COLD

LAKE

By Jeff Carson

http://jeffcarson.co

jeff@jeffcarson.co

Published By

Cross Atlantic Publishing

Copyright © 2014 All rights reserved.

David Wolf Series In Order

Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story) – Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.

Foreign Deceit (Wolf #1)

The Silversmith (Wolf #2)

Alive and Killing (Wolf #3)

Deadly Conditions (Wolf #4)

Cold Lake (Wolf #5)

Smoked Out (Wolf #6)

Sign up for the newsletter and keep up to date about new books (which are always discounted for the first 48 hours) and receive a complimentary copy of Gut Decision by clicking here -- jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html.

Dedicated to my family, friends, and readers who have given their generous support. Without you I’d be …

Chapter 1

Sheriff David Wolf looked up and saw the line of trucks and SUV’s thundering down the dirt road at five-alarm fire speed. Letting up his bodyweight on the wriggling animal underneath him, he hissed in pain as a hoof glanced off his knee.

The dust from the slowing vehicles washed over the volunteers inside the cattle pen, and then moved on to envelop the rest of the crowd gathered on the surrounding lawn.

“Who the hell is that?” Deputy Tom Rachette said, spitting and squinting with a wave of his hand.

“MacLean,” Wolf said.

The calf bleated, protesting the ropes expertly lassoed around its head and hind legs. The two men controlled their horses, pulling the ropes with practiced precision.

Rick Welch, third generation owner of Triple T Ranch, quickly shaved the calf’s right rear haunch and a volunteer weekend cowhand approached with two smoking branding irons. “God damn it,” Rick mumbled through clenched lips, waiting for the cloud to pass.

Luckily, a light spring morning breeze dispersed the dust, and the air became breathable again.

The unplanned break over, Wolf sagged his weight onto the animal and held tight. At six-foot three and two hundred pounds, he’d always carried a muscular physique with little effort, or in the case of his years as an Army Ranger, he’d carried a muscular physique with tremendous effort, but now that he was almost forty-one years old, his physique hid the fatigue within that came after rigorous activity. The morning’s work had his shoulders and abdominal muscles screaming for mercy. As sheriff of Sluice County for the past three years, he was lucky if he managed to break away three times a week for weight lifting, and the cardio… well, he figured his cardio was living in the mountains of Colorado.

He’d lost count of how many calves they’d done so far, but he knew there were plenty more to go. Even with the second and third team of horsemen and volunteers working just as hard inside the pen, it was going to be an all day job that might go into tomorrow.

A fit young man in his mid-twenties, Deputy Tom Rachette seemed to sense Wolf’s slowdown and squatted next to him, gripping the calf’s hind legs and stilling the animal for good. Rachette was shorter than average, but in Wolf’s estimation, the young deputy was built like a bull, and he had tenacity and strength rivaling that of most larger men.

“Thanks,” Wolf said through gritted teeth, a fresh twinge of pain shooting through his lower back.

Triple T Ranch had the largest herd of cattle in Sluice County, and it was a community operation to get the cattle branded every year. Wolf hadn’t missed the event for seven years running, and Margaret Hitchens, town real estate agent and self-appointed chairperson of the Wolf-for-Sheriff election campaign, had turned the fall branding into a rally for votes, complete with food and games for the entire family outside the cattle pen. Margaret had seen to it that the Sluice Sentinel ran announcements in the three weeks leading up to the event, and nearly every display window and cork board in Rocky Points featured one of Margaret’s come one, come all invitations. Over fifty men, women, and children had shown up.

And now here were a few more uninvited ones.

Wolf looked toward the congregation of people milling outside the fence. The patrons were barely visible in the dust.

“Okay!” Rick shouted.

The ropes slackened, Wolf slipped the loop over the rear hooves and he and Rachette jumped up, clearing out of danger.

“Sheriff Wolf!” A deep, jovial voice called from the other side of the fence.

Wolf turned with little enthusiasm toward the commotion.

A videographer scrambled with a tripod and camera, and an army of still photographers was darting this way and that, kneeling and climbing into photo-opportunity positions.

Wolf instinctively glanced at Margaret, who was already out of her lawn chair and charging towards MacLean, a suspicious crease of her brow beneath her cowboy hat.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

MacLean looked over at her like she was an attacking rabid dog, then smiled pleasantly. “Margaret,” he gushed, “I heard about the cattle-branding and I thought I’d volunteer. That is, if you’ll have me?” His voice boomed over the mooing.

Photographers snapped photos, the videographer panned from MacLean to Wolf.

Margaret scoffed and turned away from MacLean. “Our county?” she asked under her breath.

Wolf walked to the fence with an outstretched hand caked with dried mud.

MacLean knotted his hand with Wolf’s and shook vigorously, twisting his head and smiling with steely eyes, either ignoring or oblivious to the cool reception of every person surrounding him.

The cameras whirred and clicked.

Releasing Wolf’s grip, MacLean hopped over the fence with considerable grace for a fifty-five year old. He stomped down on the dusty earth with brand new work boots, bent down, grabbed a handful of dirt and rubbed it across his chest, leaving a skid mark on his expensive white button up shirt.

“Mr. Welch!” MacLean boomed, marching toward the owner of Triple T’s ranch with his now dusty hand.

Rick fumbled with the branding irons for a few seconds, leaving MacLean holding out his hand without a partner to shake it. Finally they shook and MacLean beamed a smile framed by his perfectly trimmed silver goatee.

The photographers pounced.

Wolf heard a ping on the fence and a collective gasp. He turned in time to see a photographer’s head whipping back as he landed on the ground. Wolf chuckled to himself, seeing at once the man’s smooth-soled shoes were no match for manure.

The guy bounced up and pulled the camera to his eye, snapping some shots.

Wolf looked over and plucked Sarah from the crowd. Standing in front of her chair to get a better look, she met Wolf’s gaze and smiled.

He smirked and shook his head, and they gravitated toward one another at the fence line.

He watched her and took a cleansing breath, feeling a jolt of energy. The combination of the crisp spring air and watching her move was better than ibuprofen or any pain reliever. As far back as high school, when he’d met his sweetheart turned wife turned ex-wife turned…whatever it was they were now, she’d always liked to dress the part of a cowgirl, and with her worn jeans, frayed hat, button-up embroidered denim shirt, she wore the look just as well as she did back then. Better than anyone.

They met at the fence and she handed Wolf a water bottle.

“Real nice of him to show up.” She made no attempt to mask her displeasure.  They watched MacLean wave to bystanders with his left hand and extend his right hand to Travis Chapman, who sat unsmiling atop a jittery Mustang. “What a great guy.”

Wolf drank the cold water and squinted. It was clear blue skies with visibility as far as it gets to the north and south, with pine tree covered mountains socking them in to the east and west. The dung-scented air was warm with a steady cool breeze coming from the north, making it biting cold in the shade, typical of early June in the middle of the Rockies.

“No wonder this guy is winning,” Sarah said. “Good God, there’s like ten photographers. What’s he shooting another commercial?” Her jeans stretched against her thinly muscled leg as she propped a boot on the fence.

Wolf took off his Stetson and slapped it against his leg in a puff of dust.

Sarah looked at him and smiled. “You look like a dust bunny. Here”—she reached through the fence and ruffled his hair, sending a cascade of dirt onto Wolf’s shoulders—“let’s unveil that gorgeous dark hair of yours for the cameras, and let’s wipe your face. It looks like one of those cattle pooped on it.”

Wolf closed his eyes and let her delicate hands do their brusque work. “I think one of them did.”

“—Wolf?”

Wolf turned around at the sound of his name. MacLean stood with Trevor Lancaster, the undersheriff of Byron County. Lancaster was Wolf’s age, younger, taller, and more muscled than his boss. Wolf couldn’t help notice the way the man raked his eyes up and down behind Wolf, taking in Sarah’s figure with unreserved curiosity.

Besides Lancaster, all eyes were on him. “What’s that?” Wolf asked.

“I say,” MacLean yelled over the cows, “why don’t you and I mount up and rope one of these calves? Show em’ how it’s done?”

MacLean was oblivious to the glares he received.

“I don’t think you or I could show any of these men anything they haven’t done themselves over fifty times already today.”

MacLean’s smile wavered for an instant, but he shrugged and walked toward a horse and grabbed the reins from the dismounted cowboy. The sheriff of Byron County climbed on with expert speed and grabbed the lasso off the saddle horn.

Wolf turned back to Sarah and handed her the water bottle.

She smiled and nodded with a wink. “Go get em’ sheriff.”

Wolf looked at Sarah’s beautiful Colorado-sky-blue eyes, her tanned face flecked with tiny circles of sunlight passing through the holes in her cowboy hat, and at that moment thought he could wrestle down a bull with his hands. Then when he tried to think of the last time he’d thrown a lasso and came up with no memories, his confidence was taken down a few notches. With a sigh he turned around.

“All right Sheriff Wolf!” Margaret Hitchens was rallying the cheerleaders, who hooted and whistled approval.

Travis Chapman hopped off his Mustang and gave Wolf the reins with a smile. “You got this?”

“Nope,” Wolf said climbing up without hesitation.  He spent a few seconds trying not to fall as the beast beneath him twisted and bucked.

Chapman finally calmed the Mustang down and handed up his coiled lasso.

Wolf grabbed it and nodded. Then he let out some slack and began a slow circle, getting his bearings with twirling a throwing rope while balancing on a horse, two actions alone he hadn’t done in years. Two actions together that took him more than a few seconds to get used to.

“You be the heeler?” Sheriff MacLean winked at Wolf.

Wolf smiled. Roping the heels meant he’d have to lay the lasso loop as a trap in front of the moving calf’s rear legs and then snag the legs as it moved through the loop. Though neither looping the head nor heels was an easy task for the unpracticed, looping the heels was a more difficult task than roping the head. Successfully heeling a calf was something he’d seen the men today fail to do on numerous occasions. They were professionals. Wolf, most definitely, was not.

“Sure,” he said, getting the feeling this politically masterful opponent of his had just roped him.

MacLean turned and pursued a calf without hesitation, tossed the lasso and snagged its head in a swift fluid motion. He yanked the line and stopped his horse and the calf twisted, turning its hind legs toward Wolf.

Wolf rode into place, feeling wobbly in the saddle as the huge Mustang accelerated.

He twirled the rope above his head, at an angle towards his left shoulder, just like his father had taught him all those years ago. Then he rode up alongside the left hind leg, just like he remembered. He let the loop grow with each twirl. He watched the calf hop, the hind legs leaving the ground in steady, predictable rhythm. He threw.

He whiffed.

“Come on Wolf!” Someone yelled from the crowd.

“You can do it sheriff! Waaahooo!” Margaret Hitchens continued rallying support.

Wolf tried again, missing the mark one more time. Then again, this time a good toss, but he was late pulling the slack.

“You gotta flatten your toss!” MacLean said over his shoulder.

Wolf chuckled to himself as he pulled in the rope one more time. I’ve gotta flatten your face.

The crowd was now long past cheering, and uncomfortable silence had settled in, which seemed deafening over the collective moos of the shifting cattle.

Wolf missed again.

“All right,” MacLean declared, loud enough for the people to hear. “I’ll take the heels. You got the head.”

Ah. Okay. Easy enough, Wolf thought sarcastically. He felt like he was thirteen all over again with his father barking at him as he tossed a rope at a wooden dummy.

“Okay, you got this!” Deputy Rachette started a renewed wave of banter.

“Come on, Sheriff!”

“Yay Sheriff Wolf!”

Wolf took a deep breath, twirled the rope above his head, this time keeping a nice bend in his elbow with each revolution. He picked an easy target: a calf that was standing still, unobstructed in the confusion of moving cattle.

The rope hit the rear half of the animal and dropped to the ground.

MacLean laughed out loud. “Okay, let’s give back the pros their horses. We could be here all day.”

Wolf ignored him. He whipped back the rope and stretched the loop out, twirled it over his head twice and tossed it. Sailing through the air, the loop went over the head of a brown and white spotted calf and landed around its neck. He pulled back, tightening the slack, and then wrapped the rope around the saddle horn. He steered his horse the opposite way, whipping the calf around and presenting the hind legs to MacLean.

“Hey! Now we’re talkin’!” MacLean yelled.

In what seemed like a split second, Wolf’s rope yanked back incredibly hard. Too hard, almost sending him off the saddle as the Mustang twisted back. At that second he saw the calf was in the air, both hind legs securely roped and pulled back, the calf poised to land on its side.

“Whoa!” Wolf pulled up on the reins, but too late, the calf was stretched inhumanely thin, and just when Wolf thought he had ripped the animal in half, the Mustang stopped and backed up a few steps.

MacLean wasted no time turning and dragging the calf backwards towards the men with the branding iron.

Wolf followed, keeping total slack in his rope, more than a little relieved the calf was struggling against the tow, rather than dangling lifeless due to a broken neck.

As the men branded the calf, Wolf noticed the self-satisfied grin on MacLean’s face, as if a plan of his had come to fruition without a single hitch.

Once again, Wolf felt bested by this man, in an arena he was unfamiliar with. Being appointed the job as Sheriff of Sluice County, just like Hal Burton before him, and just like Wolf’s father before Burton, Wolf had never had to pander to the masses. He’d never had to act a part, he’d simply shown up for work and done the best job he could have.

Now that the smaller Sluice County was merging with its neighbor to the south, Byron County, things were changing. Big time. Down in Rocky Points, just a block –and-a-half from the station, a three-story monstrosity of a Municipal building and new Sheriff’s office, complete with state of the art jail cells in the basement, was going up in record time. And with the new structure came something even bigger. An election. And a campaign. Multiple campaigns, because not only were the people of the newly formed Sluice-Byron County voting for a Sheriff, but for other seats in the new county government.

It was now Spring and the election was to be held in mid-summer by special order of the Governor of Colorado. With the political atmosphere like a mosh pit at a thrash metal concert, Sheriff Will MacLean seemed to be at home amid the chaos.

Wolf wondered just how MacLean planned on cutting and pasting all this video footage. What exactly he was going to do with all these photos.

No doubt something awe-inspiring, just like the rest of the man’s campaign for sheriff had been thus far.

Wolf felt no awkwardness when it came to mountain living. But the pixels captured through those lenses said otherwise. That’s all that mattered. The airtime on television that MacLean’s campaign could buy would undoubtedly show the people otherwise.

“And that,” Margaret Hitchens yelled, “Is Sheriff Wolf’s attitude towards his job in action. Never give up! Never give up!”

A smattering of applause. A lone whistle.

MacLean nodded respectfully.

Wolf felt his face go red. He jumped down and handed over the reins, then walked to Travis Chapman, eager to disappear back into the action as another calf was dragged in.

“Wolf!” A male voice called.

Wolf pretended not to hear.

“Sheriff Wolf!”

He realized it was Rachette, so he looked up.

Rachette had his cowboy hat off, waving it in the air with one hand and a radio in the other. Deputy Patterson stood next to him with excitement painted on her face, and not because of the recent action. She held her radio, too.

“What is it?” He asked as he reached them.

“We’ve got a…”

“What?” Wolf asked, not catching Patterson’s last word.

Patterson was a head shorter than Rachette, so she climbed two slats of the fence to be heard.

“We have a dead body,” she said. “Correction: almost a dead body.”

Chapter 2

Wolf stood on the dock, listening to the squeak of boat fenders and bumps of fiberglass boats colliding with weathered wood. With his head high he felt the sun warm his skin for an instant before the breeze sucked away the heat. He knew the lake was named for a temperature inversion found at roughly fifty feet beneath the surface of the water, but as he zipped his jacket up he thought that Cold Lake was living up to its namesake.

Taking a deep inhale through his nose, he whiffed gasoline, vinyl seats, and dead fish, a combination that brought back memories of bass fishing with his father.

Lime green in color, the boat in front of him was nothing flashy, just a middle of the line family model with a powerful outboard motor—a set-up that five to ten grand could buy.

The hypnotic movement of the sphere in the black plastic bag slowed as the wake of a passing boat dissipated. Then a combination of waves lifted the back end and rolled the bag over for an instant, revealing a mouth and nose through a tear in the plastic.

Rachette let out a soft whistle. “That’s definitely a human head in a bag.”

Stepping off the dock and onto the rear seat, Patterson snapped on her rubber gloves. At five-foot one inch, she was a year younger than Rachette and had a granite physique that was maintained with strict diet and exercise. Unlike Rachette’s stocky build, she was thin and wiry. As she moved with quick precision, the boat barely swayed under her negligible weight.

With wide blue eyes and bobbed dark hair, she was the definition of cute, and could lull the opposite sex into leering, but as Wolf watched her grip the plastic bag without hesitation and look inside the rip, he, just like everyone who met Heather Patterson, was reminded of the fearless fire within.

Wolf looked down at the head. The teeth were yellow, unnaturally large looking from receding gums. The lips were like mangled worms, and the nose was snow white and waxy, looking like it had melted flat against the face.

Rachette stepped into the boat after her, keeping his distance with his second step.

Wolf turned to the knock of boots coming down the dock.

Sheriff MacLean walked to Wolf and stopped. They both watched as Patterson gingerly rolled the head this way and that, revealing the whole face in the sunlight. A fishing hook was still attached to the eye-socket, which held no eye.

“Eye sockets look mutilated,” Patterson said. “Gouged with a knife.”

“Jesus.” Rachette kept what little distance he could, standing in the middle of the boat next to the driver’s seat.

“That’s interesting.” MacLean pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “Sorry I can’t be any help. I’ve got a … thing tonight. Congressman. Attorney General. Commissioner. DA.” He turned to Wolf. “I can have Lancaster stay if you need, get another few deputies up here.”

Wolf bent sideways to look next to MacLean. Lancaster stood motionless, a head taller than MacLean, clearly staring down at Patterson’s backside and not the grotesque item she was prodding.

“No thanks.” Wolf looked past them to the crime scene tape across the dock entrance. The owner of the boat sat on a pylon talking to Deputy Wilson. “Now if you guys don’t mind.”

MacLean shrugged and then squinted one eye. “Deputy Patterson, right? And Rachette?”

“Yes sir.” Rachette nodded politely.

Patterson gave a curt nod and resumed her examination, snapping some photos with her Nikon DSLR camera.

“You two are going to be interviewing for the new Sheriff’s department next month, correct?”

“You two carry on.” Wolf stepped backwards and walked up the dock toward the marina. “MacLean, Lancaster, follow me, please.”

“I’ll see you later, deputies,” MacLean said, taking his time turning and walking after Wolf.

Lancaster trailed his eyes up and down Patterson one more time and walked after his boss.

Wolf escorted them under the tape and over to their SUV, which sat in the newly paved parking lot of the lake marina. He turned and faced MacLean.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bully my deputies.”

MacLean frowned and took off his sunglasses. “Bully? I’m not bullying your deputies. I’m trying to open a discussion with them about the future. About their future. I would think you might be open to that.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” Wolf looked at Lancaster. “And you, Deputy Patterson is a fifth-degree black belt, so you keep letting those dead eyes of yours wander like that and I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Lancaster nodded with a sneer.

Wolf shrugged and looked back at MacLean. “And Sheriff, the election hasn’t happened yet. You’re not anyone’s boss in this county. The Sluice-Byron County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t exist yet. So, I appreciate you asking, but no thanks, I don’t need any help from your department, and please get in your vehicles, and you guys have a nice fundraiser tonight.”

Wolf patted him on the shoulder.

MacLean looked down at the spot Wolf had touched, smiled and put his sunglasses back on. “Oh, you heard about that?”

Wolf shook his head. “The fundraiser? The one you just told me about on the dock?” The lake they stood next to, though being the third largest in Colorado, could not contain Will MacLean’s ego.

“I was serious back there. I have congressman Blake coming. Commissioner Heller, the retiring commissioner of your county.” MacLean started ticking off fingers. “The DA. The ADA. Your old boss, Burton, he’s thinking about coming.”

The last name stung Wolf. But thinking about coming sounded like a bluff. Even if Burton was going, it was for the scotch and food, and not for support.

“If you’d like to join reality and come down to Ashland tonight, it’s going to be quite a party. I sent you an invitation.”

Wolf turned and walked away.

“See you Monday night,” MacLean called after him. “Hope you can prepare all those talking points with all this new action going on.”

Wolf kept his eyes forward.

“Here.” Oliver Chevelier pulled back the throttle.

The boat coasted, riding up as the wake passed underneath it and then bobbed in the water. Wolf’s ears rang in the relative silence of the idling motor and his skin tingled as the cold rushing air became warm and still.

“Right here.” Oliver tapped the electronic screen of his fish finder with a shaky finger. “You can see the depth change right there. Right here we’re at one hundred thirty feet, give or take, then it drops off to three hundred feet plus.” Oliver tipped the paper coffee cup vertical and sucked down the last drops, then poured another cup from his metal thermos.

Wolf stood looking at the screen and rubbed his face to get some blood into his cheeks.

Patterson stood up from her seat behind the glass and looked at Rachette. “I’ll give you shotgun on the way back.”

“Damn right you will,” he said.

“Should have felt it this morning,” Oliver said. “It was damn cold. Every year you forget how cold it still is, all the way into June.”

“Mr. Chevalier, the place where you pulled up the severed human head?”

Oliver Chevalier shivered and shut his eyes. “Yes. Sorry. We … we were trolling the deep parts with this downrigger. Looking to catch some Lake Trout. Caught one”—he raised his eyebrows—“big. Huge. And then later, I snagged something, and I realized I’d run too far. I knew I probably snagged the boulders where it turns shallow. Then I turned around and pulled up that bag. Billy was makin’ fun of me about it. He grabbed it and brought it in, and then he dropped it and started yelling. I still remember that sound. A head dropping into the boat.”

Oliver stopped talking and took another sip of coffee. He set it down, walked to the front of the boat, knelt down on the cushion and vomited over the side. The loud grunt of his expulsion echoed off the rock cliffs and pine- treed land to the west and came back to them a second later.

“Oooookay,” Patterson said, turning towards Wolf and Rachette.

Wolf studied the fish finder. “You come here a lot?”

Oliver wiped his mouth and looked up. “What?”

“Do you come here a lot?” Wolf repeated.

“Yeah, the boulders are a marker for me and Jed. We usually start here and troll north.”

The screen of the sonar device was split, with a multicolored image sliding by on the left, and a black and white image on the right. “Can you tell me what we’re looking at here, Oliver?”

Oliver looked over at him and wiped his chin. He wobbled over and leaned over the display.

Wolf caught a whiff of Oliver and held his breath.

“Bottom’s at one hundred thirty-four feet indicated by that number, you can see the boulders there, then the bottom drops out from under at that bright white patch. They say it goes down to four hundred plus feet. The Down Imaging won’t go that deep. This right here is the lowest point between that island,” Oliver pointed to the low-forested island to the east, “and the shore there.” He pointed to the west.

“So you thought you snagged one of those boulders?” Wolf tapped the screen.

Oliver stood up and nodded. “Well, yeah. Had to be. There’s nothin’ else down there. Of course, it wasn’t a boulder.” He lunged back to the front of the boat and bent over, his grunts echoing once again.

Wolf, Rachette, and Patterson huddled in the back of the boat and Wolf studied the surrounding landscape. To the east was a wooded island the size of a football field, opposite the island to the west was the western shore, a steep wooded embankment with a line of cliffs above that that stretched to the north and south. The granite cliff line varied in steepness, and the few people who had decided to build cabins on this rugged shore hugged the back of their properties up to the precipice, and then built wooden staircases that zigged and zagged down the rocks, teetering on stilts, down to the shore where docks jutted out into the water. Behind the whole scene lay thousands of acres of virgin forest, with snow-covered peaks as the distant backdrop.

Rachette tapped a finger on the screen, turned his back to Oliver, and lowered his voice. “Yeah. Those are dead bodies.”

Chapter 3

“What are you guys going to do for jobs?” The search and rescue rookie talking to Rachette was grating on Deputy Heather Patterson’s nerves.

“Do you have to re-apply?” Tall, muscular physique, and a nice set of eyes, the guy was cute and meant well, but he was poking the bear. Either he was a quasi-moron or he knew what he was doing and trying to rile them up, and that made him an asshole.

No, Patterson thought. The guy was a dumbass rookie who didn’t know when to shut up. The apologetic glance from his superior told her as much.

“Yep. Gonna have to re-apply,” Rachette answered, unfazed by the guy’s upfront question. “Bullshit. But necessary bullshit, I guess. They say there should be minimal cuts. I’m confident we’ll have our jobs in the end.”

“Good luck,” the rookie continued, “my sister works for the town of Rocky Points and she says that MacLean’s a real dick, but he’s gonna win. I guess he’s been coming into town, walking around like he already runs it. Made my sister get him a cup of coffee across the street, like she was some sort of—”

“Can we talk about something else?” Patterson glared.

The rookie blinked. “Yeah. Sure.”

Patterson turned and looked at Sheriff Wolf sitting out in one of the ASIS rigid inflatable boats. He was staring at the western coastline in deep thought, up at one of the houses on the cliffs. She followed his eyes to the house on the hill, and then she ran her eyes alongshore left to the next property, which must have been a good half-mile away to the south. Then she looked past it to a bend, where the tip of a dock protruded from the shoreline pines, aluminum edges gleaming in the sun.

Patterson took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The fishy lake air smelled exhilarating. She always liked spending time near or on freshwater, whether kayaking the Roaring Fork near Aspen growing up, or the time she’d spent right here at Cold Lake, waterskiing behind her uncle’s boat. The sound of lapping waves against boat hulls triggered memories of fishing with her father, uncle, and brothers. The rushing air against her face when the boat had come out to this spot had triggered vivid memories of sitting next to her late grandfather, who used to sit on top of the chair back and let his wispy comb-over flap in the breeze. She remembered doing the same, peeking over the glass, the wind rushing up her nose and over her hair.

“Hey, uh, deputy?” Oliver Chevalier cleared his throat. “I really have to use the bathroom. Like. Now. Number two.”

Patterson opened her eyes and exhaled.

“Hey sheriff?” Rachette said into his radio. “We gotta take Mr. Chevalier in.”

Wolf looked over and held up a thumb. “Okay, let’s get someone to take him into the marina in his boat. Whoever does, they can stay on shore and wait.”

“10-4.” Rachette looked at Patterson with raised eyebrows.

She nodded at the rookie. “You take him in, we’ll stay here.” Her tone left no room for arguing.

The Sheriff’s Department fleet boat pulled alongside Oliver’s boat, and as Patterson and Rachette climbed onto the solid 1987 model equipped with two powerful outboards, Patterson felt like her legs were shaking. She realized it was her racing thoughts. It was what Rachette and the rookie had been talking about—their uncertain future.

Because it was clear as day. In the end, Sheriff David Wolf was not going to win the upcoming election for Sheriff of the merged counties. Her aunt Margaret had told her as much in confidence. But it was no secret, not to anyone. Wolf was dead in the water.

She looked back at Wolf. He was staring again at the lake’s edge, immersed in the case, on another dimensional plane. She’d seen him look like that before, and it was a sight to see. A formidable sight at times. She’d never seen such sheer determination in any one man like David Wolf. But in the two years she’d been on the force, she’d also seen that he was a ruthless realist when he needed to be. That is, he was quick to see when determination became delusion, and he would act accordingly with sometimes dizzying speed to cut losses.

So what was he thinking about with this election? What was his plan? At the moment it seemed he was ignoring the inevitable outcome. He’d been appointed to the job of Sheriff of Sluice County last time. Elections were something he was clearly not comfortable with. Or good at.

And now Rachette and Patterson were being put in a tough situation. They were loyal to Wolf, that was never a doubt, but were they supposed to ignore MacLean? Were they supposed to be standoffish? How do they look good for present and future employers when those men are fighting one another to the death?

“Patterson.” Rachette slapped her shoulder.

She turned, annoyed. “What?”

“What, me? What’s going on with you? They’re back up.”

Patterson turned back to Wolf’s boat and saw that the divers had surfaced.

Rachette leaned a hand on the side of the boat. “Holy crap.”

There were four divers, and they all seemed to be carrying at least one black plastic bag. Two of them carried two bags, one in each hand.

Wolf pulled one dripping bag over the side of his boat, and Patterson could see it was similar shape and size to the head at the marina, but these bags had another something inside; a rectangular sag that streamed water as they were lifted. It looked like brick inside of each one.

The late spring sun suddenly felt hotter and she rolled up her sleeves.

“Six.” Rachette said. “Six more.” He stood up and looked at the inky water. “Dang, there could be a lot more than that down there.”

A whining engine came around the corner of the island and cut down to an idle, then continued crawling into the cluster of boats. It was the Sluice County Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Lorber. At six foot six-inches tall, his pole-thin frame was easy enough to spot, swaying with the wake like a pine in the wind, sticking up head and shoulders above the others in the boat next to him. His ever-present assistant, Dr. Joe Blank, was with him looking cold as he rubbed his hands.

There was a sharp whistle and the boat turned toward Wolf and the emerged divers. A deputy waved the red and white dive flag as if the driver needed reminding.

Lorber’s boat slid by, the Mercury outboard engine gurgling as the water frothed behind it, and Patterson held up a hand at him. Lorber pointed a long finger and nodded.

“Nice ‘stache.” Rachette murmured.

Lorber had shaven his usual five-day beard into a bushy caterpillar mustache, but that’s where the grooming stopped. His uncombed hippy-hair was as long as ever, flapping against the center of his back in the breeze.

“Is that jealousy?”

“Psh. I could grow a ‘stache like that in a week.”

“You’d be happy if you grew a map of the Galapagos Islands on your face after a week.”

Rachette glared at her, but had no comeback.

Chapter 4

Wolf got up from the bench seat of the ASIS inflatable as it slid alongside the SCSD fleet boat. He steadied himself as the pilot gave a quick burst in reverse and held out a hand to Patterson. Climbing aboard, the boat rocked under his weight.

“What’s the news?” Rachette asked.

“The news is, we’ve got at least eight bodies down there. They just pulled up six heads. Add that to Chevelier’s catch this morning and we’ve got seven. Then there’s an extra bag down there. No head accounted for with that one. It could be a full body inside.”

“What do the bodies look like?” Rachette asked.

“They say they’re all wrapped in plastic. Same as the heads, they’re weighted with bricks inside.” He pointed down and made a circle with his arm. “Apparently they’re spread out, covering a hundred feet from one end to the other.”

“So there could be a lot more down there?” Patterson asked. “Visibility can’t be that good down there.”

Wolf shook his head. “They had a pretty good system going with the sonar. There might be another one or two, but they’ve done a pretty thorough grid search with the Down Imager. They’ll obviously do another sweep, and then they’ll use the winches to get them up. It’s going to take a while.”

“Good Lord,” Rachette shook his head and looked over at the shoreline to the west. “There’s some sick bastard living over there.”

“Not necessarily,” Patterson said. “Said sick bastard could have come from anywhere. All we know is this is his preferred spot for body dumping.”

“Then someone over there must have seen something,” Rachette said.

A sharp whistle pierced the air. “Hey!” Lorber was waving a long arm above his head.

Wolf looked at him and tipped his chin.

“You’ve gotta see this!”

Wolf turned the key and started the engine, then flipped the button for up-anchor. The winch at the front of the boat whined and the thin, wet cable spooled in.

Lorber stood and stared at them with his hands on his hips, and Wolf stared back with a blank expression, keeping motionless in the driver’s seat.

With an impatient gesture Lorber said something to the pilot of his boat, and their engine bubbled to life and they sped over.

“Look at this,” Lorber said as they eased next to their boat.

Wolf snuck in next to Patterson and Rachette and peeked overboard.

Lorber was holding open a bag, revealing the face of one of the heads.

Wolf narrowed his eyes and stared into the past, and then with recognition he exhaled. “Nick Pollard.”

Lorber nodded. “Yep. I’d bet my hair on it.”

Rachette looked between them. “Who’s Nick Pollard?”

“An old missing persons case.” Wolf’s gaze was locked on the waxy face.

The eyes were just like the other they’d seen—vacant ragged holes, clearly stabbed with a knife. Probably an inch wide blade. Narrow. A fishing knife, Wolf guessed. But the facial hair pattern sparked recognition in Wolf’s mind, because the sideburns were full and all the way to the chin. The mustache was pencil thin above the deformed mouth, and there was a line of facial hair on the collapsed chin as well that clung to bluish skin like wet pasta. It was a unique facial hair pattern with impressive growth for a seventeen-year old kid, and it was a visage that the residents of Rocky Points at one time knew well.

“How old of a case?” Rachette asked.

“Twenty-two years.” Wolf answered after a quick calculation.

“He looks … it looks like a lot more recent than that, doesn’t it?” Rachette frowned and looked back down. “Are you sure?”

Lorber looked at Patterson and raised an eyebrow. It was a challenge.

She cleared her throat. “The cold water at that depth would have slowed autolysis, or when the body’s enzymes within the cells go into post-death meltdown.”

Lorber tilted his head side to side, as if to say, at least partly right.

Patterson continued. “The almost perfect preservation of the face is due to the formation of adipocere, otherwise known as saponification, which is the formation of a waxy substance that ends up coating the skin. It’s formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue. Cold, wet environments are perfect for production.”

Rachette looked at her appraisingly. “I love Science Fridays.”

“Spot on.” Lorber nodded and then looked to Wolf. “I’ll check dental records. Probably went to Dr. Unruh in town back then. Shouldn’t take more than tomorrow morning, probably this afternoon.”

Wolf nodded. “Make it as quick as possible. There were reporters at the marina. But I’m not going to jump the gun and tell the Pollards just yet. The facial hair is right, but the features have decomposed pretty badly. I wouldn’t bet my hair on it. I’ll wait for you.”

Lorber nodded.

“So, who was this vic?” Rachette asked.

Wolf took a deep breath, thinking back to his high school days. “This was my father’s case.”

Chapter 5

Wolf was the most exhilarated he’d been in years as he sat across the table from Sarah. Candlelight danced on her face and made it look like she had a spark in each eye, or maybe it was that she shared the same feeling.

“Excuse the interruption,” the waiter said in a low voice as he placed a basket of bread in front of them.

Wolf leaned back, making way for the waiter. He felt like he’d come up for air after being submerged in water, like the divers today after sitting at thirty feet for decompression, only he’d been submerged in something much better with Sarah. He realized that from the moment he’d picked her up from her house and smelled her perfume as she climbed in his truck, he’d been buried in the present. Time was passing one elevated heartbeat at a time.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the floor-to-ceiling window view Antler Creek Lodge offered, sitting atop the Rocky Points Ski Resort. The sky to the west was painted pink, the sun completely gone behind the mountains. The late spring snow on the peaks outside was like a blanket of orange sorbet in the fading light of the sunset.

The fragrance of fresh bread pulled his gaze from the windows to the table.

“Thank you.” Wolf nodded to the waiter as he left.

Sarah tore a slice of bread in half and bit into it. “So, are you ready to talk about today yet?”

Wolf chewed the soft, warmed bread. “I’d rather not ruin our first date in years.”

She sipped the wine, keeping her eyes on his. “Just tell me. After that exit this morning? And I can see that it’s on your mind. What the heck happened today?”

Wolf sighed and took a sip of water. “We found a … some dead bodies today.”

“Oh my God. At the lake?”

“In the lake.”

She leaned forward. “Really?”

Wolf sipped his wine.

“Bodies? Plural?” Sarah reached across the table and gripped his hand.

Wolf leaned forward and checked the neighboring table to his right. The couple was smiling at one another, distracted in conversation. “A lot of bodies. And I’m not sure we’re done pulling them up. They were”—he studied a piece of bread—“mutilated.”

“Jesus.” She whispered. “Like, a serial killer?”

Wolf nodded.

She put her other hand over Wolf’s and looked around the room. “That’s insane.”

Wolf nodded again. He took another sip of wine.

Sarah shook her head and stared off in thought. “So who were they? I can’t think of any missing people. Are they Rocky Points citizens? Have you identified anyone?”

Wolf gave a squeeze of Sarah’s hand and looked over to the neighboring couple again. They were both silent, reaching for their drinks. Both startled with Sarah’s last words.”

She turned her face away from them and shielded her mouth. “Sorry,” she whispered.

Wolf waited for the couple to resume with their own business.

“We identified one of them,” Wolf said in a voice barely above a whisper. “Do you remember Nick Pollard?”

Sarah frowned. “No.”

“He was younger than us growing up, a sophomore. Disappeared the summer after our senior year. I remember my dad was really bent out of shape about it.”

“Oh, geez. That long ago?” Sarah straightened and nodded. “Wait, yeah! I remember.”

Wolf squeezed her hand again.

She bent forward and lowered her voice. “Sorry. Yeah. The fourth of July. I remember he went missing on the fourth. They were all saying he went up to the lake and never came back. He went up to see ... ah, I forgot her name. But some weird girl, used to be homeschooled? Remember? Lived up on the lake? Everyone was saying that her dad killed him.”

Wolf pulled his eyebrows together. “How do you remember and I didn’t remember any of this?”

Sarah smiled. “I don’t know, Sheriff Wolf. How don’t you? Probably because you were doing two-a-days in Fort Collins, trying to impress the CSU cheerleaders with your tight spirals.”

Wolf shook his head. “I had already impressed the right cheerleader by then.”

Sarah smiled sheepishly and looked down.

The past, damn it. Wolf had learned recently that talking about the past with Sarah was a sure-fire way to ruin the moment, and he’d just done it again.

She looked up quickly with a mischievous smile. “Seriously, though.” She let go of his hands and leaned forward on her elbows, creating a gap between her breasts that Wolf wanted to dive into. “I thought that third toss of yours today was going to rope that calf. The way it barely hit him in the ass and then hit the dirt?”

Wolf gave her a dagger stare and blinked. “I will murder you.”

She smiled and laughed, and then took a sip of her white wine.

He smiled wider than he ever liked to display in public, and then brought his own glass up to his lips and tasted the exquisite Argentinian white. It was sweet, and as he swallowed it warmed his entire body. It had been a long, mentally taxing day, and he could not think of a better way to wash the dirt off his thoughts than with a swig of wine and the most beautiful companion Wolf had ever known.

They locked eyes and stared at one another, and Wolf knew his ex-wife shared the same sentiments. They both knew something special was happening between them. For the first time since their divorce, years before that actually, they felt the spark between them again. And for the first time they were moving on from the past without looking back. It was more than a spark, Wolf thought, it was a warming fire that was ignited by the friction of their souls. Or something. Wolf checked himself and took another sip of wine.

“How’s the new place?” Wolf asked.

She nodded. “Good. Great. Jack seems to like it. I think he likes being away from my parents for the first time in years. And of course, I’m not there all day.” Sarah took a distracted sip of wine.

Wolf squeezed her hand. “He’s doing all right.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “It’s just, he’s getting so … angry sometimes. And do you know what he told me when I said you and I was going out tonight? So?” She frowned and shook her head. “So? What kind of response is that to us finally going out on a date? Something he’s been hounding me about for years straight?”

Wolf shrugged. “Teenagers.”

She exhaled. “Do you think he’s doing pot?”

Wolf shook his head. “No.” He squeezed her hand and she looked up at him. “Hey, let’s just enjoy this dinner. Jack’s doing fine. I’ll see what’s bothering him this weekend. He probably just doesn’t …” Wolf let his sentence die. He was going to say, He probably just doesn’t want to get his hopes up too much, but that mirrored Wolf’s own thoughts too closely to voice out loud.

“What?” She asked.

“Nothing,” Wolf said with a smile. “Dinner. I could eat that horse I was riding on today.”

Sarah lifted her bare foot and rubbed the inside of Wolf’s knee. The touch sent a tingling wave through Wolf’s body and he smiled again.

“Salmon for the lady,” a voice said as the waiter materialized from thin air. He pushed the steaming plate in front of her.

She leaned back with a reddening face, as if she’d been caught in the act by the waiter, and clasped her hands. “Thank you.”

“And the filet.”

Wolf watched a three-inch high cylinder of meat slide in front of him, and the steamy aroma of steak, garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus made his mouth flood.

“Thank you,” he said.

He paused when he looked up and saw a flicker of horror in Sarah’s eyes as she looked past Wolf.

Turning to look over his shoulder and follow her gaze, he saw an elegantly dressed man waving at her from the bar at the front of the restaurant.

Wolf looked back at Sarah and saw she had recovered. She was looking relaxed, waving now with a semi-annoyed looking gesture.

She looked at Wolf and then her water glass, reached for it, and then decided to grab her knife and fork.

“Who’s that?” Wolf asked.

“A client.” There was no hesitation in her voice. “Geez, that looks good.” She gawked at Wolf’s plate.

Wolf cut a sliver of meat and held it out to her.

Ignoring the piece of filet mignon bobbing in front of her face, she looked into the distance once again. There was a small widening of her eyes. She put her knife and fork down and looked at her lap. Smoothed her napkin.

Wolf took the bite and studied her, knowing the man was now on his way over. He cut and forked another piece, and then put it in his mouth.

“Sarah.” The man stepped next to their table with an upturned palm thrust at her.

She looked up and feigned surprise and then placed her hand into his. His large hand enveloped hers and he began pulling her up.

“Come on, I need a hug. It’s been so long.”

“Oh … okay.” Sarah stood up and reached up to wrap her arms around the man’s shoulders. It was a difficult task for her, being that the man was at least six foot five. At least a couple inches taller than Wolf.

Wolf leaned back and put an elbow on the table, scrutinizing the man and his brash intrusion.

The man had mid-length wavy dark hair that was impeccably combed, and he wore a dark suit and an expensive white shirt over a muscled physique. The top button of his shirt was open, revealing a gold necklace around a thick, tanned neck. His watch was a platinum Rolex with a black face and there were no rings on his fingers. A good-looking guy by no stretch of the imagination, Wolf thought, and clearly the man had a big wallet.

Wolf watched as the man’s giant arms enveloped Sarah’s slender body. The man crouched and closed his eyes, his big arms crossing around her back and his big hands splaying flat on her bare skin that was exposed by the slinky cut dress.

The hug was a second too long, awkward for Sarah, who began pulling away.

As they separated the man brushed the fabric the whole way from her ribs to her upper thigh, past her panty-line, which was not there, and then finally drew back his meat hooks to his side.

Wolf stood and slapped the man’s back, hard enough for a hollow thump to echo through the dining room, silencing the nearby tables.

“Hey, there. I’m Dave.”

The man turned quickly, like he was suddenly in a fight.

Wolf gazed lazily into the man’s blue eyes.

There was movement and gasps of astonishment coming from behind Wolf, and when he looked down he saw that his chair had careened into a woman’s back. “Oh, I’m sorry ma’am.”

The woman looked up at him with exasperation and turned back around to face her husband, who was now glaring up at Wolf.

Wolf looked back at their visitor and narrowed his eyes. “And you are?”

The man mirrored Wolf’s glare and one side of his chiseled mouth rose slightly. “The name’s Carter. Carter Willis.” He broke into a disarming, politician smile and extended a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Wolf looked at the man’s hand for a second and then at Sarah.

Sarah sank down into her chair and took a sip of her water.

Wolf came in with knuckle-crunching force, but found the man’s grip too hard to dent. The shake was the same awkward amount of time as the hug had been, and then they let go.

“Well, see ya around, Carter.”

Carter looked down at Sarah. He blew air from his lips and glanced at Wolf. “See you around,” he said to Sarah. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff.”

Wolf twisted in his seat as he watched the man stroll away.

The rest of the meal was eaten in complete silence. The couple next to them was even sucked into the abyss of awkwardness, and ended up eating fast, refusing desert and getting out of there as soon as humanly possible.

Wolf had not enjoyed his steak, not with so much adrenaline pumping through his veins. He was bad company, too, because he couldn’t find any words worth saying. So he finished his food, downed his glass of wine, and signaled the waiter for the check.

They refused the desert menu in silence, paid in silence, and then left in silence, into the cold thin air on top of the mountain.

“I don’t know what that was in there,” Wolf said.

“That’s right,” she said with a hard tone. “You don’t.”

Wolf looked at her. She held her gaze in front of her, crunching along the wet rocky earth of the ridgeline toward the waiting snow cat.

Scott Reed, Deputy Patterson’s boyfriend for the last year, saw them coming and smiled wide. His smile vanished as quickly as it had formed when he saw Wolf and Sarah’s dark mood.

The cat ride and gondola ride were spent with a wedge of silence between them. The car ride was the same, and as Wolf turned onto Beacon Light Road and toward Sarah’s new three bedroom three bath overlooking the east side of town, the monotonous silence was shattered by the beep of Wolf’s phone. He picked it up and read the screen. It was a text from Dr. Lorber that read: Nick Pollard confirmed with dental records.

“What’s that?” Sarah asked, as if the last hour had been a cap to the perfect evening.

With a frown he dropped the phone and pulled over. The tires scraped to a stop and he turned toward her.

“What did I do? A scumbag comes up to our table, obviously eyeing you up, gropes you right in front of me and then I’m supposed to take it? Supposed to be grateful to meet the guy?”

She shook her head and looked over at him. “You think that’s what happened?”

Wolf blinked. “Something else happened?”

She inhaled and leaned her head back, closing her eyes in exasperation. “That man, Carter Willis, is an interior designer that we worked with for one of our projects in Aspen. He’s one of the best.” She looked at Wolf and raised her eyebrows. “And he’s also gay.”

Wolf frowned and looked out the windshield. “What? The guy might as well have grabbed your ass.”

Sarah shook her head again. “I … knew this was too good to be true.”

“And what do you mean by that?”

“This. Us.” She twirled her hands around. “We … we had our run, and every single time it looks like we’re going to make a good go of it—every single time since you went off in the Army, mind you—something goes wrong. For the longest time, we throw some wrench into the gears of our relationship, or some gay guy comes up to our table in the worst possible moment and ruins the whole mood. Or some … bitch from the FBI comes and sleeps with you for months. Or …” she shook her head.

“Or you tell me you cheated on me with some guy when I was in the Army, so whenever I see some guy like that give you a groping—a friendly hug, sorry—I can’t help but wonder if I’m meeting that guy.”

“David!” Her voice rose to a yell. “How many times do I have to apologize for my mistake?”

Wolf exhaled and gripped the wheel. “Maybe Jack knows something we don’t.”

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

Wolf put the truck in gear and drove.

Chapter 6

Wolf pulled down the sloping driveway and stopped in front of Sarah’s house.

“Good night,” Sarah said, stepping out the passenger door and slamming it before he had a chance to respond.

His headlights reflected on the front bay windows, and his heart skipped when he saw that Jack was inside squinting against the onslaught of light, watching the whole situation unfold.

Wolf was not overly surprised. Jack lived with his mother now that she’d purchased her own place, finally moving out on her own and out of her parents’ house, but Christ. It was Friday night and he was thirteen years old. Wasn’t he out with his friends?

Wolf exhaled. Jack’s grim expression said it all. It was as if he was watching a bad movie scene again—his mother turning his back on his father, their relationship a hopeless mess, and his dream for his mother and father to get back together so they might one day have a regular family evaporating into mist once again.

It was heart-breaking for Wolf to see all that in the course of one glance.

Jack strolled along the inside of the window toward the front door and greeted his mother as she stormed inside, and then looked out at Wolf.

Wolf shut off his headlights, rolled down his window and leaned out. “Hey.”

Jack lifted his chin and stepped out onto the pavement in his socks. “Hey, dad.”

“What’s going on? Not out doing something tonight?”

Jack stopped, flipping his head to one side to move his bangs out of the way. “Brian’s downstairs. We’re playin’ vids. I was just getting some food for us in the kitchen and saw you pull up.” He looked back toward the house. “Nice date for you and mom, huh?”

Wolf looked at his son and pulled his mouth into a thin line. “Oh yeah, you guys have that football camp tomorrow up in Vail. That’s why you aren’t out at a movie or something.”

Jack nodded, looking up into the sky at nothing in particular.

