Free No One Else to Kill (Jim West Series) by Bob Doerr

to his cabin he had heard some strange sounds.   His first thought was that some kids were
simply trying to harass him, but when he opened the door a bloody body fell
against him.”
    “A person?”
    “Yeah, a woman, bloody and bruised as hell.   Sean thought she was dead, but when he
reached down to try to find a pulse, she grabbed him.   Scared the crap out of him, and he blacked
out.”
    “Who wouldn’t?” I asked.
    “That’s only the start of the story.   When he came to, she had moved away from him
and had crawled into the cabin leaving a trail of blood.   He followed the trail. It led into his
bedroom.   She had propped herself up into
a sitting position on the floor with her back against the side of his bed.   He had to walk around the end of the bed to
get a good look at her. Once again he thought she might be dead.   He approached her and knelt down.   No way he was going
to touch her again.”
    “Was she dead?”
    “He says he had barely finished kneeling down when she
opened her eyes and hissed at him.”
    “Hissed?”
    “That’s his word.   He claims it wasn’t a scream or a shriek or a cry.   She hissed at him, raised her arm and pointed
at him, and whispered something like, “You.”   Then she died.   Her
eyes still staring at him.”
    “That sounds like a horror movie.”
    “For him, I’m sure it was.”
    “What happened then?”
    “Things went downhill.”
    “Downhill? How could things get worse?”
    “Well, let’s say it wasn’t Sean’s day.   Terrified, Sean jumped up and ran out of the
cabin. He would have probably run all night, gotten lost, and froze to death,
if he hadn’t run out of the cabin and across the dirt road right in front of a
couple of deputies.”
    I could see where this was going.   “They thought he did it?”
    “Who wouldn’t?   They
jumped out of their vehicle and shouted at him.   Sean turned to them and started rambling about a dead woman in the
cabin.   He’s standing there covered in
her blood.   When they inspect the cabin,
it looks like she was dragged from the porch to the bedroom.”
    “You sure he didn’t do it?”
    “Not a doubt in my mind.   By the time the investigation was over most the cops felt he was
innocent. Never went to trial, but the days after the incident were just as
hard on Sean as the incident itself.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Like I said, the cops’ first reaction was to treat him
like the killer. They interrogated him for hours right
after the incident.”
    “He didn’t ask for a lawyer?”
    “No.   Sean’s
remembrance of the police interrogation has always been hazy. I believe he was
in shock throughout the entire ordeal. I know they kept sticking photos of the
crime scene and the dead woman in his face and screamed at him to
confess.”   Colt shook his head at the
thought.
    “What did they think was his motive?” I asked.
    “They never had one for him. He was simply convenient.”
    A little more than that, I thought.   He would be a logical suspect to anyone
responding to the scene.
    “He didn’t get any sleep that night or the next day. I
have no doubt if they had kept at him he would have confessed to anything.”
    “What happened to get him off the hook?”
    “They got a lucky break that first day.   It came in the same time they were still
trying to break Sean.”
    “What was it?”
    “The victim’s concerned roommate called in to the
police.   She said the victim had called
her late in the afternoon of the day of the incident and said she had a major
row with her boyfriend.   The victim told
her roommate that she was afraid of her boyfriend.”
    “Did they check out the boyfriend?”
    “Yeah.   The roommate’s description of the victim was
dead on, excuse the pun.   They had a
bunch of priors on the boyfriend and knew he wasn’t nice.   I think at that point some of the cops
started believing Sean’s account.   Anyway, late that day they put Sean in a cell to get