Free In the Air Tonight by Lori Handeland

mafia—ours are mostly boring old Italians from Milwaukee or Chicago.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Remember Capone? But by the time he deals with ’em, they’re convicted and sentenced. They’ve got no reason to retaliate at him or his family.”
    “Someone did.”
    “Mebe,” Johnson allowed.
    “If she wasn’t killed because of her brother, then why?”
    “I thought that’s what you were here to find out.”
    “I’m just here to see if her killing is connected to any of mine.”
    “You think there are two psychos running around branding folks?” the chief asked.
    Bobby rubbed his eyes. “I hope not.”
    “That makes two of us.”
    “Three,” Christiansen said.
    “What did the marshal say about the brand?”
    “Never seen it either.” Johnson shrugged. “But when he put it into the federal system—”
    “My name popped up.”
    “Your cases did. But nothing on the brand.”
    Bobby already knew that. He’d put the damn brand into every system he could find. And gotten bupkis.
    “What about the wound?” he asked.
    “More of an amputation,” Christiansen said. “Without anesthesia.”
    “She was alive?”
    “It would be pretty hard to kill her with that wound if she was already dead.”
    Good point. Or bad point, Bobby wasn’t sure.
    “No one heard her?” he asked. At the chief’s blank expression, Bobby continued. “She had to have screamed.”
    “She wasn’t killed where we found her. Not enough blood.”
    “Could it have been an accident? Maybe she got her arm stuck in…” He waved his hands helplessly. “One of those big-ass farm machines.”
    “And flew into town on the wings of angels?” Johnson asked. “There’d be a blood trail.”
    “Not an accident,” the doctor said.
    “You’re certain?”
    “Her arm was hacked off, not pulled off, or even sliced with a decent blade.”
    “Do you know what kind of blade it was?”
    Christiansen leaned down and peered at the wound. “From what I’m seeing here, my guess is…” He met Bobby’s gaze. “A meat cleaver.”

 
    Chapter 6
    Meat cleaver? That could not be a coincidence.
    Raye had seen the murderer, and she’d thought she’d imagined it. Either she’d been lying—and for what reason, Bobby couldn’t fathom—or she had issues with reality and fantasy. He wasn’t one to throw stones, though he’d like to know why.
    First he had to find her. Fast. Raye was walking around loose, and so was that maniac. If the man had come after her once, he’d do so again.
    “Gotta go.” Bobby started for the door.
    “Back to New Orleans?” The chief followed.
    “Not yet.”
    Bobby should tell the chief everything. But not until he knew just what everything might be.
    “I have to make some calls,” he said. Not a lie. He would—after he found Raye.
    “Let me know what you need from me.” Johnson held out a hand, and they shook. “And I’d be obliged if you kept me in the loop.”
    “Of course.” Bobby shook and fled. He was driving back in the direction he’d come before he realized that he had no idea where he was going.
    Raye was a kindergarten teacher. In a town this size, how hard could it be to find the grade school? He doubted there was more than one. He was a detective for crying out loud. He should act like one.
    Bobby pulled into the gas station and asked for directions.
    There was only one grade school, and it wasn’t far. New Bergin Elementary stood on the nearest field to the town in a three-field parcel, with the junior high in the middle section and the high school in the northernmost plot. The athletic fields lay to the east, a parking lot flanked the west. He pulled in the space marked VISITOR directly in front of the entrance.
    While the school itself had been built in the sixties, the security had been updated recently. Bobby stepped through the first set of doors and discovered he could not get beyond the next until he’d passed through a metal detector and then been buzzed in. At least no one