Wolf nodded. “Well, be careful, all right? You’ve grown a foot since last fall, but that doesn’t make you invincible.” He poked a finger into Jack’s ribs. “You’re a freaking stick.”

Jack slapped Wolf’s hand away and smiled. “I’m bulking up.”

Wolf smiled at the crack in his son’s voice. If it weren’t such a harrowing experience for his son already, Wolf would have laughed out loud at the audacity of his son’s transformation as he underwent puberty, springing up from five foot nothing to over six feet tall in the course of nine months and acquiring the voice of Barry White. And Jack still complained about pains in his legs. The kid was going to surpass Wolf in no time.

“I’m not going to be able to make it up to the camp. Sorry.”

“Yeah, I heard about the bodies at the lake. It’s all over the news.”

Wolf frowned. Damn it. That had been a quick reaction by the media, and he still hadn’t told the Pollards about Nick’s body. Hell, he’d only just confirmed the body’s ID. He looked at the glowing clock on his dash and wondered if he should be acting. But it was late. Almost ten pm. He would talk to the Pollards first thing in the morning.

“Dad?”

Wolf turned to Jack. “What?”

“Nothing.” The disappointment on his face told Wolf everything.

“Look. Jack. Your mom and I …”

Jack held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I know. You guys both love me.” He slapped Wolf’s hood and walked back toward the front door.

“I love you,” Wolf called after him. “Have a good weekend. Give me a call and tell me how the camp went. Or give me a call during.”

Jack waved over his head without turning and disappeared inside.

Wolf stared at the closing door, then flipped on his headlights and backed away.

“Oh! That’s what I’m talking about!” Wolf watched the ex-sheriff of Sluice County, Harold Burton, lean back on his bar stool and pour a brown shot of liquid down his throat, slam it on the bar counter and wipe his mouth. His hand shot up in a fist and his eyes clinched shut. “Ahhh, I’ll take another beer, please sire.”

Jerry Blackman, owner of Beer Goggles Bar and Grill, stood behind the counter. “How many is that you’ve had?”

“I’ve got a cab on retainer.”

Wolf came up next to Burton and leaned his elbows on the bar. “Yeah, I bet you do.”

“Oh!” Bob Fitzgerald, one of Hal Burton’s drinking buddies pointed at Wolf and covered his mouth. “Busted!”

Burton swiveled and burst out laughing. He gripped Wolf in a vicious headlock and started scrubbing his hair. “This guy is my boy! Get him one, too!”

Wolf escaped Burton’s painful embrace and smoothed his hair.

Looking resigned and exhausted, Jerry raised his eyebrows at Wolf.

Wolf nodded. “I’ll take a Newcastle.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!” Burton repeated, slapping the counter.

“Wow, I didn’t expect to see you drinking with such aggression. What happened? Cheryl leave you?”

Burton’s smile faded as he reached for the next draft beer that sloshed in front of him. His face was red and puffy, like he’d just been upside down for an hour, and his walrus mustache was wet. “Nah. She’s outta town. She gets home Tuesday. She’ll be none the wiser.”

Wolf smiled to himself. After leaving Sarah’s he’d called Burton on his cell phone, and when he hadn’t gotten an answer he had called Burton’s wife, Cheryl. She’d pointed him straight here. She may have been out of the state visiting her sister, but she was as aware of her husband’s predictable movements as if he wore an ankle monitor.

Jerry pushed a dripping bottle in front of Wolf and waved him away when Wolf pulled out his wallet.

Wolf watched Jerry leave down the back of the bar, swerving in between another bartender and a bar back frantically stacking glasses. The speakers blared some jam-band music Wolf had never heard—two electric guitars, bass, drums and keyboards. It was ten o’clock, and the weekend crowd was swollen and alive, like the Chataqua River that flowed outside the rear windows.

He put a five on the counter and took a sip. It was ice cold, and with the mood he was in, tasted like he could sit and drink six of them.

“What’s goin’ on?” Burton looked at his watch, did some drunken mathematics in his head and looked back up at Wolf. “I thought you were with Sarah tonight? It’s early, ain’t it?”

“No, not tonight.” Wolf lied, taking another sip. “Listen, I have to talk to you.”

“Shoot.” Burton swilled his beer.

Wolf stared at him.

“Oh, like in private?” Burton turned to the back of the room. “There’s a booth … you wanna go there?”

Wolf sat across from Burton in a rear booth by the windows. The pleather booth cushion squeaked as he looked out the window at the river below. The light of a full moon reflected off the shifting rapids of the raging water, which was running high now that it was the peak of melt-season. A few warm days in a row and this building might be swept down the river.

“Runnin’ high.” Burton read his thoughts.

Wolf turned to him. “We found Nick Pollard today.”

Burton lifted his beer, took a sip, and then clacked it on the table hard, beer splattering out onto the table and into Wolf’s lap.

“Shit,” Wolf said as he scooted to the side.

“Shit! I’m sorry!” Burton raked the spilled beer back towards him with his hairy arm, squeegeeing it onto the booth seat next to him.

Wolf looked at Burton closer, into the glossy, half-closed eyes, and saw there was little consciousness left in the man. Burton in a bar was like a dog locked in a room with a fifty-pound bag of dog-food; he was going to get all he could ingest, until he could ingest no more.

“You found him?” Burton said, rubbing a hand over his silver buzz-cut hair. “Where?”

Wolf wiped the rest of the table with some napkins. “In the lake.”

Burton leaned back and clapped his hands. “In the lake!”

Wolf looked around. A table of men and women were staring at them, laughing.

“What the hell you lookin’ at scrubs?” Burton’s voice was like a train horn.

Their faces dropped and they looked at their table.

Wolf raised his eyebrows. “You done?”

“With what?” Burton grabbed his own handful of napkins and helped wiped the mess, leaving wet beads on the tabletop.

Wolf waited patiently until he finished.

“In the lake. God damn, your dad was right.”

“About what?”

“Your dad scuba dove down there, oh … must have been five times. Never found anything. It was too deep. Couldn’t get to where he wanted to go.”

“He did?” Wolf grabbed another wad of napkins and finished Burton’s clean job. “How did he know where to dive?”

“The moon guy.” Burton looked down into his beer and burped, then took another swig.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The guy who was drawing the moon. He had a telescope and would sit there and draw it. Kind a’ crazy.” Burton’s eyes closed halfway and then he widened them. “A Vietnam vet, lives up on the lake, on top of that cliff.”

Wolf stretched his neck. “Can you start from the beginning? I wanna know what you guys knew back then. Tell me about Nick Pollard. The whole thing.”

“The whole file’s in records.”

“Yeah, I know. But I wanna hear it from you.”

“Well, I’m gonna need another beer for that. This one’s—”

Wolf slid his bottle in front of him.

Burton gripped it lightly and settled back into the seat. “Let’s see. It was the fifth of July when Nick’s mom called us. Afternoon. Said her son never came home the night before. We said, so what? The kid was a misfit. One of those kids always runnin’ with the wrong crowd. Druggie. Weed, probably coke, meth.”

“Probably?”

Burton shrugged. “Ran with the crowd. Like I said.” He sipped his beer and then gazed out the window for a few seconds. When he looked at Wolf again he broke into a big smile. “It’s good to—”

“Nick Pollard’s mother called you. You guys checked on it, I’m assuming?”

“Yeah. Yeah. We … she said he went up to Cold Lake, Nick, because he was dating a girl who lived up there. Went up to watch the fireworks show with her. And then he never came back.”

“Who was the girl?”

“Kimber. Kimber … Grey, with an ‘e’. We went up and talked to her and her family that afternoon. I me’member they were pretty standoffed. Standoffish. Said they ne’er saw him that night. Said he musta been lyin’ to his mother.” Burton took another swill and put the bottle down on a wet napkin so it was teetering at an angle.

Wolf stabilized it. “And then what?”

“We … oh God I’m drunk. I’m gonna be hurtin’ tomorrow. Every time—”

“And then what?”

Burton looked at him, twisting his face with ridiculous effort. “Where was I?”

Wolf leaned back. “Nick Pollard’s mother says Nick went up to visit Kimber Grey at her cabin on the lake. The Greys said they never saw him. What did you think about that?”

“But they were fuckin’ lyin’!” Burton’s train horn voice triggered sideways glances, and as the speakers played the opening bars of a familiar bluegrass tune, Wolf’s knuckles played tabletop percussion.  His abrupt palm slap shook Burton back to the conversation.  “Who was lying?”

Burton looked over at a different table of people across the room and his eyes went mean.

“All right. I’m taking you home.”

“I’ve got a cab on retainer.”

“Let’s go.”

Wolf mimed to Jerry that he was taking Burton home. Jerry nodded, held up Burton’s credit card and put it in a drawer. Wolf gave him the thumbs up.

The screen door squeaked and slapped shut behind them, and Burton stumbled over a knot of grass and landed onto his knees on the wet gravel lot.

“Shit!” He got up, pushing Wolf’s hand aside, and stumbled forward, barely putting his arms down in time to break his fall. By the time he got into Wolf’s truck the old man’s bloodied, pasty forearms looked like candy canes.

“You going to be all right?” Wolf eyed the pile of flesh and bones in his passenger seat.

“Yeah. We worked that case.” Burton lifted an index finger.

“Yeah.” Wolf shook his head and reversed out of his spot.

Burton folded his arms and burrowed himself against the dangling, unused seatbelt. Within moments, Wolf heard the old man snoring.

Wolf pulled through the arch to his ranch at 11:18 p.m. to a familiar sight. The one story L-shaped house and barn off to the side—built by his father a lifetime ago and completely rebuilt after an explosion three years prior—stood lonely in the moonlight with black holes for windows. He was used to it—coming home after dark to a dark house. He liked solitude, but loneliness was niggling at him tonight.

But there was something different after all. He leaned forward and squinted when he saw the shiny paint of Sarah’s black Toyota 4runner in the circle drive. His longing for company turned to anticipation. Looking inside the cab of her vehicle as he slowed to a stop, Wolf saw it was empty.

Pulling forward, he parked in the carport and got out.

He stood and stared at Sarah’s SUV through the fog of his breath, listening to the sounds of the forest to the rear of the house. A symphony of crickets chirped and he heard an owl somewhere in the distance, but there were no patter or squeak of footsteps inside.

The hinges complained as he pushed open the kitchen door and stepped inside, and he thought it was warmer than he was used to. The thermostat had definitely been raised. The kitchen and the entire house beyond were dark. Curtains were drawn in the living room, blocking out the glint of the full moon.

A faint parallelogram of light showed his bedroom door as open, moonlight illuminating the interior.

“Sarah?” He called.

There was no answer.

“Sarah! You there?”

Wolf walked fast to the rear of the house, his pulse quickening with each step. Why wasn’t she answering? Something was wrong.

He pulled the chain to the ceiling fan hanging in his family room as he walked under it, and had to squint at the sudden brightness. When he got to his room he reached around the corner and flipped on the light switch, like he was a cat pouncing to catch his prey.

The light went on and he saw what awaited him.

Sarah sat on his bed, the sheets pulled up to her armpits. She dug her fists into her eyes and bared her teeth. “Ah, turn that off.”

Wolf took a deep breath and stared at her. “What the hell are you doing?”

She made a visor with her hands and looked at him, her expression softening. “I … wanted to see you. To say I’m sorry. Can you please turn that off?”

Wolf flipped the switch and the room went dark again.

The sheets rustled, and then Sarah was in front of him, wrapping her naked body around him, locking her wet lips over his, plunging her soft tongue into his mouth.

She pulled back and pushed him. “Ah! You’re freezing!”

Through the swimming circles of light in Wolf’s vision, he watched her stark naked figure jump back onto the bed, lie down, and pull the sheets over her head.

He smiled, pulled his clothes off and climbed in after her.

Chapter 7

Wolf woke up from a dreamless sleep, and found himself alone in bed. The clock said 7:14 a.m.. He rolled to his side and rubbed his eyes, wondering for a second if he’d imagined the night before, then he caught sight of Sarah’s jeans, t-shirt, sweater and underwear neatly folded on the chair in the corner and he smiled, remembering the night with flashes of pulse-quickening images and sensations.

He got up and pulled on his boxer shorts, then walked toward the noise in the kitchen.

Sarah paced by the opening of the kitchen straight ahead and then poked her head back into view. She was wearing a red and black flannel shirt of his with nothing on underneath.

“I’m making French toast,” she said with a smile.

Wolf walked into the kitchen and pulled her into his arms. After a few moments of kissing she dropped the spatula and they made their way back into the bedroom.

They made love for ten minutes until the smoke alarm squealed because of the smoke billowing off the black flaming square of egg-covered toast in the pan. Wolf ran into the kitchen, dumped it in the sink, ran back to the bedroom and they made love for another ten minutes, with such hunger and passion Wolf found it was impossible to contain the noises coming out of his mouth, and Sarah didn’t seem to have a sound filter working in her brain either. It was like they were animals, making up for lost time, letting out years of pent up tension in a few short, unimaginably hot minutes.

An hour later Wolf drove down the dirt road to town, his SUV passing through vivid memories of Sarah’s naked body, through the smells of her neck behind her ear, and the sounds of her panting, Wolf not once seeing the road in front of him. Not once registering anything in the outside world.

When he reached the stop sign at highway 734 running into town, with supreme reluctance, like a crack addict saying no to a hit off the pipe, he shifted his thoughts from Sarah to the seven severed heads in plastic bags they’d pulled out of the lake. And then to the Pollards, who had been waiting twenty-two years to learn the fate of their missing son.

He turned down the radio. The engine idling at a soft purr, Wolf looked left and right, considering heading south toward the ski resort and Hal Burton’s house. The man would still be in bed; fully clothed just the way Wolf had left him last night. Angry. Worthless until he’d slept off the booze. Wolf twisted the wheel right and headed into town.

Chapter 8

Private Investigator William Van Wyke was used to pushback, so he sat back in the chair and waited patiently for his chance to parry.

“Whatever you think you’re doing, it won’t work with me.” The slick-dressed man looked at his gold Rolex and stood up from behind his desk. “It’s clear you are blowing smoke up my ass. Now get up, and get the hell out of my office. And let me tell you something else. You listen real, real good. If you want to do contract work for any law firms in Boise any longer, or any other firm in the state of Idaho … scratch that,”—he leaned forward and hissed—“If you want to live—”

William Van Wyke P.I. slapped the manila folder on the mahogany desk and sat back with a frown. “If I want to live? What did you say?”

The City Council Chairman and President shut his mouth, staring at the manila folder. He glanced at Van Wyke and then pulled the folder across the desk.

Van Wyke watched the Chairman’s eyes as he twisted and opened it, and it was even better than Van Wyke had imagined it would be.

“What the …”—the chairman picked up the color photo prints and gaped—“How the hell did you…?” His eyes landed on Van Wyke’s. The color drained from the Chairman’s face. He wiped his forehead and with a crumple of leather collapsed back into his chair.

“Did you see that last one? You’re a swallower. Interesting. Shit doesn’t just spew out of your mouth, it goes the other way, too.” Van Wyke bent over and picked up his shoulder bag and stood.

“What do you want? Are you working for Smith?”

“No.” Van Wyke slung the strap over his head and took a step closer to the desk. His voice dropped and he lowered his chin. “But your opponent in the race for Senate may get a folder exactly like this in his mailbox. Now how’s that going to look? A man like you, with your firm anti-gay message as the backbone of your campaign in the reddest state in the west, found to be sucking cock in a back alley at four in the morning? You piece of shit hypocrite. No, I don’t work for Smith. I work for me. I’ll be in touch with my demands, and I suggest you act swiftly.” He leaned onto the desk and bent closer. “And let me tell you, I’ve operated in a lot seedier alleys than that one where you liaise with your diseased fun-boy, and I know a lot of men who would slit your throat and drop you in the center of Payette Lake in a second if I told them to. Not if I asked, if I told them. Got it?”

The Chairman swallowed and his voice cracked. “How much we talking here?”

Van Wyke slowed to a stop. His plan was to make the man wait, to let the man shake overnight in his oversized bed while his ugly wife slept next to him, text him in the morning while he was at church, pretending to be a good Christian. That would have been perfect, but Van Wyke was also on a tight deadline.

“One.”

“One? Hundred thousa—”

“Million.”

“What? I … I don’t have—”

“By Thursday.”

“My God. What? I don’t have that kind of cash just lying around. I’d need to sell my house to get that kind of money. I have two children in Ivy League schools. I—”

“Thursday.” Van Wyke turned and walked toward the door.

“Okay, okay. Wait. Wait. I can give you two hundred thousand. I can get that. I can get that Monday. I just can’t do a million. I just can’t.”

“That’s a shame.” Van Wyke turned back to the polished door. “Good luck in the race.”

“Wait, wait.” Boise City Council Chairman Phillip Chatham all but crawled around his desk. “Please. I can get you more. It’s just not going to be now. You have to wait until I’m inside. Then I’ll be slicing the pie. Then I can get more. I can … just don’t.” He held out both hands. “Please. Don’t.”

Van Wyke stood silent and waited for five ticks on the grandfather clock that stood against the wall.

“Two hundred. Monday,” he said. “I’ll contact you from the same number. You’d better answer.”

Van Wyke walked out of the building into a sunny Saturday morning. The air was damp, heavy with moisture sliding in from Washington and Oregon, but not nearly as heavy as his thoughts.

He opened the door to his black Mercedes Benz M-Class SUV and sat on the soft, warm leather.

With an exhale, he pulled out his phone and dialed.

“Yeah.”

“Hey. It’s me.”

“Who?”

“Van Wyke.”

“Who?”

Van Wyke chittered a nervous laugh and rubbed his eyes.

“What do you want?” The voice was evil sounding today. With every passing day, the man’s voice on the other side of the line had dropped to greater depths of malice.

“I’d like to discuss a proposal.”

Silence.

“I can get you two-hundred thousand by Tuesday. Then I would like to discuss a future agreement for the remainder, plus interest.”

There was no answer, and then there was a static tick, and then there was a dial tone.

He threw the phone into the floorboards of the passenger seat, his breath wheezing, his throat constricting, his heart hammering out of his shirt. For five minutes he breathed slowly, eyes closed, trying to calm down enough so he could drive home. If only things had turned out differently. There were so many instances in his life where he’d dealt with the wrong people, taken the wrong turn, but he’d always found his way back, his way out of trouble. How the hell did he get himself into this? How did he manage to get on the wrong side of such dangerous men in Boise, Idaho? Idaho? There were more animals than people here, damn it. He was the man who dug up the dirt on other people, not shoveled himself under it.

He clenched his teeth. It was that bitch, with her perfect body, and her perfect face. And her perfect lies. Rage inside him made him shake like a boiling pot.

There were no other opportunities. This City Councilman was his last hope, and now the hope was gone.

He jumped in his seat as someone knocked on the glass next to his head. Shit. He relaxed when he saw the black man’s face outside his window.

“Hey. What’s up?” Darnell’s voice was muffled.

Regaining his composure, Van Wyke lowered the window.

“Mind if I come in?” Darnell said in that eager tone of voice he used when he had something for Van Wyke.

“I’m not in the mood right now for work. Can’t this wait until Monday?”

Darnell laughed and then looked confused. Van Wyke had always told his apprentice that a P.I. worth the fees he charged worked seven days a week.

“A P.I. worth the fees you charge—”

“Yeah, yeah. Get in.”

Darnell walked around the front of the SUV, and Van Wyke took the opportunity to pick up his phone off the floor mat.

Van Wyke’s protégé got into the passenger seat in a fluid, athletic movement.

At five foot ten and two hundred pounds of pure muscle, the high school dropout from Chicago could have played division two basketball or football had he wanted to, had he continued on with high school and gone to college, but the young man sitting in the passenger seat had not had the same opportunities as Van Wyke growing up.

While Van Wyke grew up playing junior golf, studying, and fishing on the wide Snake River, rowing himself out into the water when he needed to escape from his alcoholic father, Darnell sold crack cocaine on Cabrini Green street corners, dodging bullets daily. His escape: hiding inside the Lincoln Park High School library.

Van Wyke had been born into opportunity, and Darnell had made his own, starting with finally getting “out”. “Out” being Boise, Idaho, because it had been the whitest place he could think of to start over when his mother had died of cancer. Darnell had never known his father.

Coming to Idaho, Darnell had found it difficult to find a job. He was black, and everyone else was not. He was alone, and everyone else had families. He was homeless, and everyone else had warm homes to go to. But somehow he’d managed to defy astronomical odds by talking his way into becoming a caddy at the Sandy Ranch Resort in Coeur d’Alene. Apparently when he’d gotten the idea he wanted to make big bucks at the golf course, he’d sat himself in the Boise Library for days on end, watching YouTube videos on the public computers and reading books, and then created a history for himself as an accomplished golfer and caddy.

The first golfer Darnell ever caddied for had been William Van Wyke, who had been on a three-day outing with a junior partner in a law firm he did investigative work for.

Van Wyke had smoked Darnell out as a fraud on the first hole, but he’d been intrigued more than angry, and by the end of the trip, and four rounds of golf later, he knew Darnell’s entire story, and found he had connected with the troubled, extremely determined young man.

“I could use an assistant like you,” he’d told Darnell back then. So Darnell came south with Van Wyke, and that was the beginning of his now three-year-long apprenticeship to become a qualified private investigator offering services to some of the most prestigious law firms in Boise, Washington, Oregon, and Montana.

“Everything cool?” Darnell asked.

“Yeah.” All that opportunity, and Van Wyke had pissed it away. He looked away from Darnell, hoping the sudden envy of his apprentice was invisible.

“The Chatham thing work out?”

“Yeah. Your pics were … persuasive.”

“But? He doesn’t have the cash.”

Van Wyke exhaled and leaned his head back. “You’re a smart man.”

“Well, I’ve got something very interesting for you to check out.”

Van Wyke remained unmoved, physically or mentally, leaning back on his headrest with closed eyes. He heard Darnell unzip his bag and the brush of him pulling out his laptop, and then a tiny beep as it powered on.

“Shit … you have to move closer to the building. No Wi-Fi signal here.”

Van Wyke shook his head. “Hey, listen. I can’t check out YouTube videos right now with you. I’ve got a lot of stuff to figure out.”

Darnell stared at him in silence until Van Wyke turned to meet his gaze.

Darnell’s brown eyes were dead serious. “You need to see this YouTube video.”

Van Wyke did as he was told, driving over and parking near the entrance to the building.

Council Chairman Chatham was walking out of the building, and flinched at the sight of them in the Mercedes, then he narrowed his eyes and shuffled off.

“He don’t look happy.” Darnell chuckled and clicked open a browser window.

After a quick Google search a news website called Channel 8 Rocky Mountain Action News materialized and Darnell clicked a button.

“What’s this?”

Darnell looked at him. “I remember a story you told me once about a guy who you helped liquidate all his assets in one day. Do you remember that?”

Van Wyke frowned at looked at him. “Yes?”

“And then you said he burned his house down and skipped town before paying you?”

“No. His house was the payment. He signed the deed over to me and then burned it down, and then skipped town. Get to the point.” Van Wyke’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Here you go.” Darnell pecked the laptop and twisted the screen towards him.

“…here at Cold Lake, twenty-seven miles northwest of Rocky Points, Colorado, where Sluice County law enforcement and rescue team divers have been working through the afternoon yesterday, and then all through the night, and now are resuming their work this morning, searching the bottom of the lake for what we are being told are multiple dead bodies. Now, I’d like to stress to our viewers now that I will be describing in detail the condition of these bodies, which may not be suitable for children viewers…”

Van Wyke’s curiosity was piqued. His pulse began to race.

“…severed heads, and torsos that have been sliced open. According to our sources, the eyes of the heads have been removed. All in all, a grim find by a local fisherman, and, the question is now, could this be the break local law enforcement has needed to crack a cold-case that has stumped everyone for decades?”

The camera panned out revealing a tall man with a hunter-orange hat standing next to the reporter. “I have with me here the man who was fishing and actually snagged one of the severed heads with his fishing hook, and then brought it back into his boat. Mr. Oliver Chevalier. Sir, can you—”

Darnell clicked the button to stop the video and looked at Van Wyke.

Van Wyke was staring out the window in deep thought. “Kipling. My God, you found him.” He felt energized, and then he snapped his head toward Darnell. “Has the Boise Sheriff’s Department gotten hold of this?”

Darnell shrugged. “I don’t know. How’m I supposed to check without tipping them off? They would swarm down there.”

Van Wyke rubbed his face, unblinking, and then after a full minute looked over at Darnell. “How quick can we get to Colorado?”

“Flying?”

“Driving.”

Darnell shook his head. “Sh …” He went to an internet map and plotted out the course. “Boise … to … Rocky Points, Colorado … Eleven hours, nineteen minutes, according to this.”

Van Wyke checked his watch and smiled with renewed hope that he might live through the week. “That means ten and a half the way I drive. That puts us there before sundown tonight. You ready for a road trip to Colorado?”

Darnell pulled his seatbelt across his chest. “Do I have a choice?”

“No.” Van Wyke reversed out of the spot and in front of a Jaguar F-Type sports car. He smiled when he saw in his rearview that it was Phillip Chatham stewing behind the wheel.

Van Wyke stopped, reached over and checked the glove box. The Kimber Ultra Carry II .45 caliber sat where he knew it would, the clip fully loaded, and he had a box of rounds in the spare wheel compartment. He pushed the glove box closed and looked at Darnell.

“You packing?”

Darnell blew air between his lips and gazed out his window. Of course he was. You couldn’t take the projects of Chicago out of Darnell.

With a push of the accelerator, they screeched out of the lot and were on their way to the Rocky Mountains.

Chapter 9

“Whoa.” Rachette leaned forward in the passenger seat and spat into an empty Coke can. “Now that’s a shithole.”

Wolf turned off the SUV’s engine in front of Wendy Pollard’s residence, silently agreeing with Rachette’s assessment of the property. He got out.

The sky was stone gray and the air damp cold, clouds having rolled in overnight. In the distance, a horizontal sliver of white cloud hung motionless against the pine-covered mountains, the tops of which were obscured by cloud. A light, almost invisible mist swirled in the air, moistening Wolf’s face.

“Let me do the talking if it comes up about the press.”

Rachette spit into the weeds. “You got it.”

Mrs. Pollard’s husband had left her three decades ago, leaving his wife and two boys to grow up in a singlewide trailer in a rental park next to the river. Of course, Nick had been missing for years, and according to Deputy Wilson, who knew the Pollards’ history as if it were common sense knowledge, Mrs. Pollard’s oldest son, Ken, left well before Nick went missing. Ken had not gone far, though, moving into a small rental apartment in downtown Rocky Points and taking a job at one of the two garages in town as a mechanic.

The off-white paint of the place was cracked and flaking off everywhere, what was left of it clinging like tissue paper, the exposed surface underneath brown and running streaks down the sides. The small yard in front was knee-high grass, weeds, and wildflowers that looked to have never been cut by a mower. Wolf could only imagine what the inside looked like. Unfortunately, the weather was conniving to make sure they would see first-hand.

Wolf and Rachette stepped to the metal door and knocked.

A rustle inside, and then the door opened and closed, then opened again.

Wendy Pollard poked her head out, followed by the scent of vodka. She squinted as if it were sunny, her hair was messy and matted on one side, and she was tightly wrapped in a torn lime green robe.

“Mrs. Pollard?” Wolf asked.

“Yes. Hi, Sheriff Wolf.”

“This is Deputy Rachette. May we come in to speak with you?”

“Yes. Please, come in. I’m sorry for the mess.” She opened the door wider. “My son, Ken, is coming over. I called him after you guys called. He should have been here by now.” She shook her head and bit a fingernail.

Wolf stepped up the stair and Rachette followed him in. Inside was black shag carpet, crusted with dried mud at the entrance and littered with tiny particles of trash throughout. In the kitchen, which was a counter, sink, and cabinets on the far wall, was a pile of dirty dishes that looked about to crash to the floor if they stepped too hard, and there was a line of vodka bottles on the floor against the near wall.

“Please, take a seat if you like.” Wendy sniffed and wiped the corner of a reddened eye.

She gestured to a brown loveseat that sagged in the middle.

“No thanks,” Wolf said.

“I saw the news. Did you find him up there?” She stood looking up at Wolf with desperately wide eyes.

Wolf nodded. “I’m afraid so. We’ve confirmed dental records with Dr. Unruh in town.”

“Can I see him?”

Wolf looked down at his hands. “Ma’am, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. We really don’t need identification from you. It’s been a long—”

“Because his head was … I saw the news. I saw. I …” Wendy’s eyes dripped, and then she opened her mouth in a silent scream and buried her clenched fists in her eyes.

The first sound was a long moan. Body-wrenching sobs followed.

Wolf wanted to kill the person who had leaked the story, voiding any attempt to tactfully contact surviving family and friends. Instead, Mrs. Pollard’s 22-year nightmare emerged from hibernation and struck without warning on a television screen. Was one of the mutilated bodies her baby, Nick? Had she been so near him all these years? Unanswered questions and unresolved emotions undoubtedly choked her.

Wolf placed a hand on her shoulder as he made silent promises of retribution to God, the universe, and himself.

A car roared into the yard, and the driver braked hard. A car door slammed and hurried footfalls approached and the front door flew open. An overweight man in his forties with long hair and a beard barged inside.

“Mom,” he said.

“Ken Pollard?” Rachette asked.

Ken Pollard ignored Wolf and Rachette and walked to his mother, wrapping his arms around her. Wendy pulled her hands away from her face and wrapped them around her oldest son.

Rachette looked up at Wolf and Wolf gave him a nod. They both stepped back to a respectable distance and waited.

Wolf watched Ken cry just as hard as his mother, and he felt a wash of emotion pass through him. These people had been waiting for this moment for twenty-two years, and now it was here.

Ken glared at Wolf, and then at Rachette. What the hell kind of operation you guys running Dave? When were you going to tell us? It’s all over the news. I haven’t checked the mail. Maybe you sent us a postcard? Shit.”

Rachette sniffed. “Mr. Pollard, we—”

Wolf put a hand on Rachette’s shoulder. “I apologize to you Ken, and to you, too Mrs. Pollard. We wanted to confirm facts first and notify you second. The Medical Examiner made the positive ID late last night. It was my call to wait until this morning to notify you.”

Ken shook his head and gave his mother a quick embrace, and then stomped to the door and flung it open. “Get out. Please.”

“Ken, in order to find out who did this I need to speak to you guys. Ask you a few—”

“Your dad already did that a long time ago! Why don’t you go read his interview notes or whatever.” He shook his head. “My mom was horrified to hear about this on the news. So was I. Do you know how long last night was for us?”

Wolf wrung his ball cap in his hands and looked over at Rachette. “Let’s go.”

“Sheriff, it’s been twenty five minutes.” Rachette looked at his watch and then shoved his hand back in his jacket pocket and shivered. “Should we maybe, possibly, go review your father’s report? In the warmth of the station?”

Wolf stared at the front door of the Pollard’s trailer, the drizzle beading and dripping off the front of his ball cap. He ignored Rachette for the fifth time.

Rachette exhaled and hunkered under his coat collar. “Okay. Okay.”

The aluminum knob rattled and the door squeaked open. Ken Pollard stood with a resigned look, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth. He opened an umbrella and gave it to his mother, who materialized in the doorway next to him with her own cigarette.

Silently they stepped down to the front lawn.

“I thought he left us at first.” Ken Pollard flicked open a well-used Zippo lighter and lit his mother’s cigarette and then his own. He snapped it closed and took a deep drag. “Like, ran away. When they couldn’t find his truck, it was like he’d just ditched out on us.” Ken looked into the distance. His lip sneered upward and then he shook his head, returning to the present moment. “At least I was hopin’ that’s what happened. I was hopin’ this whole time he was sittin’ pretty in California somewhere. I was hopin’ that blood on the payphone was a red herring, or whatever you call it.”

Wendy Pollard exhaled her own drag and chewed her thumbnail in silence.

The light drizzle swept past them.

“Can you describe exactly what happened that last night you saw Nick, Mrs. Pollard?” Wolf asked.

She looked up and nodded with resignation. “It’s just like I told your father, it was Parker Grey, that girl’s father. He did it. The crazy asshole.” She took a drag with a shaking hand.

“What did Nick say he was going to do that night?” Wolf asked.

Mrs. Pollard looked at Wolf with a blank stare. “He said he was going up to Cold Lake … he was going to meet Kimber. He’d been talking about Kimber all week, Kimber this, Kimber that. I told him to bring her over, said I wanted to meet her. He said he was going to and to get off his back.” She fought off another wave of emotion with a drag of cigarette. “Then he got all dolled up, put on some cologne, took his truck and left. Never came back.”

“You said he was going to meet her?” Rachette asked. “So, he was meeting her in town? And then they were going to go up to the lake?”

She frowned. “No … I don’t know. I don’t remember. I think he was just going up to her place. Her house. To watch the fireworks they have up at the marina every year. He said they had a boat they were going to go on.”

“What about his friends?” Wolf asked. “Did he say he was going to be with them?”

Ken grunted. “His friends. Remember those pieces of work? I went and talked to them when they couldn’t find him. They said they weren’t with Nick, and they all heard the same thing from him—that he was going up to Cold Lake to see Kimber Grey.”

“Who were his friends you talked to?” Wolf asked.

“Luke Hannigan. Brad Skelty. Called him Skelter back then. Real pieces of shit. Druggies. I checked in on their stories. Made sure they didn’t just sell off my bro’s truck and buy drugs with the money or something.”

Wolf jotted the names on his notepad. He vaguely remembered the two kids as boys, but knew them well enough now that they were men. They hadn’t cleaned up at all since. Brad Skelty had two DUIs, and when the pot laws of Colorado took effect, Hannigan was one of the first to get a grow license in town, and his sudden, instant, and large, supply was a point of contention with the Sheriff’s Department, but they had no usable evidence to move on him yet.

“And you believed they were telling you the truth?” Wolf asked Ken.

Ken smiled mirthlessly. “Yeah after I did my own investigation, and then roughed em’ up pretty good.” He raised an eyebrow and stared at Wolf. His fists balled up, and then he shook his head. “They were telling the truth.”

“You roughed em’ up pretty good, huh?” Rachette said.

Ken stared at Rachette, his nostrils flared. “Yeah! That’s right, I did.”

“And why do you think it was Kimber’s father, Mrs. Pollard?” Wolf asked.

“Because it was,” She scoffed. “Your father figured out the guy was crazy. Schizo. Took meds and everything. Parker Grey did it. He was up at the marina that night with his family, and then he left that night, went and killed my boy, and then went back. Left his family right there at the marina and took off. To go kill my son. And then he disappears the day after your dad goes to talk to him? Up and walks away from his family? Then the mother disappears on top of that?” She took a drag, locking eyes with Wolf. “Oh, it was him. And now the way you found Nick? And where? That’s just off shore from the Grey’s cabin, for Chrissakes.”

Wolf asked, “Ken, did you talk to the Greys?”

Ken peeled his eyes from Rachette and looked at Wolf. “Yeah. I talked to them. Your dad had his dick in his hand, so I had—”

“Hey, why don’t you watch your mouth and have a little respect there, Ken?” Rachette puffed his chest and took a step forward.

Wolf held up his hands. “Both of you calm down.”

Rachette sneered and shook his head.

“Ken,” Wolf softened his voice, “We’re trying to figure all this out once and for all.”

“They said he never showed up that night. Kimber said she never even had a date with him lined up. They were all lying. Every one of em’.”

Mrs. Pollard shook her head. “Sheriff Wolf? You gonna find my baby’s killer?”

Wolf took a breath filled with second hand smoke and looked up at the clouds gliding past, so pregnant and low it looked like he could reach up and touch them.

Rachette cleared his throat. “Of course we’ll find him, ma’am.”

Wolf blinked at looked at Rachette, then back to Mrs. Pollard. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. If you can think of anything else, please give us a call.”

She bit her thumbnail and turned away.

Ken shook his head and turned his back on them, too.

Chapter 10

Wolf pulled the dusty CD rom case out of the cardboard box. It read:

Katherine Grey Interview (Wolf, Burton)

Kimber Grey Interview (Wolf, Burton)

With a small jolt he paused and stared at the black ink. It was his father’s handwriting. He stopped himself short of touching the ink and handed the case to Patterson.

She inserted the CD into her computer tower and they waited while it clicked and whirred.

“Coffee.” Rachette got up and walked to the back hallway. “Anyone else?” He emerged with the pot, filling his chipped blue and orange Denver Broncos mug.

“Yep.” Patterson said.

“Sure.” Wolf said.

Rachette filled Wolf’s mug. “Black.”

“Thanks.”

Rachette leaned over and poured coffee into Patterson’s mug. “And a double non-fat skinny mocha frap, with two pumps of vanilla and heated to one hundred twenty seven degrees.”

“Good one.” Patterson grabbed the mouse. “Saying frap implies it’s frozen…and yet you heated it to one hundred twenty seven degrees.” She brought up a media player window showing Katherine Grey sitting at a wooden table.

Rachette stood straight, unfazed. “You’re welcome.”

As Patterson maximized the video and pressed play, Wolf recognized the gouge in the side of the table on screen, and knew the interview took place in interrogation room B. The realization hit him—he was using all the same desks, tables, chairs, walking on the same carpet, that his father had all those many years ago. For an instant, he felt like he was with his father, but the warm feeling vanished as quickly as it had come.

Rachette returned and sat down.

The video was a less-than-HD recording; Katherine Grey, the mother of Kimber Grey and wife of supposed crazy-man Parker Grey, shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her image blurring and then sharpening as she moved.

Katherine was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, her brown eyes wide and attentive, slightly upturned at the edges. Her skin was pale, or perhaps it was the harsh light of the overhead lamp, and she had a small mole on her cheek, like a beauty mark, a matching genetic anomaly that her daughter, Kimber, had as well.

She wore a tank top blouse and had thin, wiry arms, the muscles rippling beneath her skin with the slightest of movements. Her jawline was razor-sharp. Zero fat on her body—the physique of someone who lived ruggedly in the mountains. Someone who lived on the remote shore of Cold Lake, Colorado—off the grid and off the land.

“Can you please state your name?” It was the voice of the late Sheriff Daniel Wolf, Wolf’s father.

“Oh, he sounds just like you,” Patterson whispered in awe.

Wolf heard the smack of Rachette back-handing her shoulder.

“…Grey,” Katherine Grey said.

“And can you tell me where you live?”

“I live up on the western shore of Cold Lake, in Cold Lake, Colorado.”

“And your address?”

Wolf could see that Katherine Grey’s hands were motionless in her lap as she spoke.

“…tell me what you were doing on the night of the fourth of July?” Wolf’s father asked.

“My husband, daughter, and I went over to the marina for the Fourth of July party, and the fireworks display.”

“And”—a pause, a shuffling of paper—“what time was that at?”

“They had a barbecue cook out … let’s see, we left at seven, got there like seven-fifteen.”

“Can you tell me when the fireworks were?”

“They were supposed to start at 9:30 pm. Whether or not they started on time, I couldn’t say. I didn’t keep track of time.”

“And your husband, Parker Grey, he was with you?”

“Yes.”

“And did he ever leave that night?”

“Yes.”

“Can you please explain?”

“He … got a phone call. Maureen McKenzie came out and told us, told him, that he had a phone call. He left, and then came back—”

“He left where?”

“Oh, sorry. He left to the bar, The Tackle Box, right there on the marina.”

“So someone called the bar for your father?”

“Yes.”

A pause. “Who called?”

“I don’t know.”

Another pause. “Was this during the fireworks display?”

“Yes.”

“Can you estimate how long after the beginning of the fireworks show that Maureen came out and told him he had a call?”

“Uh … I don’t know, ten minutes?”

“Okay. Please continue.”

“So he left for the phone call, and then he came back, probably just a couple minutes later. He was upset, clearly upset about something. I … asked him what was wrong, and he kind of just avoided the question and—”

“Avoided the question?”

“Well, he just said, Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. But I could see something was wrong, and then he said he was leaving, and he’d be back. I was confused, because I figured we’d be leaving with him, since we all came together and it was so late. But he just said he’d be back, and if he wasn’t back by midnight to get a ride back over with someone else. Then he got in the boat and drove away.”

“Did you ask who called him?”

“Yes. He wouldn’t’ say.”

There was the sound of a door opening and closing, and then a cough. “Would you like a cup of coffee, ma’am?”

It was Burton, with a lot less gravel in his voice than he had now.

She nodded, and a remarkably thin arm of Burton’s reached in and placed a cup of coffee in front of her.

After a brief pause, Wolf’s father cleared his throat. “And then what happened?”

“Well,” she took a sip of coffee with steady hands, “we watched the fireworks, and then hung out for another couple hours. By that time it was past midnight, and people were already pretty much streamed out of the place. I went into the bar and called our house. My daughter and I were just about to try and hitch a ride, when my husband came back.”

“In the boat?”

“Yes. In the boat.”

A pause. “Please continue.”

She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “It was just so weird when he finally showed up. He was wearing a different outfit. Different shirt, different jeans. I asked him about it, and he just ignored me. He was upset, so I dropped the line of questioning. He was so… serious the whole ride back. Never looked at Kimber or me.”

“And then what happened? When you got home?”

Katherine’s lip quivered. “We got home, and he went crazy. He was yelling at Kimber, and I was scared for her. I was so scared.” She exhaled and closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her cheek.

She looked up at Wolf’s father with sudden horror.

“I went outside to have a cigarette. To get out of the house. I couldn’t take listening to it. And … that’s when I saw a plastic bag on the ground next to the house. It was strange, because we never put trash alongside the house. You know you can’t do that with the wildlife up here. So I approached it and … then I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The blood. The bloody clothes.”

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and steeled herself.

“What bloody clothes?” Burton asked a little too forcefully.

She opened her eyes. “The clothes he was wearing before, earlier in the night, were in the bag. I opened it and looked inside. They were … caked in blood. It was so much. I freaked out, and ran back inside. I thought he might be killing my daughter.”

A scraping noise on the video pulled Katherine Grey’s gaze upward.

Burton’s crotch came into view as he leaned against the wall behind her. “You told us yesterday that your family, husband and all, stayed at the fireworks show all night. You never mentioned anyone leaving. You never mentioned that phone call your husband got.”

“I know. I know. I … we were scared. I saw the blood, and you have no clue how—”

“We have no clue? Okay. So why don’t you clue us in, sweetheart.” Burton said.

Katherine Grey turned toward him, and turned back with the remnants of a glower.

“Damn,” Rachette chimed in, “Look at Burton go.”

“Shut up and listen,” Patterson said quickly.

Rachette made a face at Wolf and Wolf shrugged, keeping his eyes on the screen.

“Mrs. Grey, may I call you Katherine?” Wolf’s father asked.

Katherine looked at Wolf’s father and nodded.

“Katherine, what time did you guys get home from the boat ride back? From the fireworks show?”

“It was twelve-thirty, no probably one a.m. by that time.”

Burton bent down and got in her face. His mustache was the same minus the grey and his face was bone thin. “Which one was it? Twelve-thirty or one?”

“I don’t know.” Katherine narrowed her eyes at him. Her face was turning red and her lips were shaking. “I didn’t have a watch on. I just remember, yes, it was twelve-thirty when he came back and picked us up.”

“Because you were in the bar and you looked at the clock.” Burton sneered.

She looked at him and nodded.

“Words.” He walked out of view of the video shot. “We need words for the recording.”

“Yes.” She glared at him in defiance.

“Sergeant Burton,” Wolf’s father said, “could you go get us another cup of coffee? Maybe a bottle of water for Katherine?”

There was a long pause. “Yeah, sure thing.”

The door squeaked open and clicked shut.

“Please, Katherine. When you went back inside, after seeing the clothing. What happened?”

“I went inside and he was … going crazy again. He took Kimber and locked her in the room, and then started yelling at me. Telling me I’m raising a slut, and how she’s going to turn out being a hooker, and… he just lost it.”

“You say, the room. Can you please tell me what you mean by that?” Wolf’s father asked.

Katherine took a sip of coffee again.

A tell, Wolf thought. What exactly it was telling about her, he didn’t know yet.

She set it back down and smoothed her shirt. “For the last few years, my husband started exhibiting … symptoms.”

“Symptoms?”

“Yeah. First he was hearing things. He’d come up to me and ask, ‘Did you hear that?’ and I’d have no clue what he was talking about. Then after a while I finally realized he was hearing voices. He never told me it was voices he was hearing, but one day I listened to him when he was in an empty room, answering questions that nobody asked. I put two and two together.

“Then I could tell he was seeing things. Horrific things, I think, because he would go rigid. Sometimes he would sit there frozen and stare at the wall as if he was looking at a tarantula or something. Only nothing would be there.”

Katherine took another sip of coffee, then exhaled and closed her eyes.

“What is it?” Wolf’s father asked.

She opened her eyes. “We have rodent traps around the house. Have to for the garden we plant every year. One day I saw a dead squirrel out in back of our house. But it was,” she brushed her hair behind her ear, “decapitated. The body was sitting next to the head, and it was slit from top to bottom, on the underside.”

Katherine took another sip of coffee.

“I knew that Parker had done it. And then later I saw his fishing knife, down in the shed by the lake. It was covered in blood, but not fish blood. There was fur on it.”

Another sip.

“Did you speak to your husband about it?” Wolf’s father asked.

She nodded. “I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“First he said he was cleaning it for meat, and forgot about it. But I just got a bad feeling about it. After a while I pressed him and he admitted that’s not what happened. Turns out he had just killed it, and did what he did to it, because he had to. He said that. He had to.

“Then he told me everything, about the voices, the hallucinations, the way he was becoming paranoid, afraid of social situations. He said it had been going on for years and years. And I started thinking about our situation, and of course it all made sense to me at that point. We moved from Tennessee to the lake, from a commune with over two thousand people up to a lake in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. The new life had always been his idea. It was my husband’s idea to homeschool Kimber. And when I disagreed, he insisted. It was his idea to live this life. He was secluding us, cutting us off from society, because he desperately needed to. It was his sickness.”

Her voice trailed off and she stared into nothing.

“What happened after he killed the squirrel?”

She nodded. “When he killed the squirrel, I’d never been so scared in my life. I’d never felt something like that before. The fear was so paralyzing. So I put the twenty-two pistol we have in my pants and went and talked to him. Told him how scared I was. Told him that I wanted him to get help. He was,” she exhaled, “good about it. He went to a doctor, and got some medicine, and started taking it.”

“And did the medicine help?”

“Yes. Yes, it did. I never caught him hearing voices again. Never saw him looking at things, and I didn’t find anything else, you know, dead.”

“Do you know who his doctor was? The name? Where?” Wolf’s father asked.

“I know he went to Grand Junction. The first time. For a psychiatrist. But he didn’t tell me who when I asked. And that’s what was strange. The paranoia seemed to still be there … it was better, he was better, he acted so nice and normal after that, but the paranoia was still there. And it was like that, the way he evaded the question of exactly who the doctor was in Grand Junction. Little things that really didn’t matter to me. But he wouldn’t tell.”

Katherine Grey picked up her coffee cup and tilted it all the way back. It was empty.

Wolf’s father cleared his throat. “I’m sure Sergeant Burton will be back soon with more coffee.”

Burton came in on cue and set another cup down. He picked up the empty cup and left the room.

“Look at these two work,” Rachette whispered. “It’s like a … a—”

“A good time to still be quiet,” Patterson said.

“…the night in question. We were talking about the room.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. The room. Like I said, the medicine worked, but it was patchy. I mean, it worked most of the time, but he would still have psychotic episodes. And they seemed to get worse and worse with time. One of these episodes happened a couple years ago after my daughter went out with the car. She wasn’t sixteen years old yet, and she was just taking a joy ride, you know? Like teens do. Especially extremely lonely teens like her.

