find where he stood when he fired the shot?” the sheriff asked Trey.
“Yep, and according to the laser and this cord, he was about my height.” Trey jerked his head toward the bare white oak tree where he’d attached the string. “There’s a marker on the ground where the leaves are disturbed. The cord hits me about shoulder high when I stand by the marker.”
“Good work.”
He held out a piece of metal. “Got this out of the post. Looks like a .22 long rifle.”
“Does that mean he used a rifle?” she asked.
For the first time, Trey’s eyes met hers, his expression going from unreadable to concerned.
“Not necessarily. There are semi-automatic pistols that fire .22 longs, but I’d say this time a rifle was used.” Trey rolled his shoulders and turned to the sheriff. “If you don’t need me, I’m heading back to the jail.”
“Good work, Trey, but I need the trajectory for another bullet before you leave.” The sheriff pointed in the direction they’d just come from. “The bullet is in a tree east of the live oak. It has a ribbon around it.”