He was darkly silent, but gestured for her to go ahead of him. They joined Davidson on the glazed cement, and together the three of them climbed the fifteen steps to the doors.
Sam cast a discreet glance behind them, just in case someone, or something, was there. She saw nothing but the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains, hazy and mysterious, butted up against the green farm fields. The effect was beautiful, a study in contrasts: the ephemeral mountains against the tangible land. She imagined the sunsets up here must be spectacular.
Davidson rang a bell, and waited. Nothing. He jabbed the button again, and they heard the singsong bells, not a traditional ding-dong, but a deeper sound, like the gong of a church bell. Hell, it probably was. Sam hadn’t seen a bell tower when they drove up, but these people probably had their very own Quasimodo in the backyard, swinging from a rope.
Davidson was knocking on the door now, loudly, and the bangs from the bold brass lion-faced knocker echoed through the house. He shielded his eyes and looked in through the thin strip of decorative glass running the length of the ten-foot door. There was a matching one on the left, and Xander leaned in to do the same.
Davidson stood back. “This is strange. I called her on my way over to let her know we were coming to talk to her. She sounded upbeat, offered to make us some lemonade. I can see through to the garage behind the house. Her car’s parked out there. She’s here, or she was ten minutes ago.”
Sam didn’t hesitate. “Exigent circumstances. We have to go in.”
“I can’t break into her house.”
“You can, and you will. Something is terribly wrong, and you know it as well as I do.”
“Let me just call her again. Hang on.” He pulled out his cell phone.
Sam could hear the phone ring inside the house. Once, twice, three times.
Davidson frowned and hung up. “Let me get on the horn, get some more folks out here.”
“While you’re wasting time, I’m going in.”
Davidson put a meaty hand on her shoulder. “I can’t let you do that, Dr. Owens.”
“Then charge me with breaking and entering.”
She ignored his curse and put her hand on the oversize doorknob. It twisted easily in her fingers. “See, it’s unlocked.” She turned the knob and the door clicked open. It swung in silently. The house was quiet, too quiet.
“Mrs. Scarron? Are you home?”
Nothing.
Davidson was clearly struggling with his conscience. Sam rolled her eyes and entered the house, Xander on her heels.
She hadn’t been imagining it. The meaty scent of copper hung in the air like a fog.
Blood.
Chapter
23
FIVE STEPS LED down to a sunken living room. Sam saw Ellie Scarron twisted on the floor, a pool of burgundy under her head.
Davidson yelled, “Jesus, don’t touch her. Get back up here and don’t touch anything. This is a crime scene.”
She ignored Davidson, rushed down the stairs and knelt by the woman. Scarron’s eyes were open, unseeing, staring upward. Sam avoided the carotid; there was a thin loop of wire around the woman’s neck, cutting deep into the flesh. Instead she picked up Scarron’s limp wrist. Her body hadn’t begun to cool into inertness yet; the killer hadn’t been gone long.
She was about to release the wrist when she felt a tiny bit of pressure, the weakest bump against her fingers. A pulse, thready and indistinct. Sam launched herself into CPR, hands intertwined, pushing hard on the woman’s chest.
“She’s alive, she’s alive! Get an ambulance out here. Xander, come here and stabilize her neck for me. She can’t breathe. We need to clear an airway for her.”
The men jumped into action. They were both professionals, able to handle an emergency situation without second-guessing or arguing.
Sam took one look at the damaged tissue around the victim’s neck and knew there was no safe way to intubate her. As Sam got her heart beating in a more regular rhythm, blood began to slowly pulse from the wound in her neck. Sam felt around the wire and pressed her fingers into the base of the woman’s throat, then nodded to herself. There. She could do it.
Xander knelt by the woman’s head, grabbed it with both hands. He’d been on enough battlefields to recognize what Sam was about to do.
“You’re going to trache her?”
“I have to. Keep her head still, tell her she’ll be okay. Put pressure on her carotid, not enough to knock her out, but keep that blood flow down. She’s tachycardic. Watch her pulse. I’ll be right back.”
Sam rushed toward the kitchen, grabbed a paring knife from a block on the counter and looked around for something to use as an airway. A straw, a pen, something, anything hollow.