“Anyway, Parker and I went into town in his truck, and as soon as we left she took my truck and drove it around the lake to the marina. She knew a girl who worked at the marina, and wanted to go see her.

“Parker had to turn around because he forgot his wallet, and we ended up going back home and we caught her. Saw she was gone and so was my truck. So Parker flipped out. We sat there and waited until she got back.

“The whole thing triggered this long episode in him. We had an extra bedroom in the house, so he fixed the mattress up with Kimber’s sheets, put rebar over the window outside, painted it to match her room, and put a lock on it. Then he put her inside it and”—she twisted her wrist—“locked her away for the entire night and the next day.”

Katherine Grey looked down at her hands and a tear rolled down her cheek. “That day the fear came back for me. And ever since that day, I’ve been trying to work up the courage to carry out a plan to escape with Kimber. But I’ve just been too scared. Despite all the psychotic crazy symptoms that make my husband weak, Parker is still one of the smartest, most resourceful men I’ve ever known. I always knew he would catch us if we left him. And he’s told me before, if we leave … he’d come find us, and ‘do just like the squirrel’ is what he said once.”

Wolf’s father coughed lightly. “Excuse me.”

All of a sudden Wolf’s father’s face was right in front of the camera, as if he was checking the record light was on, and then as quickly as it was there it was gone.

The unexpected sighting of his father in real life, his eyebrows furrowing, his light brown eyes squinting, his mouth twisting, sent a shock through Wolf’s body. He ignored Patterson and Rachette glancing his way and steadied his breath.

“Sorry about that. The night of the Fourth of July, into the morning of the fifth, your husband locked your daughter in the room he’d built for her.”

“Yes.”

“And that night. What was he saying?”

“He was yelling at her, telling her she was a whore, and she needed to learn how to respect her father, and all sorts of other stuff.”

“Did he ever mention Nick Pollard specifically?”

“No. He didn’t. But he was saying that Kimber was a whore, going out with boys in town. But no, he never did mention his name.”

A pause. “So now we get to the question of what brought you here now.” Wolf’s father shuffled a paper. “It’s now the sixth of July. Where is your husband, Parker Grey?”

“He’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. He took his truck and left.”

“And why are you here now?”

“Because as soon as I saw he was gone, I didn’t want to wait around for him to come back. Now was our chance. Because when you guys came to the door yesterday, I knew that my husband had killed that boy. I saw the clothes. And he knew I knew.”

Chapter 11

“Do you still have the clothing he was wearing the other night?”

Katherine shook her head. “He took it. He took the bag.”

“We’d like to come up and check the house for that blood. There may be a spot he left, touched it with his hand and left a mark on the wall.”

Katherine nodded. “Of course.”

The video suddenly went black, the steady hiss of the audio blaring out of Patterson’s speakers going silent.

“Whoa, whoa,” Rachette said.

“What’s going on?” Wolf asked.

“I don’t know.” Patterson clicked the play button again. The video started from the beginning. She clicked the scrubber on the bottom and pulled it to the right and released it. It snapped back to the beginning.

“What the hell?” Rachette stood up.

Patterson ejected the CD and looked at the bottom of it. “Ah crap.”

The CD on bottom was cracked like a dried up lakebed, chunks of the reflective surface completely missing.

“Frickin’ CD’s.” Rachette snorted.

Wolf stood up and stretched. “Can you fix it? Somehow salvage the data?”

Patterson looked up. “I doubt it. I wouldn’t know how to do that. I’ll check into it.” Her phone vibrated on her desk and she picked it up. “It’s Lorber,” she said, hitting the answer button.

“Okay,” she looked up at Wolf and then her watch, “okay. Okay.”

Wolf looked at his own wrist and saw it was just after three in the afternoon.

Patterson tapped the screen on her phone and looked up.

“What?” Rachette asked.

“Lorber still hasn’t identified any of the other seven bodies yet. Wants us to come in to see what he has and pick up the files.”

Wolf nodded.

“I … uh,” Patterson shifted uncomfortably and looked again at her watch. “I would go, of course if you need me to go I’ll go, but I kind of had plans tonight.”

“She’s meeting Scott’s parents.” Rachette walked around to the front of her desk and sat on the edge. “Oh man. Good luck with that.”

Wolf raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

Patterson’s facial color was answer enough.

“Yep,” Rachette answered for her, “gettin’ serious.” He picked up a pen from Patterson’s desk, twirled it, and it clattered out of his hand and underneath her keyboard.

“All right,” Wolf said. “Rachette, you and I go to Lorber.”

“Let’s do it,” Rachette said.

“And let’s take separate vehicles,” Wolf said.

“What? Oh I get it, you’re going on a date, too? Big Saturday night with Sarah?” Rachette studied his fingernails.

“Aww, poor guy,” Patterson sang, fishing out the pen and putting it in a drawer. “You’re gonna get a girlfriend some day. One of these days one of these waitresses is gonna crack under your misty gaze.”

Rachette turned and stared at her. He leaned forward and his face shook with exertion.

“What are you doing? Are you trying to fart?” Patterson stood up and walked to Wilson’s desk.

Rachette relaxed. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Wolf rolled his eyes and headed past Rachette with held breath. “See you there. Have a good night with Scott’s parents. And not that my love life is either of your business, but no, I’m not going on a date. I’m going to head up to the lake after to talk to Kimber Grey. Her mother’s gone, her father’s gone, and now her interview is gone. We need to talk to her.”

Rachette frowned. “I figured we’d tag team it like Burton and your dad. What am I gonna do?”

“You’re going to come back here with Lorber’s files and start looking through the missing persons databases.”

Rachette smacked his lips and nodded. “Ah. That should be pleasant. Seven decayed heads, fifty states worth of mis-pers, twenty-two years’ worth of them.”

“So you’re not going on a date,” Patterson said to Wolf, “but you admit there is a love life.” She appraised Wolf with a nod. “I suspected so. You and Sarah are so obvious. That’s what happens when you’re in love.”

Wolf turned and walked away.

“Wait a minute,” Rachette said quickly.

He stopped reluctantly and turned.

“You know, I need to tell you guys. I dated this girl once.”

Patterson scrunched her face. “What? Kimber Grey?”

“Yeah.”

“Really,” Wolf said.

“Really,” Rachette said.

There was a silence.

“What? I’m serious. I did.”

“Okay.” Wolf nodded. “So … did you discuss the case with her?”

“Well, we didn’t really ever talk. I mean, I guess we didn’t really date. Per se.”

“Oh.” Patterson pointed an index finger. “Okay. I get it.”

Rachette stared at her. “If I may continue? Anyway. I kind of, you know, made out with her one night. And she’s crazy.” He picked up another pen from Patterson’s desk.

“Sorry, how is that different from any other girl, according to you, that you ever dated?” Patterson asked.

Rachette looked to Wolf for back up and received none. “I’m just saying. I thought she was acting crazy back then, and now that I know her father was crazy, well, her behavior is now explained.”

“And what behavior was that?” Wolf asked.

“She was all over me one night. Groping me, kissing my neck at the bar. I was pretty excited, you know? Older woman?” He bounced his eyebrows. “She said let’s go outside, so we went out to the car, and then she just shut down. Completely stopped kissing me, got out of the car, and wouldn’t talk to me. Just walked right back into the bar as if I was a ghost.” He held up a finger to hold off Patterson and Wolf. “And then, three days later I saw her, and she pretended she didn’t even know me. And then, shut up Patterson, and then, a few days later, she came up to me on the street and started talking to me, like we were long lost friends again.” Rachette shrugged and shook his head.

Wolf turned around and walked to the vehicle pool garage door.

“You sure you don’t need my help?” Patterson asked.

Rachette jogged up behind Wolf and past him out the door.

“No. Go ahead. I’ll see what Kimber says tonight, and we’ll reconvene tomorrow. Good luck with the parents.”

Chapter 12

Wolf and Rachette walked into the examination room, where seven heads were laid out on two gurneys, lit hard with the bright lights above. All with different colored wisps of hair of varying thickness, all slight variations on the shade of pale bluish white death, all misshapen by varying degrees. Near them was eight more gurneys parked in two lines of four, each with a body laid out on its back, each body on top in a differing state of deformity and corrosion, each stirring equal amounts revulsion within Wolf.

“God damn,” Rachette said, “Lorber, you’re crazy to have this job. Sick. And crazy.”

Lorber loped into the room behind them and past Rachette. “Deputy Rachette. Patterson couldn’t make it?”

“Meeting the parents,” Rachette said, oblivious to Lorber’s disapproving glance.

Lorber pushed his glasses up his beak nose and narrowed his eyes. “Aha. Well, always nice to see you.”

Rachette gave him a suspicious look.

“As you can see, gentlemen, seven heads, seven decapitated bodies. One complete corpse. I’ve got each head numbered and each body, in order of how I think they match. I’m reasonably sure I’ve pieced them all together correctly now.”

“Patterson said you ID’d Nick Pollard and no one else,” Wolf said.

“Correct. Nick Pollard is numbered one. The rest are going to take some time.”

“What have you found out?” Wolf asked.

Lorber set down his clipboard and took off his glasses. He walked to the heads and swept his arm wide, as if he was Vanna White and the heads were the letters flashing up.

“You can see the waxy look of all the faces. That’s saponification, as Patterson mentioned earlier. It’s preserved the flesh, but completely screwed up time of death. It’s basically impossible for me to accurately guess. So I won’t guess. Even Nick Pollard’s body. It’s impossible to tell if he died at the same time he disappeared.”

“Can’t you assume Nick Pollard died that night and use it as a sort of baseline?” Rachette asked. “And then go off of that?”

Lorber looked at him with surprise. “Astute question. But no. There are simply too many variables to account for. Some of the bodies had torn plastic, with others it was completely intact. The difference of materials the victims were wearing, natural versus synthetic, would have changed the rate of decay and saponification.” He walked in between the two rows of four gurneys. “Each of the bodies had stab wounds on the torsos. Five of them, as you can see here, were slit from just above the genitals to the ribs. The different exposure of the intestines to varying degrees would have changed the rate of decomp, and the extreme cold at those depths, in that lake, slow the rate of autolysis and putrefaction.”

“All right. So you have no time of death.” Wolf said. “What else? Fingerprints?”

“No usable fingerprints. Completely decayed.”

“Wallets? What about the clothing? Labels tell you anything? Receipts?”

Lorber made two fists and opened his hands. “Nothing. Not a thing. No wallets. Receipts. No tell-tale signs of anything. I was just in the process of looking up the design models of the shoes of each of the victims. I’ve taken DNA samples. The process will take my assistants a while, at least a week, and then we’ll check them with CODIS.”

Wolf walked to the heads. Each head was frozen in an unnatural expression, looking waxy and flattened to one side or the other, slightly elongated or puffed.

“These seem like clean cuts,” Wolf said pointing to the necks. “Right?”

Lorber nodded. “I agree. Looks to be a long sword of some kind that did the deed, or a machete. Most of them look like a one-blow severing of the head.” He stepped toward one of the heads in the center. “This one, however, you can see it was chopped a few times. That’s how I matched it with the body.”

Wolf blinked and looked back at the bodies. “All male?”

Lorber nodded.

The bodies were nude and each was more or less clearly male. Wolf, however, had learned long ago to confirm the obvious with a statement with Lorber rather than assume. Lorber, having a highly analytical, scientific mind, often neglected to mention some of his more developed theories, assuming other people saw them as he did.

“From radiocarbon dating of the tooth enamel, I’ve determined seven of them being anywhere from late teens to early twenties, though this one here, number eight, doesn’t fit the mold. He’s older. Looks to be forty, plus or minus three years. Obviously his head is still attached.”

Wolf looked at number eight. The face was bearded, the mouth gaping open, revealing a swelled, black tongue and brown teeth. On the forehead was a gaping exit wound. The one eye-socket was devoid of an eyeball, but there were no cut marks.

Lorber walked near. “Number eight, shot in the back of the head from point blank range. If you look in his mouth, our number eight has some pretty extensive dental work. I’m checking with Dr. Unruh, and the offices in Ashland. I’m doing the same with the other heads. The seven heads are all missing their eyes, as you can see.” Lorber walked away and shoved a gloved finger inside a skull as nonchalantly as if testing the finger size of a bowling ball. “Clearly these are ritualistic killings. Perhaps the killer believed the eyes were the window to the soul, and wanted to … I don’t know, I’m not a profiler.” Lorber twisted his finger in the socket and removed it with a faint sucking sound.

“Easy doc,” Rachette said.

“Ritualistic, or the opposite,” Wolf said. “They’re gutted like fish, or rodents. Chop off the head, slit the underside to remove the insides.”

Lorber pulled the corners of his mouth down and looked at the bodies as if for the first time. “I guess. Only the insides are all there, shifted and spilling, but still there.” He shook his head. “The eyes. The barbarism of cutting off the heads.”

“Yeah.” Rachette swallowed. “Pretty damn sick.”

Wolf bent over a head and looked into a slice mark through an eyelid. “In the early nineties there was a guy in Texas who removed his victims’ eyes. Kept them for souvenirs.”

“These eyeballs are still there. Mangled, shriveled up inside the sockets.”

“I think it’s safe to say that whatever the reason was, it was messed up.” Rachette was looking pale, talking rapidly. “Where’s the files, doc?”

Lorber nodded at the countertop. “Over there.”

Rachette walked to the counter and opened the thick file folder. “So basically you’re saying you have nothing. And it’s up to me to find out who these guys are?”

Wolf ignored their banter and walked to a numbered row of bricks on a metal table. “These are what the killer used to weigh down the bodies?”

Lorber nodded. “Burnt clay brick, made by a Denver company called Tracer Building Supplies.”

Wolf frowned. “How did you figure that out?”

“Says on the side of three of them.”

Wolf leaned down and saw the logo pressed into the side of one of them.

“I’m out.”

Wolf turned just in time to see Rachette disappear through the door.

Lorber smiled and shook his head. “Patterson couldn’t make it, huh?”

“Keep me posted on anything else you find,” Wolf said.

“You got it.” Lorber pulled his gloves off and walked Wolf to the door.

Wolf shook his long, sweaty hand and left.

Rachette was outside, standing with his head tilted to the clouded sky, welcoming the mist that beaded on his skin.

“You okay?” Wolf asked.

“Ah,” he said, sucking in a breath through his nose.

“That good, huh?”

“Sorry. Something just came over me. It was all those heads. I can see why they used to put heads on stakes back in history, to scare the crap out of people, make them subservient or whatever. That shit is not right. I’m not gonna sleep tonight. I know it.”

Wolf tilted his back, too, feeling the cool mist on his cheeks. It was disturbing. And that it happened so close to home made his hair stand on end.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by the vibration of his phone. He pulled it out and answered.

“Wolf.”

“Sir, I talked to Wilson, he agrees, there’s nothing we can do about the CD. It had to have been that damn storage room. Twenty-two years of temperature and humidity fluctuations inside there must have done it.”

“Okay, thanks.” Wolf said with a sigh.

“You sure it’s okay for me to go out to dinner tonight? I can cancel.”

Wolf shook his head. “No. Have fun.” He hung up.

“What’s up?” Rachette asked.

“Patterson says the rest of the Katherine Grey and Kimber Grey interview is damaged beyond repair.”

Rachette nodded in resignation.

“Get back to the station and get after those files.” He started walking.

“Will do.” Rachette’s tone was skeptical.

“I know it’s going to take a while, but it’s all we have to go on. Do what you can until the end of your shift and then hand them off to Wilson tonight. Tell him it’s top priority. And then both of you get back on it tomorrow.”

Rachette nodded. “So your dad thought it was Parker Grey who did this?”

Wolf nodded. “Looked that way to him.”

Rachette looked at him. “None of those were female in there.”

Wolf shook his head.

“But Katherine disappeared, too. The day after the interview we just watched?” Rachette asked.

Wolf nodded.

“Why? Did she leave to go find Parker?” He frowned. “Or was she killed, too?”

“All good questions.” The rain started slapping the ground in large drops and they parted and began running. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Chapter 13

Wolf turned up the windshield wipers to a steady beat and flipped on his headlights as the SUV rolled down the muddy dirt road.

Just like the foggy view outside, he was going into this interview almost blind. Instead of watching Kimber Grey’s reactions to his father’s questions on video, Wolf was going to be talking to a woman he’d never met relaying her side of things, and over two decades later. That would have been fine for him, had he known the interview video was waiting for him when he got back.

Wolf shook his head. There was no sense worrying about it. He looked out the droplet-covered windows at the surrounding forest. The fog had everything socked in, cutting visibility to fifty yards or less. The weather obscured his view of the lake to his left, not that he suspected it would be visible with the density of the pines.

Crawling down a steep grade at ten miles per hour, Wolf feathered the brakes as a couple of craters in the road came into view. Flanked by car-sized rocks on either side, the bottleneck forced him to almost stop and enter the dip straight on. The rear bumper scraped as he dropped in, and then he lifted in his seat and the rock and dirt beneath the tires smoothed out.

Just before he let off the brake and coasted, he jammed to a stop, sure he’d seen something on a tree next to the rock on the left. Hoping his parking brake would hold on the steep grade, he stepped out. The rocky wet earth gave way underneath his work boots as he stepped back toward the massive potholes.

Sure enough, he’d seen something on the tree—a camouflage-painted rectangular game camera with a shiny black lens in the center, more or less pointed straight at him. A four-inch long antenna jutted out from the side of the device—a newer model camera capable of transmitting the picture via Wi-Fi connection.

After a few seconds of staring into the lens, large raindrops slapped on his coat, coaxing him back into the idling SUV.

Down the hill, a side-road went perpendicular left. He stopped and studied it. The fog had lifted just enough to see that the road veered up and left in the distance. He pushed the button on his phone screen to check the map. There was no service. He checked the Wi-Fi settings and found one network available called “XXXXX”. It was a secure connection requiring a password.

He continued straight, using his memory of the map that he’d studied before leaving the County Hospital parking lot.

Two gentle turns and a brief straightaway later he came to his destination.

Someone was out front of the cabin wielding an axe, chopping down on a vertical piece of firewood with a fierce blow that sent two pieces flying onto the ground.

The person turned, and as his wipers swished he saw a pretty face buried inside a blue parka hood. Kimber Grey, Wolf recognized, though much older than her photos he’d seen so far in the file sitting next to him.

Not to say she looked old. She looked young, and her jeans were snug, showing she was fit, and the way she chopped another piece of pine showed she was strong.

She was seventeen when Nick Pollard went missing and within days her father, her father’s truck, and her mother, were gone too. That was twenty-two years ago. Wolf had done the math: she was thirty-nine, just a year or so younger than Wolf, and had lived at this location her entire life since that fateful summer, and yet he could not remember ever seeing this woman in person other than this moment.

“Kimber Grey?” Wolf closed his door and zipped up his parka.

“Yep.” She kept her back to him, raising the axe behind her and swinging down with perfect precision. The wood clanked to each side and she bent over and picked up another piece and placed it on her stump. The air was thick with the scent of fresh cut lumber.

Wolf looked past her to the cabin. It was a two-story wood frame construction with the entrance on the upper level. The lower floor was halfway sunk into the ground. Wooden steps climbed up to the entrance, which was a shiny wood slab door, and to the right of it was a covered deck that wrapped around to the right and presumably to the back of the property. A large bay window revealed open curtains and a spinning ceiling fan inside, but little else.

“I’m Sheriff David Wolf, of the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department. I’d like to talk to you for a bit.”

“Okay.” She chopped another piece.

Wolf heard a faint motor to his left and turned, noticing the abrupt edge of the land fifty yards away for the first time. The lake that Wolf knew was there below the precipice was invisible in the eye-level clouds they stood in.

“Can you please stop with the axe?”

She jammed the axe into the stump, pulled down her hood and turned around. “Sorry, I’m low on firewood. Need to get some stocked back up. Still gets plenty cold up here in the summer, you know?”

She flashed a gleaming smile, and Wolf saw the similar mole above her lip as her mother’s, though Kimber’s was more pronounced. She pulled off her leather glove and pointed to it, then pointed at Wolf’s face.

“We both have these damn things,” she said.

Wolf smiled and shook her hand, which was hot and sweaty, slender, fitting easily inside his, and when she took it back it was like pulling sandpaper from his grip. She was callused like an old farmer, or a rock climber.

“Kimber Grey,” she said.

“Nice to meet you. I’d like to talk to you about the,”—he gestured to the lake—“recent activity on the lake. I take it you’ve heard?”

Leaning back, she made a face and twisted back and forth to loosen her muscles. “Yeah. I’ve heard. I’ve been watching it.”

“Do you think we could go inside for a chat?” Wolf asked.

She nodded. “Follow me. You drink coffee?”

Wolf sat at a small eating table and watched Kimber work in the kitchen.

Kimber made coffee with elegant movements: lifting a back leg as she bent into a cupboard and pulled out a French press, jumping just the right height to grab a bag of coffee grounds stored on top of the cupboards. There was no wasted action. She knew every centimeter of the kitchen, and she was well practiced with what she was doing. Apparently she liked her caffeine.

By the time she was depressing the plunger the weather was clearing outside, and the clouds slid out to the east, revealing more and more of the majestic view of the silver lake below. He wondered how much the property had cost when they had moved here all those years ago.

“How many acres you have here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She poured the coffee and set it down in front of Wolf. “Sixty three. It’s mostly that way, up towards Olin Heeter’s place.” She faced the lake and then pointed left.

Wolf remembered his father’s notes, and Olin Heeter’s mention of seeing something being dropped in the lake on the night of July 6th.

He sipped the strong coffee and then stood up and bent over the counter to get a better look out onto the land below the house. It was the side of the house and beneath it was the parallel edge of the cliff line below. Some scrub oaks and pines obscured the edge to the right, and over to the left the cliff was more exposed—grassy land and then precipice. On the far left part of the exposed section was a wood staircase with a hearty handrail that disappeared over the edge. “Man, that’s quite a ways down. I hope that’s a sturdy staircase.”

“Oh yeah. It’s sturdy.” She leaned over next to him and pointed towards the scrub oak. “If you don’t want to go down the stairs, you can always rappel down my rope.”

Wolf squinted and saw a turquoise and pink climbing rope, attached to a sophisticated top-rope anchor system that hooked to two tree trunks, dangling over the edge and out of sight. He whistled softly and walked back to the table. Sitting down, he noticed her smile, looking satisfied she had impressed him.

“You climb up that?” Wolf asked.

“Yep.”

“And who’s belaying you from below?”

“I self-belay.”

Wolf nodded.

“You rock climb?” Kimber’s amber brown eyes locked on his as she took a slow, careful sip of her coffee. Then she set her cup on the counter and leaned back on her hands with arched back, presenting her smallish breasts and erect nipples through the thin fabric of her long-sleeved shirt. Her arms rippled with thin muscle.

“No. Not unless I have to.”

She stayed in the provocative pose and spoke softly. “So you found Nick Pollard.” It wasn’t a question.

“What makes you say that?”

“So you did?”

“We did. Why did you suspect that?” Wolf asked.

“I thought it would have been obvious to you. You watched the interview tapes of me and my mom that your father made, right?”

“Actually I haven’t watched your interview yet. I wanted to get it straight from you first.”

She reached for her coffee cup and twisted to look out the windows. With slow deliberation she caressed her jeans, and then slid her fingers inside her rear pocket. “Okay. So what do you want to know?”

“Everything. I’d like to start with that week of the Fourth of July. Tell me about you and Nick, and about that night.”

She turned and walked over, then sat down across the table. With an exhale she closed her eyes and her brown eyelashes swung to the top of her cheeks like Chinese fans. Her chestnut hair was pulled back in a ponytail that couldn’t tame the wavy thickness of it. Frizzy strands popped up everywhere and she tucked one long one behind her ear.

Wolf smelled her for the first time; a flowery scented deodorant and sweat.

“It’s been so long.”

“Take your time.”

She looked at Wolf and gave him a sad smile without teeth, as if he was being the kindest person in the world to her.

Wolf admitted to himself at that moment that she was an attractive woman. Had he been a single man, he’d have admitted she was beyond attractive.

“Let’s see. I started seeing Nick two weeks before that.”

“How did you two meet?”

She smiled. “I went to a party some guy was having out in the woods one Saturday night. I remember I heard some other kids talking about it over at the marina, and I just showed up. By myself.”

Wolf nodded.

“Anyways. I didn’t get out much with my parents being how they were. I kind of wasn’t supposed to be there, and I didn’t know anyone. I was seventeen, and just wanted to see what the whole fuss was all about. The whole high school scene. The whole being social scene. So I walked up to the keg, and I remember everyone was staring at me like I was a bear or something coming out of the woods, and he came up and started talking to me. Wouldn’t leave me alone, actually. After a while I guess I started to like him. He was, after all, a boy talking to me.”

She shrugged and took a sip of her coffee.

Wolf saw her mother’s spitting image in her actions.

“So you two dated a few times leading up to the Fourth?”

She nodded. “Yeah. We went out twice. Went and saw a movie down in Ashland once. And I went to his house for dinner once.”

Wolf took a sip of coffee, thinking about how Nick Pollard’s mother said she had badgered Nick into bringing Kimber over to their little house by the river. But Nick had yet to bring her there.

So that was a lie. But was it Kimber Grey’s or Wendy Pollard’s?

“The place the Pollards have on the hill?” Wolf asked.

Kimber looked at him and broke into a slow smile. “No. The one by the river. Mrs. Pollard has another place? Didn’t think they had that much money.”

Wolf sipped his coffee. “And how about the Fourth of July? Were you two planning to meet that night?”

Kimber shook her head. “No. I’m not sure why Nick’s mother has been saying that. Maybe Nick was lying to her, I don’t know. But we never had any plans for meeting that night.”

“Tell me about that night,” Wolf said.

“My mom and dad and I went in the boat to the marina to watch the fireworks. When we were there, my dad got a call and he left in a hurry. Then he came back later and picked us up.” She took a sip of her coffee and seemed to steel her thoughts. “I remember he was so sullen on the trip back. And then when we got in the house, he went crazy.”

“Meaning?” Wolf asked.

“He was screaming and throwing things. Calling me a whore. Yelling at me about how I was disgracing the family.” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Did he hurt you?”

She shook her head.

“And then what did he do?”

“He locked me in the room. That was it. I went to sleep.” She shrugged again.

“The next day my father came to visit you asking about Nick Pollard’s disappearance.”

She looked at him and nodded. “Yeah. He was a nice guy, your dad. He was real concerned for us.”

“But that day, the day after the Fourth of July, you guys told him that your dad had been with you guys the whole time at the marina. The entire fireworks show.”

She frowned and shook her head. “I didn’t tell your father anything. I didn’t speak that day when your father came over. I talked to your father the next day, after my dad left. When we went into the station and did the interviews.”

“Okay.” Wolf nodded. “Were you concerned for your safety when my father came asking about Nick Pollard that next day? On the evening of the fifth?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Because my father had a bag of bloody clothes lying next to the house. I saw it the next day. Then I thought about how my father was yelling all those things the night before, and … I put two and two together.”

“So you saw the bag of bloody clothes, too?”

Kimber nodded.

Wolf frowned. “So, he left it outside all night? The bag?”

She frowned for an instant and then nodded. “Yes. It was up against the house. It was there the whole time your father and the other deputy were talking to us, actually.”

“Why didn’t you tell my father about the bag? About your suspicions?”

“I hadn’t seen what was in the bag yet. I checked it later. After your father left.”

Wolf leaned back and took a breath. “My father came the next evening. The evening of the fifth. So you saw the bag of clothes the next evening.”

She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t see what—”

“You said you saw the bag of clothes on the next day. Now you’re saying you actually saw it the next evening.”

She snorted a laugh. “I saw it the next day, then I looked in it the next evening.”

“Yelling what things exactly?” Wolf asked, changing tack. “Do you remember what made you think he’d done it?”

She narrowed and widened her eyes a few times and then looked at Wolf. “I don’t know. The whore thing. He kept telling me I was a whore. Like I had been going out on the town and screwing every guy or something.” She looked at Wolf. “Which I hadn’t been, by the way. Then all of a sudden the guy I went on a couple of dates with goes missing? And then the clothing with blood on it?”

Wolf nodded and sipped his coffee. “Do you have those bloody clothes?”

She snorted again. “No. Like we told your father, my dad left with those clothes. Your father never found any blood traces of Nick’s. You guys scoured the place.” She looked into her cup. “What? Are you testing me or something?”

Wolf sipped his coffee. “Like I said, I haven’t watched your interview yet. Do you know who called your father that night? At the marina?”

“No. They say it was a woman. I still don’t know who it could have been.”

“It was the number to a gas station down the valley, right at the junction of highway 734,” Wolf said. “That didn’t ring any bells with you back then?”

She shook her head.

“And it still doesn’t after all these years?”

She shook her head.

“And did you or your mother suspect he was seeing someone else? Cheating on her?”

She frowned and then shook her head.

Wolf stood up and walked to the kitchen doorway. So far he’d seen the entryway to the house, which was a cramped T-Junction that went left and right. They’d gone left into the kitchen.

“Could I see this room I keep hearing about?”

She shrugged and stood up. “Yeah, sure. It’s not the same, though. I’ve made sure of that.”

She led the way through the kitchen doorway, past the front door and into the living room, which was a good-sized rectangular space with creaky wood floors and a bay window. A wood-fired stove stood against the interior wall on a brick hearth, which extended in a semicircle a few feet in front of it. The stack of wood on the hearth was reduced to slivers.

Wolf bent down and ran his hand over a logo on one of the bricks. Tracer Building Supplies.

“What?” Kimber asked.

Wolf stood up. “Who made this hearth?”

“The bricks?” She frowned.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. It was here when my father bought the place. Must have been Mr. Heeter.”

“Mr. Heeter?” Wolf asked.

She pointed out the window toward a house on the hill a quarter mile in the distance to the north. A two-story structure with a deck off the back, the house was higher than the Grey’s cabin, and clearly visible above the tops of the pines now that the weather was clearing.

“Mr. Heeter. My parents bought the place from him.”

Wolf nodded and looked past her into the hallway. “The room?”

She turned and flipped a light switch and a coverless light bulb lit up the corridor. There were three doors, one on the near left and two on either side of the hallway at the end.

She stopped at the first door. “This was it.”

With a twist of the knob, she pushed the door open. It creaked on its hinges and cool, stagnant air that smelled like fabric softener hit Wolf’s nostrils. An uncovered square window straight ahead showed dense pine trees outside, illuminating the space in soft natural light. There was a crisply made twin bed against the left wall, a dresser, a nightstand, and a closet in the corner.

Wolf looked down at the exterior of the door and ran a hand over the jamb.

“I removed the lock. Removed the bars on the window,” she said, following his eyes.

“May I?” Wolf asked, stepping into the room.

She nodded. “Be my guest.”

The boards underneath him sagged, squeaking with every step as he entered the room and walked to the picture window. Looking out the glass, he noted the grooves cut into the wood on the outside frame—three on each side and two on top and bottom.

“That’s where the bars were. My dad cut those grooves and put rebar in there. I cut them out when he left.”

Wolf shifted his gaze to the woods beyond. There were hundreds of old-growth trees butting up against the back yard of the property, the darkness within deepening with each passing minute. Wolf pressed his right cheek against the window, catching a glimpse of the lake through the trees off to the left.

Wolf flinched and turned around when a series of digital ding sounds came from the living room, like a noise when a car door is left ajar only much louder.

Kimber glanced quickly toward the noise and then seemed to dismiss it.

“What was that?” Wolf asked. “Is someone at the door?”

Kimber shook her head. “No,” she said after a moment hesitation.

He gave her a quizzical look. “What was that?”

She exhaled and walked out into the living room again, pulling a phone out of her pocket. A few seconds of intensely focusing on the screen and then she tapped and pocketed it.

“I have an array of motion sense activated cameras and perimeter alarms set up around the property.” She pointed up at a tiny speaker mounted in the corner. “When they’re tripped, they trip the alarm, and I hear it.”

Wolf walked to the window and looked outside. “So did you know I was coming?”

“No. Well, yes. I’ve set it up to notify my phone, and I knew that someone had driven in, but I didn’t know it was you.”

“And the camera on the tree? That’s yours?”

She nodded.

“Can you watch who comes in and out?”

“I have to get on my computer and check footage. If I want to sit and stare at a live feed, then yeah, I guess I could monitor it. But that’s definitely not my style. I would guess that was Mr. Heeter leaving. Or a deer. Or a bear.” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

Wolf looked at her. “So a motion sensor being tripped out in the woods, or a person leaving on the road is the same sound?”

She nodded. “Yep. Not exactly top-of-the-line, but good enough for the job.”

“And what exactly is the job your system is performing?”

“I’d like some more coffee.” She disappeared back into the kitchen.

Wolf stepped to the window and looked out. He looked down at his truck, noting the beads of water had almost dried on the paint. He looked into the surrounding forest. Despite the lifting clouds it was dark and getting darker and he saw little past fifty yards into the trees. The west windows of Mr. Heeter’s structure were glowing pink now, reflecting the sunset. Wolf continued into the kitchen.

Kimber was stirring sugar into her cup and standing by the sink.

“So … tell me about it.” Wolf said, leaning against the counter. “Why all this security?”

“My father left us on the sixth. The day after your father came to talk to us about Nick. My dad knew the cops were onto him. He knew my mother and I knew about him. About what he’d done. And then, a couple days later my mother up and left. I’d heard him threaten my mother numerous times. If you two leave me, I’ll hunt you down, stuff like that.” Kimber shook her head and stared into her swirling coffee. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She left a note. And she just left.”

The file on Wolf’s passenger seat contained a copy of the note. “What did the note say?”

The turning coffee in her hand hypnotized Kimber. “It said she was going into town, and she’d be right back. Into Rocky Points. Then she, just never came home.”

“She took her truck? You were stranded up here?”

Kimber’s eyes swam with tears, glittering in the vague light of the kitchen. “She called me the next day from some payphone from somewhere. She said she was going back home. Back to Tennessee. She apologized, and said she had to follow her heart and go back home. She left the truck down in Rocky Points, in the grocery store parking lot with the keys in it. I had Mr. Heeter take me down.”

Though he knew the incredulous story already, he felt a mild shock as he watched her speak about it. Surprised by the surge of sympathy washing through him, he turned to look out the window as she clenched her eyes tight.

Quickly she wiped her eyes and smiled defiantly. “Sorry. Old habit. Playing the victim.”

She walked to the wall and flipped on the light switch, and the kitchen filled with yellow light, washing out the majestic views outside with hard interior reflections.

“I have to say, I don’t blame you for being upset. Your parents both abandoned you. But, that doesn’t explain the security measures. What? You think your father took your mother? Is that why you’ve rigged the place like an Army base?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe my father came back, and then made my mother write the note. Then took her or something. And then there’s always been Mr. Heeter. Not exactly the most normal of men.”

Wolf leaned against the counter. “You think Mr. Heeter is dangerous?”

“No,” she said with a chuckle. “He’s sweet. But maybe creepy? Like a dirty old man? I mean, I live below him, and he lives up the hill. He has a big telescope, and who knows where he’s pointing that thing at all times. He’s always been socially awkward, too, and now that his wife is dead he’s worse. His wife was definitely his better half. He’s a Vietnam vet, and I think whatever happened to him over there screwed with him. Dangerous? I don’t think so.”

She scrubbed the coffee cup under the running water and put it on a drying rack.

“And what about your father?” Wolf asked. “You think he’s coming back for you?”

She shrugged. “Your father and his department looked into my mother going home. They never found her. Your father figured she hitchhiked out of town, because buses didn’t run back then from Rocky Points to Vail, which was the nearest place you can pick up a bus. The bus company didn’t remember her, either. No credit card receipts. Our family always used cash.

“Your father said he notified law enforcement from here to Tennessee. No one reported seeing her. I have no clue where she called home in Tennessee.

“After all that investigation into my mother and father and not getting anywhere, believe it or not, it was your father’s idea all those years ago to put motion sensors out there. He came out and helped me rig up the system. I’ve updated it a bit here and there over the years, adding the Wi-Fi camera on the road and stuff. But basically, it’s all your dad’s fault I live like I’m on an Army base.” She smiled wide and sniffed.

Wolf returned her smile, feeling unexpected pride in his father.

“So you’ve been living here by yourself since you were seventeen? For the last twenty-two years?”

She nodded with her chin up.

Wolf blinked a few times. “And how have you kept the place up? How are you making a living?”

“Don’t worry, Sheriff. I pay my taxes like the next person.”

Wolf shook his head. “No, I mean it must be tough. You hunt for food? Fish?”

“Yeah, I do that. But I have money. My father came into money back in Tennessee. An inheritance. That was the reason we came out here and how we could afford this place. But when they left, my father and then my mother, they never touched the money. They just left it here for me.”

Wolf stared at her. There was a muffled caw of a crow outside. He looked out the window, focusing through the reflections. There was a soft orange in the west, but over the lake the sky was completely black.

“They just left it right here … in a safe?”

She shook her head with a hint of a smile. “No.”

Wolf held up his hands. “All right. Just curious. And you haven’t had any contact with your father since that day he left?”

She shook her head.

“Do you suspect he’s come back?”

She shook her head.

“What about that alarm just now? That doesn’t even bother you?”

She shrugged. “I’ve been living alone for so long, I’ve gotten used to it. I was freaked out at the beginning, and now I just know where my guns are, I can see three hundred sixty degrees if I’m inside the house, and I just go on living my life. I figure if my father is out there and wants me dead, he’d have done it a long time ago.”

He nodded and looked at his watch – 8:32 pm.

“Listen, as you’ve probably heard, we found more than just Nick Pollard out there. My father came here with the notion that your father may have killed that boy. Now, we’ve brought up a total of eight bodies.”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “I know. I saw the news.”

“I’ve gotta get back.” He pulled out his card and gave it to her. “I’ll be back in touch, all right?”

She stood and nodded.

Wolf stood and looked down at her, he was a good head-and-a-half taller than she was, but Wolf thought she acted bigger. They stared at each other awkwardly for a moment and then she raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, look.” She pointed next to the phone on the wall.

Wolf looked over and saw a business card that said Daniel Wolf, Sluice County Sheriff.

“Your father pinned his card right here twenty-two years ago. Told me to use it if I needed it. I’ll just pin yours right under it.”

Wolf nodded, still staring at the plain white card with a raised SCSD logo and address on it, and then the name in simple glossy black. Daniel Wolf.

“Ma’am, I want to be clear. I’d like to be back in touch with you soon, so if you’d please stay available, I’d appreciate it.”

“Yeah, of course. So don’t go driving off and disappearing?”

“Exactly,” Wolf said.

“I’ll look forward to it.” She looked at Wolf from the sides of her eyes.

Wolf said goodbye and walked down the steps by himself, Kimber retreating back into her house. When he looked back up she was drawing the living room drapes, looking out into the night beyond him.

Outside the night air was damp and chilled to the bone, as if the cold air pooling on the lake had billowed over the lip of the cliff and was now lapping against Wolf. He could hear a faint laughing and chatter of voices coming from the water, and when he looked, he could see a tiny cluster of lights all the way across the lake. He realized the noise was coming from the marina bar on the opposite shoreline. It looked to be miles away across the water.

He sat in the SUV and looked up at the cabin windows. The slit between the drapes fell closed, fingers pulling out of sight.

With a deep breath he fired up the SUV and backed away.

Chapter 14

Wolf’s engine whined hard and the headlight beams bounced against the pines as he left up the dirt road from Kimber Grey’s.

He stopped for a moment at the road that came in from the right, the road to Mr. Olin Heeter’s place, and got out.

Wolf’s feet crunched on the wet dirt road as he walked into the spray of light from his SUV and studied the ground. There were no tire tracks on the road other than Wolf’s incoming tracks. None came or went in the soft earth from Mr. Heeter’s home.

Again, Wolf wondered about the alarm Kimber Grey had heard.

He did a slow circle, studying the dark forest around him and saw nothing. His SUV hummed softly, and billowing exhaust floated through his headlight beams.

With a fresh resolve he got in and turned up the road toward Mr. Heeter’s.

A quarter mile up the road the cabin loomed up on the right, dark and deserted looking, perched at the top of a hill that overlooked much of the lake below.

Wolf pulled in front, angling the SUV toward the house and saw that all the windows were covered with pulled curtains.

He shut off the lights and engine and got out.

There was little sound save a few crickets and the rush of wind through the pines, like a distant waterfall that rose and fell in strength.

The lake, a silver pool in the light of the moon, was visible on either side of the house, and to the right and down Wolf could see the pocket of light from Kimber Grey’s cabin tucked in the trees.

Wolf studied the exterior of the house in front of him. It looked unkempt—overgrown with weeds and wildflowers.

No lights were on. No sign of life, but still, he stepped to the front, climbed onto the squeaking wood porch and pushed the glowing doorbell button.

A classic ding-dong chime sounded within.

There was no answer, though Wolf could have sworn he heard a thump and then the creak of a floorboard.

He knocked. No answer.

Wolf turned and looked into the surrounding forest behind his SUV. The moon passed beneath a cloud, lighting it up around the edges, dropping the ambient light.

He flicked on his flashlight and did a sweep behind his ticking SUV, passing the powerful beam over the edge of the virgin forest, seeing nothing beyond the first tree trunks. He turned to peer into the front window next to the door. It was no use; the drapes were shut tight.

Stepping off the porch, he kicked something. A rock, he realized when he swung the light down into the grass. He reached down and picked it up. It was a geode, cracked in half, with exposed purple crystals on the inside. He set it back down on the porch next to the support beam of the deck and walked along the front of the property to his right, bobbing and swiping the light beam ahead of him and against covered windows as he went. The land inclined down as he walked around the side of the house, revealing a lower level with walkout sliding glass doors in the rear. They were covered as well.

Looking down the rear wall of the house, a low whoosh of wind came from his left, and he swung his flashlight towards it. The beam showed long grass, and then a row of rocks that had been stacked in a three-foot high straight line, like a rear perimeter fence one might see in the rural Irish countryside. Beyond it was nothing but the mercury-pool lake far below.

He walked towards it and the noise grew louder.

Reaching the rock wall, he leaned forward and shone the flashlight, and saw swirling moths and a bat fly past, both riding on a steady wind that climbed up the sheer cliff.

Craning his hand out, he pointed the beam down and saw nothing. He remembered seeing this cliff from the boats on the lake, and knew the drop was more or less straight down and higher than the back of the house was tall, which made the drop at least thirty feet high in his estimation. Though invisible with the flashlight beam now, he remembered the base of the cliff was a steep incline with the shoreline some distance down from that. He peered harder and noticed the end of a dock with a bobbing fishing boat moored to it, looking like a miniature toy from this height.

With a start that raised his pulse, Wolf sensed someone behind him. He lurched back and twisted the beam to his rear. Sweeping it back and forth, he saw nothing but a vacant rear lawn of the house.

He exhaled and shook his head. His history with cliffs was clearly playing with his mind.

Another look at his cell phone confirmed there was still no reception. The screen showed 9:09 pm, and he was now longing for home. Sarah had said this morning that she would come to stay at his house again tonight, and he had the sudden itch to get the heck off this lake and back down to Rocky Points.

He looked down at Kimber Grey’s home, still lit brightly, but obscured somewhat by the trees from his angle, and then he exhaled and headed back across the lawn.

In the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement towards the house. He jabbed the flashlight beam toward the spot, and could have sworn he saw the corner of a drape lower in one of the windows. Now it hung perfectly motionless.

“Hello?” Wolf called out. “Anyone in there?”

His heart was pounding a steady clip.

Wolf took a deep breath and marched toward the window, flashlight beam locked on the lower left corner of the window.

“I’m with the Sheriff’s department! Mr. Heeter?”

He let his eyes wander across the other windows, thinking if the person inside suspected they were spotted they might go look from another vantage.

“Hello?” He called out again. “Sluice County Sheriff. Mr. Heeter? I wanted to talk to you.”

No answer, and no movement.

Wolf flicked the beam to the next window, careful to aim it in the small crack between the two drapes.

Nothing.

He stood stock still, breathing quietly out his mouth.

No sounds from inside.

He flicked off the flashlight and stood silent for three full minutes, listening to the pulsing whoosh of fish-scented air cresting the cliff behind him. Between gusts he heard crickets chirping in the surrounding woods.

If there was someone inside, they were determined to stonewall him, and he had no business making them do otherwise. Defeated by either the person inside, or his own imagination, Wolf exhaled and walked around the house and back up to his awaiting SUV.

He got in and started the engine, and then when he flicked on his headlights he lit up the front of the house once again. The drapes were still and the door was closed.

He reversed out and started to drive when he slammed on the brakes.

The geode rock he’d placed back on the front porch was not there.

With lightning speed he shut off the engine and jumped out. Keeping his hand on his pistol, he pulled his flashlight and pointed it forward, carefully walking to the front porch again.

The rock was sitting burrowed in the grass, the violet crystals reflecting Wolf’s flashlight beam.

Wolf bent down and picked it up, studying the grass around it. He could see a few spots where the grass was flattened. Someone moving toward his SUV? Or were they his footsteps from earlier? Wolf swept the beam back and forth and decided, no. His earlier steps were to the left.

He followed the disturbances to the gravel road. The ground was hard pack rock and gravel, such that stepping on it left no shoe indentions, but there were rocks kicked over, leaving depressions, and a scrape of a shoe or boot.

Wolf shone his light into the forest and listened.

“Is anyone there?” Wolf asked, feeling like an exposed idiot.

He turned full circle and then pulled his pistol and shone the light through each of his windows into his vehicle.

Heart still walloping, Wolf got back in his SUV and drove back down the hill, crawling at under ten miles per hour and keeping a close eye on the forest to the right. It was no use, the trees were too dense, and Wolf wasn’t about to stop and hike in after some unknown person that could be armed and dangerous for all he knew.

At the base of the hill he looked left at the T-Junction. His dash clock said 9:15. He exhaled and took a left back towards Kimber Grey’s.

He was surprised to see her squinting against his headlights, standing halfway up her porch steps as if she was expecting him. He made a wide loop and pulled up with his driver’s side window down.

“You okay?” He asked.

She gave him an expressionless look and a single nod and shrug, as if saying, “Yeah, why?”

“I was just up at your neighbor’s, and thought I saw someone up there. I think there was definitely someone up there. They went off into the woods.”

She lifted her chin to look into the trees and then shrugged.

Wolf waited for a response that never came.

“You … get any alarms on your motion sensors?” He asked.

“If I do, I have a pistol and a rifle. Don’t worry about me, Sheriff.”

Wolf studied her calm expression for a few seconds and then nodded. “Be careful,” he said, shifting into drive.

As he drove away up the steep incline, he studied his rearview mirror, and saw Kimber Grey keep a motionless vigil on her steps until she disappeared out of sight behind the trees.

Wolf shook his head. Who was this woman?

The dash clock read 9:20. Well, she’d survived this long on her own, and she’d survive another night. He hoped.

Shaking his head, staring into the dark forest on either side of him, he used his high beams and kept his speed just south of unsafe through the woods, thoroughly creeped-out by the mystery encounter at the Heeter residence.

When Wolf finally got to the county road 74 junction he checked his phone. Still no reception, and now it read 9:31.

Damn it. As he began driving along the northern edge of the lake back east, he knew there was still one more stop he needed to make. He was up here, and the marina bar was hopping. Who knew if someone would be there in the morning—a Sunday morning. He’d bet his pension against it. They would have a landline at the bar, the same one that transmitted the mystery call to Kimber’s father all those years ago. He would call Sarah from there and she would just have to wait. But would she?

He pressed the gas a little harder, took the gravel turns with a little more slide, hoped no wildlife stood around the next corner.

Chapter 15

Deputy Heather Patterson and Scott sat across the table from his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Reed, at the Red Ruby Café, a jeans and tee-shirt kind of place with some of the best American Cuisine in Colorado that money could buy. It was a small building with a ski lodge atmosphere right off Main Street in Rocky Points. Scott had chosen the venue, making sure his father got a view of the television screens that were in the bar area when they’d sat down, giving his father an “out” at all times.

Patterson ignored the hand under the table caressing the inside of her knee and answered the question. “I went to the University of Colorado. In Boulder.”

“Oh, you’re kidding! I went to grad school in Boulder.” Scott Reed’s father sat across from Patterson and Scott. “That’s where I got my Masters of Aerospace Engineering. Scott threatened to go to college there back in the day, but as you know he ended up at Metro State.”

Scott’s caress abruptly stopped. “And my father hasn’t let me hear the end of it since.”

His father shrugged and took a sip of his wine. “Nothing is wrong with Metro, son. It’s not CU, but … nothing’s wrong with Metro.” His tone said otherwise. “So, how’s work going with you, Scott? The, uh, snow cat running well?”

Patterson could see Scott’s breathing quicken, and his face was turning red behind the water glass pressed against his lips.

It was Patterson’s turn to reach over and place a hand on his leg.

Scott looked over and his face relaxed.

“You two are so good together,” his mother said.

Patterson smiled and looked at her. “Yeah. We kind of are.”

His mother smiled warmly.

The waiter came over, providing a welcome distraction. “Here we are,” he said, placing three plates of appetizers on the table.

“The wings here are the best in Colorado,” Patterson said, feeling her face go red as she realized she’d already said as much when they had ordered the food. Damn, she was nervous, and Scott’s father wasn’t helping the situation one bit. The man seemed to feed and grow stronger on discomfort, and every word out of his pompous mouth made sure there was plenty of discomfort to feed his cruel spirit. It was amazing Scott was related to this man at all.

Scott’s father’s face was heavy with unmasked disappointment, which was a shame. Scott didn’t waste any energy defending himself against his father, either, which Patterson admired. If it had been her father across the table she’d be standing up and shaking a fist in his face right now, dropping f-bombs and causing a scene. She didn’t take shit from any of the men in her family—not from her father or any of her three brothers. In fact, she’d once thrown a beer in her middle brother’s face at a restaurant.

Smiling to herself at the sudden memory, she picked at her food in silence with her other three companions.

After a few more agonizing seconds she cleared her throat. “You know, Scott has written a novel and he’s working on a second?”

“Oh my goodness.” His mother set her beer down. “Are you serious?”

Scott gave Patterson a rueful glance and nodded. “Yeah. I am … I have.”

“Oh really?” His father said. “What’s it about?”

Scott wiped his fingers with a napkin. “It’s a mystery about a man who is an avid outdoorsman. He comes across a murder victim in the woods and…”

Scott’s father set down his drink and straightened, looking past Scott as if he’d just seen something terrible.

Patterson and Scott followed his gaze and saw he was focused intently on the highlights of the Boston Red Sox on the television.

“They paid way too much for that asshole,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, son. What’s it about?”

Scott shook his head and picked up a chicken wing. “Forget it.”

“No, I want to know. Have you been looking for a publisher?”

Scott ignored him.

“John,” his mother said in a whisper.

“What?”

Scott threw his napkin on the table and scooted his chair back. “We’re going to take off. It was good seeing you mom.”

Patterson looked up in shock at Scott as he left, then across the table. His mother was slack-jawed and his father was concentrating on a hot wing with indifference.

“Oh no, Scott. John, tell him not to go.”

Scott was already gone, swerving his way around tables in the bar and heading to the door.

Patterson wiped her hands and scooted her chair back. “Ummm, I guess we’re going.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Scott’s father said with a quick smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

His mother’s lower lip was quivering and her eyes welled up. “I’m sorry.”

Patterson scooped up her rain parka and purse off the back of the chair and nodded to them. “It was nice to meet you.” She walked away. “What an asshole,” she muttered to herself.

She stepped quickly through the tables toward the exterior door, now swinging shut, Scott waiting with his back turned to the windows.

Making the final push to the door, she stopped dead in her tracks. It was a reflexive move, because she’d just seen Sarah Muller—just looked right at her and then kept walking. Wolf’s ex-wife (and current lover if she’d been reading the situation correctly) was one of those women that always demanded a second look. She was stunning. Electric blue eyes, thick true blonde hair, and a figure that made men stop and stare every time.

But it wasn’t just that Sarah was a stunner that stopped Patterson dead in her tracks, it had been the large man next to her, and the way that man was grabbing her leg, which was clearly visible to Patterson since it was a tall bar table and she was short.

Wasn’t she dating Wolf again? She thought.

Sarah met Patterson’s gaze and she visibly flinched. Her leg whipped to the side, and the man’s hand was now grabbing air under the table. The man followed Sarah’s eyes and saw Patterson. Sarah looked like a frightened animal, but the man was cool and confident.

Patterson’s blood was already boiling with the botched dinner and the father from hell, and before she could even think about it she was right next to them thrusting out her hand.

“Hi Sarah,” she said.

Sarah reached out and grabbed her hand with a timid claw.

Patterson shot her glare at the other man. “And you are?”

He smiled and his hand swallowed hers. He squeezed with increasing pressure and Patterson met every foot-pound of force. “I am Carter.”

“Carter who? Don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

The big man’s smile vanished and he let go of his grip. “Carter Willis.”

He was a good-looking man, but if he got up from his chair, Patterson was sure there would have been slime on it. He was dressed impeccably, polished platinum jewelry on his wrists peeking out beneath a crisp expensive shirt and blazer. A politician or important businessman, if Patterson had to guess. Perhaps too muscular for something as simple as that, though. The man was dangerous looking, she decided.

“Ah.” Patterson looked back at Sarah, who was stirring her drink with a plastic straw. “Okay, see you later.” She turned without waiting for a response from Sarah and marched out the door.

“Who was that guy with Sarah?” Scott said in greeting.

It was cold outside, a steady pin- pricking drizzle blowing from the north, so she burrowed against Scott and wrapped an arm around him. “I don’t know. Some asshole.” They turned their backs to the blast of weather and walked to her car.

She looked up at Scott and it was heartbreaking. His eyes were vacant, his face expressionless and sagging, his walk slow.

“I want to go back to my place.” She said.

He nodded.

She burrowed deeper against him as they walked, shaking the image of Carter Willis’s disgusting face out of her mind, and then a sympathy for Sheriff Wolf pushed its way in.

Chapter 16

Bass notes pumped out of the brightly lit Tackle Box Marina Bar.

Wolf walked across the parking lot and a couple of young men stared at him from a darkened nook near the trees, clearly hiding something in their hands behind their backs.

Wolf sniffed the air. “Marijuana is legal now. As long as you’re not driving, I don’t care.” He continued past them and down a wooden plank entryway, which hovered a few feet above the shimmering water.

Boats bumped and creaked on small waves generated by the wind that replaced the rain and clouds. The air was crisp and cold next to the water.

The door wrenched open before Wolf could reach for it, and loud music and a couple dressed in weathered denim poured out. Walking arm in arm with unlit cigarettes dangling from their mouths, the couple stopped short. The man stepped to the side and held the door for Wolf.

“Sheriff,” the man said.

“Thank you.” Wolf stepped into the humid room. It smelled of fried bar food and beer, stale cigarette smoke and marijuana. The jukebox in the corner played a hair metal song from the late eighties and two women who were probably roadies back then danced in front of it while their boyfriends played pool.

Hair, leather, and chains were the overriding theme of the twenty-plus patrons inside the bar.

Wolf walked to the bar and a younger man with a tight ponytail and hemp necklace greeted him with a raised chin. “Sheriff?”

“Hello. I’m looking for someone named Maureen McKenzie. Worked here twenty-two years ago.”

The man nodded. “Yeah. She owns the place. She’s in back.” He thumbed towards a doorway behind him with raised eyebrows.

Wolf nodded and then reached down to pat his pocket when his phone began vibrating. It was going nuts.

He pulled it out and looked at it, seeing that he’d been granted a tiny sliver of cell reception, and now two voice messages and a text message were coming in.

Wolf looked at the text message. It was from Rachette.

Call me immediately. Found Parker Grey!

Wolf’s pulse jumped. My God, after all these years, he turns up? And right now as they start investigating him again?

Looking at the voicemails and seeing they were both from Rachette, he skipped listening to them and called instead.

As the phone purred in his ear, he turned and studied the inside of the Tackle Box Bar and Grill. A few people averted their eyes. The mood had definitely shifted at the sight of his badge and gun to a somber impatience. People wanted to get back to using the F-word loudly, drinking their fourth or fifth or tenth beer before they got back in their cars and drove on the dirt roads to their houses.

“Hello, I’m Maureen.” A husky voice came from behind him.

“Hey!” Rachette’s voice exploded in his ear. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you!”

Wolf turned around and held up a finger to the heavy-set red headed woman. She frowned, shook her head, and walked away.

“What’s going on?” Wolf asked. “Parker Grey turned up?”

“Yeah. I’m on my way to you right now. Where are you? I thought there wasn’t any cell reception at her house.”

“I’m across the lake at the Marina. The Tackle Box Bar and Grill.”

People nearby turned resentful eyes towards him, clearly wary of more cops showing up and ruining their Saturday night. Wolf walked away from the bar and retreated to a quiet corner.

“I just left County now,” Rachette said, his voice still excited. “I’m about twenty minutes away.”

Wolf frowned and switched phone hands. “Why are you still at County? I thought you went back to the station.”

“I did. Then I came back.”

“Why?”

“Because there’ve been some developments.”

“What?”

“I started with the Colorado missing person’s database, and got a pretty immediate identification of one of them. A kid named James Trujillo. Seventeen years old. Most likely a runaway. Last seen hitchhiking north out of Alamosa.”

“Okay, and … what’s with Parker Grey? Where’s he at?”

“Wait a minute. It gets better. Or worse. Turns out James Trujillo went missing six years ago.”

Wolf froze. “Six years ago?”

“Six years ago.”

“So the killer … so Parker Grey kept killing? He stayed close.”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Parker Grey is here.”

Wolf frowned. “Sounds pretty close to me. Where? What do you mean, here?”

“Here, as in at County, sitting on a gurney in Lorber’s exam room with a bullet hole in his head.”

Wolf hit the end call button and walked slowly to the bar, his thoughts wading through the revelation.

Maureen McKenzie, the woman Wolf had come to see stood with both hands on the bar, an expectant look in her bloodshot eyes. Extending his hand, he gripped and shook hers, thinking of a dead trout as he did so.

“So? What can I do for you?” She coughed, and it was like a blast of radio static.

“I need to talk to you about this man.” Wolf produced the photo of Parker Grey from Wolf’s father’s file and held it out.

Wolf’s thoughts wandered again to the alarm at Kimber Grey’s house, and to the strange encounter at Olin Heeter’s house, from which the adrenaline had yet to wear off. It hadn’t been some sort of encounter, Wolf reminded himself. It had been a person. He was sure of it. A person who had been hiding inside Olin Heeter’s place. He thought of the movement he saw in the window. Now that person was in the woods outside Kimber Grey’s. Who? The Killer?

Definitely not Parker Grey.

“…that? Sheriff, hello! What the hell is going on?”

Another coughing fit snapped Wolf out of his thoughts and he saw that Maureen now wore red framed glasses and she was holding up Parker Grey’s picture. She took off her glasses and dropped the photo on the bar. “What do you need?”

“Sorry … I need to talk to you about this man.”

She shrugged. “Sure. Like I said, go ahead.”

“Do you remember the night of the Fourth of July, twenty-two years ago, when this man was here with his family watching the fireworks, and he got a phone call here?”

She nodded. “Hell yes, I do. That was the last time I saw or spoke to Parker Grey.” She grabbed a glass and put it under a tap, filling it halfway with beer and taking a sip. “Used to be a regular here. Would come across the lake in his boat every Friday and Saturday night.”

Wolf nodded.

“You want one?” She held up her now empty glass.

“No. Thanks. Can you tell me a little about that phone call he got?”

She nodded, the red skin under her chin wobbling. “Yeah. Why don’t we step outside?”

Wolf followed her out to a wooden deck over the water that squealed under her footsteps.

She pulled out a crinkling pack of cigarettes and lit one, and then held the pack to him.

He shook his head.

Maureen took a greedy pull and exhaled. “It was during the fireworks. I remember I was right here, watchin’ em over the lake, right there.” She tilted her head and pointed to the moon. “And then my bartender came out and said there was someone on the phone lookin’ for Parker Grey. I remember being like, ‘We ain’t running a secretary service,’ and then Gabe—that was my bartender—said she was saying it was an emergency. So I stormed in and got on the phone, and this girl demanded to talk to Parker Grey. And I said, ‘Listen, honey. He’s not here in my bar, so you’re out of luck.’ And she started getting hysterical, like crying and stuff, and then I was kinda creeped out. I didn’t want to be the one not telling him about an emergency. So I told her to hold on, and I went out over to the lawn over there by the parking lot where everyone was set up and started looking for him.”

She sucked another drag and ignored the ash as it broke off and tumbled up her arm.

“And can you describe the voice?” Wolf asked. “Was it an older woman? A younger woman?”

“Younger,” she said without hesitation. “Early twenties or something.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay, and so you—”

“Or could have been a boy, I guess.”

Wolf blinked. “If you had to bet, which one would you say it was?”

She took another drag, this one slow. The cherry brightened, and her eye winked shut against the smoke. “I don’t gamble. But if I had to, I’d say it was a woman. I guess she sounded too mature to be a little boy.”

Wolf nodded. “You got the call, and then you went and found Parker?”

“Yeah. I went and found Parker, and told him he had a phone call and it sounded like an emergency. So he got up from his blanket and came in with me and talked. I didn’t hear what was said. But—”

“Sorry to interrupt, but when you came out to tell him, was he with his wife and daughter, Kimber?”

She nodded. “Yeah. They were sitting on the same blanket. I remember whispering in Parker’s ear, cause I didn’t want to freak out his wife and kid about the whole thing.”

“Okay, thanks. Continue please.”

“Yeah. So, he came in, and I watched him on the phone for the conversation. He was talking all intense into it, ducking down and covering his mouth when he talked and stuff. And then he just hung up all a sudden and stormed out.”

“Upset looking?”

She nodded while taking a drag and exhaling. “Yep. Looked real upset.”

“And then did you see him leave?”

“Yeah. I went back out here to the rear deck, and everybody watched him get in his boat and tear outta here. A couple of the guys were calling after him, asking if everything was okay. When he didn’t answer, they was givin’ him shit.”

“So he left, without his wife and daughter?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

“And did you see him come back later?”

“Yep. I was out here again. Saw him drive up in his boat. I remember we were all yelling at him again. I remember he was ignoring everyone, just like when he left. Then he came in and got his wife and daughter and they left.”

Wolf looked at her. “He came in here?”

“Yeah. They were in here talking to people, looking to get a ride back home. But then he showed up.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

“Shoot. I have no idea. Midnight?”

Wolf put his hands on the wobbly wooden railing and looked across the water. He counted seven lit cabins on the western shore, a constellation on the dark mountain on the other side of the lake. The clouds were moving out, and the moon was full, its stripe reflection slicing the lake in two. “Thanks for your time.”

“Yep.”

Wolf walked back into the bar and then out the door, hearing raucous laughter as the door shut behind him.

Standing in the parking lot, he watched as a vehicle approached. It was a shiny black Mercedes Benz SUV with Idaho plates. Not Rachette.

Checking his cell phone, he saw no missed calls. With a shake of his head he pushed Sarah’s number and listened to it go to voicemail after two rings. He looked at the digital clock on the screen and then across the lake again. He couldn’t shake the feeling that things were happening over there. Right now. And it was all because they’d pulled up those bodies.

“Shit,” he said under his breath and got in his SUV. Firing it up, he backed out and began the journey back to Kimber Grey’s cabin.

Chapter 17

Van Wyke’s ass was killing him as he pulled into the parking lot for the Cold Lake Marina.

“Says the lake is named for a temperature inversion at fifty feet under the surface. Every twenty or so years the water will flip …” Darnell was droning on, looking at a Cold Lake brochure complete with a miniature map they’d picked up at the gas station outside of Rocky Points.

“Hello,” Van Wyke murmured, slowing to a crawl as his headlights passed over the reflective paint of a Sluice County Sheriff’s Department SUV.

Darnell snapped the brochure down and slipped it in the side pocket of the door. “The guy’s outside his truck. I guess we should have expected this,” Darnell whispered, as if the cop could hear them. “They did just pull up eight dead bodies.”

Van Wyke kept quiet as they passed. The cop watched them approach and then got preoccupied by his cell phone.

They silently parked, got out of the car, and Van Wyke stretched his arms and legs. It had been a grueling drive from Boise, but they were here now.

He sucked in a breath, smelling the fishy scent of lake water mixed with marijuana smoke.

“Damn,” Darnell said, meeting him at the back of the SUV, “buncha hippies up here. You smell that? And with that cop right here?”

Van Wyke ignored him, watching the Sheriff’s Department Vehicle back up and peel out of the lot, the engine revving high before up-shifting to the next gear. They watched as the roof lights turned on and twinkled into the distance, following the dirt road along the edge of the lake.

“Let’s go.” He walked toward the bumping bar.

“Yeah. Black man, middle of Hicksville, biker bar … what could go wrong?”

Van Wyke ignored him and they went in.

Heads turned, but the patrons left them alone as they walked up to the bar. A young man with long hair and a hippy necklace put his hands on the counter. “What can I do you guys for?”

Van Wyke leaned conspiratorially on his elbow and pulled out his P.I. license, which looked vaguely like a driver’s license and demanded zero respect, but more often than not, he found, did the job of loosening lips.

“I’m a private investigator, here looking for a Sheriff’s deputy. You happen to see one in here?”

The guy nodded eagerly. “Yeah. He just left.”

“Do you know where he went?”

The man frowned. “No clue. Hey, Maureen. Do you know where the Sheriff just went? These men were supposed to meet him.”

The Sheriff.

“I don’t know. Who are you guys?”

Van Wyke flashed a winning smile and then his P.I. license again. “Private investigators working with the local Sheriff’s department. I was supposed to meet the Sheriff here.” He exhaled with disappointment. “Typical. We don’t wear an official badge, so they don’t give us the time of day.”

She nodded with commiseration.

“I thought I saw him leaving. Do you know where he was going? Looked like he was hauling ass along the lake.”

“Oh, well then he was probably going up to Parker Grey’s. He was just asking about him.”

Parker Grey?

Van Wyke popped his eyes with eagerness. “You know exactly where Parker Grey lives? We’d love to catch him.”

“Yeah, just follow the lake around on County 74, then turn left on County 16. Follow it down to the south a mile or so, can’t miss his place. The road dead-ends right on it. Only Parker Grey don’t live there no more. Just his daughter.”

Van Wyke nodded. “Really?”

“Hey, here he is. I think the Sheriff just pulled up.” She pointed lazily out the window toward the parking lot, and sure enough a Sluice County Sheriff’s Department SUV was pulling into the lot. “You can ask him yourself.”

Van Wyke’s pulse jumped. “Thanks.” He stepped quickly for the door.

Darnell followed close, and they marched to the parking lot, and approached a different uniformed man who was jogging towards them. It wasn’t the Sheriff they’d just seen. It was a much shorter, younger deputy.

“Hey,” Van Wyke called to him. “You lookin’ for the Sheriff?”

The uniformed man frowned and stopped. “Yeah. Why?”

“He just peeled outta here, went up the road along the lake.” Van Wyke pointed in the distance and thankfully saw the faint strobe of blue and red.

The deputy squinted and started walking back towards the lot. “Shit,” he muttered, and then started running.

“Damn,” Darnell said under his breath. “That was close. We were about blown. Where you goin’?”

Van Wyke hurried to the SUV. “We’re following them.”

Chapter 18

Kimber Grey’s eyelid twitched. She stepped out onto the wooden deck and all but collapsed into the railing. “What?”

“It’s been confirmed by our Medical Examiner at the hospital. It’s definitely your father’s body.”

She shook her head, squinted her eyes shut, and gripped her hair with a maddening gesture. “I don’t get it.”

“Listen, I think you might be in danger,” Wolf said.

She looked at him and moved her lips but made no sound. She continued to shake her head, her eyes fixed in the past, trying to reorder events in her mind.

“My mother?” She whispered, asking a question to herself.

Wolf cleared his throat. “What about your mother?”

“I’m just trying to figure out who did this.”

“There’s more to it. One of the bodies was a missing person from six years ago.”

Kimber looked at Wolf; her pupils shrank to pinpoints.

They turned at the sound of crackling tires and saw the bouncing headlights coming through the trees. A few seconds later Rachette drove down from the woods and parked in front of the cabin.

He got out quickly and came to the base of the stairs. “Everything all right?”

Wolf nodded.

“No,” Kimber said.

“Kimber,” Wolf turned to her. “I’d like you to come into town. You may be in more danger than you think. The discovery of these bodies, it may have triggered some sort of action with this killer. You—”

“Yeah, okay. You don’t have to convince me.” She walked to her doorway. “Just give me a second to get my things.”

Wolf watched her march into the house and then he walked down the stairs and stood next to Rachette.

“What do you think?” Rachette hitched up his duty belt and looked out toward the water.

“I think we need to come back tomorrow and scour these woods, and get back up to Olin Heeter’s place and check it out.”

“Olin Heeter?”

Wolf nodded. “The place on the hill up there. I was just up there and had an encounter with someone.”

Rachette looked at Wolf. “Really?”

He nodded.

They stood listening to the silent forest for a few minutes, hearing thumps and creaking from inside the cabin.

Rachette looked up the stairs to the cracked open door. “Where’s Kimber going to stay?”

“The Edelweiss, or some other hotel in town.” Wolf watched Rachette’s face drop. “Did you think I was going to say with you?”

“Pfft, what?” He twisted his face. “Yes. Yes I did.”

Chapter 19

“There it is.” Van Wyke shut off his headlights, his brakes screeching softly as he stopped on the dirt road. The cabin loomed down and to the left a hundred or so yards, dark and deserted looking.

“What the hell were the cops doing here? And who’s Blazer was that?” Darnell leaned forward and squinted.

Van Wyke ignored the question and the SUV rocked as he shifted into park.

“And ‘Parker Grey doesn’t live here? His daughter does?’ How does that make any sense? His daughter? I don’t think we’re in the right spot.”

Van Wyke gazed out the windshield, surveying the dark forest uphill from the cabin. “There’s only one way to find out.” He pulled out his pistol and stepped out into the cool night air.

Darnell stepped out, went to the back seat, dug into his laptop bag and pulled out his own pistol. With crunching footsteps he walked around the back of the truck and joined him.

A howling coyote sent Van Wyke’s pulse spiking, and Darnell shook his head. The forest surrounding them was pitch black and dense, and every little noise put Van Wyke on edge. He’d come so far, thinking about this moment for over ten and a half hours, thinking about how he would get what he was rightfully owed back from the man who betrayed him.

Parker Grey. It was either him or it was not. There was only one way to find out. And if it wasn’t? They were going to have a long night ahead of them, and a long day ahead tomorrow, and that was with cops everywhere. They would have to canvas door-to-door and to confirm residents’ IDs until they found their man.

Van Wyke clenched his teeth as he gazed down at the darkened cabin. If Parker Grey was their man, and this was the cabin they were looking for, there was a good chance a million in cash was inside. Van Wyke knew this, because Van Wyke had watched the man take three million in cash, stacked neatly in a briefcase, twenty-five years ago.

And Van Wyke’s payment for hooking the man up with people who could buy seven million dollars worth of boats and real estate for three cash, no questions asked? A signed quitclaim deed and the keys to a two million dollar house in the resort town of McCall, Idaho.

Van Wyke clenched his teeth, thinking of the trip up to McCall he’d made that fateful day, only to see a pile of charred ashes for a house, straight down to the charcoal foundation, surrounded by a flock of cops. That had been his payment. Dustin Kipling, or Parker Grey, or whatever he wanted to call himself now, would regret doing that to him. He had made Van Wyke bend over backwards, calling in all sorts of favors with all sorts of unsavory people, for free. Van Wyke never worked for free.

“Nobody home,” Darnell said.

“Mmm,” Van Wyke said. “You have a flashlight?”

Darnell looked at him and shook his head. “Damn. Nice preparation.”

Van Wyke pulled out his cell phone and looked at it. “I’ve got a flashlight app.”

“Oh yeah, me too.”

“Let’s not use them until we can get inside. Until then, let’s keep out of sight. We’re gonna have to stick to the trees.”

He turned back toward the cabin and squinted. There was a gap in the trees to the left of the cabin, and it looked like the land just ended abruptly. There was a smooth horizontal silhouette cut against the silver lake. The top of a rise, he thought, or a cliff.

Van Wyke flinched at a bright flash to his right, and a slapping noise behind him at almost the same instant. Just as his mind registered the sharp crack noise that came from the same spot, something hit Van Wyke in the face, and he watched in stunned confusion as the illuminated screen of a cell phone twirled off his jawbone to the ground in front of him. When he heard a loud bonk against the car behind him, he twisted just in time to see Darnell’s head bounce off the rear door as he collapsed into a heap.

“Darnell? Darn—”

An angry zip of air next to his cheek froze him in place, and a spark on the dirt followed by a loud whining ricochet sent him diving to the ground for cover. A split second later he felt a stinging punch in his side, then his shoulder, and then his chest exploded in unimaginable pain.

He opened his eyes, and his vision swirled like he was a teenager who’d drunk too much wine. Blinking, he saw a figure out of a science fiction movie coming at him from the trees. A dark apparition with a protruding single lens for a face, an eerie red glow within.

No. It was a person with a silenced rifle and a night vision scope on their head, he told himself. He blinked again and tried to raise his gun, but to his surprise there was no feeling in his arms. He swallowed and gagged on the huge amount of coppery blood that was there. Gasping, he grunted, trying to ask who was there.

Another punch of pain in his chest, and he lay still this time. He knew the life was ebbing from his body, and it was a sensation like falling from a great height, only there was a sickening dread. An unimaginable sense of regret.

He saw two legs step near and then the person rolled Darnell over. Digging in his jacket. Pulling out his wallet. The legs stepped to him, and then he felt himself shift this way and that, never seeing who was doing it, because his vision had gone out.

The dread lifted.

The regret disappeared, along with everything else.

Chapter 20

Running on fumes from five hours sleep the night before, Wolf took a sip of coffee and a bite of his chocolate glazed donut, hoping the two would react in his body to give him some energy. With heavy eyelids he looked up at the clock on his office wall—8 a.m..

He looked at his cell phone for the third time in as many minutes, and there was still no missed call or text message from Sarah. It was … what was it? It was disconcerting, he thought. She hadn’t answered his late call last night, nor responded this morning. He wanted to think she was sleeping in, but she never did that.

Had he stood her up? Had she been there at his house waiting for him all night and then left after he didn’t show up? If that was the case, then why not leave a note for him?

There was a double tap on his door.

“Come in.”

Patterson poked her head in. “Still no answer at Heeter’s place at Cold Lake, or his place in Ashland.”

Wolf rubbed his eyes. “All right.” He stood up and his knee cracked, sounding like a dry stick snapping in two.

“Sir,” Patterson said. She itched the back of her neck, avoiding eye contact with him. “I need to talk to you. Last night—”

Wolf’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out with a little too much enthusiasm. It was not Sarah. It was Margaret Hitchens.

“It’s your aunt,” Wolf said. “I can talk to her later.”

“No, no … please. We’ll talk later. It’s nothing.”

Wolf looked at her and narrowed his eyes. The phone wriggled in his hand for a few more seconds and then stopped. He stared at her. “What is it?”

She rolled her eyes and sagged a little. “I … last night I was out with Sarah … I mean, I was out with Scott. And his parents.”

Wolf hardened his stance.

“Anyways, long story short, it sucked, but that’s not the point. On the way out, I saw Sarah.” She closed her eyes. “Shit, I shouldn’t be shoving my nose in other people’s business.”

“You saw Sarah.” Wolf waited for the small jolt in his body to dissipate. “So what?”

“She was with a guy. Some big dude with fancy clothes on. Name was Carter Willis. I went up and introduced myself.”

Wolf nodded, controlling his breath. “Yeah?”

“And … I don’t know. Aren’t you two dating?”

He stared at her, considering the implications of the question. Were Sarah and Carter acting more than friendly with one another? “Not really.”

“Oh. I thought you guys were. I guess … I don’t know. Never mind.” Patterson shook her head and walked out his door.

“Hey,” Wolf called.

She turned.

“Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Who was this guy who had waltzed his way into his and Sarah’s lives? All Wolf knew was, if the man was only a gay former colleague of hers, then Wolf was a billionaire.

He sighed and looked at his phone again. Against his better judgment he called back Margaret Hitchens.

“Hey, how’s it going, Sheriff?”

“Hi, Margaret. Fine. What’s happening?”

“Are you around?”

Wolf leaned to the side and peeked through the open blinds of his window, then ducked back when he saw Margaret’s face pressed against the window of her Real Estate storefront office across the street.

“No.” Wolf pulled his chair over to him and sat down out of sight.

“Oh, I thought you were there.”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, I wish you were there. I have great news.” There was a rattling in the background, and then the sound of a door slamming shut.

“Well I’m not, so what is it?”

“Geez, you wake up on the wrong side? Never mind, let me help your mood. Because of your ineptitude with a lasso, you’ve helped your campaign.” She was breathing hard. Excited.

Wolf raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Good.”

“Oh good? That’s all you have to say?” There was the sound of a door opening and closing in the background, and hurried footsteps.

Wolf took the phone away from his ear. He shook his head and hung up.

Margaret burst into his office with phone in hand.

“Good morning Margaret. I’m glad Tammy is just letting you in whenever you want now.”

She held out her hands. “She knows how to treat your campaign manager. Maybe you could learn a thing or two. You know, the employees in this building are counting on us, too. No one wants to work for that asshole, MacLean.”

“Really? I hadn’t thought of that. Sit.”

“No thanks. Move.” She came around the desk and grabbed his computer mouse. “Have you seen this?”

Wolf marveled at this sixty-year-old woman’s vivacious hunger for winning, and watching her in action, he was suddenly more grateful than ever that he’d employed Margaret Hitchens for his campaign manager.

Employed wasn’t the right word, Wolf thought. He hadn’t employed Margaret Hitchens, because he wasn’t paying her a dime, and he had had nothing to do with her working for him in the first place. It was more like she’d stepped forward and recruited him. She had demanded she run his campaign, and had vowed—with a look in her eye that had made Wolf swallow—that Wolf would win no matter what.

She clicked the mouse and scooted back. “There.”

Wolf leaned forward and watched a shaky video of him failing at lassoing a calf, and then failing again. The video cut, and then he was failing again.

“Yeah. I’ve seen this first hand.” Wolf snatched up his empty coffee cup and walked to his door.

“You’re missing the best part.”

Wolf paused and looked back. “What.”

A deep male voice bellowed over the speakers. “David Wolf for Sheriff. He never gives up in a fight. Never fails to finish what he’s started. Never…”

Wolf shook his head and walked into the hallway, poured himself a cup of coffee and walked back into his office.

Margaret was standing now, arms folded with a disappointed look. “David. I turned this into a commercial, put it up on channel 17, and then up on the local for Ashland, and then all the news channels are showing it this morning. Look at the number of views on this YouTube video. That’s like two views per capita of Byron and Sluice counties combined!

“It’s perfect. MacLean comes barging in with his photographers, and ends up making you the star.” She shook her head in astonishment. “Oh, the irony. I wish I could have seen his face when that commercial came on. I bet he laughed. Thought we were kicking ourselves. And I bet he’s shitting his pants now. It’s perfect footage, showing exactly the type of man you are. And right before the debate.”

Wolf took a sip, feeling a fish wriggle in his gut at the thought of speaking in front of a large, sweaty audience with cameras pointed at his face, being broadcast to thousands of homes. “Are you done? I kind of have a lot of work to do today, with eight dead bodies showing up at the lake and all?”

She frowned. “You have eight bodies, but you have a debate that can make or break your future tomorrow night. Don’t you forget that.”

“Yeah.” He set his cup on the desk and looked up at her. “How could I forget?”

She softened her look and walked around the desk, placing her wiry hands on his shoulders. “I know you’re nervous. But the more you know that packet I gave you front and back, the more relaxed you’re going to be. The more confident in front of the cameras you’ll be.”

Wolf tightened his lips into a straight line and nodded.

“Pop quiz. What are you going to say about the pension issue?” She asked.

Wolf exhaled, eased past her to his seat and pulled himself on the wheels to his desk. “That I like pensions.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Okay. I’ll let you get to work. Just study that damn packet.” She looked around the room, trying to find it.

Wolf pulled his desk drawer open, took out the packet of papers and showed it to her, and dropped it back in.

She pointed at him. “Study it, David. Two days, today and tomorrow. You have two days to study.”

Wolf nodded. “Yep.”

“So are you ready for the good news now?” She clenched her fists and her face shook with a wide smile.

“There’s more?” Wolf looked at his watch and stood. “Look, I’ve got a situation meeting in five minutes.”

“Senator Chama wants to talk to you. Tonight.”

Wolf frowned. “What? I thought he was all for MacLean.”

“He was. Until this,” she pointed at the computer. “I’m telling you, this video is spreading like wildfire through beetle-kill trees. He called me this morning after they aired it on Denver news.”

“And he wants to meet me tonight? On a Sunday night?”

She shrugged with a chipper face that made Wolf want to bend over the trashcan.

Wolf’s phone rang and he looked at Margaret with lazy eyelids.

“Yeah. All right. I’m outta here. But Chama’s coming tonight to meet you here. Six p.m.. So be here, or I’ll murder you and throw you in the lake.”

Wolf picked up the phone. “Sheriff Wolf … Hi, Mr. Frehauf. I was hoping you could meet me today to talk for a bit…”

Margaret waited patiently until Wolf finished.

Wolf hung up and walked past her and out the door. “I’ve got a meeting, Margaret. I’ll see you later.”

“Six o’clock.” She followed him down the hall. “Don’t forget!”

Chapter 21

Wolf stood at the front of the situation room with a pen in hand, waiting for his five on-duty deputies to take a seat around the large rectangular table.

As they sat, slits of morning sun came in through the blinds and lit up swirls of steam rising from their coffees. Along with caffeine, each deputy had a stapled packet of paper with them—the photocopied report Burton and Wolf’s father had compiled on the case twenty-two summers ago.

“All right,” Wolf said. “Let’s go over what we’ve got.”

“We’ve got a sick bastard killing people,” Baine said with a humorless chuckle.

“The father?” Wolf asked, writing Parker Grey’s name on the board.

“He’s dead,” Rachette said.

“I know. I still want to talk about him.”

“He fits the bill as the killer,” Wilson said. “We’ve got Katherine Grey’s testimony on video that he came back with blood on his clothing. And then,” Wilson pointed at Wolf with a pen, “your father and Burton tracked down that psychiatrist in Grand Junction, and confirmed his diagnosis. Schizophrenic, with psychotic tendencies. The doctor said he told Parker Grey that he could legally put him in the loony bin, because of the murdered squirrel story he admitted to. The doctor said Parker Grey was potentially a danger to himself or others. Prescribed him anti-psychotics.”

“Where’s that psychiatrist now?” Wolf asked.

“Dead.” Wilson pulled his lips into a line under his mustache.

“Yeah, there’s just that one big problem,” Rachette said, “We found the father’s body with the other victims. So that means it wasn’t him.”

“Just because we found the father’s body doesn’t mean he’s exonerated,” Patterson said.

“Agreed,” Lorber’s voice barked out of the laptop in the center of the table. “Thanks to the cold water of the lake, it’s impossible to know when Parker Grey died exactly. He could have disappeared on the fifth of July, gone into hiding and gone on killing, and then he was killed himself.”

“By someone else, years down the road.” Patterson finished his thought.

“With a bullet to the head, mind you, not the same M.O. as the other kills. Maybe his kills were the decapitations, and someone killed him with the gun.” Lorber smiled and bit a donut on the computer screen.

Wolf turned away from Rachette’s souring face and scribbled profusely on the pen board. “Timeline,” he said. “Let’s go over what we absolutely know, and when.”

Patterson raised her pen. “Nick Pollard goes missing twenty two years ago.”

Wolf wrote that.

Rachette cleared his throat. “And we’ve got the phone call coming from the Pumapetrol gas station down the road the night of the fourth. Call went out at 9:39 p.m. according to the phone company records from twenty-two years ago. Burton and your father found Nick Pollard’s blood on the receiver of that phone. So I think that we can definitely say Nick Pollard died that night, sometime before 9:39 p.m..”

“Not necessarily,” Patterson said. “He went missing that night. His blood was put on the phone at 9:39. But died? He could have been wounded, and some girl was helping him. She gets his blood on her hand, calls Parker Grey from that pay phone at the gas station ... and then Parker Grey comes and picks her up.”

The room went silent.

Baine scrunched his face. “Why?”

“I’m just saying. We don’t know what happened. All we know is there’s Nick Pollard’s blood on the phone, and when the phone call went out.”

Wolf took a sip of coffee and folded his arms. After a few seconds he turned back to the pen board. “All right. We’ve got Nick Pollard: missing twenty-two years ago. Parker Grey: missing two days later, on the 6th of July. Katherine Grey: she bolts a day after that, on the 7th of July, supposedly goes back home to Tennessee, which no one has been able to confirm.

“James Trujillo’s body is in with the others, he went missing six years ago, last seen in Alamosa, Colorado. What else do we have on him?”

Baine held up a finger. “I talked to the Alamosa PD. James Trujillo’s grandmother reported him missing six years ago. She’s since deceased, and there are no other next of kin. They stopped looking for him before they started, because the grandmother was apparently on all sorts of medication, and they thought he just left on his own accord.”

Lorber’s voice croaked through the speakers. “But we now know he was stabbed fifteen times, slit from the stomach to the neck, and decapitated, and then thrown into Cold Lake in a plastic bag.”

The room went silent.

“Thanks, Doc,” Rachette said. “Maybe you could sing it next time?”

They chuckled for a few moments and Wolf capped the pen. “The point is, we know that whoever is responsible for these grisly killings has been doing it at least up until six years ago.” He turned to Wilson and then Rachette. “How we doing on those missing persons database searches.”

Wilson held up a hand. “Real slow. I’ve got no other confirmed IDs.”

“None of the DNA samples are done,” Lorber said. “But I do want to say, the timeline of Nick Pollard’s death is looking to be a lot earlier than six years ago. The decomposition has been stalled, but his body is nowhere near as pristine as James Trujillo. And neither is Parker Grey’s. I’m going to start testing, using Trujillo’s body decomposition at six years, and I’ll be able to extrapolate when the others were killed give or take a few years. But nothing definitive.”

Wolf paced in front of the room. “Okay. Thanks Doc. The fingerprints on the phone? We’ve triple checked those, right?”

“Still no match in any database,” Patterson said.

“And,” Baine chimed in, “where the hell is Pollard’s truck? That thing just vanished off the face of the earth back then. It’s gotta be in the lake.”

Wilson shook his head. “They ran sonar around the entire perimeter of the lake back in the day. Never found anything.”

“Then they didn’t look deep enough,” Baine said.

“And how is someone going to dump a truck deeper into the lake?” Rachette scoffed. “You can only get it out so far, and they checked already.”

“I don’t know, jump it off one of those cliffs?”

“Pfft, those cliffs aren’t over the water. They’re over land.”

“So someone took the plates off, scrapped it, sold it, painted it, whatever.”

“Then I guess you have your answer,” Rachette said.

Baine sank back in his seat, glaring daggers at Rachette.

“Pollard’s yellow Toyota pickup truck.” Wolf wrote it. “Good question. And here’s a question. What if Parker Grey was killed on the 6th? Where’s his truck?”

Wolf scribbled that question on the board.

Patterson cleared her throat. “Like Rachette said, they scoured the edges of that lake. It doesn’t look like Parker Grey’s truck or Nick Pollards pickup are in there. But we could get the sonar guys to do another lap.”

Wolf nodded. “It’s probably a good idea.” He took another sip of coffee, glancing at his quiet deputies. “Let’s talk about the neighbor, Olin Heeter.”

Patterson raised a hand. “I checked property records this morning. Olin Heeter was the original owner of the land and structure the Greys bought. Olin Heeter quitclaimed it to Parker Grey twenty-five years ago. There’s a cash transfer on record of one hundred thousand dollars. I’m not an IRS agent, but that sounds fishy to me. There’s over sixty acres and a house on the land. Otherwise, Olin Heeter also has a primary residence down south, in Ashland.

“His number was listed so I called it. No one answered there, either. The guy is seventy-one years old. Vietnam veteran. Wife is deceased, died of a heart attack three years ago.” She held up her hands. “Nowhere to be found.”

Wolf nodded. “And no sightings up at his place in Cold Lake?”

Yates inhaled. “Well, I’m supposed to go back up right after the meeting. I’ll report back ASAP. But I didn’t see anything this morning. I had that DUI I was helping with down the valley around—”

“Don’t worry,” Wolf said. “Just check it and let us know. What about Kimber Grey?”

“I think she’s fishy,” Baine said.

“I think she’s crazy,” Rachette said.

Patterson fluttered her lips.

“What?” Rachette asked. “Looks to me like she’s the only one left standing. Dad’s dead. Mom’s gone. She’s sittin’ pretty.”

“We have no evidence.” Patterson shrugged. “And I know what I just argued before, but if Nick Pollard was killed the night of the fourth, before that payphone call was made, we have plenty of witnesses that put her at the marina all night. And it’s not her fingerprints in Nick Pollard’s blood on the phone. The rest of her story, being locked up in a room all night I could take with a grain of salt, but facts are facts, if Nick Pollard died that night, she didn’t do it.”

Rachette picked up his packet. “Says here that Olin Heeter told Burton and Wolf’s father that he was,” Rachette flipped through the pages, “Quote: ‘Painting the moon on the sixth of July and saw Parker Grey’s boat out in the lake dumping something in the water. I saw it clear as day, because it was right in the reflection.’, end quote. Parker Grey, according to Kimber and her mother, was supposedly gone on the sixth.”

They sat in silence.

Wolf nodded. “So that means if Kimber and her mom were telling the truth about Parker Grey leaving on the 6th from their lives forever, then they were the ones out there dumping something in the lake.”

“Yeah, and now we’re pulling up bodies from the lake,” Baine said.

The room went silent again.

“So what does all this mean?” Yates asked.

“It’s what I like to call, a whole lot of nothing,” Lorber said through the tinny laptop speaker.

Wolf put the pen down on the tray and stood still, looking at the dejected faces. “We’re not going to solve the case in here. We’ve gotta get out there and work it. It’s been sitting dormant for twenty-two years, and it’s cold.”

Baine raised his hands. “And what do we do? Just go through the same leads your dad and Burton did? They were pretty good cops, and they never found anything.”

“But we have something they didn’t. Like you said, we have bodies. In the end, my father and Burton were stumped. A crew of rescue divers couldn’t find the bodies. The sonar wasn’t as advanced back then, the bodies were down deep, and apparently my father was diving in the wrong spot. In the end they had to assume Nick’s blood was on that phone because,” Wolf shrugged, “because who knew why. But we have Nick Pollard’s body.

“But, like we said. We have no time of death for any of these bodies. We need more, people.”

Wolf stood motionless for a full five seconds. He rolled his neck and scanned the faces in the room. “I’m meeting Chad Frehauf, the clerk that was working at the Pumapetrol gas station that night the phone call took place. Yates, make your way back up there to Heeter’s on the lake. Wilson, you’re going up with him. If there is no answer, I want you to check the surrounding woods, check out his boat.”

Wolf forked his fingers.

“Patterson and Rachette, you’ll go to Heeter’s other place in Ashland.”

Rachette looked up. “Doesn’t that mean we have to work with Byron SD?”

Wolf nodded.

“Oh. Great.”

“I’ll call MacLean and tell him you’re on your way. Let’s move people.”

“What about me?” Baine sat up straight.

“You keep an eye on Kimber Grey.”

Baine raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“An eye.” Rachette got up and the room burst into motion. “And that’s it.”

Chapter 22

Wolf pulled into the parking lot of Pumapetrol Gas and got out.

Rachette honked twice as he and Patterson coasted by toward Ashland.

Wolf waved without looking and shut his door. Twisting on his heels, he felt the warmth of the morning sun on his back. Maybe June would finally make an appearance today. He stood tall and stretched his arms overhead, and then reached into his cab and picked up the Nick Pollard file folder off his passenger seat.

Slamming his door, he turned and stared at the skeleton of a payphone mounted on the cinderblock south wall of the gas station.

The phone book had been ripped off, the handset had been severed and taken by SCSD twenty-two years ago, and the body of the phone looked like it had been beaten to death with something blunt. Wolf marveled at the thought that the last person to use the phone had had Nick Pollard’s blood on their hands.

What did that mean?

The person, a woman, killed Nick Pollard and then came and used the phone to call Parker Grey? Or the woman—or teenager, or young woman, or boy—injured Nick Pollard, used the phone to call Parker Grey, and then Parker came to pick said person up and finished Nick off with a mutilation ritual killing? Then brought his body up to the lake and dumped it in?

A rumbling engine came up from the south and pulled Wolf from his thoughts. He turned and squinted, watching a beat up mid-eighties full sized Chevy pickup lumber in and rock to a stop next to his SUV.

The door squeaked open and slammed shut, sounding like a muffled gong. A man walked up with a dirty trucker hat twisted sideways covering a head of long, greasy hair, his thumbs tucked into grease-stained and ripped jeans, the rest of him covered in denim that had never touched a bit of soap.

“Mr. Frehauf?” Wolf asked.

Frehauf reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboros. In a practiced move he tipped one out into his mouth and lit it, took a deep drag, and kept it dangling from his lips.

Wolf held out a hand, and Frehauf shook. Bone thin and sweaty.

“You remember the Fourth of July, twenty-two years ago?” Wolf asked with a wry smile.

Frehauf exhaled and pinched an eye shut against the rising smoke. “Nope.” His chest rattled rhythmically, like rocks in a coffee can, and Wolf took this to be a laugh. “Just kiddin’. I remember that deputy comin’ and talkin’ to me about that night. I’m not sure how helpful I was.” Frehauf had a clear southern accent. “Or how helpful I can be now.”

“Says here you talked to a Deputy Burton from our department?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah, I guess.” The same rhythmic rattle in his chest, like a big set of maracas, and now a flash of his three front teeth. “What do you need to know that I ain’t already told that deputy?”

Wolf shifted, turning his back to the sun, eying the crossroads a couple hundred yards to the north. A car came into view down County 74 from the direction of Cold Lake and squeaked to a stop at the junction before turning away north on 734 towards Williams Pass and Rocky Points beyond.

“My report says you stated someone in a black Chevy Blazer drove down County 74, from Cold Lake, and into the gas station parking lot that night?”

Frehauf pursed his lips and exhaled a plume. “Yeah. Pulled in right here.”

Wolf consulted the report. “Says here it was about 10:30 p.m.. Probably kind of difficult to remember that with all the people coming in and out of the station that night? Fourth of July … wasn’t it busy?”

Frehauf shrugged. “Half and half. Half the night it was dead. Busy before the fireworks show though. A whole mess of people came in from both directions, buyin’ beer, snacks, stuff like that, before they made their way up to the lake. A lot of young folks. Then it was dead for a spell, up until about midnight when they started comin’ back down.

“That’s how I remembered the Blazer, because it came down early, before the rest of the crowd. It was the only truck I seen for an hour, right in the middle of the dead spell. It pulled in all slow, and parked on the side of the building. Right here where we’re standing I guess. Only nobody got out and came inside. He just drove into the lot, I remembered seein’ the headlights flashin’ around, course I couldn’t see him from where I was inside”—he sucked another drag and exhaled—“and then that same Blazer just went past the windows and headed up 734. That way.” Frehauf pointed north towards Williams Pass.

“You don’t remember seeing anyone inside? In the passenger seat?”

“Nope.”

“I notice you keep using the word him.”

“Yeah, I don’t know. I guess it was kind of a manly vehicle. And it was drivin’ around like a man? I don’t know. Guess it could have been a woman. Shit.”

“You’re sure it was a Blazer?”

“Yeah. A Blazer. You know, all boxy and big. Chevy.”

“And how about outside before the Blazer came in? Did you see anyone in the parking lot? A girl or a woman?”

Frehauf shook his head. “Like I told that deputy back then: I didn’t see anyone hangin’ around. I woulda’ been spooked and remembered that. I was working alone on my second night on the job. Middle of nowhere. Middle of the night, know what I’m sayin’? Spooky. Specially for a rookie.”

Wolf pulled out a picture of Nick Pollard’s beat up yellow Toyota pick-up. “How about this truck?”

“I’m tellin’ ya. It’s like I said back then, I don’t remember anything but that Blazer comin’ down. I remember it because it was during the dead time. Anything before that or after, when it was hoppin’ with kids buying beer and hotdogs, I was like a chicken with my head cut off. Tryin’ to learn the register, tryin’ to bag hotdogs and taquitos. Them kids were rippin’ me off, a whole mess of ‘em in here.” Frehauf shook his head and chuckled. “But I do remember that Blazer.”

Frehauf took a deep drag down to the filter and dropped the cigarette on the ground. “That all? I gotta do some grocery shoppin’.”

Wolf inhaled and nodded. “Yeah, go ahead. Thanks.”

Frehauf pointed at Wolf and walked away toward the front of the store and then went inside.

Wolf twisted his heel on the smoldering filter, burying it deep into the dirt. He turned to the payphone and walked over to it. Then he walked along the edge of the building toward the front. Countless cigarette butts, pop-tops, cellophane pull strips, and other crap was strewn on the ground—decades of convenience store litter blown into a drift against the wall by years of southerly wind.

He rounded the corner and peeked in the windows, which made up the entire front of the building.

The cash register was right on the other side of the glass. Frehauf would not have been able to see someone hanging out by the pay phone, his back would have been up against the interior of the concrete wall. The man behind the register looked over his shoulder at Wolf and widened his eyes. With a sheepish grin he saluted at Wolf, and Wolf returned the gesture.

Inside Chad Frehauf was bringing a case of beer to the register and he set it down, nodding at Wolf through the window.

Wolf backtracked and went to his SUV, opened the passenger door and set the report on the seat.

Chad Frehauf came around the corner lighting another cigarette, juggling a case of MGD as he did so.

Wolf looked past Frehauf to the stop sign terminating County 74, and then up highway 734 until it bent out of sight.

“Mr. Frehauf.” Wolf picked up the report sheet with Burton’s handwriting on it and walked over. “It says here that you told the deputy you saw the Chevy Blazer drive away up County 74.”

Frehauf blew out a puff and frowned. He shook his head, then pushed out his lips again. “What? No, I said he went up 734.” He twisted and pointed straight up the highway towards the north, not up the road to the west towards Cold Lake.

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. I mean … I remember he didn’t go back up the road the way he came down. Went up 734 towards Williams Pass.”

Wolf looked at the report again.

Burton’s handwriting said, Mr. Frehauf pointed in the direction of the junction of County 74 and Highway 734 and told me “I saw the Blazer (vehicle in question) take off up County 74.”

“Mr. Frehauf. You said it was your second day on the job that night?”

“Yep. I was fresh into town from Mississippi. My sister lived in Ashland down the road. Got me this job. Her friend used to own this joint. Mississippi was gettin’ to me, know what I’m sayin’? Hot as shit down there.”

Wolf nodded patiently. “Do you think that you may have said the wrong road? I mean, County 74 and Highway 734 … kind of sound the same, don’t they? Maybe you accidently said 74 instead of 734?”

Frehauf narrowed one eye and then looked at the ground, searching his mangled brain cells for a memory.

Wolf stared at him and held his breath.

Frehauf pointed a finger at Wolf and then bounced it up and down. “You know, my sister … oh man,” Frehauf took a drag, “I remember my sister and I got into it once back then, because I gave her directions to a … shit, I’m just gonna tell you seein’ it’s legal and all now … a weed hook-up.”

Wolf pulled his lips into a thin line and nodded.

“I told her directions off of 74, and I meant 734. Got her all sorts of lost. She was pee-issed. So yeah, I guess I could have done that same thing.”

Chapter 23

Patterson watched Rachette squirm in his seat to get a better look in the side view mirror.

She unbuckled her seat belt and exhaled. “Here goes nothing.”

“Do you think it’s him? I hate that we have to work with him.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

Patterson stepped out onto the dirt road and shielded the sun with her hand. She watched the Byron County Sheriff’s Department SUV blow past them, turn into Olin Heeter’s driveway, and rock to a stop.

It was MacLean, and that creepy undersheriff that was latched to him all the time.

She closed the door and looked around the flat country. Ashland and Rocky Points were as different as cross-country and alpine skiing. Ashland was bigger and more populated, but to Patterson’s taste, was infinitely less appealing with its vast expanse of flat land in between the north-south mountain ranges that ran the length to Williams Pass in the north and out of sight into a haze to the south.

A university town, Ashland had a thriving population of young people who tended to inhale as much marijuana smoke as oxygen on any given day. It was a short distance from Rocky Points ski resort over the pass to the north, so students with a hunger for mountain living flocked here from every corner of the country. Liquor stores and take-out restaurants thrived, and houses were generally drab and utilitarian, owned by out-of-towners that rented to the students. Properties that had any money dumped into them were few and far between. And looking at Olin Heeter’s place, he dumped his money into his lake house, not here.

“Nice abode.” Rachette said, hitching his duty belt up and smoothing out his shirt. His eyes were anywhere but on Olin Heeter’s place.

“Deputies,” MacLean stood by the passenger door and squinted. “I see Sheriff Wolf couldn’t make it?” He smirked and shook his head as he shut his door.

“No, sir.” Rachette stepped in front of Patterson with an outstretched hand. “Deputy Rachette, sir.”

Patterson moved in next, wondering why they were introducing themselves by name. MacLean had already called them by name at the lake, but she did it anyway. “Sir. Deputy Patterson.”

MacLean smiled and looked between the two of them. Nodding in silence for a few moments, he seemed to come to a conclusion.

Patterson gestured to the one-story ranch house, ignoring the tall man staring down at both of them outside the driver’s side door. “Thanks for meeting us here, gentlemen. We’d just like to speak to Mr. Heeter. Ask him a few questions.”

MacLean turned and appraised the house. “This isn’t our best area of Ashland.”

She scanned the area. They were a few miles north of the town-proper, and it was wild, flat, sage-covered land as far as the eye could see in all directions, save the reflections of Ashland a few miles south.

She looked the house over. The front porch was cracked concrete, sinking on one side. The siding was cream colored, warping and deteriorating. A single car garage in front of MacLean’s vehicle was closed, the bottom edge tilted, revealing a dark crack on the bottom right side. The roof sagged in the middle.

“Okay. Let’s do it. I’ll let you two do the talking.” MacLean walked quickly around his car and to the front door.

“Sounds good,” Rachette said eagerly.

“You two ever met my Undersheriff?” MacLean asked not breaking stride. “A good man to get to know. He’ll be my right-hand-man moving forward.”

Patterson suppressed any facial expression as she noticed that the Undersheriff was staring right at her.

Rachette paused at the muscular, tall man and looked up. “Hi. Undersheriff Lancaster, right?”

Lancaster looked at Rachette like he was an annoying dog and shook his hand. His gaze slid off Rachette and slathered up and down Patterson.

She narrowed her eyes and shook his hand, keeping contact with the man’s ape-like grip to a minimum.

They walked to the porch and MacLean rapped five times with his knuckles. “Sheriff’s department!”

There was no response.

Rachette eased his way next to MacLean.

“What are we doing here, deputies?” MacLean asked without eye contact.

Rachette cleared his throat. “We pulled those bodies out of the lake, sir. Mr. Heeter said he saw someone dump something in the lake. We need to clear up a few things.

MacLean eyed Rachette. “Is Olin Heeter a suspect?”

Rachette shrugged.

“No, sir,” Patterson said. “But definitely a person of interest.”

MacLean nodded and reached for the doorknob. He twisted and pushed, but it was locked. “Any suspects?”

Patterson frowned. “Sir, we don’t have probable cause to enter the premises.”

MacLean looked over his shoulder at his Undersheriff. “You smell that?” He sniffed, pushing his mustache up against his nostrils. “Smells like rotting flesh to me.”

Lancaster remained mute.

MacLean stepped off the porch and walked to the single-car garage. “Open this up.”

Patterson and Rachette looked at each other. Rachette raised his eyebrows and followed after him.

“Deputy Rachette, Lancaster, I want you two to search the property. I want to know if this man is here. Deputy Patterson, come over here and speak with me, please.”

Patterson’s face flushed. “Sir?”

Without responding, MacLean walked to his rear door and opened it. After a second of fishing inside he stood up with a manila envelope.

Patterson stood dumbfounded until MacLean craned a finger her direction. She looked over at Rachette, and he was eyeing them with trepidation as Lancaster yanked the garage door up from the bottom.

“No car,” Lancaster said, the deepness of his voice startling to Patterson, realizing she’d never heard the man speak until now.

“Go around back and check it out.”

Lancaster nodded and walked around the house.

Rachette stood unsure, looking at MacLean and the envelope in his hand and to Patterson.

“Around back.” MacLean stared at Rachette.

“Yes, sir.” Rachette walked after Lancaster.

“Okay. Now that we’re alone. I have a few things to show you.”

“Me?” Patterson stepped next to him.

MacLean went to the back of his SUV and opened the back hatch, and then he held out the envelope to her. “Open it. You can use the back here as a desk if you’d like.”

Patterson grabbed for the envelope. “What is this?”

He pulled it back and she whiffed air. “It’s bad news for you and your partner I’m afraid.”

He dropped the envelope and held out his hand. “Go ahead.”

Patterson’s skin crawled and her face went hot. Slowly she picked it.

MacLean stood watching her, a whistle coming from his nose with every exhale.

With shaky fingers she bent the metal prongs, opened the flap and looked inside. It was a thick stack of glossy photographs. She pinched the thick stock, her thumb sticking to the top photograph, and slid them out.

She frowned at the top photo.

It was Rachette with a girl. Taken with a telephoto lens from an extreme distance. The girl was bent over, digging inside the trunk of a beat up blue Subaru. Rachette was standing in plain clothes, jeans and a green t-shirt, hands on hips, looking over his right shoulder.

She frowned and looked up at MacLean.

His eyes were glittering with amusement. “Go on.”

She flipped to the next photo and put the first one face down on the rubber mat in front of her.

The girl had stood up now, holding a red backpack by one strap. Rachette was now looking at the backpack, otherwise unmoved.

The next photo was the girl closing the trunk. Rachette staring at her ass.

The woman was turned facing the camera in the next photo, her eyes closed as she brushed long blonde hair behind her ear. Rachette was staring at her. Mesmerized by her movements.

Patterson flipped to the next photo.

“Ah, here it is.” MacLean tapped the photo in her hand.

Patterson exhaled, finally starting to comprehend what she was looking at.

The next photo was taken a moment later, and the woman was handing the backpack off to him. Rachette was taking it with a dumb-looking smile. The woman’s smile was warm, with soft and dreamy eyes.

Patterson flipped faster now, the anger rising—at Rachette, at this cologne-drenched asshole that was going to be her new boss in a month standing next to her.

Next photo: Rachette with the backpack slung on his shoulder, embracing the woman in a close hug. The woman’s back was arched a little, pressing her crotch into his.

Next photo: The woman walking to her driver’s side door. Rachette adjusting his crotch.

Next photo: Rachette at the open rear door of his own beat up Volkswagon. The backpack being tossed into the back seat. Rachette looking longingly over his shoulder at the woman leaving in her own car.

Patterson’s stomach dropped on the next photo. It was a mug shot of the woman taken at the Byron County jail, time stamped two months ago with a booking number rather than a name. Patterson stared at it for a moment. The girl was beautiful, no older than her early twenties. Her brown eyes were vacant of emotion, her face slack. Her skin was smooth and flawless, not a typical mug shot of a woman, Patterson thought. She was used to seeing pockmarks, scabs, bruises, unkempt hair, bloodshot eyes. Not this woman, though. She was clean -looking.

Behind the mug shot was a two page stapled copy of an Byron County police report dated the same as the mug shot.

There was movement around the left side of the house.

“No way in, sir,” Rachette said in a chipper voice.

Patterson looked up from the paper in her hand and instinctively leaned forward to hide it in the SUV’s rear, though Rachette wouldn’t be able to see a thing from such a great distance.

“Go ahead,” MacLean said under his breath as he walked away, “keep reading. Okay. I’ll head back with you two. Did you check the windows?”

Patterson watched the three men round the side of the house and out of sight, Rachette in the rear with an eager smile, talking gibberish about something.

She scanned  it to get the gist. Byron County Sheriff’s Department stopped the woman, Gail Olson, for speeding on 734. A search of her car produced twenty-two pounds of pot and one hundred thousand dollars in cash.

Patterson shook her head. Twenty-two pounds was slightly over the legal possession limit of one ounce of pot.

Gail Olson did not have a distributor’s or grower’s license, or any documentation connecting her to a legitimate business in Colorado. She admitted she was delivering a package, a runner for an illegal grow op. Probably a group of shady individuals exporting illegally out of the state and/or out of the country, Patterson thought, and if she was reading the previous photos correctly, Rachette was this woman’s latest recruit.

“Oh yeah.” Rachette was laughing as he and the other two men came around the other side of the house.

MacLean looked genuinely interested in what Rachette had to say. Lancaster was following with his Lurch walk.

Patterson put the report face down on top of the other upside-down photos and scooped them into the manila envelope, all the while keeping a no-tell poker face. She tucked the envelope under her arm and stepped away from the vehicle.

Rachette’s expression  went flat when he eyed Patterson and the envelope she carried, but rebounded brighter than ever when MacLean smacked his back.

“All right. Tell your Sheriff you didn’t find a car. Did you find a car up at the lake?”

“We haven’t checked his place up there, yet,” Rachette said. “Sheriff Wolf knocked on his door last night. No answer.”

MacLean nodded. “Well. Better check back up there.”

Patterson flicked a nod to the open garage door. “As long as you’re bent on going inside, there’s a door to the house in the garage.”

MacLean looked and Rachette and Lancaster followed his gaze.

“Yeah. So there is,” MacLean said. “Rachette, go check it out.”

Rachette walked into the garage, sidestepping wood debris on the floor.

MacLean stepped over to Patterson. “Show those to Sheriff Wolf by tonight, please.” His voice was low and malicious. “Tell him I’ll be in touch.”

“Locked!” Rachette yelled from the garage.

“All right,” MacLean said with finality. “I think we’re done here. We’ll follow-up for you later, see if he comes home. Close up the garage.”

MacLean came around the back of the SUV and closed the hatch door. “By tonight.” His expression said or else.

Chapter 24

Wolf’s tires scraped and he cranked the wheel hard to the right to compensate. The final descent of the dirt road to the tailing pond was steep and he’d taken it at a little too much speed.

Bouncing in his seat, he decided to let off the brake and let it ride to the bottom. With deafening thumps, the SUV rolled for a few more yards until it flattened out, and with a sigh of relief he slowed to a stop next to the red-tinted water.

He turned off the engine and got out.

Closing his door, he walked to the rear of the SUV and twisted full circle. Across the pond and still in shadow, the mine gaped a black trapezoid shape halfway up the slope in front of him. Underneath it there was a cascade of rock, every color of the rainbow that had been dumped out of the mineshaft—however many years ago, Wolf had no clue.

The engine ticked rapidly and the scent of burning brake pads wafted across him as he stared at the water.

The pond was about as big as half a football field, tinted red by what he assumed to be acid mine drainage. Almost the color of blood.

Wolf looked at the ground under his feet and back up the road he’d come in on. It was a gentle slope into the water where he stood, and it was going to take some acceleration in four-wheel-drive to get up that first rise on the way out.

He pulled out his phone and looked at it, surprised that even in the crater-like valley depression he stood in, he still had a sliver of cell reception.

With a tap of his finger he pulled up the map function again and stared at it.

One point four miles of road, most of it dirt, connected Wolf to the Pumapetrol Gas station.

He looked to one edge of the water, listening intently to the sound of a trickling stream. Then he turned the other way.

Slowly Wolf walked along the edge of the water, studying the surface carefully. A few seconds later, he saw a tiny eddy in the water. Keeping his eyes glued to the spot, he bent down and picked up a rock. Then he stood and threw it.

The water splooshed within a yard of where Wolf aimed, and a fish flopped, splashing water in a tiny fountain, and then disappeared.

Wolf walked back, grateful for the increasing warmth with every second the sun rose, and stripped off his clothes to his boxer shorts.

After a few seconds of rapid breathing he stepped into the water.

For five steps he clenched his teeth, feeling the biting cold and occasional jagged rock beneath his feet. Soon he was waste deep, and then with a gasp his crotch was below the level of the icy water. A few more yards out his teeth chattered as the water reached to his shoulders, and then he sagged down and swam in a slow breaststroke.

For three slow strokes he inched his way out toward the center of the pond, keeping his head clear of the red liquid, and then on the forth he pulled his thighs toward his body, and straight into an edge of jagged metal.

Chapter 25

“I’m telling you, you need to learn how to be more personable with these guys.”

Patterson stared out her window at the passing sagebrush, opting to remain silent through Rachette’s rambling.

“I saw the way you looked at Lancaster. He’s not such a bad guy, you know. Cracked a few good jokes when we were around the back of the house. I think he’s just quiet when he’s around MacLean.”

Patterson looked at Rachette with half-closed eyes. “Really? A good guy, huh?”

Rachette rolled his eyes and shook his head. “And the way you acted with MacLean?” They rode in silence as he swung his gaze between her and the road. “You gonna tell me what’s in that envelope, or what?”

Her pulse quickened again at the prospect of talking to Rachette about the bombshell that lay across her lap. For now, she just turned back to her window and looked outside.

“Seriously. What the hell is that?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “All right. Listen—”

Her cellphone trilled. With a silent scream of thanks she looked at the screen. “It’s Wolf. Hello? … Yeah?” She looked over at Rachette with raised eyebrows and then leaned toward the windshield. “Yeah, we just passed the gas station now … what?”

She leaned to look in the side view mirror and turned to Rachette. “Turn around!”

Rachette slammed on the brakes. “What?”

She hung up and pocketed the phone, letting the packet of pictures fall to the floorboard by her feet. “Wolf found Nick Pollard’s pickup truck.”

Chapter 26

Wolf watched as Rachette’s SUV slowed and parked behind the other SCSD vehicle that Baine had been driving. Directly behind Rachette and Patterson was another SUV, unmarked and shiny white, looking government-issued. It slowed on the dirt road and stopped, and Lorber stepped out with Dr. Blank.

The four of them convened and scuttled their way down the final incline of the road toward him.

Wolf walked to meet them halfway. “Toyota pickup truck. Has the same dent in the back right panel.”

Lorber looked past him and whistled. “You found it. How the hell did you find it?”

Wolf retold the story about the Pumapetrol Gas station clerk’s mix-up between Highway 734 and County 74.

“So Parker Grey came up and picked up someone, and went up 734.” Lorber put his hands on his hips. “So how did you get here?”

Wolf started walking to the dripping pickup truck. With each step the skin on his thighs screamed in pain as it rubbed against his jeans, because his legs had rammed hard on the tailgate. And the tailgate, resting in this vat of noxious water a few feet below water line for twenty-two years, had rusted out to a dark orange, littered with sharp slits and holes in the metal.

“I checked the local map on my phone, north of the gas station, in the direction Parker Grey took off in his Chevy Blazer that night, presumably along with whomever made that call from the gas station pay phone, the same person who left Nick Pollard’s blood on the payphone.

“I got to thinking, Parker Grey pulled into the gas station, picked someone up, and went up 734. Why? We know he eventually went back up 74 to Cold Lake that night, so why did they go north?”

“The caller had Pollard’s body sitting up here,” Patterson said.

“And she walked her way down to the gas station.” Wolf nodded.

“Yeah, but why not drive Nick’s truck?” Rachette asked.

Wolf shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe the caller was real bloody, didn’t want to risk being pulled over in a truck? Or … she didn’t know how to drive a stick.” Wolf squinted.

“So you,” Lorber tilted his head, “sensed the truck was in the water?”

Wolf smiled. “No. I had a hunch it might be, since this is the only place within ten square miles along 734 where one could hide a truck for twenty-two years, so I got in and swam right into it.”

Lorber pointed a long arm at the water. “Jesus Christ, you swam in that?”

Wolf nodded.

“You,” Lorber grabbed his arm and studied it, “do you know the toxic ores found in dark red water like this? The PH level? You’re lucky you didn’t dissolve. It’s like swimming in battery acid. Worse! I mean, my God…”

“There’s fish in the pond. There’s water running into the pond from the north and out the south.” Wolf resisted the urge to itch his skin and turned to the truck. “I want you to scour this truck, inside and out for anything of interest.”

Lorber laughed. “Sure. There’s not going to be any organic material. That’s for sure. Fish in there …” He squinted and bent toward Wolf’s bare arm again.

Wolf turned to Rachette and Patterson. “What happened at Heeter’s place?”

“Heeter wasn’t there,” Rachette said. “And no sign of his car.”

“And how was MacLean?”

Patterson remained silent, looking into the distance.

“He was all right.” Rachette glanced at Patterson.

“Is something wrong?”

Patterson gave Wolf a double take. “What? No.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay. Any word from Yates and Wilson at the lake?”

They shook their heads.

Wolf took a deep breath, hoping the two deputies were all right. He’d definitely encountered someone up there last night. Maybe it had been Heeter. “I’d sure like to know if Heeter’s car is up there. You have a make and model on it?”

“No,” Rachette said, looking at Patterson. Patterson seemed to be avoiding any and all eye contact.

“Rachette,” Wolf said, “why don’t you call Tammy and track down Heeter’s car’s make and model.”

Rachette looked at Wolf and then to Patterson. “Yeah. Sure.”

Patterson watched Rachette walk to the road and she turned to Wolf with wide eyes. “Sir. I have to talk to you.”

Wolf frowned. “All right. Go ahead.”

She froze and stared at Wolf and then sprinted away after Rachette.

Wolf watched her dash up the hill, up the road past Rachette to the SUV, and open the passenger door. A second later she closed it and walked past a confused -looking Rachette back down the hill, to a just as confused-feeling Wolf.

She thrust a manila envelope in his hands. “Here.”

Chapter 27

Patterson watched with growing unease as Wolf silently flipped through the pictures. When he’d finished studying the whole stack he looked at Patterson.

“What did Rachette say?”

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it, sir. I didn’t—”

Panic shot through her when he looked up and yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Rachette!”

“Sir,” she whispered, “I didn’t know if I should talk to you first, or … or …” she let the sentence die in her throat, and her heart sank when Wolf offered no condolences to her.

Rachette trotted down, a confused frown on his face. “Yeah?”

Wolf slapped the stack of photos into his chest. “What’s this all about?”

Rachette fumbled for a second and began looking through the stack. He pulled down the corners of his mouth, shaking his head, as if he had no clue what the pages he looked at were. And then when he got to the final pages, and then the Ashland PD police report, his eyes went wide and he looked up at Wolf.

“Sir. This is me and this girl I’ve been kinda seeing. But,” he took out the police report and pointed at it, “that’s not her name. She told me her name was Jessica.”

Wolf blinked.

Rachette turned to Patterson and squinted. “What the hell, Patterson? That’s what was in the envelope and you didn’t tell me?”

Patterson stared at him. “MacLean said we were both in trouble.”

“I … so what? You think I’m what? You think I’m running drugs for this girl?”

“I don’t think,” Patterson said. “I know. The photos are—”

“Listen.” Wolf held up his hands. “ I want to know everything. Who is this girl? When did you meet her? What did she tell you?”

“Sir,” Rachette twirled, arms pleading to the sky, “you gotta believe me. I had no clue. She just said she had to take off to go to Denver, and couldn’t wait around to return this backpack to her girlfriend. Said I was doing her a favor. That was it! She never told me what was in it.”

“And you didn’t think to ask?” Patterson shook her head, her voice hot.

Wolf snapped his fingers.

The two deputies froze and looked at him.

“I want to know who this girl is,” Wolf’s voice was a growl, “I want to know when you met her, exactly. Where? Exactly. What she said? Exactly.”

Rachette swallowed, and began recounting his tale of a night in downtown Rocky Points that seemed too good to be true. A night where all of Rachette’s bad luck with women had miraculously reversed its course and, how he’d become the Casanova of the local zip code.

Patterson watched Wolf as Rachette told his story. Wolf stared motionless toward the mine tailings across the pond. She noticed a blotch of blood spreading on the Sheriff’s thigh, but he was oblivious to it; his mind was elsewhere, and by the look of his flexing jaw, it was an angry elsewhere.

When Rachette was done, Wolf stared in silence for another ten seconds.

“Sir?” Rachette asked.

Wolf turned and looked over their heads. “What?”

Patterson pulled her eyebrows together and looked behind them, noticing for the first time that radios were exploding with voices.

“What’s going on?” Wolf walked away, leaving Rachette glaring resentfully at Patterson.

Baine raised his radio. “They’ve found something up at Olin Heeter’s house on the lake.”

“Thanks,” Rachette said under his breath as he walked away.

Patterson stood shaking her head, watching the mayhem unfold. Someone’s scratchy voice on her handheld said something about blood. And a door. She was too preoccupied to comprehend everything going on.

Wolf jogged back toward her, still clutching the stack of photos in his hand. “Baine! With me.”

Baine raised his hands. “Sir, I drove up here.”

“Leave it. You’re coming with me.”

Baine shrugged and jogged past Patterson, bouncing his eyebrows on the way by. “See ya’ up there.”

Rachette twirled after Wolf. “Sir, I’ll take Baine’s vehicle!”

“Keys are in the ignition!” Baine said, climbing into Wolf’s SUV.

Wolf got in, and an instant later he was revving the engine and bounding up the steep incline, past the other SCSD vehicles, and then out of sight.

Rachette ran to Baine’s SUV and glared back at Patterson. “Keys are in the ignition.” Without another word he got in, turned the SUV around and drove away in a roar of engine noise.

It took Patterson another few seconds to realize she’d been rooted to the same spot for at least a minute.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Lorber was staring at her over his glasses.

She shook her head. “Maybe some other time.”

“Go get ‘em tiger,” he said with a fist pump.

She smiled despite herself and jogged to join the cavalry.

Chapter 28

Wolf stared down at the blood smear on the doorknob of Olin Heeter’s lake house. The mid-afternoon sun shone on the front of the house and the porch was hot, and a prick of purple light glinted off the geode rock still sitting in the grass where he’d last seen it.

The wind breathed through the trees surrounding the property, bringing the scent of pine and scrub oak underbrush, and the faint noise of motorboats tooling around the lake swirled with the air. It was a warm Sunday afternoon, the first real good weather of June yet, and a lot of people would be on the water taking advantage of it.

Another vehicle screamed up the road and scraped to a stop. Patterson got out and walked past Rachette without a glance.

“I’ve got a key here,” Yates was kneeling at the end of the porch, an upturned flowerpot in one rubber-gloved hand and a key in another.

Wolf nodded. “Bring it. Let’s go in.”

“Sir,” Rachette called as he marched over. “Kimber Grey was behind me on the drive up. She’s pulling into her place now.”

Wolf nodded.

Yates gingerly inserted the key into the knob, not disturbing any of the blood that was smeared around the sides of it and twisted.

The door opened a sliver, and Wolf pushed it open.

With a groan it swung wide before hitting a coat rack behind it, sending a crumple of fabric to the wooden floor behind it.

“Put on these,” Patterson said to someone behind him.

“You think?” Rachette answered with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

The interior of the house was cool, almost cold, and dark, the air heavy with the scent of chemical cleaner. As he stepped inside a honeybee dive-bombed past his ear and went down the hallway in front of him, disappearing around the corner.

Yates sniffed behind him. “Smells like some one’s been cleaning recently.”

Wolf flicked the light switch on the wall and a yellow bulb above his head brightened the entryway. At the end of the hall in front of him was a dining table, and the space opened to the right.

Walking after the buzzing insect, Wolf turned into a wood and linoleum kitchen, where brass colored pots and pans hung from ceiling hooks above an antique looking stove.  Black and white checked drapes were drawn across the windows. Wolf squinted when he flipped the light switch on the wall, the overhead lights brightening the space as if they were outside again.

There was a gentle rattle of a humming refrigerator. The creaking and shuffling of footsteps behind him, punctuated by the occasional bark of radio static, were the only other noises.

The linoleum countertops were spotless, the dining table shiny, the area devoid of dust or dirt. The smell of cleaner was overbearing.

“Sir.” Yates was pointing at a door. “More blood.”

Wolf stepped closer and examined another smear of bright red.

“Both these stains, if they are actually blood, look fairly new,” Patterson said. “I’d say twenty four hours.”

“Open it,” Wolf said.

Yates studied the knob and then gingerly put his hand on it and twisted. It opened to a dark stairway that went down.

Wolf reached and flicked on another light switch, and it illuminated a cramped stairway that led down. The walls were painted neutral beige and at the bottom of the corridor was a painting of a vivid moon over the lake.

Wolf walked down, and with each step the wood squealed under the carpet.

The air was dusty, each step colder still as they descended into the walkout basement. Wolf flicked a light switch at the bottom of the stairs and lit the wide-open space to the left.

A hanging lamp and canned lighting in the ceiling blazed bright, showcasing a covered pool table and a bar crafted of logs and lacquered boards. The drapes were all drawn shut, covering the large sliding glass door and two windows that looked out to the back.

The walls were covered in paintings, and it took a few seconds for him to realize they were all of the moon: close-ups of craters as if seen from a telescope lens, the moon waxing, waning, the full moon above the lake, the full moon rising through the trees. There had to have been thirty of them, mounted all over the walls in neat rows. The paintings were life-like, the artistry of a professional.

Wolf pulled aside one of the drapes, bringing in natural light from outside to mix with the harsh yellow ceiling lights. The lake glittered diamonds beyond the wall of stacked rocks. Boats streaked in all directions leaving white wakes. Wolf could see one of the nearest Sheriff’s Department boats down and to the right.

He stood transfixed by the awesome view and then frowned. He fished in the fabric and found the cords, and then pulled open the drapes. They glided smoothly on the rails, the room brightening with each pull.

Unlocking the sliding glass door, he pulled it open and walked outside onto the grass and dirt.

“What’s up?” Patterson asked, following him out.

Wolf pointed. “You can’t see the place we’ve been pulling up the bodies from this vantage point. It’s blocked by that rise in the land, and the trees.” He craned his neck and looked up through the slivers of light in the deck above him.

“Sir,” Yates called from a few paces away. “Look at this.”

On the ground against the wall was a neat pile of red clay bricks. Wolf picked one up and saw the Tracer Building Supplies logo.

“That’s not good for Olin Heeter,” Patterson said over his shoulder.

The brick clanked on the top of the pile and Wolf looked to the lake, still trying to flesh out an idea.

“Sir!” Rachette called from inside. “I’ve got more. More blood.”

Wolf and Patterson went back in through the sliding glass door.

“Open it up,” Wolf said.

Yates was already there, twisting the knob. The door opened wide, revealing a pitch-black void beyond. Yates clicked on his Maglite, illuminating the walls of a ten by ten room.

Yates took a deep breath as if to steel his resolve and stepped inside. “What the?”

Wolf followed in close behind him.

Chapter 29

Patterson watched with mounting impatience as Yates and Wolf shuffled into the small room.

“What the?” Yates said.

Wolf was pointing his own flashlight beam inside as he stood in the doorway, and then he stepped forward, freeing up space.

Patterson looked and saw that Rachette was standing still, not making any move to follow Wolf inside, which Patterson found deeply unnerving. Rachette was always right next to Wolf into any situation, and when he wasn’t next to him he was right on his heels.

Rachette held out a hand, his face expressionless. After you.

There was a click and the light went on in the room. A string was bouncing and swinging in front of Patterson when she stepped in, and she held it steady and creased her forehead when she saw the wall.

A circular cluster of photographs was affixed at eye level, every one of them of Kimber Grey. They were tacked to the wall with what seemed to be a crazy purpose, tilted every which way, some on top of others, the whole of it resembling a multicolored moon made of photographs.

They were glossy color prints of Kimber chopping wood. Kimber milling around her boat. Kimber standing on her porch, looking directly into the lens of the camera, though from an impossible distance to be able to know she was being photographed.

Yates leaned close to one of the prints of Kimber standing naked inside of her yellow-illuminated window. “Can I keep this one?” he murmured, looking back at Rachette.

Rachette ignored him, not even cracking a smile.

Extremely unnerving. Patterson cleared her throat. “Sir, Olin Heeter was an astronomy enthusiast?”

“Yeah.” Wolf was pressing his face close to the photos.

“Looks like he’s enthusiastic about the moon and Kimber Grey.” Yates stepped back, letting Rachette in for a look.

“Process that rifle,” Wolf said keeping his eyes on the photos.

Patterson turned around, wondering what he was talking about. She looked at the other walls. They were painted white drywall, void of any photos or paintings of any kind. A shelf stood against one of them, and on top was a midnight black bolt-action rifle on its side. On the shelves below it were numerous books: one on survival techniques, another about military history, The Art of War, at least a hundred hunting magazines, and several horror fiction novels. Acting as a bookend was a box of .308 Winchester rifle bullets, the cardboard cracked open showing the box was less than full.

“There’s blood on it,” Wolf said, keeping his nose to the photo wall.

Patterson nodded and looked at the rifle. “Yes. I see that … now.” There was a smear of blood on the stock, and on the trigger guard.

Wolf stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “There’s bloody gloves on the lowest shelf. These are all taken recently.”

Patterson frowned and bent down, saw the gloves, and then stood back up and turned toward Wolf.

His eyes were still glued to the photos.

When no one else spoke, Patterson asked, “Recently? How do you know that?”

Wolf shook his head. “It’s even more than that. Kimber. She has the same hair in all of these. Same length, same ponytail, with a strand flipping out on the side. She has the same outfit on in these. The same jeans and shoes, but some with her long sleeved shirt, others with the rain parka.” He pointed to some of the photos scattered in different spots. “The weather. Look here. It’s raining.” Wolf pointed to a few of the photographs that were zoomed out enough to see the surrounding forest, or Kimber’s cabin in the background. “You can see the wetness. And then … look at this.” Wolf pointed to the corner of a photo.

Patterson leaned forward and saw what he was talking about. There was a tiny droplet of water on the lens in the upper right corner, causing an unfocused blob of light refraction. It was in every single photo on the wall. “They were all taken on the same day?”

Wolf nodded. “Looks like it. And this is the outfit Kimber had on yesterday. When I came and talked to her. I think these were all taken yesterday. It was raining all day until the evening. These low light photos could have been taken through the fog, that’s why they look like they’re in the night. That’s why Kimber’s lights are on inside her house.” Wolf stepped back another step and exhaled.

“What the hell?” Yates asked no one in particular.

Wolf pushed past them and out of the room.

Patterson looked at Yates and Rachette for a second and then followed.

Wolf walked to the stairs and went up.

Patterson followed close, reaching the main floor a few steps behind him.

Back on the main floor, Wolf twisted, searching for something and then walked to another door. With his rubber-gloved fingers he twisted the knob and looked inside.

The other side of the door was dark, but she saw a gleaming car bumper and smelled motor oil, and then Wolf flicked on a light switch, revealing a two-car garage.

One side of the garage was filled with dusty equipment: a riding lawn mower, a four-wheeler, and various gardening tools hanging on the wall. Parked on the other side was an older looking Chevy pickup truck.

“That’s Heeter’s truck,” Yates said behind them. “Those are his plates.”

Wolf studied the truck for a few seconds and nodded. “It’s clean. Not any dust on it.”

“So it hasn’t been parked here long?” Patterson asked.

“I’d say no. Let’s search it.”

Wolf turned to the door and stepped around Patterson to go back inside

She watched him go into the kitchen dining area and pull back the drapes, unveiling another sliding glass door that led onto the deck outside. Abandoning the garage door and letting it click shut, she walked after Wolf again.

With a whoosh, Wolf pulled open the door, letting in a flow of cool, fresh air smelling like lake water and pine trees, and then he walked out.

There was a blue tarp tented at shoulder height. Wolf grabbed it and lifted it off, revealing a telescope that reflected the surroundings off its silver cylinders, knobs, and mounts. Wolf peered at the lens and nodded. “There’s a single water mark on the lens.”

Wolf looked closely at the eyepiece portion of the telescope and pointed. “This is an adaptor to attach a camera lens, for taking photos through the telescope.”

“What a perv,” Yates said.

Patterson watched Rachette. He was taking everything in in perfect silence, and Patterson wanted to punch him in the face for it. She got the point. She’d betrayed him, and he was hurt. But in her defense, Rachette had betrayed her first. Or at least she had been led to think so at the time. And that was if Rachette was even telling the truth about the floozy with a bag full of drugs. Screw him.

Patterson turned and Wolf and Yates were looking at her.

“What?” She asked.

Wolf gestured to the cloudless sky. “I asked if you knew anything about celestial coordinates?”

She raised her eyebrows. “That’s a big no.”

Wolf walked to the railing of the deck and looked down to the lake. “See how we can’t see the diver boats out there?”

Patterson looked down at the shimmering water below. She could only see one Sheriff’s Department boat. There were still another two or three boats out there as far as she knew. The divers were supposedly doing another series of dives today just to make sure they hadn’t missed any more bodies. The Sheriff’s boat they looked at held a northern perimeter line, like a floating crime scene tape, keeping water skiers and fishermen out of the area.

“Yeah, I see. No diver boats. They’re behind the trees on that rise.” she said.

“My father and Burton spoke to Olin Heeter, and Heeter said he’d seen something suspicious on the lake, the night of the 6th. Two nights after Nick Pollard’s disappearance.”

Patterson nodded. “Okay. And …”

“Yates, please get the report packet from my car.”

Yates nodded and bolted inside.

Wolf leaned on the railing. “So, because of Heeter’s interview, my dad and Burton spent a few days out on the lake with sonar and dive equipment. Looking in the exact spot that Heeter said he’d seen activity.”

Thumping and jingling keys approached, and Yates re-appeared , packet in hand.

Wolf leafed to a page and read, “…the night of July 6, at eleven thirty p.m., Olin Heeter saw Parker Grey’s boat go out in the water and stop. Olin says he got a clear view of the boat, because it happened to stop in the stripe reflection of the full moon, which he was photographing that night. He saw (through his own eyes, not the telescope—the telescope was pointed at the moon) a splash, and then he heard the splash, and then the boat headed toward Parker Grey’s property.”

Wolf lowered the packet and looked back out at the water.

Rachette stepped forward. “So what?”

“So the bodies we’re pulling out of the water are out of sight from here. If Grey had dumped a body where we’re finding them, Heeter wouldn’t have seen a thing.”

They stood in silence.

Patterson spoke first. “So there’s another dump site? Is that what you’re saying?”

Wolf nodded, and then pointed at the packet. “It’s right here. My dad wrote some coordinates in the margins . They’re celestial coordinates. The exact location of the moon on July 6th, twenty-two years ago, at 11:30 p.m..” Wolf turned to Rachette and Yates. “Let’s get Lorber and his crew up here. You guys stay and give him any help he needs.”

Rachette and Yates nodded.

“And me?” Patterson asked.

Wolf handed her the packet and then pointed an arm into the sky above the lake. “Figure out exactly where that moon was, and let’s get the sonar guys in the boat looking there.”

“Okay, wait. Who says Olin Heeter could even identify the boat as Parker Grey’s from this distance? It says his telescope was pointing at the moon.”

Wolf looked out at the lake and pointed. “It’s a coincidence, and one my father was willing to invest five days of his life diving into the water to check out. So it’s good enough for me.”

She swallowed and nodded.

Wolf gave her a quick smile before he followed Rachette and Yates. “Figure out where that moon was.”

“Is that …”—she looked at the telescope and then the lake—“even possible?”

“For you? Yeah.”

“Wait,” she called after him. “I need a computer. Internet.”

Wolf kept walking. “Check and see if Heeter has one. If not, call the station and work with Tammy.”

“There’s no cell service up here!”

Wolf was gone.

A landline phone hung on the wall next to her. She plucked it off the cradle and heard a dial tone

She hung up and stared at the telescope through the sliding glass door.

“Fine,” she said to no one.

Chapter 30

Kimber Grey answered her door in a wet towel.

Wolf couldn’t help but glance down the length of her body, and then he couldn’t help but think about her naked body underneath, the image of it still fresh in his mind from seeing the picture twenty minutes ago.

“Sorry.” Wolf averted his eyes. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Please,” she opened the door wide, “come in. I’m just getting dressed. You can wait in the living room.”

Before Wolf could say No, I’ll just wait out front, she was already gone and the door was swinging open.

He stepped inside and shut the door, turning just in time to see Kimber’s naked backside for an instant as it disappeared into the hallway and out of sight.

Wolf wondered how imperative it was for Kimber to pull her towel off and dry her hair an instant before she was back into the privacy of her own room.

He took a breath and stepped toward a bookshelf and studied the contents, cutting off any angle for a further view into the hallway.

Leaning forward, he looked at a washed out color picture of Kimber and her family. Her mother and father were standing arm in arm, Kimber next to them, all genuine smiles in the throes of laughter. They stood in front of a lake on a sandy beach, pine trees in the background. Kimber was young in the picture, no more than eight years old, with sun bleached pigtails and a black void for front teeth.

Wolf saw the door to the room was open to his left, and he walked toward it and peered inside. Though he could only see the edge of the twin bed from his angle, it was clear that the sheets were tousled, like it had been slept in.

“What are you guys doing up at Mr. Heeter’s?” Kimber’s voice came from down the hall.

Wolf cleared his throat. “That’s what I’m here about. When exactly is the last time you saw Olin—”

Kimber walked in front of him and leaned on the wall between him and the room. She was fully clothed now in jeans and a button up shirt.

“What happened to you?”

Wolf pulled his eyebrows together.

She pointed down. “Your leg?”

He looked down at the bloodstain on his thigh. “Oh. Swimming accident.”

She looked confused.

“When’s the last time you saw Olin Heeter?” Wolf asked.

She shrugged and brought her towel back up to her damp hair and walked out of sight back down the hall. “I don’t know. A couple weeks ago? He comes and goes a lot. I don’t remember him coming up this weekend, though. He usually comes up on the weekends.”

Her footsteps came closer and she stepped around the corner again. “He’ll do that until winter hits, then he winterizes his place and stays away until the next spring. Sometimes he stays for longer than the weekend. Doesn’t have anything to go home to, with his wife being dead. Not sure why he even goes home, actually.”

“I’d like to get all the footage you have available on that Wi-Fi camera up there.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Okay. Sure. I don’t have much, though. The video is loaded onto an external hard drive every seventy-two hours, and then I go over it and erase it to leave room for the next seventy-two hours, or the whole thing shuts down.”

Wolf stared at her for a few seconds.

“What?” She asked.

“How much footage do you have now?”

She shrugged. “A couple hours? I just did the memory dump earlier when I got home.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay. I’d like to see it.”

She nodded back. “Okay. I’ll get it.” She disappeared into the back rooms again.

Wolf twisted slowly on his heels, taking in the rest of the space. There were paintings on the wall depicting mountain wildlife scenes: deer, elk, and bear foraging for food in different settings. The paintings were dusty, and by the looks of the line of dust and lint against the wall on the floor Wolf guessed she rarely cleaned.

She returned holding out a memory stick. “Here you go.”

Wolf took it. “Did you check the footage before you erased it?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there anything?”

She shrugged. “Just a lot of you coming and going.”

Wolf eyed her for a second and nodded. “Thanks. I’d like you to come back into town tonight, where we can more easily keep an eye on you. With cell service being shoddy up here, and our radio relays not reaching, it would be better.”

“Keeping an eye on me, eh?”

Wolf shrugged. “What we found up at Olin Heeter’s house suggests it may be dangerous for you up here at the moment.”

Kimber frowned. “Really?”

Wolf nodded.

She pulled back her wet mass of brown hair and lifted it off her shoulders, twisting it into some sort of knot. She stepped into The Room with fast steps and pulled the sheets all the way back and off, piling them on the floor.

Wolf watched. “You use that room?”

“I take naps in here.” She walked out with a wad of sheets and back out of sight down the hall. “What are you doing tonight?” She asked.

Wolf frowned to himself and didn’t answer. He walked back to the bookshelf and looked at the picture in front of a row of worn paperbacks.

Once again she appeared at the wall and leaned against it.

He saw her studying him from his peripheral. “I like this picture. Where was it taken?”

Stepping close, she moved silently and put her hand on the small of his back. “Oh, that? I think in Tennessee. Near the commune.”

“Oh yeah. The hippy commune. Must have been a fun time growing up there.”

She pulled back and folded her arms.

Wolf looked at her. “I’m just saying it’s an interesting way to grow up, is all. How many people were living there?”

She stared for another few seconds and then seemed to relax. “Lots. It was the biggest commune in the world at one time.”

Wolf nodded, looking at the pine trees in the background of the photo. “I’m not too familiar with geography east of Colorado. What is that, the Appalachian mountains?”

“I think so. I don’t remember when that was taken.”

Wolf nodded.

“You want some tea?” She walked away toward the kitchen.

“No thanks.”

Wolf set down the picture and looked at his watch. 2:45. He calculated he’d be back into the office at 3:30 pm if he left now, which would give him a couple of hours before the meeting with Senator Chama, a meeting that was making him more nervous than he was used to being on the job. And what if Senator Chama wanted to talk about the pension? The development projects of the resort village base? The future budget concerns of the bigger, consolidated Office of the Sheriff in the next four years?

Suddenly the urge to read through Margaret’s packet sitting in his desk drawer trumped any and all work he had to do otherwise. Rachette, Wilson, Yates, and Patterson, even if some of them weren’t speaking to one another, could handle Heeter’s.

“Sheriff?”

Wolf looked at Kimber standing in the kitchen doorway.

“You okay?”

Wolf nodded. “Yes. Listen, I think it’s a bad idea for you to stay here tonight. I’d like you to come down to Rocky Points, where we can keep an eye on you.”

“I tell you what. You meet me for a drink and I’ll do it. I’m sick of sitting in that hotel room and watching shit TV.” She blushed and pulled her hair behind her ear. “So?”

“All right. Eight O’clock, I’ll meet you at The Pony Tavern. You know it?”

She nodded and opened the front door. “Okay then. Sounds good.”

Chapter 31

Thirty minutes later Wolf’s phone vibrated in his center console when he was just getting started up William’s Pass. Not recognizing the number, he hesitated and hit the answer button.

“Wolf.”

“You get my pictures today?”

Wolf switched hands and exhaled. “Yeah.” Wolf turned down his radio. “And I have a few questions about them.”

“Like what?”

The sound of wind buffeting MacLean’s phone scratched in Wolf’s earpiece. “Like what’s the Byron County Sheriff’s Department doing conducting an investigation in my county without my permission?”

“That’s a delicate topic. We had a man deep under, and I had to make a call on the fly.”

Wolf paused for a few seconds. “You’re conducting an illegal investigation. Those pictures of yours aren’t going to do you any good.”

A chuckle. “Aren’t they?”

Wolf clenched his jaw.

“Listen, I’ll let you think about those pictures some more, but I’m actually not calling about that. I’m calling, because I’ve got two dead bodies sitting in a burnt up SUV with Sluice County plates. Only when I checked up on the plates, they came up stolen. I just got off the phone with your dispatcher, Tammy. She’s informed me the plates were taken from a car in the marina parking lot last night. At least that’s what … me.”

“What?” Wolf jammed the brakes and stopped on the side of the road. “What did you say?”

“Which part?” MacLean laughed. “Damn cell phones.”

“The last part.”

“I said your dispatcher tracked down the owner of the plates, and called them on the phone. They assured your dispatcher that they were indeed alive and well, and they went out and checked their car, realized that their plates were missing. They swear it must have happened the night before, up at the marina. They said they were up at that Tackle Box place.”

Wolf shook his head. “This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

“That’s because you guys all been incommunicado up at the lake. So instead of waitin’ for your asses, me and Tammy had ourselves an investigation. Nice woman. Glad someone up there knows the score.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“The burnt?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s an SUV. Mercedes Benz. One of those real expensive jobbers. Isn’t worth shit now, though.”

Wolf remembered the shiny black Mercedes SUV from the night before. “Damn.” He looked at his dashboard clock—3:15. “Where are you?”

“Me?” MacLean paused, and there was the sound of a door shutting. “I just got to my office. I’ve got a meeting with Senator Chama in a few minutes.”

Wolf remained silent.

“But if you want to know where the vehicle is I’ve got some deputies up there. I’ll let them know you’re on your way. Hello? You still there?”

“Yeah. Tell me where.”

Wolf pulled up behind the Byron County Sheriff’s Department vehicle, turned his keys, and looked at the dashboard clock—3:52. He did the mental math and figured he had about a fifty-minute drive back to Rocky Points. If Senator Chama was keeping his appointment, that meant he had to be out of here by 5 at the latest. An hour and eight minutes was enough time to get in and out with essential info, he told himself.

He stepped out of the SUV and zipped his jacket up all the way. The densely forested hillside they were on was draped in afternoon shade and the temp would be on a steady free fall until the next morning.

“Sheriff Wolf?” A middle-aged deputy came marching down the dirt road beyond a bouncing line of crime scene tape.

He walked toward the deputy, stopping next to another deputy with a clipboard who stood eyeing him with a suspicious squint.

“Sheriff Wolf, you say?” The deputy held up a hand.

Wolf smiled. “Yes sir.”

“Come on, go ahead,” the other deputy called, waving an arm.

Wolf ducked under the tape and held out a hand.

The other deputy was shorter than Wolf with a brick house build. His cop mustache was full and blond, so thick Wolf wondered if the man could breathe out of his nose. He took Wolf’s hand and his grip was firm and energetic.

“Deputy Fuller. Nice to meet you, sir.”

Wolf nodded. “Sheriff Wolf. Nice to meet you.”

“This way.” Fuller marched up the road at a blistering pace, which Wolf was grateful for. “Twice in one day our departments work together. That’s definitely a record. Guess we should get used to it.”

Wolf smiled politely at the banter and concentrated on the surroundings. The land on either side of the dirt road was steep, higher on the left and plunging down to the right. Chipmunks chittered from the trees and there were blasts of static coming from distant radios ahead and below.

“Here we are.” Fuller stepped to a widening of the road and went over the steep edge on the right side without slowing.

Wolf followed, digging his heels into the pebbled earth covered with inches of brown pine needles. He eyed tire marks off to their left, marked with yellow numbered evidence tents. There was no skidding on the forty-degree slope, which would have been a double black diamond if they were skiing it.

“Why didn’t we hear about this earlier?” Wolf asked.

“We got the report a few hours ago. We just figured out the plates.”

Wolf nodded.

Down the slope another fifty feet was the SUV, bent severely in the front and burned to the frame. At first glance, the make and model was in no way apparent. But as they got closer, he could see the three-pointed star and the Colorado plates covered in soot.

“You find a VIN?” Wolf asked.

“Yep. Someone scratched out the driver’s doorpost VIN, and the windshield one was clearly destroyed by a blunt object before they dumped it down here.”

“Dumped it?”

Deputy Fuller stopped at the rear of the SUV and put his hands on his hips. “Yep. We’ve got multiple gunshot wounds on each of the victims inside the vehicle. The teeth have been destroyed on both bodies. Someone was definitely trying to hide these two men’s identities.”

Wolf walked to the driver’s side door. It smelled like burnt plastic, gasoline, and cooked meat.

A woman clad in a white suit stepped back and pointed into the seat at a twisted, shriveled black body. The head was torqued back, mouth open in a mute scream.

“Got a gunshot to the head. African American male. Early twenties I’m estimating. Next to him a Caucasian male. Mid-fifties. Autopsy will confirm. Tougher to tell with this one in the passenger seat, but I think he has multiple gunshot wounds to the torso. Massive trauma to the ribs that the fire damage failed to hide completely.”

A man clad in the same white suit stood from the other side of the vehicle and nodded.

“Slugs?” Wolf asked.

“Gotta wait until the autopsy, but I’m guessing they’re all through and through shots. High-powered rifle?”

Wolf nodded in thought. “And the VIN?”

The woman nodded and pointed to the front of the car, which was buckled into a V on a cracked pine tree. The wood was scorched black all the way up to the blue sky above. “Found it on the engine block. Whoever did this didn’t know Mercedes puts the chassis number there, too I guess.”

“Registered to the state of Idaho,” Fuller said.

“Idaho.” Wolf frowned, vaguely remembering seeing a vehicle from Idaho sometime recently.

“Yep. Registered to one William F. Van Wyke. Resident in Boise, Idaho. Coroner will start there with trying to ID the Caucasian. There’s no telling who the African American is.”

“Where’s the coroner?” Wolf asked, looking up the steep hill.

“On his way,” Fuller said, offering no further explanation.

“I’d like the VIN.”

Fuller nodded, carefully jotting it down and tearing off a sheet of paper.

“And your contact information.”

“You got it.” Fuller stood straighter and handed him a contact card from his breast pocket along with the sheet of paper.

“Any witnesses?” Wolf asked.

“Nope. There’s no one who lives around here for miles. There was a woman who was walking her dog on this road and she saw it. Luckily it’s been so wet lately and it burned itself out without starting the mountain on fire.” Fuller exhaled and looked around. “Lot of beetle kill around here. Of course, that’s most places now.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “So when do you think this happened?”

“Our fire investigator said there were accelerants. Gas poured inside. He says probably happened early a.m.. He’ll be back in a few minutes if you want to talk to him.”

Wolf held up the card and the sheet of paper with the VIN and nodded. His watch said 4:25. “I’ve actually gotta get going.”

Fuller nodded. “Okay, yeah. I can keep you posted with any developments. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks.”

Fuller turned around and started stepping straight up.

Breathing hard, legs screaming with fatigue, Wolf trailed Fuller over the edge back onto the dirt road a minute later. Looking down toward his SUV, Wolf paused. A circus of activity was underway below, with two ambulances and three more police vehicles parking in Wolf’s SUV on all sides. An army of uniforms were digging into compartments, pulling out bags, preparing stretchers, ropes and other equipment.

Wolf and Fuller walked down the road and ducked under the crime scene tape.

“I got this,” Fuller said, and walked toward a man near the ambulance. They spoke in low tones, looking back at Wolf. The man, who was apparently the driver of the ambulance looked up and nodded with annoyance, and then opened a side compartment and began pulling out orange bags.

Fuller came back, stepping quickly to Wolf. “They’ll just be a minute.” He stood next to Wolf and folded his arms. “So, how’s the campaign going?”

Wolf nodded. “It’s going.”

There was a loud beeping and a tow truck came into view, driving up the road rear-first.

Fuller nodded, and then stepped away again. “Hey, we gotta move these vehicles out, Ted. This is Sheriff Wolf from Sluice, and he’s gotta get going.”

The crew of men and women ignored Fuller, and any request he made seemed to have the opposite effect Wolf was hoping for.

Wolf turned to the deputy with the clipboard, and was surprised to see the man had a sadistic grin, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

Wolf nodded.

The man looked down at his clipboard and began scribbling.

Eleven minutes later Wolf’s dashboard clock read 4:46 pm, and he was on his way down the dirt road past the idling emergency vehicles when an SUV marked with the Byron County Sheriff logo on it came into view.

Wolf slowed and the SUV did the same.

MacLean’s smiling face rolled up next to Wolf.

“You done already?”

Wolf nodded. “I think I’ve got all I need.”

MacLean leaned back and checked his rearview mirror, as if settling in for a long conversation.

“I’ve gotta get going.”

MacLean smirked. “Yeah. I know. Chama.”

“Chama.”

“Well, he knows what he needs to know about the way you’re runnin’ your department up there.” MacLean’s upper lip was raised, his eyes narrowed.

“Well, then that’s a good thing. I appreciate it.”

MacLean chuckled. “You gonna play it that way?”

“Listen, like I said. I gotta get going.”

“I thought you were a smarter man than that, Wolf. I’m really trying to envision where I might put you in the new department, where you would be a good fit? And I keep drawing a blank. I don’t know, a jailer? You even got experience doing that? Hell, I don’t know. Maybe somewhere a little less taxing mentally. Let’s see … I keep seeing a toilet brush. A mop. One of those big push brooms.”

Wolf lowered his eyelids to half-mast.

MacLean raised his hands. “Easy, Sheriff. I’m just playing with you.” He leaned an arm out the window and tilted his head out. “Listen, it’s as simple as it gets. You end your campaign and I have cushy jobs lined up for you and your two little deputies. Whatever you want, whatever they want. It’ll be one big happy family going forward. Either that, or you three look for new careers.” MacLean finger-combed his mustache in the side-view mirror and looked at Wolf. “And I’m Sheriff anyway.”

Wolf let off the brake, not once looking back as he drove.

Chapter 32

Patterson stood next to the tall rookie rescue diver she’d had the privilege to meet the day before and shook her head. “Look, Jeremy,” she pointed up at the cloudless sky, “there was the moon.”

Jeremy looked up at the vacant blue sky and narrowed his eyes.

“The reflection would have been a straight line from the moon,” she continued, “straight at the observer, which is us. Right here.” Jeremy blinked as she pointed down and stomped her foot, shuddering the deck.

“Okay,” Jeremy said slowly, with eyes like a dog in mid-poop.

“Look. Please. Can I just take the radio?” Patterson held out her hand.

Jeremy peaked his eyebrows and handed it over. “Yeah. Fine.”

“Thank you.” She took the radio and pushed the button. “I need you to move approximately fifty yards south.”

There was silence. “Who’s this?”

“This is Deputy Patterson. I’m taking over radio contact.”

A pause. “10-4. Moving now.”

The water behind the silver rescue boat below frothed white, and a split second later Patterson heard the distant gurgling of the outboard motor.

Patterson ducked underneath the telescope main body, in front of the mounting tripod and squinted one eye. She backed her head up until it touched the cylinder, and then looked with her squinted eye at the weighted string she’d hung from the lens.

She was winging it, with no help from Einstein who stood on the deck with her, but she had effectively traced the path of the moon’s reflection with the string, as it would have appeared that night. How wide a swath from left to right the reflection would have covered, she could only guess, but the boatmen said the sonar transducer covered a 250 foot diameter circle as it traveled. She hoped that was enough to catch whatever dropped out of Parker Grey’s boat. And that was only if Olin Heeter had been a reliable witness and something had actually been dropped out of Parker Grey’s boat in the first place.

“Such a scientist,” Jeremy said.

Patterson ignored him and pushed the radio button. “Okay, there! Stop.”

“10-4.”

“That’s right on it,” Patterson said.

“All right. We have a bearing.”

The engine of the boat started up again and it inched forward. Patterson squatted again under the telescope main housing and the boat travelled a straight line along the string.

“Here we go,” the voice said over the radio. “Let you know what we find.”

Patterson stood up, satisfied. It had been a grueling hour or so, first trying to figure out how to point a telescope to exact celestial coordinates, with remote help on a landline with Deputy Tyler at the station, who had proved to be one of the least patient men she’d ever known. Then there was tracing the heading of the moon’s reflection using the string, which was actually a thin strip of tee shirt deputy Wilson had offered up out of his SUV. She was sure there was a better way to do all of it, probably some app sitting on her phone that could have helped, but all in all she was satisfied.

“So, listen,” Jeremy’s eyebrows were peaked again, his head tilted, smiling with one side of his mouth. “You live in Rocky Points, right?”

Patterson exhaled. “Yes.”

“What say you and I grab a bite sometime?”

“Sorry. Taken.” Patterson leaned on the railing.

“Well, he’s a lucky man.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean,” Jeremy leaned down and leaned next her to, close enough to smell his dead animal breath, “because I think you’re cute. Shorter than most of the girls I tend to be attracted to, but … cute.”

Patterson frowned. “Thanks. Now don’t you have a boat to catch?”

Jeremy stood up, his eyes darkening. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”

Patterson stood up and backed away, startled by the man’s sudden hostility.

“Hey, dickhead. She said she’s taken.”

Patterson and Jeremy both turned to see Rachette standing by the telescope.

“Now get the hell off this deck and off our crime scene, before I throw you off.”

Jeremy smiled as he walked by Rachette, looking down. “Yeah, okay, Napoleon. You two make a good couple.”

Rachette stood flexing his fists as he watched Jeremy leave. He turned back around and looked at the telescope, and then he touched the makeshift string. Stepping to the railing he said, “I see you figured this out. No way I could have. I guess that’s why Wolf told you to do it.”

Patterson stayed silent. Wilson walked underneath the deck, nodding up at them.

“No prints on anything.” Rachette stretched his back. “Looks like the place was wiped clean, top to bottom. That’s why the place smells like a hotel maid’s cart.”

“Look,” Patterson said. “Thanks. I could have kicked that guy’s ass, you know that, right?”

“Whatever. I know.” Rachette looked down at the railing and picked at a sliver with his thumb. “I’ve seen that guy out on the town a lot lately. Always has a bunch of girls hanging on him.”

They stood in awkward silence for a full minute, and she watched the boats meander on the water below, the trees swaying in the wind, and the birds flying by along the cliff face below.

“Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know you think I betrayed you or something.”

“Nah, it’s just that partners are supposed to have each other’s backs, you know? Like, remember that time I got shot three times that night? When I—”

“Christ, Rachette. Of course I remember that.”

“Oh, really? Because when you took those photos straight to Wolf without talking to me first, it was kind of like I was some piece of shit you were scraping off your shoe, and not a partner who’s taken three bullets for you.”

Patterson inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. “We’re both going to be lucky if we have jobs next month. Look at it from my perspective, MacLean pulls me aside and gives me those photos, our likely future sheriff if my aunt is telling me correctly, and tells me you and I are both in trouble? I saw those pictures and thought you were going behind my back doing something stupid, putting both our careers in jeopardy. And, oh wait, that’s exactly what you were doing.”

“What? How the hell was I supposed to know that this girl was giving me the run-around. She gave me a backpack and asked me to give it to her friend. What’s so bad about that? How the hell would I have known?”

Patterson shook her head and stared out at the water.

“Oh wait.” Rachette turned to her and squinted. “I get it. You think I should have been alarmed when a cute girl like that was suddenly into me. You think I should have known she was using me. Because I’m just some … Napoleon, who nobody of the opposite sex takes any interest in. Yeah, I should have known.”

Patterson exhaled and turned. “No, I’m not saying—”

“No,” Rachette backed away, “I get it. Hey, I’m sorry, partner. Sorry for screwing up.”

“Rachette.”

He disappeared into the house.

Patterson exhaled and pressed her palms into her eyes. He was probably right, and admitting that deputy Tom Rachette right was her least favorite thing in the world to do.

“Deputy Patterson,” the radio scratched. “Do you copy?”

“Copy, go ahead.”

“We’ve got something. It’s too deep to get to with divers, but we definitely have something.”

Chapter 33

By the time Wolf pulled into the parking lot of the station, his dashboard clock read 6:13.

With a glimmer of hope, he spotted a shiny black Land Rover in the parking lot. Parking near it, he got out, slammed his door and jogged through cool air smelling of barbecue into the station.

Tammy greeted him with a shake of the head.

Wolf frowned, looking around the reception area. “Where is he? Is he still here?”

She nodded. “I’ve been stalling, and I’ve been calling your cell. He’s in your office, drinking coffee. Looks a little impatient. What happened? You get caught in that blasting on the pass?”

Wolf nodded. “Yeah. Okay, thanks.”

“I’m leaving to go home.” She raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah. Okay.” The door clicked and Wolf stepped inside. After a step he froze.

“Bullshit!” Baine was yelling at Senator Chama, who stood in front of Baine’s desk. “That’s what I told him.”

Chama pulled his coffee from his mouth and leaned his head back laughing. “Well, that kid probably had it coming.”

Wolf pulled his lips into a line and walked over with his hand extended. “Senator Chama, I’m sorry I’m late. I see you’ve met Sergeant Deputy Baine.”

“Yes. Yes. Good man.” Chama nodded, his smiled fading to a contented look.

Wolf eyed the Senator as they shook hands. The man was dressed casually in well-worn jeans and a button up dress shirt rolled loosely to the elbows. In his mid-forties, he was a fit, tall man who looked like he took care of himself, and by the looks of his complexion, had a punch card at a tanning salon.

“Why don’t we head to my office.” Wolf edged away from Baine’s desk.

“Ah yes. I’ve already made myself acquainted with it.”

Wolf began walking and looked back at Baine with a questioning look.

Baine gave a big nod, and then two thumbs up just in case Wolf didn’t catch his meaning.

Wolf nodded and stepped in line with Chama. “Sorry. I was detained down south.”

“Me too. Did you get held up with that blasting?”

“Just for a little.” Wolf lied, thinking about how he’d been stuck for ten minutes and then ended up blowing through the entire zone with his roof lights flashing. He stopped at the coffee machine. “More coffee?”

“Please.”

Wolf poured some into Chama’s cup and poured himself one, and then stepped into his office. The lights were already on, and the shades open. Wolf walked around the desk and glanced out the window. Margaret Hitchens was across the street, clearly visible inside her office with her nose pressed against the glass.

Wolf locked eyes with her and twisted the blinds shut.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me,” Chama said as Wolf sat down.

“You’re welcome.”

Chama took a sip of coffee and smiled with his eyes over the rim of the Styrofoam cup. They were gentle gray eyes, with crow’s feet grooves at the corners. Chama’s hair looked like it had been trimmed around the edges with a laser, and a generous amount of gel locked his short black hair in place, looking like it would stay put in a nuclear blast.

Wolf ran a hand over his own head, feeling the lines in his hair from his ball cap along with particles of sand and dirt.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” Wolf asked.

“I just wanted to stop in and say hi.”

“Ah.” Wolf sipped his coffee, put it down and sat back.

“I wanted to commend you on a well-run campaign so far,” said Chama. “I certainly think you’re a good man for the job.”

Wolf nodded. “Thank you. Is this what you told Sheriff MacLean earlier today?”

Chama chuckled, and then stared Wolf in the eye. “No.”

They gazed at each other for a few moments, listening to the plastic tick from his Rams clock on the wall.

“I saw your recent commercial. Nice move.”

Wolf shrugged. “Not my move, but thanks.”

“Ah, yes. Your campaign manager, Margaret Hitchens. She has the fire, doesn’t she?”

Wolf gave a half smile.

The silence returned and Wolf spread his hands.

Chama broke eye contact and looked over at his jacket on the chair next to him. He dug into the breast pocket and came out with an envelope. Without saying a word he flipped it onto Wolf’s desk, the contents knocking as it hit the wood surface.

Wolf drew his eyebrows together and grabbed it. It had a single object inside, almost rectangular. The envelope was not sealed, so he flipped it open and looked in. It was a red USB memory stick. Wolf stared at it, let the envelope close and dropped it back on the desk.

“And this is?”

Chama took a sip of coffee. “That’s your insurance policy.”

Wolf blinked. “And what does that mean, exactly?”

“I heard from MacLean today that he had some dirt on you, or one of your deputies. I didn’t get the specifics, but he made it clear it would make you look bad. He wanted to make sure I knew whom I should be endorsing in this campaign. Which one of you two were the winning horse to bet on.”

Wolf kept silent.

Chama nodded and then stood up.

Wolf watched with mild interest as the Senator stepped around his chair, pushed it in, and leaned heavily on the back with both hands. “I want to level with you, David. May I call you David?”

“Sure.”

“You can call me Alexander.”

Wolf shrugged.

Chama hesitated. “I would like to endorse you.”

“What’s on the memory stick?” Wolf asked.

Chama gave a sly smile that made Wolf cringe. “Let’s just say it’s something that catches MacLean with his pants down.”

Wolf raised his eyebrows and then leaned forward and put his hand on the envelope. “And all I have to do is blackmail MacLean with this. Is that right?”

Chama’s smile faded. “That USB stick has something on it that you need to see.”

“MacLean paying a hooker for a blowjob?” Wolf shook his head and leaned back, leaving the envelope on his desk. His teeth squealed as he clenched his jaw. “I don’t want to see it. You know, I rushed here from an important case. Had to leave my deputies all alone to handle everything, without me there to back them up. It’s been the busiest Sunday I can remember, and there’s still a lot of work I have to get done.”

Chama stood straight and looked at his Rolex.

“We’re working on a case my father started over twenty years ago. It stumped him, but we’re making some good progress. And I should have known it was something like this a Senator of the United States of America was bringing to me. Not an endorsement for the man I am, for the job I do, but an endorsement because there’s shit out there,” Wolf gestured to the envelope, “shit that makes MacLean look bad. And you know the score. You’re not going to back him with this out there. So you’re here to tell me I’m your man, and you’re giving me the dagger to take down MacLean. And for what? What will you want from me after all this is over?”

Chama narrowed his eyes.

“I can’t even imagine the favor you already have lined up to call in on me years down the road. I bet it’s a real good one. Well beyond my political IQ, that’s for sure.”

Wolf leaned forward and shoved the envelope across his desk. It shot off the edge, flew through the air, clanked against his closed office door and landed on the carpet.

Chama looked down at it and then glared at Wolf.

“Pick that up and get out of my office.” Wolf swiveled in his chair and powered on his computer.

Wolf watched from his peripheral vision as Chama shook his head and picked up his jacket, then bent over and plucked the envelope from the floor.

“Nice meeting you, Sheriff. Good luck with your campaign.”

“You know the way out. Good night.”

Chama twisted the knob and walked out, leaving the door swinging open and bouncing off the inside wall.

Wolf stormed around his desk and shut it. With a sigh he sat in his chair, the springs squealing as it leaned back. He pulled himself forward and leaned his elbows on the desk, rubbing his temples. Shaking his head, he opened the top drawer and looked at the crisp packet of paper Margaret had prepared for him.

He slammed it shut, stood, and opened his door again. “Baine!”

“Yeah!”

Wolf went and sat back down.

“Yeah.” Baine leaned in the doorway.

“Did you find her?”

“Yep.”

Wolf stared at him. “So what are you waiting for?”

Baine looked lazily at his watch. “Seven-thirty.”

Wolf frowned.

“That’s when she gets off work.” Baine lifted his lips in a jackal smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll get what you need.”

Wolf’s skin crawled, but he stopped short of calling Baine off. Instead he nodded, and Baine disappeared around the corner.

Wolf jerked his head as his desk phone shrilled. He stared at it for two rings and then picked it up.

“Wolf.”

“So?” Margaret’s voice was just below a yell. “I just saw him leave. How did it go?”

“It went.”

“Okaaaay. What did he say?”

“He wanted to endorse me.”

“What?” She laughed. “Are you kidding me?”

Wolf felt a ball of molten lava hit his gut as he pulled the phone away from his ear.

Margaret exhaled into the phone. “Oh, my God. That’s such good news. With this video going viral, and now Chama’s endorsement? We’re sitting pretty. Do you know the pull this guy has? Do you have any clue the contact you’ve just made for the rest of your career? Listen, I saw Sarah earlier today. Maybe we should all go out and celebrate. I’ll buy dinner.”

Wolf’s gut churned the lava. “No thanks. I already have something going on.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah, you and Sarah probably don’t want me being a third wheel.”

“Listen, I gotta go.” Wolf leaned forward.

“All right. Great work, Sheriff. Remember to study your—”

Wolf hung up the phone and leaned back.

The clock said 6:40.

Politics, he thought. Whatever it took to be a politician, Wolf had not been endowed with it at birth. And the more he spent time with politicians, the less interested he was  in developing whatever it was he needed to become one of any skill.

For a few minutes he closed his eyes and breathed deeply, letting the tension melt through the chair under him.

What seemed like five hours later he snorted awake.

The clock said 6:51—an hour and nine minutes until his drink date with Kimber Grey. He had a VIN number to pursue, two burnt bodies with one possible ID being the owner of the vehicle to investigate, an old man with a hundred stalker photos plastered to the wall of a back room in his basement, missing and nowhere to be found, and six unidentified, mutilated bodies.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket, and he pulled it out and read the screen.

Sarah.

Wolf snorted out loud, hit the ignore button, got up, and left for the bar.

Chapter 34

“I tell you what else,” Rachette stepped over a downed log, his foot crunching on dead branches, “she’s got another thing coming if she thinks Scott Reed is some sort of saint.”

Wilson looked over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rachette concentrated on his steps.

“Are you saying Scott’s been cheating on Patterson?”

Rachette exhaled and shook his head. “No. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he was. Good-looking guy like that? Always shuttling women off the mountain in that snow cat? Men can only hold back for so long.”

Wilson stopped and looked at him with a sour face.

“What?”

Wilson rolled his eyes and started walking again. “I don’t know what you want from me here. You want me to start bad-mouthing Patterson?”

Rachette shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Good idea.”

They walked in silence for another few seconds, and then Wilson froze with wide eyes.

“What?”

“Shh.”

Rachette tilted his head and listened. It was probably another squirrel, or chipmunk, or another deer. They’d been hiking zigzag patterns in the woods for over two hours now, and hadn’t found anything of interest. But Wilson was a big man that was hardly excitable, so this definitely got Rachette’s heart going.

“What?” He whispered again.

There. A branch snapped in the distance, somewhere up to the left.

A century of fire suppression in the area made the forest so thick it was impossible to see further than fifty feet from where they stood.

“I think I saw movement.” Wilson’s eyes popped.

“What? In this?” He looked at Wilson. “I didn’t see anything. Probably a deer again.”

“No. I saw … I don’t think it was an animal. I think it was a person.”

Rachette pulled his gun without thinking, his pulse racing now. “You’d better be sure. You’ve got me freaked.”

A second later there was the sound of footfalls, the rhythm of a person running at a fast jog travelling west up the slope ahead of them. They looked at each other.

“Let’s go.” Rachette started running toward it.

Sheriff Wolf had sworn he’d encountered a person a couple of nights ago, and Rachette was determined to prove his boss right. After his debacle with Jessica and the backpack, or Gail, or whatever her name was, he was desperate to redeem himself.

So now they were west of county road 16, up into the virgin forest with the lake at least a mile behind them, and the light was beginning to fade above them.

Saplings scratched against his jacket, his lungs pumped, blood rushed in his ears, and he pushed harder. Still not seeing anything, he stopped and listened again.

Wilson came up huffing. The big man was already hurting at the fifty-yard run.

“Shh.” Rachette cupped his ear.

Wilson closed his mouth and a squeak came from his nose as his chest heaved.

Rachette shook his head. There was no sign of the person anymore.

The sky above was turning orange, and despite there being at least thirty minutes of light left, the forest around them was turning pitch black. Though it would give away their position by using a flashlight, Rachette saw no choice. He pulled his Maglite and clicked it on. Wilson did the same.

Wilson’s breathing normalized, and the forest went silent once again.

They stood motionless for another minute.

Rachette flicked his head and continued west, up the mountainside toward the noise that was no longer there.

“I don’t hear anything anymore,” Wilson said in a low voice.

Rachette ignored him. He stepped between the dense pines, the trunks as thin as his forearm and no more than five feet apart. They needed to burn this part of the forest to the ground, damn it.

Another five minutes later he stopped, breathing hard out of his mouth to try and catch his breath, happy to rest his legs, which ached from the incline.

Rachette shined his beam on Wilson’s face and saw he was clearly the worse for wear. The forest had thinned out considerably, and it seemed a good spot to get their bearings.

They stood still for another minute listening. Crickets and a mourning dove were all they heard.

Wilson and Rachette shot their beams behind them when they heard what sounded like something falling through a tree, smacking branches for a couple of moments, and followed by a thump on the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Rachette swept the forest with his beam, seeing only pine trunks and needles.

“I don’t know. Sounded like something falling from the top of a tree.” Wilson pointed his flashlight. “That direction. Probably a hundred feet at least.”

They crept toward the noise, keeping pistols aimed and flashlights pointed.

Rachette looked around them, wondering what they were getting into. It had not been a natural sound. If palm trees on a desert island had surrounded them, then something falling and thumping to the ground would have made sense. But barring an owl dropping dead and hitting the forest floor, that noise was man-made.

Blood swished in his ears, his breath quickened. His limbs felt clumsy with the excitement pulsing through his veins, but his pointed pistol gave him all the courage he needed.

“Who’s there?” Rachette called, realizing they might accidentally shoot one of their own. But they were the only ones out here. Patterson and Yates were down at the Heeter place. Rachette wasn’t thinking straight.

Wilson led the way for a few minutes, and then they reached a clearing. Wilson swept the forest floor with his flashlight beam and honed in on a rock.

“I think this was it.” Wilson leaned down and picked it up.

Rachette swung his flashlight in a circle. There were a few more rocks twenty or so feet away, but they had clearly not been disturbed in ages. Pine needles were naturally laid on top of them, parts of them settled into the soil.

Wilson twisted the rock in his beam. It was caked with mud on one side, but it had not been embedded in the ground. It had been sitting on top of the pine needles.

“Someone threw it,” Rachette whispered. He swallowed, wondering what the hell was going on. Had someone thrown it for a diversion, bringing them to this spot while he escaped to another direction? Or had someone lured them in to where he wanted them to be? If so, why? Rachette could not help but think the person who’d decapitated seven people and sunk them in the lake was literally a stone’s throw away.

Olin Heeter? A seventy-year-old man? It didn’t seem likely, unless Heeter was a fitness buff, but the pictures they’d found of the man said otherwise. Heeter’s two pictures in his cabin of himself holding fish, and another with him and his wife, showcased quite a gut on the man. He was the kind of a man who spent hours on end fishing on a boat, not hours on end wandering the dark forest.

No. It had to be someone younger.

Wilson dropped the rock and swept his beam in a circle.

Rachette did his own sweep, trying to peer deep into the woods. It was no use. The beam only went so far and the light was only getting worse.

“I vote we get the hell back down.” Wilson’s voice had an edge. “Come back in the day time.”

Rachette nodded, taking a shaky breath. “I agree.”

Chapter 35

The Pony Tavern was a boxy log structure on Main Street, known for its pool tables and craft beer. Located a few blocks to the south of the station, it was right across the street from The Edelweiss, where Kimber was holed up for the second night in a row.

Wolf parked his SUV and crunched across the parking lot, eyeing Kimber’s black Chevy Blazer across the street. It was just like her father’s old missing one in Wolf’s report, but not identical. It was her mother’s old truck, a final gift before ditching out on her daughter.

Stepping inside, he was surprised to see her talking animatedly with the bartender inside.

Wolf ordered a double whiskey and sat next to her.

“You’re early and going for the hard stuff, huh?”

Wolf smiled.

“You know they have the best selection of beer in Rocky Points here.” She pointed to the sign that said We have the best selection of beer in Rocky Points hanging on the wall.

“I’m in the mood for something with a little more bite.”

“I’ll take one of those, too.” She pushed her beer aside. “Too bitter anyway.”

Wolf’s first sip was like gasoline going down his throat, but he enjoyed the immediate warmth traveling through his torso.

They sat in silence for a minute, watching muted baseball highlights on the screen above the bar, the soundtrack instead two men shooting pool, the clack of their balls piercing over the faint country music coming out of the jukebox in the corner.

“This place is rockin’ tonight.” Kimber swiveled on her stool.

Wolf watched in the bar mirror as one of the men missed his eight ball shot. “It’s perfect.”

Wolf watched Kimber’s reflection as she studied the place. Her hair was pulled back, a thick brown ponytail resting in between her shoulder blades, a cream-colored silk blouse shining in the yellow overhead lights.

Turning in his stool toward her, he smelled her perfume: subtle and flowery. Her worn jeans were snug on her legs. She was wearing more makeup than he’d ever seen her wear, as if she were making an effort. Wolf felt a tinge of self-consciousness about his jeans and a t-shirt that he’d been wearing under his uniform all day, both probably smelling less than breezy.

“You eat yet?” He asked.

“No. You?”

“Nope.”

They ordered burgers and he another whiskey, and then ate the meal in silence. She seemed to have something on her mind, and Wolf certainly had plenty to think about as he ate.

She swallowed the last bite of burger and said, “Wanna talk about it?”

“About you?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you were asking if I wanted to talk about what I was thinking about.”

She blushed and ducked into her drink. “Really? About me?”

Wolf nodded. “About you and your family.”

She set down her drink. “Pretty screwed up. Right?”

Wolf took another sip and then his phone vibrated. He fished it from his pocket and checked the screen.

Rachette.

Wolf held up a finger. “I‘ve got to take this.” Into the phone he said, “Hey.”

“There’s definitely someone up there.” Wind buffeted Rachette’s phone.

He switched phone hands and headed toward the jukebox, glancing over his shoulder at Kimber. She sat still, sipping her whiskey and staring at Wolf in the mirror behind the bar.

“What? Where?”

“Up at Heeter’s. Wilson and I were out in the woods, looking for whoever you saw the other night, and we’re certain there was someone out there.”

Wolf leaned on the jukebox with one hand. “Did you see them?”

“Nope. Wilson thinks he saw someone, but just a glimpse.”

“What’s his description?”

Rachette exhaled. “None. But we heard him. Running pretty fast away from us, then he threw a rock to fool us.”

Wolf frowned. “A rock?”

“Yeah. He threw a rock. Freaked us out.”

Wolf exhaled. “So it’s a he?”

Rachette paused. “We both think so. We think it was a young male. The person moved fast. And then he threw the rock.”

Wolf frowned. “What happened at the house? Any identification on the prints?”

“Heeter’s ex-military, so they compared the few prints they could find to his on file. Every print in there is his. Someone went to town scrubbing the place clean. Everything: lamps, tables, light switches, everything.”

Wolf rubbed his face and stepped away from the jukebox as it exploded with sound. “Except for the blood on the doorknobs and the rifle.”

“The rifle’s a Thompson Center ICON .308, looks like it’s been fired recently. Registered eleven years ago to Olin Heeter. A few of the bullets in the box are missing. No prints. Just blood. Whoever used it was clearly wearing gloves.”

Wolf shook his head. “No prints?”

“Nope. Not even a partial on one of the shells in the box. We’re sending the blood samples from the doorknobs and rifle to Lorber for DNA testing. He says he can see if there’s a hit in CODIS, but he also says ‘it will take more than a few days’, were his words. Says ‘work is piling up faster than elephant shit’ he said.”

“And what about Heeter’s truck? You find anything of interest?”

“We found a gas receipt from a week ago in the center console.”

Wolf paused in thought, looking over at Kimber who was laughing with the bartender. “A week ago?”

“Yep. From the Pumapetrol station.”

Wolf switched phone hands. “Where are you?”

Rachette hesitated. “We’re at the marina. We were thinking of heading back to the station.”

“Good. I don’t want you guys poking around up there in the woods at night. You guys might have been lucky. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with. We’ll get up there with the cavalry in the daytime and do a thorough search. Let me talk to Patterson.”

A pause.

“Where’s Patterson?”

“She’s headed back by herself. I’m with Wilson.”

Wolf exhaled. “What did she find out?”

“The rescue divers found something. Say it’s just the right size to be a body, right where Heeter told your dad he saw something dumped. They say they can’t pull it up until tomorrow. Too deep. The equipment they had today wouldn’t reach.”

Wolf looked over at Kimber and switched phone hands. “I put a VIN on yours and Patterson’s desks. I want to know everything about the owner. And I want you to look deeper into Heeter. His business. His wife’s death. His children. His business partners. His potential enemies.” Wolf looked at his watch. “Do what you can tonight and get some rest. We’ll get back on it tomorrow morning.”

Chapter 36

Wolf hung up and walked to Kimber.

She looked at her watch. “Work never ends, eh?”

Wolf sat and sipped his whiskey, grateful for the melted ice diluting the taste.

Staring at the muted televisions in silence, Wolf made more progress on his drink than she did on hers, so he ordered another one. When it came he took a generous pull and looked over.

“You’ve never gotten the sense that someone is up in those woods? I mean, besides you or your neighbor, Mr. Heeter?”

There was something like fear in her eyes for an instant and then she pulled her eyebrows together. “No. Not really. I mean, I get alarms all the time. But there’s all sorts of animals in those woods, and I just got so sick of being scared that I started ignoring everything.”

“And you said it’s been a couple weeks since you’ve seen Olin Heeter?” Wolf asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. Not that I keep tabs on him or anything, but I can usually see when he’s up there. You know, lights on at night, and he goes out in his boat a lot.”

Unable to tell if she was lying, Wolf turned back to his drink and took a slurp. “You got sick of being scared, you just said. So you’ve been scared before?”

She frowned and shook her head. “No, not because of a specific incident. I mean, I used to be scared about being all alone.”

Wolf watched her as she talked. She was nonchalant. A tough person who’d been abandoned by both her parents, at least how she had perceived it all these years. It was clear she had built up a wall around her feelings and it was thick. Or, she was hiding something and this was her poker face.

After a sidelong glance she turned and looked at him. “Why? Do you think someone’s up there?”

Ice tinkled in Wolf’s glass as he stirred it. “I encountered someone up there Friday night, and my deputies just had another encounter up there tonight.”

She pulled her eyebrows together. “Was it Mr. Heeter?”

Wolf shook his head. “We don’t think so. From what we’ve gathered about Olin Heeter, he’s not exactly the picture of health. He’s over seventy years old and out of shape. The person my deputies encountered was fast.”

She blinked and stared into her glass.

“Tell me about the day your father left. When was that again?”

She gave him a sidelong glance and then turned and frowned at him. “The sixth. The sixth of July. I’ve told you this.”

Wolf nodded, feigning recollection.

She exhaled and looked up at the ceiling. “Geez. I don’t remember much, I mean, I don’t know much. I was locked in that damn room until late morning. When my mother let me out, he’d left us.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So on the night of the fourth, he locked you into the room. And then the next night, the night of the fifth, our sheriff’s department came and asked if you and your family had seen Nick Pollard.”

Kimber nodded.

“Then your father locked you back in the room that night?”

She nodded quickly. “Yes. He was angry again. He seemed completely gone after your father and that other deputy came to talk to us.”

Wolf nodded. “And then you say he left on the sixth.”

“Yeah. Like I said, I woke up late, my mother let me out, and he was gone. He’d left us.”

“And the bag of bloody clothes. It was gone.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“And then you and your mother came down to Rocky Points and talked to the sheriff’s department. Talked with my father.”

She nodded.

Wolf raised his eyebrows. “But your father didn’t leave you.”

Kimber nodded and took a sip of her whiskey. “I know.”

“So,” he stared at her, “knowing that your father was shot in the head and dumped in the lake instead of up and driving away in his truck on the morning of the sixth, do you want to revise your story?”

Kimber looked at him and shook her head. “For what? That’s all I know.”

Wolf stared at her for a few moments.

She shook her head and squinted. “I don’t remember hearing a gunshot. It’s silent up there. I would have heard a shot.”

Wolf watched a tear trickle from her eye down her cheek, past the mole on her upper lip and drip off her chin.

“I don’t know. I think maybe …”

“What?”

She sniffed and looked up at him. “I think that maybe my mother killed my father.”

“But like you said, you didn’t hear the gun shot.”

“But I didn’t hear the gunshot,” she whispered.

Wolf shook his head and took a sip. “Yeah, and your father killed Nick Pollard. Anything could have happened all those years ago, and all I have is your word for it.”

She leaned back and stared at him. After a few seconds she pushed her drink forward, making to get off her stool.

“Please, sit,” Wolf said.

She leaned forward and her body seemed to deflate.

“Look, you have to look at this from my point of view. All we have is your word, and that’s not good for you.”

She frowned. “But you know someone called my father from the gas station. That person put Nick’s blood on the phone. I was at the fireworks show at that exact time. There’s phone records.”

“So? That tells me nothing. Unless we can somehow prove Nick Pollard died in that window of time that you were at the fireworks show, then I don’t give a shit what you were doing that night.”

“Ooookay.” She slid off the front of her chair. “I think this was a bad idea.”

Wolf flipped a hand in the air. “Fine. Leave.”

She leaned into Wolf’s ear. “I had nothing to do with Nick Pollard’s death.”

Wolf nodded, looking into his drink. “What about the night of the sixth?”

She picked her jacket off the back of the chair and paused. “What?”

“The sixth. The fourth, you were at the fireworks show and then locked in the room. The fifth, the sheriff’s department comes and talks to your family, and then you were locked in the room that night. And the sixth? Your father’s gone, and then you say that a couple days later your mother went missing.”

Wolf watched in the mirror while her brain ran calculations.

She nodded. “That’s right. So?”

“So what did you do the night of the sixth?”

“The sixth?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. Nothing.”

Wolf stared at her and narrowed his eyes. He stopped short of mentioning Olin Heeter’s testimony. Instead he shrugged and said, “Okay.”

“Okay.” She stared at him and then put her jacket back down. “So what?”

“So sit down.” He studied her beautiful face, and again at her liberal use of makeup that was unnecessary. He tilted his glass back and ended up sucking ice. With a roll of his neck, he sat straight and realized he was way past okay to drive.

“I have to use the restroom.” Wolf got up, leaving her dumbfounded, standing next to her bar stool.

When Wolf was done, he returned to the bar and realized he’d been moving unconsciously for the entire act of voiding his bladder and washing his hands, because his mind was whirling with possibilities.

Wolf walked slowly, half in a trance towards Kimber, who had now sat back down, apparently shrugging off their harsh encounter. He watched as the bartender lined up another drink on the bar, and realized for the first time that Kimber had been sipping the same drink all night.

Sitting down, he snapped out of his thoughts as a commotion ensued at the entrance. A few men barged in, howling with laughter, and headed to an open pool table, pushing aside chairs like they owned the place.

Wolf twisted on his barstool and narrowed his eyes when he recognized the tallest of them to be Carter Willis.

Carter removed his Armani jacket and the other two took off their hooded sweatshirts. The two men wore tight t-shirts, showcasing their bulging, tattooed arms. Carter rolled up the sleeves on an expensive looking button up and looked over, locking eyes with Wolf.

Wolf stared unmoving.

The two other men eyed Wolf with smirks, and then Carter mumbled something to them and walked straight over.

“Okay. Who the hell is this guy?” Kimber shifted forward on her stool and eyed Wolf.

Wolf turned and stirred his drink with his straw.

Carter stood next to him and leaned on both hands. “Can I get two pitchers of Bud and three glasses?”

The bartender nodded and got to work pouring.

“Hey, what was it, Sheriff Wolf?”

Wolf ignored him.

“All right. Dave? Can I call you Dave? Listen, I’ve heard all about you.”

Wolf kept quiet.

Carter shook his head. “Have it your way. I just wanted to apologize about the other night. I know you and Sarah are involved and were out to dinner, and I was a little rude barging in like that. And I just wanted to say sorry.”

Wolf looked up at Carter’s reflection in the mirror.

Carter slapped Wolf on the shoulder, sending Wolf’s hand into his drink, spilling a dollop onto the bar.

Wolf exhaled as the sharp sting on his skin dissipated to a warm, tingling ache from the blow. He took a deep breath and looked at the liquid as it spread into a comma, reflecting the baseball highlights above.

“It’s just hard to forget a piece of ass like that once you’ve had it, you know?”

Wolf twisted and punched as fast and as hard as he could with a backhand left, connecting with air where Carter’s head had been a split instant before.

Carter ducked easily and jabbed once into Wolf’s nose with lightning speed.

Before Carter’s hand left Wolf’s skin, Wolf jerked back and connected an uppercut to the chin, sending Carter sprawling back with fluttering eyes. With a crash and tumble Carter knocked over two barstools and landed on them.

Wolf blinked away the gush of stinging tears and ignored the pain pulsing up and down his nose. A gush of blood flooded into his throat. These were all sensations Wolf felt as he stepped over a downed stool.

Carter finished bouncing off the wooden legs and put his hands down to push himself up, a move that left him completely vulnerable.

Wolf connected a vicious heel-kick to the nose.

“Watch out!” Kimber yelled from behind him.

Wolf turned, hearing more than seeing a twirling pool cue hurtling toward the side of his head. With a deafening crack he was thrust to the side, landing hard on top of Carter’s moaning form.

For a split second Wolf was incapable of moving, his consciousness ebbing into darkness as he lay on top of Carter’s wriggling legs. With the sound of ripping clothing, he was yanked to his feet and then another blow hit him square in the jaw. The last thing he saw was Kimber grabbing tattooed arms, a shotgun, and then he went to sleep.

Chapter 37

Patterson listened to the eighth purring ringtone in the earpiece and exhaled. The digital clock read 10:25 and her eyes were stinging, losing the fight against gravity. This was the perfect end to the longest day on the planet.

“Jesus Christ, don’t they have employees on duty on Sunday ni—”

“Boise County Sheriff’s Department,” said a bored voice.

Patterson straightened in her chair. “Hi, this is Deputy Heather Patterson from the Sluice County SD in Colorado. We found a burned vehicle yesterday with two yet unidentified bodies inside. The VIN came back registered in Idaho in your county. I’m doing a follow up call—”

“Please hold.”

The line clicked and a recording of a man talking about Boise Sheriff Department’s commitment to serving and protecting the people of southwestern Idaho crackled in her ear.

She leaned back in her chair and blew out through her lips.

Her cell phone lit up and started dancing across her desk.

She leaned forward and read the screen with a sigh. Scott. She had missed three of his calls today, and when she’d called him back he didn’t answer. Now she was going to have to leave him hanging yet again.

The phone stopped vibrating and darkened, plunging the room into silence once again, save for the recording in her ear.

The squad room was black, the only light the red flash of computer monitor switches and the small cone of photons under her desk lamp. Looking outside, the ground was painted with moon light, looking like there was a dusting of snow on the ground it was so bright.

The recording went silent in her ear. “Deputy Michelson speaking.”

“Hi,” Patterson introduced herself, “I’m trying to get some information on a man we might have found down here. Looking to see if you have a rap sheet on him.”

“Rocky Points, Colorado, huh?” The man’s tone was breathy,-couldn’t give two shits, but I’m still asking.

Patterson creased her forehead. “Yeah. The name is William Van Wyke. I’m looking for priors, anything you have on him.”

A long exhale. The squeak of a chair. Finger taps on a keyboard. “Yep. Here we go. A licensed private investigator. Registration is current with our department. Other than that, squeaky-clean. Looks like he’s working on the right side of the law. Wait, what did you say happened to him?”

“We found him burned up in a car, shot four times. Or, at least we think it’s him. Someone made sure his teeth weren’t going to tell us, and he was a piece of charcoal after the fire.”

The deputy gasped into the phone. “Hey, Rocky Points. They’re talking on the news today about a bunch of bodies being pulled up from a lake up there, aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are.”

“In your county?”

“Yep.”

The deputy let out a long whistle. “Well, have fun with that. That’s some messed up—”

Patterson jumped as the station line rang shrill and loud on her desk.

“Look, thanks for your help. If you find anything else, please give us a call. Again, it’s the Sluice County Sheriff’s Office, and I’m Deputy Patterson.”

“Got it. Have a good one.”

Patterson hit the line button and switched to the main line. “Sluice County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Hi, my name is Doug Orden. I live up on Bear Hill road. I’m pretty sure I just heard three gunshots.”

Chapter 38

Wolf was hot.

With exertion that made his head throb with pain, he squinted to see. But the light was too bright, and no matter how much he squinted, the light was too bright and the images were washed out.

He heard the chopper in the distance, and by the sound of the rotors it was ready to lift off. Everyone was almost on board, and he was supposed to be sweeping the perimeter of the jungle, but he couldn’t see a thing.

He was hot. He was hot, and his pack was heavy. So heavy he couldn’t move.

The rotor of the chopper thumped, thrumming in his skull, but the wash didn’t reach him. He was so damned hot.

As he looked back toward the jungle line his earpiece roared with distressed yells, almost rupturing his eardrums. His head shrieked in pain at the sudden cacophony, and suddenly he was flooded with panic.

“They’re dead, and it’s all your fault!” Someone screamed at him.

With a loud bang, he was slammed by a wall of heat as the helicopter exploded.

Wolf grunted and tried to sit up, but something was on top of him. Something heavy and unmercifully hot was pinning him down.

He opened his eyes and saw a twirling ceiling fan, and then a face inches from his.

As he laid his head back, he was shocked by the sudden thud of pain that hit the back of his skull. His vision twisted for an instant, and then he blinked and looked again at the face in front of him.

“Are you all right?” It asked in a soft voice.

His chest heaved as he tried to normalize his breath. His nose was plugged, draining blood down the back of his throat. He closed his eyes and relaxed, realizing it was Kimber.

But wait. He opened his eyes again. That was his fan mounted on his bedroom ceiling.

The pressing heat on his body. Without having to move he realized Kimber was lying stark naked with her full weight on his left side, with her leg draped across his crotch. The sweat trapped between their bodies made the scrapes on Wolf’s upper thighs itch.

“What the hell?” he asked.

She peaked her eyebrows and smiled. “You’re at home. You got beat up by a bunch of thugs last night. And a little drunk to boot.”

Wolf reached up and touched the side of his head, sucking in a breath at the sudden pain. “Ah.”

“Don’t touch it. If it feels half as bad as it looks then I’m sure it hurts.”

Wolf took another few deep breaths as he ran his fingers over the goose egg bump above his ear, all the while feeling the sheets as they pulled across his naked skin. Suddenly it was all too much, and nausea rose from within.

“Get up.” Wolf pushed her off of him and closed his eyes. “Get up.”

The sheets rustled and the bedsprings rose as she got up.

After a few breaths the nausea abated and he looked over and saw Kimber standing fully nude.

“What happened?”

“I just told you, you got beat up by—”

“No. I mean with us?” Wolf wiped sweat off his forehead.

She looked genuinely confused. “You don’t remember?”

Wolf shook his head. The motion felt like a sledgehammer to his temples.

“The bartender, he had a shotgun. Got those guys off of you. You got up and said you were all right. He was wondering if he should call your deputies, but you said no, and then you told me to take you home.” She looked down at the sheets, and then she bent down and pulled up the comforter to cover her breasts. “And so I took you home.”

Wolf closed his eyes. He remembered the fight with Carter, and he remembered what the man had said to him. In fact, Wolf felt rage course through him again just thinking about it, and it only served to make his head pound with more pain.

“I’m sorry.” She said softly.

Wolf cracked an eyelid and looked over at his nightstand. There was a wad of bloody gauze and bandages, and next to it was a bottle of peroxide.

“You were bleeding pretty bad. I got it to stop. I didn’t think you needed stitches, it’s just those head wounds won’t stop sometimes.”

Wolf frowned. “And after you patched me up? We …”

She smiled sheepishly and then exhaled. “You don’t remember?”

Wolf closed his eyes and put his arms above his head. “No. No I don’t.”

“Maybe you do need to get that checked out.” She rolled her eyes and put a strand of hair behind her ear. “Jesus. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

Wolf shook his head. This time the movement hurt less. He was thirsty as hell, like he’d swallowed some of the gauze and it was stuck in his throat. With immense effort he sat up, feeling dizzy as he looked around the room.

The light outside was dim. Was it morning or evening? He swept his legs off the edge of the bed and sat. The nightstand clock said 6:14.

“This is going to sound like a stupid question, but it’s morning, right?”

She chuckled. “Yeah. Who the hell were those guys, anyway?” She asked.

He stood up, feeling too dizzy with his head throbbing too hard to worry about his nakedness. He paused to look out the window and saw an elk grazing under a pine. The window’s cold aura got him walking again. “Nobody to worry about.”

He walked to the bathroom and saw his clothes from the night before hanging on the shower curtain rod.

“There was quite a lot of blood on your shirt, and some on your jeans. I washed them for you.”

He looked at her and nodded thanks.

She returned the gesture.

He looked in the mirror, tilting his head to check out his wound. It was a bump the size of a golf ball with a red T-shaped split on the tip, clearly visible through his hair. The slightest touch sent a current of pain through his entire skull.

His nose was swollen and the skin was darkening in between his eyes. He wondered if he was going to have two black eyes for the … shit. The debate. Life came back at him like a slingshot.

“What is it?” Kimber stood next to him, still stark naked, staring at him in the mirror.

He looked down at her and frowned, thinking of the absurdity of the situation. “How did you know how to get to my house last night?”

She shook her head. “You told me how.”

Wolf nodded. “Of course I did. I’m going to take a quick shower. Then you can take one if you want and we’ll head back into town.”

She narrowed her eyes and then without a word turned and closed the door behind her.

Wolf stood transfixed in front of the mirror, staring at the doorknob, wondering what the hell just happened, and what the hell had happened last night? Thoughts and snippets of his and Kimber’s conversation before the fight flooded back into his brain, like a wave that goes out only to join forces with another and comes crashing in even harder.

He remembered after the pool cue snapped against his head now, how he’d gotten a good shot in on Carter, and then had been leveled by one of the other two men. And yes. He remembered telling the bartender to hold off on calling his deputies. He didn’t want the embarrassment of being caught out drinking with a person of interest in the case, and he never liked being broke and beaten on the ground.

What he did not remember was getting home, or anything else beyond that. Had he drunk that much? He knew that given a severe enough blow, head trauma could erase some short-term memory, but it just seemed ludicrous that it would have happened to him.

The truth was, he wondered whether he should feel like a rape victim, or guilty for acting like one. There was one thing he did remember, though. Closing his eyes, he thought about the end of his dream.

They’re dead and it’s all your fault.

Chapter 39

Roiling clouds above slid by and the tops of the pines bent in the wind as Wolf walked across the station lot. Looking at the darkness to the north was all the forecast Wolf needed to know that it was going to be a miserable Monday. Fitting, he thought, still waiting for the Advil to deaden the miserable pounding in his skull.

Tammy glanced up at him and the door clacked.

Wolf almost made it by her.

“Wait, what the hell happened to you?”

Wolf exhaled and nodded. “Hello, Tammy.” He grabbed the door and pulled.

Tammy stood and was making to meet him on the other side through her own door.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he warned as he stepped through the squad room.

She pulled her eyebrows together and shook her head. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Will do. Thanks.”

Wilson stood from his desk as if ready to refill his coffee and paused. “What happened to you?”

Wolf ignored the question. “What’s going on? Where is everyone?”

“Rachette and Patterson just left to go up to the lake. Baine, too. Rachette and Baine were talking about going into the woods, Patterson talking about the rescue team trying again to get what they found at the bottom of that lake. Oh yeah, and Baine says he left something on your desk?”

Wolf nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

“And sir, Patterson got two calls last night from people who heard shots fired. Both said they heard three shots, but we haven’t found anything yet, haven’t heard anything. We had two units on patrol last night who couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary either.”

Wolf frowned and nodded. “Okay. Let me know if anything comes of it.”

“Yes sir.”

He stepped down the hall and into his office. With a twist of his fingers, he opened the aluminum blinds, letting in the subdued light from outside. Margaret Hitchens was outside her office across the street, bundled in a knee length dress coat and talking to three other professionally dressed people.

He narrowed his eyes as he watched Margaret signal toward his office, and the other three looked his way.

With an exhale he turned and sat down. The squawk of the chair springs jabbed his brain. After a few seconds of staring dumbly at the wall, he stood and got a bottle of water from the mini-fridge in the hallway and downed it in one breath. Another half a bottle down his throat, and he felt some vitality returning.

He heard his desk phone’s digital trill and walked back into his office and picked it up.

“Wolf.”

“Hey, it’s Lorber. Have you checked your email yet?”

“No, just a second.” Wolf woke up his computer and logged into his email.

As he waited for the screen to load he noticed a sticky-note on his desk.

Done. Check your email. –Baine

Wolf ripped up the note and put it in the trash. “All right. I’m clicking on your email.”

“Look at the attachments. There’re three pictures.”

Wolf clicked on one. “Okay. I’m seeing a watch.”

The sound of Lorber sipping coffee filled Wolf’s ear. “I found this watch in Nick Pollard’s truck. Notice the way the strap is severed at an angle. I’m calling this the smoking wrist watch.”

“Mmm,” Wolf said.

“This is a Swatch brand watch,” Lorber continued,” popular in the 80’s and 90’s. Some models are water resistant. Lucky for us, this one was not. Also lucky for us, this watch is made exclusively from plastic parts, which resisted corrosion from the particular vat of chemicals you bathed in yesterday. By the way, how are your genitals doing this morning?”

Wolf clicked on the second picture. It was a close up of an arm of one of the murder victims pulled from the lake. “I’m on the second picture.”

“Okay. The second picture is a close up of Nick Pollard’s left wrist. Do you see that vertical slash on it?”

Wolf leaned into the screen. “Yes. I do.”

“And it just so happens that the angle of the cut on the wrist lines up exactly with the severed watch strap.”

Wolf clicked on the third picture. It was a close up of the watch face.

Lorber coughed into the receiver. “And the third. I give you, the smoking wrist watch.”

Wolf shook his head, allowing a small smile to reach his lips. “It’s stopped at 8:25.”

“Eight, twenty, five. There’s even a cute little date and day next underneath all that gook that I cleaned off, and it says Thursday, July 4th.”

“So there’s our time of death,” Wolf said. “Or, correction, the time his truck was dumped in the lake.”

“Yep. And there are eleven other stab wounds from the same knife on Nick Pollard’s body, and three tears in the vinyl seat of his truck seat that are made by the same blade.”

Wolf leaned back. “You’d bet your hair on it?”

“Yes. I would. It’s safe to say that by the time Nick’s truck was dumped in the pond, Nick was dead.” Lorber made a kissing noise. “And there’s the sound of Kimber Grey’s alibi sealing tight.”

Wolf stared at the picture on his computer screen, and then up at Wilson’s head peeking inside the office.

“Sir? You have some company.”

Wolf frowned. “Who?”

“Who what?” Lorber said in his ear.

“Lorber, I have to go, I’ll talk to you later.”

Wolf hung up and looked up to see Wilson gone and Margaret poking her head around the corner with a surprised grin on her face. “Howdy Sheriff.”

He needed to have a talk with Tammy.

“Sheriff Wolf, we’re sorry to bother you.” She stepped into the doorway and looked over her shoulder.

We? He pictured a pool cue snapping over Tammy’s head as he stood from his desk.

Two men and a woman stepped up behind Margaret and craned their necks to see. He raised his chin and smiled politely, recognizing one of the men and one of the women from somewhere that escaped him now.

“Hello.” Wolf walked around his desk.

“David,” Margaret stepped aside, “these are all members of the Byron County Council. They were in town this morning and wanted to meet you. You might remember Chairwoman and President Teresa Ball? And Vice Chairman Phillip Henley? And this is Council Member Andrew Kensington.”

Halfway through the second handshake Margaret’s face dropped. She stared closely at Wolf’s injured scalp. “What happened to you?”

Wolf gave a sheepish smile and pointed a finger at his wound. “One of the hazards of the job.”

Margaret and the council members shared an exasperated look with one another.

“Can we come in?” She asked. “We’d like to talk for just a few moments.”

Wolf looked into his office. “Sure. But I only have two chairs. Let’s go into the Situation Room to talk.”

He led the way and held the door open. They funneled past Wolf with wispy fabric and strong fragrances and took seats on the plastic chairs.

Wolf pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the white table and sat down.

Chairwoman Teresa Ball leaned forward on a thin forearm, and Wolf was mesmerized as her platinum bracelet dangled and danced on the table. “I’d like to congratulate you on your recent popularity.”

She flashed an attractive smile and smoothed her hand over her gray sculpture of a haircut. “We were just in the neighborhood, up from Ashland, checking on the new county building that’s going up.”

Wolf pulled down the corners of his mouth and nodded. “They’re getting close.”

She nodded. “They say they’re going to be done by the end of the month.”

“Just in time.” Wolf smiled.

“Just in time.” Her smiled faded. “I want to get to the point, Sheriff. We’re here because we want us all to be friends, here in this room. We have some great things already planned for the sustainable growth of this new county, and for this beautiful resort town of Rocky Points, and I think we can all help each other out with the trajectory our respective careers are taking.”

Wolf leaned back and smiled. “The trajectory our careers are taking? We’ll have to see about me. They still have to count the votes. At least I think. Isn’t that how it works, Margaret?”

Margaret’s face froze for a second and then she smiled. “Ha. Of course, David.” She looked at the three council members and then shot a dagger glance at him.

“And what about you three?” Wolf gestured with a hand. “You don’t have to be voted in?”

The two men relaxed in their chairs and exchanged a glance. The Chairwoman looked down at her hand and tapped a finger. “Yes. We do have to be voted and sworn in, but unlike you we are all running unopposed for the positions we will hold in the newly formed County Council.”

“Ah.” Wolf nodded with genuine interest. “And if I were to be elected sheriff, the bylaws state I would have voting power in many of the council matters.”

“That’s right.” The Chairwoman nodded and her bangs bounced. “You would, on certain issues.”

Wolf spread his hands. “Just trying to ‘get to the point’ as you say.”

The Chairwoman leaned back and took a deep breath. “Well, I think that—”

The door clicked and creaked open, and Wilson peeked his head inside. “Sheriff?”

Wolf held up a finger. “I’ll be right out. We were just finishing up.”

Margaret’s nostrils flared as she white-knuckle-gripped the armrest of her chair.

“Sir. We have a”—Wilson looked at the four guests and then back at him—“10-79.”

Wolf nodded. “Sorry, folks. I’ve gotta get going.” He got up and left the room without a second glance at his confused guests.

“What do we have?” The Sit-Room door latched behind him.

Wilson froze, his eyes locked on Wolf’s.

“What?”

“It’s … Beacon Light Road, sir. Two 10-79’s on Beacon Light.”

Wilson’s sad eyes answered Wolf’s question before Wolf could line up his words.

He sagged against the wall. “Who? Who is it?”

Chapter 40

Wolf took his time getting to the black BMW sedan. The scratch of radios seemed to disappear and the rain seemed to pass through him. As he rounded behind the passenger side and ducked under the makeshift tent, he was laser focused on the alabaster hand dangling from the car.

It was clenched in a half fist, a single stripe of red on the palm to the first knuckle of the slender pinkie finger.

The two white-clad deputies stepped aside as Wolf approached.

The bare arm and a bare leg came into view, and Wolf froze. For a few long seconds he stared at her muddy feet, and then his eyes travelled from the bare foot, up the impossibly white skin of the knee, to the thigh, all the way up to the side of her buttock, all the way to the waist and to her slinky black nightgown pulled up to her belly.

For just an instant he allowed himself to look at her exposed black panties. It was unclear whether the movement of being ruthlessly murdered had raised the slinky material above her waist, or if had been something, or someone else. He moved forward and then stopped before raising his gaze to her face. There are some things you don’t need to see.

He turned and walked around the back of the vehicle. Tinted windows. Colorado plates. Gleaming black paint covered with orbs of water. Ducked under the edge of the tent. A white clad deputy stepped back. The open driver’s side door.

Wolf tracked his eyes from the man’s shiny shoes, muddy and scuffed on the top of the toes, up his pressed black slacks, and paused at his fly. The crotch zipper was up and Wolf blinked with relief.

The rain slapped the top of the foldout canvas tent as Wolf bent for a closer look at the dead man.

Carter Willis’s face was scratched and bruised, and there was a neat hole in his temple. His eyes stared into the void.

Wolf stared, his eyes transfixed on Carter’s groomed hair. In his peripheral vision he saw Sarah’s face twisted toward him, blonde hair across her face, and though he did not look directly, he could see two white specks and knew her eyes were open. The most beautiful blue eyes the world had ever seen, and would never see again. There are some things you don’t need to see.

Sergeant Yates stood at the back of the car. He was waiting to talk to Wolf with a sympathetic expression.

Wolf stood up and walked past him.

“Sir.” Yates stepped up behind him. “We found a receipt in the center console for The Pony Tavern from last night.”

Wolf stopped and nodded. “Yeah? So?”

Yates shifted his feet. “Sir, I was on patrol last night, and I saw your truck there. You were there last night, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Yates held out his hand. “Sir. I gotta.”

Wolf stared at his hand for a second, his mind reeling with possibilities, and then un-holstered his service pistol and held it out, butt-first.

Yates took it with a rubber-gloved hand and ejected the clip. He held it up, counting the rounds and checked the chamber. Wafting the barrel in front of his nose, Yates flared his nostrils and stared into the distance. He shook his head, jammed home the clip and handed the pistol back to Wolf.

“Good enough for me.”

Wolf took it with a nod, his gut churning from the exchange.

He looked back at the BMW and then down the road that that led into Rocky Points.

A quarter mile away, barely visible through the rain, Wolf saw a figure alongside the road. Pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth.

The wriggling in his gut became a thrashing wild animal, a gorilla trying to break out of a cage. Jack.

He began walking.

Chapter 41

Patterson gripped the ceiling handle and held her breath as Rachette sped up Beacon Light Road. The SUV’s wheels skidded on the wet asphalt, and they drifted a few feet to the side before correcting.

“Careful,” she said, but she wasn’t about to tell him to slow down. Halfway to the lake, they’d received a call from a freaked-out Wilson. The news had been nothing short of a mental bomb detonation.

She and Rachette had not spoken on the way to the lake for one reason, and now they were silent for another.

Sarah was dead? She closed her eyes and swallowed. Three gunshots, the two calls last night had said. At the memory, her eyes welled again.. This time she let the tears stream down her face like the water streamed across her passenger window.

“God damn it,” she said.

Rachette reached over and gave her arm a squeeze.

Flashing lights marking their destination came into view through the mist, and they sank back in their seats as Rachette revved the SUV.

A figure standing on the right shoulder came into view, and Rachette swung to the oncoming lane to give a wide berth. As they passed, Patterson gazed out through wet eyes, seeing a curious look on a teenaged face framed by a cinched hood.

Patterson’s head whipped back. “Shit. That was Jack.”

“What?” Rachette let up on the gas.

“Yeah. That was Sarah’s new house we just passed. Jack doesn’t know yet?” She looked at Rachette.

Rachette looked in the rearview mirror. “Damn. I don’t know. What do we do?”

“There’s Wolf.” She pointed out the windshield.

Rachette jammed on the brakes and stopped in front of Wolf who was marching down the edge of the road.

Patterson’s breath caught when she saw Wolf’s eyes underneath his hood. They were blood red and swollen, unblinking, staring past their vehicle.

She hit the button and lowered the window.

Wolf sidestepped the front of their SUV onto the muddy shoulder and walked past without pausing.

“Sir …” The next word was impossible for her to choose. She looked back at Rachette and rolled up the window. “There’s nothing we can do. Let’s go up.”

They parked behind a flashing SCSD vehicle and got out.

Patterson stepped into a patch of mud straight out of the SUV and slipped, barely catching herself on the door before she went down. With spread legs she shut the door, zipped up her jacket against the cold, and then gingerly walked around to the asphalt.

Rachette stopped next to Yates at the top of the driveway and they looked down the road at Wolf’s receding figure, now barely visible through a passing bank of fog.

“What the hell happened?” Rachette asked no one in particular.

Yates gestured to the black luxury sedan. “The homeowners discovered the car this morning. They live in Denver and this is their second home. You can see for yourself.”

Patterson followed Rachette. Dread pressed down harder with each step she took, and she focused on Rachette’s unwavering steps to get her there.

He went to the driver’s side door where Deputy Tyler was collecting forensics evidence.

Patterson ducked into the tent, determined to work the scene as she would work any other.

She flinched at Sarah’s vacant stare, and it threatened to turn Patterson’s resolve to rubble, but she pressed on. She had a job to do. She noted the trickle of blood that had oozed from a neat hole in Sarah’s  forehead. The rear of her skull was misshapen, but there seemed to be no exit wound. An explosion of blood on Sarah’s upper right chest had bled profusely, running down her right arm, which dangled off her exposed right thigh.

Patterson tried to cloak herself in professional detachment, and to ignore the coppery scent of blood mixed with fecal matter. She studied the scene from various perspectives: the gunshot wound on Carter Willis’s head, the scuffmarks on Carter’s shoes, the lack of shoes on Sarah’s muddy feet and her nightgown outfit.

“Where are the keys?” she asked.

“Center console.” Deputy Tyler cleared his throat. “Cup holder. It’s a push button start motor.”

She looked down to the concrete driveway. “No brass?”

“Nope.”

She reached back and Tyler handed her some gloves. She put them on and pulled open Carter Willis’s jacket, exposing the empty inner pocket.

“I already checked his pants. No wallet. No ID. Insurance card and registration in the glove compartment says Carter Willis. We’re confirming his ID.”

She nodded. “I met this guy. He introduced himself as Carter Willis.” She noted the powder smears throughout the interior of the car where prints had been found and lifted.

“We’ve got at least four separate sets of prints so far,” said Tyler.

Rachette walked away shaking his head. His face was pale and his lips shiny with saliva.

She listened to his footsteps quicken as he ran away, and then him retching. The soundtrack of Rachette heaving drew no glances from anyone.

“Did you call Lorber?” She asked.

Tyler nodded. “He’s on his way.”

She looked around the interior of the car and at the scuffs on Carter’s shoes. “Looks like they were shot outside the car and put inside.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Tyler said. “There’s no spatter inside. We’ll scour the area with the K-9’s.”

She stood straight and walked up the hill to the top of the driveway.

Her eyes welled up again when she saw Wolf holding Jack in a bear hug and rocking back and forth, his son trying to escape to no avail. Then she flinched for the second time that morning when a distant wail reached her eardrums.

Chapter 42

Wolf had no energy to knock on the door so he pushed the doorbell button.

A full minute later he heard the squeak of wood inside and the clack of locks, and then he saw Burton’s face poke out to greet him.

“Hey.” Burton squinted and rubbed his eyes. “What’s up?”

Wolf took a breath in response.

“Holy shit, boy. What happened to you?”

“Can I come in?”

Burton swallowed and opened the door wide, revealing his full outfit of a muscle T-shirt and boxer shorts. “Sorry. I was just watching TV in bed. I … let me change. You want some coffee?”

Wolf nodded. “Sure.”

“Got one of those single shot dealios in the kitchen. You know how to use it?”

Wolf waved a hand. “I’ll figure it out.”

Burton eyed him warily and then hurried down the hallway.

Without pausing at the entrance to the kitchen Wolf walked to a bright window in the living room and stared out through the streaming droplets. A green ski slope covered in mud, grass, a single strip of snow, and wildflowers meandered up the mountain and disappeared into the mist.

“No coffee?” Burton walked up and studied Wolf. “What’s going on, son?”

“Sarah’s dead.”

“What?” Burton stepped back, bumping into a piece of furniture. “Oh my Go … what happened?”

Wolf stared out the window, now seeing fuzzy shapes as the tears welled. “She was calling me last night. And I ignored her calls.”

Burton put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, rocking Wolf in place.

“Jack …” Wolf sniffed.

“What happened to Jack? Is Jack alright?”

“He’s fine. He’s … fine.” Wolf let the tears stream down his cheeks. “She was shot. She and some other guy that was in town named Carter Willis. Shot in his car.”

Burton’s grip on Wolf’s shoulder was relentless.

“And Jack is so,” Wolf shook his head, “angry. He watched his mother call me last night. He watched her hang up the phone after I wouldn’t answer. He watched …” Wolf clenched his eyes tight and a deluge of tears streamed down his cheeks.

Burton stood silent.

They stood like that for what seemed an hour, until Wolf opened his eyes wide and turned around. “Coffee.”

Burton was glued to his spot near the window, looking at Wolf with sparkling eyes. He sniffed loudly and walked toward the kitchen. “Yeah. Coffee.”

For two cups they sat at the kitchen table without speaking, listening to the drops of rain hit the roof and make their way down the network of gutters outside.

“When’s Cheryl coming home?” Wolf’s voice croaked, like he hadn’t used it in a year.

“Tomorrow.”

Wolf smiled. “Better clean your ass up.”

Burton nodded, sipping his coffee with two hands. “Yep.”

They sat in silence for another few minutes.

Burton looked at him. “What do you need me to do?”

Wolf shook his head. “Nothing. You’re doing it.”

Another minute of silence.

“You need me to apply makeup on that nose?” Burton’s face was deadpan.

Wolf rolled his eyes. “I don’t think Cheryl’s my shade.”

They laughed for a second, and then another flood of emotion poured out of Wolf.

Burton assumed his position as patient shoulder-squeezer.

Successfully pushing away another wave of emotion, Wolf leaned back and took a big breath through his mouth. “Okay. Thanks. I’ve gotta get going.”

“What? No you don’t. Stick around.”

“No. Thanks.” Wolf stood up. “I’ll let you get back to watching your soaps.”

Burton scoffed, but had no retort. His expression steeled. “What happened to your face and head?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Like you said, nothing a little makeup can’t hide.”

Wolf paused in the middle of pushing out his chair and stared at the top of Burton’s hand-carved wood table.

“What?”

Wolf tilted his head and looked at Burton.

“What? What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” But it was something. Wolf was sure of it. He stood up and gave Burton a quick hug.

“Where are you going?” Burton asked.

“Home.”

“Good.”

Wolf nodded and walked outside, not even noticing the icy rain that stabbed at his face.

Chapter 43

Rachette stared at his computer monitor, listening to the patter of rain on the squad room windows. Despite the late afternoon hour, it was almost dark as evening outside and he needed to turn on his desk lamp, but he had too little willpower to reach up and twist the switch.

He felt a tinge of regret that he wasn’t out scouring the scene of Sarah’s murder for clues with Patterson. He felt like he’d betrayed Wolf once by getting caught unknowingly running drugs … running drugs for Christ’s sake! And now, instead of trying to crack Sarah’s case, he was staring at the seizure-inducing glow of his computer screen, trying to find a damn match for at least one of these bodies pulled up from the depths, something he was also failing at.

“Rachette.” Tammy was leaning out her door.

He looked up.

“There’s a Kimber Grey here? Says she wants to talk to you.”

He sat straight. “Thanks, Tammy.” He walked to the reception door and opened it.

Kimber Grey sat on the edge of a chair, her thick brown hair bundled at the back of her head, eyes big and wide and looking up at him.

“Hi.” He said.

“Hi.” She stood up and pulled down her sweatshirt. “Can I talk to you?”

He nodded. “Sure. Come on inside.”

She smiled gratefully and walked past Rachette into the Squad Room, and Rachette took a deep inhale of her as she passed. Flowers and fabric softener, he thought as he looked at her butt. Only for a second. It was impossible to ignore the perfect way she filled her jeans.

“I’ve been sitting at the hotel all day, and I just wanted to see how things were progressing?”

He exhaled with a somber nod and motioned for her to sit in front of his desk.

Patterson’s desk phone began to trill.

“With things up at the lake?”

She nodded and sat down. She crossed her legs and pulled a piece of escaped hair behind her ear.

He sat down. “Yeah. Well, we had a little incident in town, and haven’t gotten up there today. The rescue divers have been up there all day trying to fish a … trying to exhume something they found yesterday.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Really? Another body?”

“Well, I don’t want to speculate. It’s not in the same spot that the other bodies, and your father, were found. They’re searching more straight out from Olin Heeter’s place. Still no word yet, though. It’s too deep to dive to, and it’s not like we have submarines up here in the Rockies.”

“Ah.” She nodded and looked down at her hands.

Her eyelashes were so long, her lips so smooth. Even after so much time, over two years now, he recalled the way she kissed. So hungry and passionate, and then so quick to switch it off. He remembered it like it was yesterday. It was a typical shoot-down of the variety he’d endured many times before—one second he’s making out with them, the next they come to their senses. But her shoot-down had stung badly, and he still remembered exactly how he’d screwed up the moment. They’d gotten into his car in full steamy mode, and he had his uniform in the back seat. He had pointed at it and told her See that? I’m a man in uniform. You like men in uniform?

Apparently she didn’t. Because that had been the end of their kiss, and the end of any sort of meaningful communication they’d had with one another until this moment now.

“Tom?” She was looking at him with raised eyebrows.

His face went hot and he stood up. “You want any coffee?”

“Sure. I was just asking, though, have they found anything interesting in Mr. Heeter’s house?”

He walked out from behind his desk. “No I mean, I can’t really talk about it.” He paused at the coffee machine and frowned. “So when is the last time you saw him?”

“Geez, I don’t know. It’s been a couple of weeks, I guess. He usually spends most of his weekends up there during the summer, but I didn’t see him this last weekend, or the one before that, I guess.”

“You want cream and sugar?” Rachette held up a cup of steaming coffee.

“No thanks. Black.”

He walked over and sat it down in front of her.

Patterson’s desk phone rang again.

He jerked his head towards it and then got up. “Just a second. Someone keeps calling her damn phone. Hello?”

There was shuffling on the other end and then a man clearing his throat. “Hello. I was looking for Deputy Patterson?”

“Yeah. Are you the one that keeps calling?”

“I called just before this, but I didn’t leave a message. Then I called your dispatcher and got your fax number. I was just calling back now to let her know that I was going to fax her over some files of interest we have.”

Rachette frowned. “And who is this?”

“Oh sorry. This is Deputy Michelson, Boise Sheriff’s Department.”

“Boise?”

“Idaho.”

“Yeah, I know where Boise, Idaho is. I’m just wondering why you’re calling.”

“I’m calling because Deputy Patterson called last night about a VIN number. And we got to talking about the bodies you’ve been pulling up from that lake down there.”

“Yeah?”

“I just got off the phone with a retiree from our department, a guy who lives up state. He called talking about an unsolved case we have from twenty-four years ago. This retiree worked the case all those years ago. Anyway, he saw the news stories they’re plastering all over the TV about those headless bodies you’re pulling up down there, and he swears there’s a connection to his case way back when. Looks like they had a body that showed up, killed with the same M.O..”

Rachette leaned on the edge of the desk. “Really? Head chopped off?”

Deputy Michelson cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m looking at the pictures. I don’t envy you guys with eight of these bodies.”

“Seven. One of them was killed with a shot …” Rachette looked at Kimber and stopped talking. She had been staring at him with wide eyes, and now she turned away.

Shit. Rachette was being an insensitive bastard, talking about all this right in front of her. Her father was the one with the gunshot to the head, idiot.

Rachette stood up and turned away. “Sounds like we need to hear about this.”

“Okay, that’s what I figured. I just got your fax number from your dispatcher. I’ll send it right away. Keep an eye out for it.”

Rachette looked absently at Kimber and nodded. “Sounds good. We’ll look forward to it.” The line clicked dead and he hung up.

“Hey, Wilson. We’ve got an important fax coming in from the Boise Sheriff’s Department.

“Idaho?”

Rachette held out his hands. “California. Yes, Idaho.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

Rachette exhaled. “Just make sure it comes through.”

Wilson shook his head and kept his eyes on his computer screen. “Yeah. Sure.”

Rachette felt his face blossom red.

“Deputy Rachette?” Kimber looked up at him.

“Yeah?”

“Can you do me a favor?” She raised her eyebrows and gave an exasperated smile.

He sat down. “Sure. What?”

“The reason I came in here is because I have to go up to my house, and I heard from Sheriff Wolf that you guys have seen someone up there?”

Rachette leaned back in his chair. “Nobody’s seen anyone. But someone is definitely up there.”

Her eyebrows creased together and she looked at her hands. “I have to go up there. I have to get some things, but I don’t want to go alone. Do you think you could go up with me?”

“Now?”

She exhaled. “I have to go. I left my laptop computer up there and it’s driving me crazy.”

He shook his head. “If you need to you can use one of our computers in here.”

She sagged in her chair. “I also don’t have enough money on me to stay another night in the Edelweiss. I don’t use credit cards, so I have to go get more cash. Listen, I’ll buy you a drink on the way back?”

Without even trying he gave her an awe-shucks smile that lit up her face. “If you need money, I can spot you, Kimber.”

Her face dropped and she scooted her chair back. “No, thank you. I’ll just drive up by myself. I’m sorry for bothering you.” She kept her eyes down as she stood.

“All right. All right.” He raised a hand and stood up. “Geez. I’ll go with you. Don’t worry.”

She smiled and tilted her head, her eyes softened with unending gratitude.

Rachette gave her a cool smile. “But I’m driving. I don’t want to be listening to Madonna all the way up there in that Blazer of yours.” He picked up his jacket and put it on.

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. She liked his ribbing.

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel so much better.”

He smiled and hooked his thumbs on his duty belt. “No problem. Hey Wilson. I’m heading up to the lake for a little bit. I’ll be back.”

Wilson eyed Kimber for a second and then nodded. “All right. I’ll be sitting in this dark room sifting through databases.”

Rachette pursed his lips and thought about Wolf. Where was he? Patterson said after he talked to Jack, he had driven away without a glance or word to anyone. The pity he felt for Jack and Wolf right now made him sick every time he thought about it.

“Could be worse,” he said.

Wilson looked up and nodded with closed eyes. “Yeah. Could be worse.”

Chapter 44

Patterson walked into the Squad Room and took off her jacket, being careful not to flip water all over the papers on her desk.

Easing around to her seat, she looked out the rain-splotched window and read Debate Cancelled Tonight in black capital letters on the Town Hall sign.

“You see all those reporters outside? Now they’re all in the right place at the right time, glomming on to this God-awful mess for something to cover.”

She slung her jacket on the chair and sat down, feeling the ache in her shoulders as she reached for the computer mouse to wake up her computer. The screen for the National Missing Persons Database materialized.

“Any luck?”

Wilson gave her a sour look. “What do you think?”

She opened another Internet browser tab and checked her email.

“So what have we got up there?” Wilson’s tone softened.

She leaned back and rubbed her eyes, trying to vaporize an image of Sarah’s dead, exposed body from the back of her eyelids. “Nothing yet. None of the neighbors saw anything. The two people who heard the gunshots were over a mile away, on the other side of thick forest, over on Bear Hill Road. They didn’t see anything. No brass at the scene. Fingerprints are Carter Willis’s, Sarah’s, and the other two sets aren’t matching in IAFIS.”

Patterson and Wilson turned to the sound of the Reception door slamming closed. Wolf was already halfway through the Squad Room, head leaning forward as he marched.

She swallowed. “Sir.”

Wolf ground to a halt at her desk and dropped a plastic bag that knocked against the wood.

Looking down, she saw it was a brushed nickel doorknob. With raised eyebrows she looked up.

“Where’s the Pollard case packet?”

She snatched it off her desk and held it up.

Without a word he pulled it from her fingers and flipped to a page. “I want you to check the prints on this doorknob against these. And then,” he flipped to another page, “these.”

She took the packet back and pulled her eyebrows together. “You want—”

“Wilson, help her.” And with that, Wolf left the room.

“Yes, sir,” Patterson said to no one. She looked up at Wilson and they exchanged puzzled looks.

“Now!” Wolf’s voice boomed from around the corner.

She jumped in her seat and stood.

“What the hell is going on?” Wilson stood up.

“Follow me.” She grabbed the plastic bag and case file and marched out of the squad room, down the hallway past Wolf’s office and into the tiny box of a room they called a lab.

Wilson was breathing excitedly on her heels. “What’s going on?” He whispered when they got inside.

“We have to check for a print match on this doorknob to these or these.” She got busy.

“But … the first prints are Kimber Grey’s.”

“Yep.” Patterson flicked on an overhead lamp and bent it down.

“And these are the prints on the payphone.”

“Yep.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. Now stop wasting time and hand me that brush.”

Ten minutes later Patterson stood over the white sheet of paper and pasted the clear tape on top. An array of charcoal-colored prints crowded the small area looking like a cloud of swirling smoke.

With a magnifying lens she bent over and studied the patterns, looking for specific indicators. There were dozens of fingerprints on the knob, smudges on top of smudges, and most were warped because of the shape of the knob.

For a minute she bent over. Her lower back ached and she was on edge, the humming light was hot and making her palms sweat even more than usual under her gloves. Wilson’s exhales through his nose and shuffling feet weren’t helping the overall atmosphere inside the tiny room.

A few seconds later she drew in a breath and looked up.

Wilson stood straight, studying her expression. “What’s the matter?”

Picking up the card covered in fingerprints, she held them next to Kimber Grey’s print sheet. “The fingerprints on this doorknob do not match Kimber Grey’s print sheet.”

“Okay. So, what’s the matter?”

She picked up the fingerprint sheet from the bloody handset of the payphone at Pumapetrol Gas. “The fingerprints on the doorknob match these.”

Chapter 45

“MacLean.” The voice barked in Wolf’s ear.

“I need to know what bullets were used in the Idaho vehicle fire.”

“Sheriff Wolf? Hey, listen. I was so sorry to hear about your ex-wife. My God. I can only—”

“I need to know.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Just a second.” The phone line clicked and there was silence.

Breathing out his mouth, Wolf sat listening to the pulse pounding in his ears. A trickle of clotted blood slid down his throat and he made a face as he swallowed.

“You there?”

“Yes.”

“.308 FMJ.”

Wolf hung up and rubbed the sandpaper stubble on his chin. Sarah and Carter were murdered with a nine-millimeter hollow point. A pistol.

The rifle at Olin Heeter’s had a box of .308 Winchester full metal jackets, half empty, sitting on the bookcase next to it. It was looking like that rifle killed those two burned men.

With growing impatience he stood and walked to the hallway. The door to the lab was closed.

For ten minutes he’d been waiting on Patterson and Wilson, and on Jake Wegener, his friend from his football days who worked for the Carbon County Sheriff’s Department. Wegener had promised to send over all he had on Aspen’s Carter Willis, but the fax machine at the end of the hall sat dormant.

The lab door flew open and Patterson came rushing out. “Sir, the prints on the doorknob you gave us match the ones on the payphone receiver.”

Wolf snapped the sheet out of her hands and walked into his office.

“Where did you get that doorknob?” Patterson was on his heels.

“My house,” Wolf said laying the sheet on his desk.

Patterson shook her head. “What? Your house?”

Wolf nodded. “Kimber Grey was over at my house last night.”

“Sir.” Patterson spoke slowly. “I talked to Lorber today, and he said the watch they found in Nick Pollard’s truck proved Kimber Grey was telling the truth about being at the fireworks show when that payphone call was made.”

Wolf nodded.

“So … I don’t get it.”

The fax machine hummed and Wolf walked past them out into the hall. “I’ve been thinking about those doorknobs at Olin Heeter’s place for a while now. It was so out of place that everything was scrubbed clean, except for those doorknobs. It was like someone was trying to lure us in there.” Wolf paused at the fax machine and turned around to face Wilson and Patterson. “In fact, that’s exactly what it was.”

“I … sir, I’m not getting it.”

He turned to the fax machine and saw the first page spit out from Carbon County Sheriff’s Office.

Letting the machine do its work, he turned back around. “I was out with Kimber Grey last night. I don’t want to talk about it, but she ended up staying at my house. I took that doorknob from my bathroom, which I watched her touch.”

Patterson and Wilson frowned.

Patterson lowered her voice and spoke slow again. “But sir, the doorknob prints at your house did not match Kimber Grey’s.”

The fax machine finished and Wolf turned and picked up the pages from Carbon County. He was surprised to find a hefty stack of paper already in the incoming fax tray.

With mounting curiosity he picked up the entire stack. The heading on one of the pages read Boise County Sheriff’s Department.

As he flipped through the sheets one by one, he held his breath. With a toothless grin he pulled out the third sheet and held it in front of their faces.

Chapter 46

Patterson stared at a picture of two teenaged girls standing side by side, arm in arm on the shore of a lake. The black and white photo was poor quality—a copy of an original that had been faxed—but she could see the two girls were of identical height, with identical haircuts, wearing identical sweatshirts.

With a sinking stomach she looked up. “They’re identical twins.”

Eyes glassing over, Wolf nodded and twisted his lip in a satisfied snarl. “Identical twins who are sadistic killers. That’s who was out murdering Nick Pollard at the same time she was at the lake watching fireworks. That’s why her father left that night. Because it was Kimber’s sister in trouble. She had a dead body to dispose of.”

Wilson frowned. “So she calls her father about it?”

Wolf walked slowly past them toward his office, staring at the fax from the Boise Sheriff’s Department.

Patterson and Wilson followed.

“It’s all here,” Wolf said, flipping to another page. “The family disappeared from Idaho twenty-five years ago, right after a similar killing happened. Near decapitation. Mutilation. It was a murder in McCall, Idaho. A neighbor of the Kiplings. A teenaged boy found murdered in the woods near his boat shed. Stabbed nineteen times, head almost severed clean off, a slice from the pubic bone to the ribs.”

Wolf dropped a page with four photographs of the gruesome killing printed on it and turned to the next sheet. “Here are their real names: Parker Grey was actually named Dustin Kipling. The twins are Hannah and Rachel. The mother is the same name: Katherine.”

“That’s why the Grey’s past never checked out with the Tennessee commune,” Wilson said.

Wolf paced in a circle, reading farther down the page. “Dustin Kipling used to own a chain of boat dealerships in Idaho. Kipling Boats was the largest statewide seller and buyer of watercraft and fishing boats, with four dealerships. Says here he sold every dealership in the span of a single day for pennies on the dollar to a casino owner in Wendover, Nevada, named Gabriel Sithro. In the middle of the night of that same day, their house in McCall, Idaho burnt to the ground, and the family went missing. Suspected arson. No bodies were found in the fire, and the family cars were in the garage … and then the family was never heard from again.”

Patterson leaned against the wall with wide eyes. “So they were fleeing … trying to disappear, because of their murdered neighbor?”

Wolf held up another sheet and ran his eyes down the entire length of it.

Patterson’s curiosity boiled over. “What?”

“Looks like a family friend, a psychiatrist, came into the Boise station after the Kiplings disappeared. He had recently prescribed anti-psychotics for Dustin. Knowing that, Idaho law enforcement has assumed all along that Dustin murdered the neighbor, but the Kiplings whereabouts stumped them.”

Patterson frowned. “That was the same story Kimber and her mother told about Parker Grey. He was psychotic and needed meds.”

Wolf perused the next page. “Here’s a statement from a school psychologist taken a few months after the Kiplings disappeared. She reported two incidents involving Hannah Kipling at Duck Mountain Middle School. First, Hannah received minor injuries while fighting a boy. Hannah said she was just sticking up for her sister, Rachel. A few months later …”

“What?” Patterson asked.

Wolf shook the sheets of paper. “Hannah retaliated against that same boy, beating him with a baseball bat until he was unconscious. The kid was hospitalized with a fractured skull, broken ribs, and a broken arm, and she was expelled from school.”

“Wow,” Wilson said. “A middle-schooler taking a bat to someone?”

“She had extremely violent tendencies according to the class psychologist,” Wolf said shaking his head. “It was the girls. It’s always been them, not their father. They killed that teenager in Idaho, and that’s why the family left. It makes sense now why we found Parker shot in the head. A girl called from the payphone that night. It was one of Parker Grey’s girls, sorry, Dustin Kipling’s girls, who killed Nick. She’d killed him and had his blood all over her hands, and called her father to help clean it up. There must have been a family meltdown after that. Think about it, they leave Idaho because of their psychotic, violent daughters. They literally burned their old life to the ground, and now the girls are starting up again?”

Patterson nodded. “Serious meltdown.”

“After my father and Burton went up to the lake and talked to them on the 5th, maybe Parker had had enough. Maybe he threatened to hospitalize them. Turn them in? Who knows exactly? But the family all knew what happened to Nick Pollard that night. And in the end, Parker Grey was a threat to the girls. So they shot him and dumped him out in the lake, right next to Nick.”

“And Katherine Grey?” Patterson exhaled with realization. “She would have known about her husband’s death. And she came in and did that interview knowing he was dead, killed by the hands of her own daughters. But she stood there and lied to your father. My …”

“I knew she was hiding something in that interview. She had a tell,” said Wolf, “and now she’s at the bottom of the lake in front of Olin Heeter’s place.”

“What?” Wilson asked.

“I think Katherine’s daughters killed her that night after the interviews with my father at the station. Maybe they were skittish about whether or not Katherine would crack under the pressure. Whatever the reason, they killed her and dumped her body out on the lake, but in a different place the following night, and Olin Heeter had a front row seat to watch it, complete with a spotlight, thanks to clear skies and the moon’s reflection.” Wolf stared out the window.

“So Katherine leaving to go back to Tennessee was all a big—”

“Shit-shit-shit.” Wilson blurted.

Patterson and Wolf looked at him.

“Rachette took a call from the Boise Sheriff’s office earlier, and they said they were sending a fax. He told me to keep an eye out for it. He was talking with Kimber Grey at his desk at the time, and took the call at Patterson’s desk. At your desk.”

“Okay,” Patterson said. “And?”

“And Rachette hung up and left with her, said he was going up to the lake with her and would be back in a while.”

“So she knows we know.” Wolf darted past them toward the door.

Chapter 47

Rachette scanned the woods on either side as they crept down the dirt road towards Kimber’s cabin.

The windshield wipers squeaked across the windshield and Rachette turned them off. The rain had finally abated, but the clouds were still low and thick, and though it was only late afternoon it seemed dark as night outside.

He leaned back in his seat, wondering where someone lurking in the woods would have taken shelter in a storm like this. A cave? A tent? Heeter’s place? They needed to get back up here with the cavalry. Tomorrow.

Kimber eyed him from the passenger seat. “What is it?”

Rachette shook his head. “Just thinking. Nothing.”

“Slow down here. Your back bumper will scrape.”

“I know. I’ve been here a few times myself the last couple days.”

The SUV rocked back and dropped down as Rachette eased into the giant pothole between two rocks. Back and forth they swayed in the seat and then they were coasting down the dirt road once more.

Rachette stopped at Olin Heeter’s turn off and looked up the road. The dirt was undisturbed, or it had been and then it was smoothed over by the earlier deluge of rain.

He let off the brake and wondered if the rescue divers had made any progress out on the lake today, and if not, would they still be out there?

The dashboard clock said 5:12—a few minutes past a normal workingman’s clock out time. They still had nothing, he decided, otherwise he would have heard.

A few minutes later Rachette parked in front of the cabin and stomped his foot on the parking brake. “Here we are. You want me to wait here for you?”

She smiled. “No, why don’t you come in. I’ll make us some coffee before we head back.”

Rachette twisted the keys and got out. A drop of moisture slapped him in the face from his roof as he got out and the soggy dirt gave way beneath his boot. The air was thick and moist, and he zipped up his jacket all the way against the chill.

The lake was a magnificent sight to see, so calm, lead color from the reflection of the clouds above. A crow sailed by and over the edge of the cliff that severed the land to the rear of her house.

“Geez. You aren’t afraid of heights I take it.”

She chuckled. “No. In fact I climb that face most days. Got a top-rope set up. You should try it.”

“No, thank you.” He shook his head. “I’d have a chain link fence along the top of that thing if I lived here. I couldn’t ever trust myself after a six-pack. Probably fall trying to take a leak off it.”

She scrunched her face and walked up the stairs.

Shaking his head at his own last comment, he followed her up the stairs. When he got to the top his boot slipped on the wet wood and he almost went down. Regaining his balance without slamming into her, he stood up straight and felt his face reddening, but Kimber’s soft smile disarmed him and he smiled back. “I’m a klutz, what can I say?”

For a second she leaned towards him, like she was going to kiss him or something, then she looked down at the ground and dug in her jeans pocket. She produced a key and opened the door. Stepping inside, she turned and beckoned him in with a bashful look.

Rachette swallowed at the sight of her beautiful eyes and took a deep breath to calm the racing of his heart.

“Let me take your coat.” She took off her own jacket, revealing her slender body, and turned to him.

He unzipped his jacket and sloughed off one sleeve, and then the other.

Inexplicably she bumped into him as he pulled off his other sleeve, sending him off balance for an instant.

“Hey, what’s the…” Staring down the barrel of a pistol, he let the question die on his lips. A closer look revealed the gun was a Glock 17, and then he looked down at his duty belt and saw his empty holster and his stomach dropped an inch.

He quickly regained his composure, and there was no doubt in his mind that he was going to duck and grab for the weapon, but before he could make his move she stepped back with lightning speed and fired a deafening round into the ceiling.

“Ah!” Rachette ducked and raised his hands to cover his now ringing ears. “What the hell?”

“Don’t think about it.” Kimber’s lips were raised like a rabid dog, her beautiful face twisted into pure rage.

“Yeah. You got it.” Rachette said with his arms raised, watching crumbs of drywall ceiling fall past him.

Kimber took forced breaths through her nose and looked at the floor beneath her. Keeping the pistol aimed steadily at Rachette’s chest, she stomped her foot down on the wood, and a boom echoed through the whole house around them. “Get up here!”

Rachette frowned. “Who are you talking to?”

Closing one eye, she brought her other hand up to the pistol and aimed. “Keep quiet. Or I will shoot you in the head.”

There was a creaking sound below the floor, and then a door shutting.

Listening intently, Rachette stood stock-still and heard nothing more. He stood transfixed, noticing the calm of Kimber’s steady aim. A few seconds later footsteps creaked on the wood outside, and Rachette eyed the closed front door.

Kimber waved the gun. “Step over here.”

He stepped forward into the living room as she stepped back.

“Back there. Lean against the wall.”

Rachette backtracked and leaned against the wall, keeping his hands motionless above his shoulders.

Kimber stepped to the door and opened it. “Stay out there. We’re coming out,” she said, and then she turned to Rachette.

“What’s going on?” The female voice called from outside.

The sound of the voice—it was so familiar.

“Out.” Kimber came back into the family room and waved him out the open front door.

Rachette obeyed. The air flowing in the door penetrated his uniform shirt, making him shiver as he stepped out onto the porch. At the top of the stairs he froze and widened his eyes. “What the hell?” With a quick jerk of his head he looked over his shoulder, making sure he was seeing correctly.

Kimber stood behind him, thrusting the barrel into his face with renewed vigor. “Keep walking.”

He turned around and walked, almost falling down the stairs as his mind whirled with the reality of the situation. “There’s two of you? Holy—”

“Just shut up, or I’ll shoot you in the head and throw you off that cliff.”

Rachette ducked his head and raised his hands higher, quickening his pace down the stairs.

The other Kimber stood out of the way at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a matching jacket with her doppelganger sister.

“Over there. Against your car.”

Rachette leaned up against the ticking front end of his SUV, grateful to feel the warmth streaming out from under the hood. He turned to look at both women, who now stood next to each other. In every way they looked alike, from the amber eyes to the smooth lips, to the wavy thick brown hair that was too much to tame.

He shook his head. “Wow. You guys are so much alike.”

The Kimber with the gun whipped her glare toward him and marched with the muzzle raised. “I said shut up!”

Rachette lowered his gaze submissively. For ten long seconds they stood.

“Why are you with him?” The Kimber at the bottom of the stairs broke the silence.

The Kimber with the gun backed up and lowered her aim. “They know. Or at least, they’re gonna know. Boise Sheriff called them this afternoon.”

“Oh, my God.” The Kimber without the gun gripped her thick head of hair and began breathing hard. She paced with crunching footsteps and looked at the ground, her lips moving without sound. With an exhale she crouched into a ball and sat on the first step of the stairs.

Rachette’s pulse was escalating with each breath, because he was thinking about the dead bodies in the morgue, and how these two were cutting off people’s heads, people that matched Rachette’s description—young men—and dropping them in the lake.

It was one of them in the woods last night, he realized.

With immense effort he took a breath through his nose, trying to calm his racing pulse and relax his tightening chest.

“What’s our plan here?” The Kimber on the stairs raised her head.

The Kimber with the gun shrugged, her eyes staring through Rachette. “We get in that cop car and drive.”

“And then what? Don’t they have GPS trackers on those things?”

Rachette nodded, but neither of them noticed.

“They’d find us in minutes. And then what?”

The Kimber with the gun refocused on Rachette. “We bring him.”

“And then what, Hannah?”

Hannah.

“Then we what? Ransom this cop for a helicopter ride to somewhere? Yeah, that’s going to work.”

“I don’t know!” Hannah paced a few steps forward and then back, and then rubbed her nose. “Then we’ll just go into the woods.”

“And then what?”

The Kimber with the gun looked into the forest behind Rachette. “We don’t have a choice.”

Rachette heard the rolling hiss and pop of tires somewhere in the far distance. He flicked his eyes left and immediately caught movement—a white SUV with roof lights flitting in and out of the trees along the lake’s edge.

Kimber looked. “Shit. Go see.”

The Kimber on the stairs stood up and jogged down toward the lake to the edge of the cliff and looked left. She shook her head and walked back fast. “It’s the frickin’ cops. What are we going to do here, Hannah?”

Rachette cleared his throat and lowered his hands a fraction. Whatever was going on was apparently all explained in the fax message that the Boise Sheriff’s Department had sent. Rachette blinked, pausing to clench his eyes with a prayer that whatever it was, Wolf and Patterson had figured it out, that they had found the fax message and were coming to his rescue. He prayed that Wilson had done as he was asked and had kept an eye on the fax machine, despite his smartass attitude—he prayed that Wilson had done that.

Amen.

When he opened his eyes Hannah was sneering at him, walking slowly in his direction, the pistol rising like a drawbridge.

“Please don’t do it, Hannah.”

Rachette swallowed, unnerved by Kimber without the gun’s tone. Because it was as if she’d seen it all before. Because it was starting to make sense to Rachette. It was like Hannah was the uncontrollable one who killed. Who chopped off heads. Who stabbed eyeballs with a blade and then sliced from balls to chin. Who murdered her father. And Kimber? She was the one who sat back and watched in horror.

“Please.” He lowered his gaze submissively. “You have to tell me what’s going on. I can help you guys. I can help you out of this.”

Her footsteps crunched all the way to him and the cold steel of the pistol barrel pushed against his forehead, forcing his chin up.

She bared her teeth. “What the hell are they—”

With a lightning quick move he ducked to the right and swatted up with his left arm. The gun fired, deafening him and sending a blast of heat onto the side of his face, but the shot missed, just like he knew it would. Nobody could react fast enough to such an unexpected, ballsy maneuver. A split instant later he gripped her gun arm with both hands and pushed his full weight back into her, knocking her back and to the side.

With a whimper she fell sideways and before she even hit the ground Rachette had twisted the gun from her grip.

“That’s right!” He screamed in triumph at the top of his lungs.

Gripping the pistol and twisting to raise it at the other Kimber, he flinched when he saw she had her own pistol raised at him already.

There was a lance of fire, and his gun-holding shoulder was wrenched back like he’d been clipped by a semi-truck, and as he twisted his feet slipped out from under him. With a stutter step he tried to keep his balance, but slammed headfirst into the tire of his SUV.

For an agonizing eternity he convulsed on the ground, trying to take a breath that would not come, all the while a warm pool of blood spread underneath him, lapping against his chin in rhythm with his pulsing heart.

There was an eardrum-tearing scream, and Rachette felt powerful arms pick him up and drag him away from the pool of blood, and then he was on the ground staring at the leaden sky.

Hannah’s eyes, bloodshot and evil, were right in front of his now, and she sat hard on his chest.

With a squeal, his lungs finally opened, and a cold breath of wind rushed down his throat. And then Hannah’s cold hands locked on his neck and squeezed.

He tried to struggle, but the strength in him was already gone.

The last thing he saw was Hannah’s drooling snarl, and then popping stars in his vision, and then Kimber wrapping her arms around her sister.

Chapter 48

Patterson slammed the brakes, fishtailing to a stop and then stuck her head out the window.

Cursing as the engine fan kicked on, she craned her neck, trying to catch the echo of sound waves she thought she just heard.

Nothing.

As she ducked her head into her cab again she heard a gunshot. Another gunshot. It was as clear as day this time, without the rumble of tires to drown it out. Wrenching the radio off her center comms console, she thumbed the button.

“This is Patterson, come in.”

She leaned out the window again and listened.

The radio scratched and then a loud whining noise blasted out. “…ahead.”

Whatever Wolf had just said had been mostly drowned out by the sound of the boat and rushing wind.

“I just heard a gunshot.”

A pause.

She let off the brake and eased forward down County 74. She was almost to the County 16 turnoff that led to the Grey and Heeter places. The Kiplings, she corrected herself, but what was this development? Did they need to change their plans?

Damn it. The response was taking too long. She brought the radio up to her lips but it barked before she pressed the button again.

“The plan stays the same.” Wolf’s voice was distorted as he yelled over the din.

“10-4. I’m almost at the turn off.”

“Let me know when you’re there.”

“10-4.”

Patterson dropped the radio and drove. The road climbed and she saw over the tops of the trees to the left for a few seconds, and caught a glimpse of a motorboat slicing through the smooth water in the distance, and she was surprised that it was actually ahead of her.

Looking back at the road, she just barely straightened before she careened off the steep edge on the left.

“Pay attention!” She yelled at herself. Her breathing was borderline hyperventilation. The whole time she’d raced up here with screaming sirens, at one time reaching one hundred twenty miles per hour on a straightaway, passing every and all vehicles in a blur, she’d been gripping the wheel with white knuckles, all the while going through scenarios in her mind—none of which were ending well inside her imagination. And now there were gunshots?

She shook her head and slapped the wheel. Maybe they were Rachette’s gunshots, and he was standing over injured killers right now. Or maybe he was lying on the ground bleeding out.

Damn it! She had to think like Wolf. The man was a warrior. Think like Wolf.

She gripped the wheel with her white-knuckle grip again and bared her teeth. She felt sorry for these bitches.

“You there yet?” The radio squawked.

Her pulse jumped even higher. No. She wasn’t. “No. Not yet. A few more minutes.”

“Okay. We’re approaching fast. We saw Rachette’s vehicle. Make the call.”

“Okay. 10-4.”

She twisted the dial to channel 14, the designated vehicle-to-vehicle communication channel their department used, and pressed the button. “Deputy Rachette, do you have a copy?”

“Come on. Come on,” she whispered.

There was no response.

She pressed the button again. “Unit 3 this is Unit 8, do you have a copy?”

She waited five Mississippi’s. No answer.

She flipped the switch back to the encrypted channel and pressed the button. “No answer.”

“Okay.” Wolf’s response was immediate. “We go in.”

Patterson pressed the gas and the engine screamed, pulling her back in the seat.

Chapter 49

Wolf pressed the soft rubber eyepieces of the high-powered binoculars to his eyes and tried to steady the shaking image of the cliff top. The wind was too much at these speeds. Tiny details like people milling about outside the cabin, and where each of them stood was impossible to see.

Tucking the binoculars behind the passenger side windshield he sat down in the sheltered seat and zipped up the rear of his wet suit.

Wilson looked over at him with a wary eye.

Wolf gave him the thumbs down signal and Wilson pulled back on the throttle, bringing the speed to half, raising the nose of the boat. The engine noise lowered in pitch, though not in volume.

He took the radio and shoved it in the 10 by 7 inch dry bag, and then slid his Glock in after it. Zipping it shut, he tied two half- hitches in the nylon line around his wrist and, just to be safe, tied an overhand knot with the free end to keep the previous knots from slipping.

That finished, he twisted in his chair, feeling the dive knife against his flexed calf as he stood up, and with a few hard pulls he tightened the climbing harness around his legs and waist, making sure the belay device known as a Grigri he’d borrowed from Baine was solidly affixed and the carabiners were locked.

Turning forward, the wind pushed against his chest, chilling him to the bone. He looked up at the granite cliffs and shook out his arms, doubting he was in shape for the climb ahead, and it had been years since he’d had experience on any sort of rock face. Adrenaline and perseverance would get him where he needed to go, he assured himself. The cam inside the Grigri would pinch the rope, arresting any fall should he slip while climbing, and the device would give him ample opportunities to hang and rest his muscles on the way up. Of course, time was of the essence. There was not going to be much rest.

Wilson eyed him again. “You know, people don’t normally leave climbing ropes anchored for days on end. Those things are expensive, and there’s a damn good chance it’ll be gone.”

Wolf had already brought up the same objection to himself. It had been Friday evening when Kimber, or Rachel, pointed out the rope dangling over her backyard cliff. “And killers don’t normally have their stack of mutilated bodies discovered by the cops. I’m willing to bet they’ve had other stuff on their minds besides bringing in the climbing ropes.”

Wilson shook his head, clearly unconvinced at the entire plan, but that failed to faze Wolf.

“I’m just saying,” Wilson pressed, “if there’s no rope. I don’t want you going up that cliff.”

“I’m not looking to die today. I’ll skirt to the south and find another way up if need be.”

That seemed to satisfy Wilson.

“Okay.” Wolf looked off the starboard side at the small island in the distance. “You know what to do. Stay on the other side of that island until you hear otherwise. Keep everyone else back. I don’t want another unit traveling down that road.”

Wilson nodded with wide eyes. “I know, sir.”

Wolf pulled the hood over his head. As he straightened the edges around his face the pathway up the hillside from the Grey’s dock to the cabin came into view.

Without another word he clutched the dry sack in his left hand and dove off the back of the boat.

Chapter 50

Rachette was yanked out of unconsciousness by a stabbing pain in his shoulder.

“Ah!” he cried.

Opening his eyes, he felt a familiar weight on his chest. Hannah was still on top of him.

The pain ebbed, and he saw she was concentrating on his shoulder. With another explosion of pain she leaned on his wound.

“Keep this on it.” She said.

Rachette kept still. It was like he had forgotten how to move.

“Here.” She took Rachette’s left hand and put it on his right shoulder. “Press.”

His jaw bounced uncontrollably. He was so cold. “Kimber?”

She sat up and looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, sure. Kimber.”

“Hannah?”

She rolled her eyes. “No. It’s Rachel. Kimber. Whatever. Now don’t mess with her when she comes back.” She gripped some rustling fabric and pulled it up to his chin. “Keep this pulled up.”

Rachette looked down at his jacket, which was now draped over him. He croaked an unintelligible word and then gave up on responding.

She stood and walked away, her rain jacket swishing as she walked toward the stairway to the front porch.

Rachette shook his head and blinked his eyes. His shoulder was cold, and when he looked down he could see that the shirt had been ripped away. Kimber had done some first aid and now he was holding a wadded up piece of fabric on the wound.

The other Kimber barged out of the front door holding an open laptop computer and trotted down the steps. Hannah. The anger in her eyes told Rachette as much. The two were not identical in every way.

“You fix up your boyfriend?” She asked without looking at him.

“Yeah. He’ll live.”

She clicked a button and scoffed. “We’ll see.”

Rachette pulled away the fabric on his wound and looked underneath. An oozing red hole with striated muscle bulging out stared back at him. He shut his eyes and took a breath.

Slowly he propped himself on his elbow and looked around. Instinct was telling him he needed to elevate his upper body to slow the bleeding. His shoulder throbbed with each micro-movement, but he managed to shuffle over to his tire with his ass and good arm. When he reached it he collapsed backward and panted with sweat streaming down his face, his teeth sounding like a jackhammer in his skull.

The two women were glancing between the laptop screen and his sideshow performance.

“Not sure if you want to be awake for this. Your little partner just showed up. She’s been trying to get hold of you on the radio.”

Rachette looked at Hannah, the memory of the white SUV with roof lights on top coming back to him in a flash. “Don’t you dare hurt her.”

Eyes locked on Rachette’s, Hannah handed off the laptop to Kimber and took a step toward him. Her face twisted in rage and then she tilted her head and slowed, and then she stopped.

With a jerk of her head she walked away and then jogged down to the edge of the precipice to look at the lake.

Rachette frowned, watching her strange actions, blinking in and out of partial consciousness. Then he heard a faint thrumming sound of an engine, and he saw why she’d ran.

A blue motorboat, out far enough that he could see it under the drop-off, slid by lazily, the wake spreading out into a white V behind it. With a smile he remembered wakeboarding with his sister in Omaha growing up. She used to suck. Could never get up. Had to resort to waterskiing with two skis.

“What are you laughing at?” Hannah was back in his face.

He looked up under heavy eyelids. “What?”

“I asked what you’re laughing at.”

Rachette squinted, trying to figure out who was talking to him.

Chapter 51

The shock of the cold through Wolf’s eighth of an inch wetsuit was overshadowed by the violent wrenching of his body when he landed in the wake of the boat. He’d landed wrong, too vertical, and the momentum of the water sliding by twisted him for an instant, arching his back and twisting his neck like he was caught in a blender.

As his body stilled, he opened his eyes and let himself float to the top of the water. Poking his head out of the water, he took a soundless breath and began swimming toward the shore.

Panic arced through his body when he realized his arm was gliding too effortlessly through the water. The added resistance of the tied dry sack was not there.

Treading with strong kicks that were less than effective with climbing shoes on, he twirled, desperately searching for the yellow sack.

There.

Twenty feet away a bright yellow bag, now with a frayed nylon string slithering on the surface, was just below the top of the water.

In an instant he saw it was sinking.

Ducking his head, he pulled and kicked with all his strength.  A few strokes later, through his blurry vision, he saw a yellow rectangle plunging down, fluttering back and forth as it sank out of sight.

His ears plugged and squeaked as he dove down after it, but it was no use. He was too slow, and it was gone.

With a burst of bubbles he cursed at the top of his lungs and then broke the water in silence once again. Without looking back he swam towards the shore in a silent breaststroke.

Chapter 52

Rachette felt himself moving and emerged into half-consciousness again. With a head-rattling scrape, he felt himself being pulled by each leg across the ground. He looked up and saw, Kimber it was, pulling him toward the steps to the house.

He opened his mouth and croaked.

“She’s here. Wait. She’s stopping.”

Kimber dropped Rachette’s legs and his body rocked to a halt. There was less pain now. Rachette knew that was a bad sign. With mild interest he watched Hannah and Kimber huddle at the laptop screen.

“She’s stopping right at the camera.”

Their concerned, identical, faces glowed from the laptop screen’s light.

“Into the woods?” Hannah frowned and shook her head, looking into the forest over and beyond Rachette. “They know we have motion and vibration sensors everywhere. What the hell is she doing?”

Kimber looked down at Rachette. “She’s coming for him.”

Hannah put the laptop down hard on the stairs. She pulled the gun from her waist and racked the slide. “You take this. Keep him covered. I’m going in to cut her off before she gets here.”

“Don’t!” Rachette’s shoulder exploded in pain as he yelled the word. “Patterson! Patters—”

Rachette’s teeth slammed together and his head jerked back.

Hannah pulled back her leg after kicking Rachette and stepped on his shoulder.

His entire world now a blast of pain on his right side, Rachette doubled over, his mouth open in a silent scream. Between gasps, he heard footsteps receding into the distance.

Chapter 53

Patterson twisted the keys and got out.

With a glance over at the wildlife camera nailed to the tree, she slammed the door and ran around the front of the car and up the slope to the woods on the right hand side.

With quick, powerful strides she climbed the dirt embankment and before too long was swerving between tight pine trees. Her lungs beat a steady rhythm, and the earpiece thumped in her left ear with every movement. For minutes she kept the steady pace without struggle, and she thanked herself for taking time out of every single day for the last two years to exercise.

Jumping over a downed log, she slowed and stood behind a thick pine and leaned on it, catching her breath with long pulls of air. With slow deliberation she ducked down and peeked around the edge of the tree.

The road veered away from her below, and in the distance was a partial view of the Grey’s cabin. She saw the white paint of Rachette’s SUV parked in front, and the wood two-story structure to the right. Past all of it she saw slivers of the gray lake water beyond. It looked still, no white streaks of a boat wake, but she could see a distant row of wake waves as rolling reflections on the otherwise still water.

Where the hell was Wolf’s radio signal?

If that was their boat’s wake, he was undoubtedly on shore by now. Not only that, but judging by the waves, it looked like Wolf would have had enough time to jump in the water, swim to shore, and hike the short distance to the base of the cliff and by now be halfway into his climb.

“Wolf, do you copy?” She whispered into her wrist mic.

There was no response. Quickly she checked her belt and made sure the dial was turned on. It was. The green light was solid next to the power knob and she was on the agreed channel.

Damn it.

In an instant she forgot the radio, because a branch had snapped loudly somewhere down the slope between her and the cabin.

Again she leaned out, and she still saw nothing in the forest below. For ten full seconds she scanned the area below, doing methodical horizontal sweeps with her eyes, adjusting the distance downward, and repeating the process. If someone was there, they were waiting her out.

What was her next move? It was impossible to make a choice without Wolf’s signal. She was there as a decoy, to bring their attention up the hill while Wolf snuck up from behind. Was the climbing rope Wolf had been expecting not there? Was he hurt? Had he been seen?

Even if things were still going to plan, if Wolf was nowhere close to finishing his climb up the cliff face behind the property, she was not in position to start banging pots and pans.

Damn it. Wolf was silent, and the sisters had the edge. They knew the forest. According to Wolf, they had sensors, and as far as she knew she was signaling her position right now.

She leaned back against the tree trunk and shook her head. Something must have happened to Wolf’s radio, she thought. Otherwise he would be communicating. That was the only thing she could think of.

What if he fell off the cliff face and he was lying dead on the ground right now? Then what?

“Shut up and move,” she hissed under her breath.

She needed a better view of the property below. Scanning straight across the slope, she found a target that would give her a better vantage point—a group of old-growth pine trees in the distance.

With a quick breath she gripped her pistol, then sprinted for it, trying to keep her footfalls as silent as possible. Keeping her eyes forward, her breath bounced in and out of her nose as she moved with as much speed as she could muster. She swerved and ducked, jumped a downed log, and baseball slid through pine needles to a stop at one of the thick trunks.

For five seconds she steadied her breath and then poked her head out. There! She cheered silently to herself as she saw Wolf was already up the cliff and making his way across the property to Rachette. Then her face fell and she gasped in horror, because what was about to happen next she could see as clear as Rocky Mountain air.

Chapter 54

Wolf was only halfway up the rock face when his forearms started giving out.

The rope had been there, just as he hoped. The Grigri was doing its job—the cam inside the device pinching the belay side of the rope, arresting his downward motion when he needed.

And now he was using putting his full bodyweight on the rope, stretching his forearms, staring alternately between the rest of the climb ahead of him and the trail below and to the right.

The trail is too exposed on top. Suck it up.

The trail was too exposed. First, there was the two sisters’ alleged security system that Wolf’s father had helped set up. That meant the trail from the dock, and the stairway up the rocks, would have been equipped with at least one sensor. To not do so would have been negligent.

Even if there were no sensors, it was an open stairway, with no cover at the top. He’d seen as much two days ago. Taking that route would have been suicide if the two women were even half as dangerous as they seemed to be. Once on top, he would have had an expanse of wide-open property to negotiate, and now no weapon except for the dive knife on his calf.

He looked up. The top of the cliff was his best bet to sneak onto the property. There was cover in the form of pine trees to the left at the summit. And best of all, it was unexpected, he told himself again.

Steeling himself for another push of exertion, he sucked in a breath, gripped a thin handhold with his right hand and pulled himself up. Then he pulled the slack of the rope through the Grigri. Then he alternated hands, heaved himself a foot up the rock, and pulled the slack of the rope.

The light was fading fast, like he’d suddenly entered a cave. The skies would open up with rain again soon.

He pictured himself summiting. He envisioned himself doing it in one continuous burst of energy.

With clenched teeth, he reached up and grabbed another handhold.

Pulling up with shaking biceps, he thought of the two deputies lives at stake on top and it fueled his muscles and his resolve. And when a minute later that wasn’t enough, he thought about Sarah’s dead body, and how he was sure now that one of these twin sisters had shot her dead.

A couple of minutes later, Wolf summited the top of the cliff and collapsed to his chest, panting for oxygen. He quickly gained his composure and ducked behind a wind-warped scrub oak. The two women he now knew as Hannah and Rachel Kipling were on the other side of his thin cover—across the lawn and in front of the house.

Chest heaving up and down, the muscles in his biceps feeling like they’d been torn in half, Wolf watched in silence as his pulse pounded in his temples.

Blood trickled out of his nose and onto his teeth. As he licked the blood and swallowed, his right hand middle finger flexed against his palm, the tendon in his forearm clamped tight and screaming in pain.

With slow, deliberate movement, he got to his knees, keeping his upper body crouched low, held his breath, and with his other hand stretched out his finger.

He froze as the two sisters looked toward him. He was unnoticed, because a second later they turned and looked back up the mountain the opposite way. Unexpected.

Narrowing his eyes, he studied the two women. They were identical physically, but surely not the same mentally. One sat on the front steps of the house looking defeated, while the other glared into the trees above. He thought about the makeup on Kimber’s face last night. How it had seemed overdone. That had been Hannah, he knew now. The picture from Boise had shown she did not have a mole on her lip. That had been drawn on. That had been what was bothering him about her makeup. Hannah was the baseball bat wielder in her childhood, and she was presumably the one looking up the mountain with killer determination.

Wolf snapped out of his thoughts and moved silently to the trees to his left.

The rope scraped across the top of the cliff below him. He stopped and dropped to his knees again, watching in horror as a fist-sized rock dislodged and rolled for a few inches before stopping—right before it plummeted over the edge and made a noise that could give away his position. The rock stilled, and Wolf breathed out.

Wolf crouched behind a thick pine trunk and surveyed the property. The cabin was built perpendicular to the edge of the cliff, with the front of the house on Wolf’s right, where Rachette’s SUV was parked and the stairway climbed to the upper level deck and front door.

The rear of the cabin was on Wolf’s left, with a deck on the upper level and a door to a ground level underneath it. The side of the house was straight ahead, and Wolf recognized the kitchen through the windows on the upper floor.

Wolf watched as one of the sisters walked away along the house. She paused and kicked something on the ground.

Wolf exhaled with relief to see it was Rachette, alive, albeit writhing on the ground in pain.

That was definitely Hannah, he decided.

Wolf’s anxiety ratcheted up a notch when he realized what she was doing. She was going after Patterson.

He pulled his dive knife and severed the rope below the Grigri and watched the frayed end disappear over the edge. Gripping the rope above the device he paused before cutting it.

Instead of slicing it, he jammed the knife home in its sleeve and reeled in the rope hand over hand. As he pulled the cord up, it threaded through two carabiners attached to the top anchor lines, and he moved smoothly to keep the metal from clanking with each pull. There was no plan for the rope, but perhaps he could use it to restrain one of the sisters.

After pulling up the entire rope, he took the coil off his arm, slung it over his head and sprinted silently to the rear of the house.

Once up against the side of the house, he walked toward the front and peered around the corner. Rachette was near his SUV, fluttering his eyes as he barely held onto consciousness, his shoulder covered in blood and his face looking ghost white.

The sister who stayed behind, Rachel, paced short steps at the base of the stairway that led to the second floor. She looked eagerly in the opposite direction toward her sister, who made her way past the front of the house and out of sight.

Patterson was coming from up and from the right. The sister was going to try and flank her from the left.

“Be careful,” Rachel hissed. “She could have a rifle!”

Wolf ducked back around the corner.

He had to act fast.

He peered, and then with light feet stepped around the corner, keeping the stairway between him and Rachel. Without slowing he bent down, picked up a stone, and lobbed it high in the air and over the back of the SUV, all the while moving forward at the same silent pace.

The stone landed with a splat and Rachel turned toward the noise and pointed her pistol. Wolf sprang up from behind at the same instant, clubbing her on top of her head as hard as he could with the butt of the knife handle.

Wolf’s fist was a sledgehammer with a solid plug center, and the muffled knock on her skull dropped her unconscious to the ground face first.

Wolf sheathed his knife, and then took her pistol and tucked it into the waist of his harness. He grabbed her under her arms and pulled her back the way he’d come. Tossing her to the dirt on the side of the house, he went back up to Rachette.

Rachette looked up at Wolf and smiled.

“Don’t say anything,” Wolf whispered.

He grabbed Rachette under the arms and dragged him backwards, scraping his heels along the dirt and wet grass, down to the side of the house. He could tie up the one sister, and know that Rachette was behind the shelter of the house, and then get on the hunt for the other sister.

“Drop the cop, and drop the gun.”

Wolf’s stomach sank. With a slow squat he laid Rachette down next to the unconscious sister and held up his hands.

“Slowly. Pull the gun out of your harness and toss it to your side.”

Wolf gritted his teeth and did what he was told.

“Thank you. And now the dive knife.”

Wolf pulled the knife and tossed it next to his gun.

There were quick footsteps on the soggy grass behind him, and Wolf turned to see her picking up the pistol and the knife.

“Hannah? Or Rachel?”

She raised her eyebrows and tucked the pistol into the back of her jeans, and then she picked up the knife and stared at it. She twirled it for a second, staring at the blade as if lost in memories. Then she twisted, hauled back, and threw the knife across the lawn and over the cliff. With a sour smile she faced Wolf with her gun pointed.

“Hannah,” Rachette grunted from the ground, answering Wolf’s question.

An icy raindrop slapped the back of Wolf’s neck and trickled down his wetsuit. Another one smacked on the wood side of the house, and a cold breeze drove up over the edge of the cliff.

Hannah looked at Rachette and then raked her eyes up and down Wolf. “Nice outfit.”

Wolf stared at her.

“I got to thinking just now, why the hell did that midget deputy of yours stop in front of our camera and go into the woods? And then we saw that boat go by. I almost didn’t put it together.” She twirled a finger in the air. “But then I did, and I came around the house.”

Wolf glared. “Why did you kill Sarah?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I killed Sarah? Oh really?” She leaned her head back and laughed heartily. “You’re better off without that slut. Believe me.”

“What the hell do you want?” Wolf asked. His chest heaved, and despite the cold wind that howled up the cliff, he was sweating under the wetsuit.

Hannah’s cool façade cracked for an instant and she thrust the gun at Wolf. “To be left alone!”

“Then”—he waved a hand—“go. Get out of here. Leave me and my deputies and you and your crazy-ass sister get the hell out of here.”

“She’s not crazy.”

“Ah. Right. That’s you.”

Hannah walked over to Wolf and past him. She peered around the corner to the front of the house and then turned back to Wolf and came back, leading her movements with the business end of the gun. “Tell your deputy to come out with her hands up or I shoot this guy again.”

She stopped and aimed down at Rachette. “She’s at the back of the house.”

Wolf glanced toward the back of the house.

“Do it!”

Rachette stared up at Wolf from the ground, shaking his head in defiance.

“Patterson!” Wolf yelled. “Come out!”

There was no response but the whoosh of wind through the pines and the knock of raindrops on the side of the house.

“Patterson!”

“Here.” Patterson came around the corner with both hands in the air, her pistol aimed to the sky.

“Drop it!” Hannah pushed the gun closer to Rachette. “I swear to God, I shot him once, I’ll shoot him again. I’ll shoot him in the face. Drop it.”

Patterson threw her gun to the side and walked at them. Her eyes were half closed, eyeing Hannah with burning hatred.

Wolf held out his hands. “Okay, you got us. Now what? What’s your plan, Hannah?”

She backed away from Rachette and walked to her sister who lay motionless a few feet away.

“Rachel,” she said, slapping her cheek. “You okay?”

Rachel groaned and rocked her head back and forth.

Hannah glared at Wolf and thrust the gun at him. “You two back up. Towards the cliff.”

Chapter 55

Rachette stared at Patterson and Wolf’s drawn faces, and like the blood that seeped from his shoulder, felt the hope that he might live to see another day drain from his body. He no longer had the strength to press on his own wound, and he no longer cared. He was on the way out and he knew it. The cold was so absolute, but his chin no longer bounced from shivering. That had to be a bad sign.

All he cared about now were the wellbeing of his two partners. Now that he sat on death’s door, he could see so clearly now that these two people were everything to him. Nobody else came close.

And now the barrel of a gun was pushing his two friends toward the edge of a cliff.

And now he could see so clearly what he had to do.

Patterson was saying something with her arms raised, probably trying to bargain their way out of it somehow.

He looked at Wolf. Such a God among men was this Sheriff. Such a man of honor and dignity. Such a … Rachette did a double take, because Wolf had just slung the rope off his neck and dropped it on the ground.

For a moment it was like Rachette was watching nothing of significance, like he was staring at water swirling down a drain. But then he blinked and widened his eyes, because Wolf was doing something, he realized. Because the rope was on the ground, but that was not everything, because Wolf was grasping the end, and he was twisting it in his fingers.

Hannah was preoccupied with talking to Patterson, noticing none of it. But how long could that last? He had to act.

Rachette pushed air with all his might through his lungs. “Hey!” He looked at Patterson and winked.

Patterson frowned and shook her head.

Hannah stopped marching at his friends and turned to Rachette.

“You know what?” Rachette cleared his throat, tasting blood in his mouth. That had to be a bad sign. “You know what I told these two? Kimber? Hannah? Or whatever the hell your name is?”

Hannah walked away from Wolf and Patterson and stopped at Rachette’s legs, tilting her head.

“I told these two you were a crazy bitch. And I was right!” Rachette let out a long annoying laugh that really started him laughing uncontrollably. “Remember when we made out that time?”

Hannah shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

“Because you’re a crazy bitch.” Patterson lifted her chin. “My partner’s rarely right, but this time he’s spot on. A crazy bitch.”

Hannah stopped and looked over at Patterson, frowning like she’d just taken a bite out of a lemon. With a shake of her head she let her lip curl in amusement, and then her face dropped.

Rachette watched in sickening horror as Hannah raised her pistol.

“No!” Rachette screamed as fast as he could. “Me! Me! Me!”

It was no use. Without hesitation, Hannah pointed her pistol at Patterson and pulled the trigger.

The gun roared and Rachette turned his eyes away at the last second, seeing the bright flash of light illuminate the side of the house, like a flash of lightning. As the echo of the shot faded into the distance, his eyes welled up like an instantaneous chemical reaction.

He inhaled and stretched his mouth, and then he screamed. “Ahh—”

“What the hell?” Hannah yelled.

Rachette blinked and looked down. Patterson was still standing. Unharmed.

Wolf, Patterson, and Hannah stood in more or less an equilateral triangle formation, with Hannah as the point nearest the house, swaying her pistol between the two of them, pushing them ever closer to the cliff, all the while keeping a reasonable distance for her safety.

When Wolf had found the end of the rope that was coiled around his neck and started tying the knot with his right hand, he exchanged a glance with Patterson. I need a diversion, he screamed with his eyes.

Wolf could only assume Patterson had read the situation correctly, because without a second’s hesitation she began sniveling.

“Please,” Patterson spoke with heart stopping pain and passion in her voice. “We didn’t bring up the rest of our squad because we want to help. Listen. It’s the—”

“You know what?” Rachette squirmed to life from his position on the ground. “You know what I told these two? Kimber? Or whatever the hell …”

Dammit.

Rachette had come up with a plan of his own.

Hannah snapped out of her hypnotized glare at Patterson and turned to Rachette.

Wolf blocked out everything and concentrated on the knot in his fingers. Easily enough, he twisted the rope with one hand into a regular knot and tightened it, but he needed two hands for the pretzel twist, push through of the end of the rope and final cinch to complete the slipknot.

Hannah’s expression changed, like she was about to act, and by the looks of it, Rachette had seconds to live.

Abandoning stealth, Wolf looked down at the end of the knot, cinched it tight making it complete and ready to use, and then pulled open the loop with a quick motion that burned his thumb.

Hannah was too far away to bum rush, she’d made sure of that and had been keeping a smart distance away from Wolf and Patterson the entire time. This was the only plan that kept his deputies safe. If Wolf missed? Then a bum rush would be his plan B. That would be a suicide plan. This plan, Wolf told himself with little conviction, was not a suicide plan.

As Wolf dropped the climbing rope loop to his side and twirled it once, Hannah aimed at Patterson.

Wolf stepped at Hannah and let the rope fly with a side-armed toss his father would have been proud of. The loop wobbled and widened at the perfect moment, as if guided by a higher power, and looped over her gun arm and around her torso. He pulled back as hard as he could, cinching the makeshift lasso tight and yanking Hannah off balance.

Hannah stumbled toward him, the same instant her gun erupting with a deafening boom. She landed hard on her palm and knee, and then looked up with a dumbfounded look. “What the hell?”

Wolf had no time to attack.

Without hesitation, she raised the pistol and aimed it at Wolf’s center mass, and then squeezed the trigger.

Something bounced in front of Rachette, a line of rope or a cord, and for a second he blinked through the tears, trying to focus on what it was. He felt a surge of excitement, because it was the rope that had been in Wolf’s hand. One end was a loop, now cinched tight around Hannah’s upper arms and torso, and the other end was in Wolf’s hand.

A lasso, he realized. Wolf had thrown a lasso made from the rope and pulled her down.

Before Rachette could form a smile, Hannah’s gun roared and spit fire once, twice, three times. Her teeth were bared as her arm kicked back with each shot. Then she dropped her gun and grabbed at the rope with both hands, wriggling like it was a piranha biting at her skin.

Rachette turned to look at Wolf, but he was not where Rachette expected. He was zigzagging, running away as fast as he could.

But he was going the wrong direction.

And then Wolf was gone, twisting as he flew down and out of sight over the edge of the cliff.

The rope was fluttering limp, and then with the sound of a tightening guitar string it pulled laser beam straight, one end scraping on the top edge of the cliff, the other a contracting loop around Hannah’s torso.

Hannah let out a panicked squeal as she was flung in a blur towards the cliff’s edge. Rolling in a thumping tornado of limbs, she barked an animalistic noise as she smacked back-first against a tree. For an instant she was velcroed to the trunk of the pine, her on the right side of the tree and the rope stretched around the left. With a slack mouth, she stared vacantly at Rachette, blinked, and then was pulled over the edge and out of sight.

As Wolf leaped head-first off the cliff, and as the wind rushed past his ears, and as his stomach floated, and as death rushed up at him at 9.8 meters per second per second, he thought about a man named Claus Vaadner.

Because for the last six years Claus had been a legend in Rocky Points—because everyone in town knew the story of how one day Claus had cheated death with the aid of dumb luck, and a pallet of ceramic roof tiles.

Six summers ago, Claus had been installing Italian clay tiles twenty five feet above the ground, working on the roof of a two-story luxury house in the hills to the west of Rocky Points, when he slipped and fell over the edge. Luckily for him he was tied off, but unluckily for him, he had tied himself to the pallet, which was more than half empty and weighed less than he did.

Fellow workers, with the aid of a few beers, told, and still tell, the tale how Claus dangled over the rocky ground, screaming frantically as the pallet gave way and slid toward the edge of the roof above.

Claus had been spared a horrific fall, however, because the resistance from the sliding pallet effectively lowered Claus at a gentle rate, depositing him to the ground completely unharmed, as if he’d stepped off a three-foot step-stool and not just tumbled off a twenty-five foot roof. Lucky for Claus, he watched as the pallet flew off the edge and he avoided the cataclysmic explosion of ceramic by diving out of the way.

With a wrench of his body, Wolf twisted one hundred eighty degrees and pulled his legs to his chest, completing three quarters of a front-flip-half-twist, waiting for his pallet of tiles to slow his fall.

Now parallel to the ground face down, the steep grade beneath him rushed up through his blurry vision. Just when he began wondering if his makeshift lasso had held, the slack in the rope pulled tight and his outward trajectory shifted downward.

He was halfway through the fall when the rope pulled again against the Grigri cam system which was still locked on the rope and attached to his harness, changing his trajectory once more, this time sending him slamming chest first into the side of the cliff.

The collision was so fast and violent that he felt no pain, but he heard muffled crunches beneath his skin and felt the blows to his body as he tumbled down the rock face.

Completely disoriented, he sensed the ground nearing when his descent came to a complete stop.

The rope ripped at his harness, wrenching him around so he faced the sky. He grunted as his body arched backwards and folded in half, and he felt his feet kick the back of his head, and then an instant later he was laid gently onto his back, on the cool, wet ground.

As the bright world tunneled in from the edge of his vision, he watched the rope drop in an angry coil next to him, and then he felt a rush of wind and a spray of warm blood as Hannah landed next to him with a thud.

Somehow amid the numbness, Wolf found the muscle coordination to turn his head and look.

Hannah was next to him on her back, her head twisted two hundred seventy degrees, her face pointed at his. Eyes wide open but void of life, a web of blood trickled from her temple across her face, and then grew to a river that ran into her open eyeball and poured off the bridge of her nose.

Wolf’s eyelids fluttered once, and then he closed his eyes and felt nothing.

Chapter 56

Patterson stared dumbstruck at the precipice. Wolf had been planning something, she could tell that, and part of her was wondering just what exactly Wolf could do to right the situation, but never in a million years was she expecting to witness what she’d just seen.

With a shake of her head she snapped out of her initial shock, realizing there may have been method to Wolf’s suicidal move. By pulling Hannah over the edge, had he slowed his own momentum enough to survive the fall?

She turned to Rachette with wide eyes.

“Go,” he said.

Patterson exploded into movement. Sprinting to Rachel, she handcuffed one of her wrists, pulled her semi-conscious form to the side of the house, clamped it on a water pipe and sprinted to the top of the wooden stairway descending the cliff.

“All units move! Call Summit County and get a medevac helicopter up here now. Sheriff Wolf and Deputy Rachette are down and injured badly. Get the bus over here stat! I repeat, we need ambulances, and we need medevac!”

With thumping footfalls on the creaking wood, Patterson ignored the eruption of voices on the radio, keeping her eye on Wolf’s unmoving form at the base of the cliff.

She got to the bottom, jumped off the trail and flailed across the steep incline.

Slipping onto her hip as she stepped on loose scree and slamming her elbow on a rock in the process, she breathed through the pain with bared teeth, not slowing a second. When she reached Wolf she pressed her fingers on his carotid, feeling the slick warmth of his blood on her fingers, and then the weak rhythm of his pulse.

“Medevac on route,” Patterson heard the radio squawk.

A boat was roaring toward the dock beneath her, Wilson standing with fluttering hair above the windshield.

As she panted, she looked down at Hannah’s body. Her face was turned toward her and Wolf, but she was on her back and it looked like her neck had been twisted almost two hundred seventy degrees. Her head rested in a growing pool of blood, and her face was completely red. As if that was not enough, her chest was still. She was as dead as it got.

Patterson thought about the concussion of air she’d felt against her face as Hannah’s bullet missed by inches, and then she thought about Rachette’s pale face, and then she looked back down at Wolf.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said with little conviction.

Chapter 57

6 Days Later…

Patterson squinted and gazed up at the sky, feeling the sun warm her face. The cotton ball clouds above hung motionless, painting the water below with dark circles of shade, and the breeze brought the smell of freshwater and the whir of distant motorboats.

She popped her eyes open and sucked in a breath, remembering the zip of the bullet as it had passed inches from her face.

Perched atop the cliff below Hannah and Rachel’s house, Patterson stood feet from where she had almost a week ago. She took a deep breath, reminding herself that night was over.

“That was depressing.”

Patterson turned around at the sound of Rachette’s voice. She was surprised to see him. “You got that right.”

Rachette stepped next to her, thumbing the sling on his right arm that hung over his formal khaki uniform top, which bulged at his right shoulder like he had a pillow stuffed underneath.

Patterson knew there was a mass of gauze covering a line of staples, which covered internal scars from reconstructive surgery on his joint, a large divot in his clavicle bone, two shredded ligaments, and severe muscle trauma from the bullet that had hit him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” She asked.

Rachette tried to shrug, a move that make him bare his teeth in pain. “I got a ride up with Wilson after the funeral, since you ditched me.”

“I thought Wilson was taking you home. You should be in bed.”

Rachette ignored her and gazed into the distance. “Did you see Jack?”

“Yeah.”

It was an unnecessary question. Everyone had seen Jack at his mother’s funeral earlier that morning. It had been the saddest thing she’d ever seen in her life.

Patterson had felt no sense of closure with the lowering of Sarah Muller into the ground, and she had not shed so many tears since her grandmother’s death six years ago. But with her grandmother’s funeral, she had at least felt closure. Her family had been sad at that memorial service six years ago, but they had celebrated her life at the house later. Grandma had lived a long, full life, and then she died.

The funeral earlier that morning had been the antithesis of that day.

Wolf’s son Jack had stood next to Sarah’s parents, never once lifting his gaze from his mother’s coffin, never once a tear escaping his eyes—a sight that had blown Patterson’s heart into a thousand pieces.

Wolf’s absence had been the elephant at the funeral, but it had been impossible for him to attend, because Wolf was in surgery at County Hospital, and when they were done with the third operation on his fractured hip, he would continue to be unconscious, recovering from a ruptured spleen, three broken vertebrae, and an assortment of ten other broken bones, ranging in severity from a cracked femur to a broken thumb. His absence was necessary, but it seemed to make the whole thing that much more difficult.

Then there had been Sarah’s parents. They had been a sniveling mess, and every time Patterson had looked at them during the funeral she’d broken down into a sniveling mess herself. Sarah Muller had lived a short troubled life, and now she was dead.

“Hey.” Rachette nudged her with his good arm.

Patterson looked up and wiped a fresh tear from her cheek.

“It’s gonna be all right.”

She nodded. “Yeah. Right.”

They turned around at the sound of an approaching car. “Looks like the Idaho boys are here.”

A Caprice Classic with a Boise Sheriff’s Department paint job crunched on the gravel into a tight spot between a swarm of five SCSD vehicles. The vehicle rocked to a stop and both doors opened.

A younger man climbed out of the driver’s seat, dressed in a dark brown uniform, and an older man dressed in civilian clothing pulled himself up with the passenger door.

Wilson was there to greet them and shook hands. They spoke for a few seconds and then Wilson pointed toward her and Rachette.

The younger, uniformed man, raised a hand, and though it was far away, he looked like he beamed an attractive smile from under a black ball cap that had a gold embroidered BSD on it.

Patterson raised a hand in a half wave. She had been speaking to Deputy Michelson from the Boise Sheriff’s Department for a few days now on the phone about the case. They had initially spoken that fateful night Sarah had been shot, and she’d since been in charge of working in tandem with the BSD in order to completely close the file on the Kiplings. To her surprise, just like a pen pal from Japan she once had in elementary school, she found she had connected on a deep level with the young deputy in Boise, Idaho.

Now, as he walked down the grass slope behind the older man, she was seeing Michelson for the first time. He was dressed in a gray uniform, and she could tell he was young, probably no more than five years her senior—fit, medium height, brown hair—and moved with sure feet.

The older man next to him was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt rolled up to the elbows, and a trucker cap was laid askew on his head. He waddled with a limp, and when Michelson offered a helping hand he waved it away impatiently.

Michelson looked up at Patterson and smiled again, and it was enough to make her blush, which made her stomach twist with a pang of guilt about Scott. What the hell was she feeling?

She turned to Rachette, determined to change the subject in her head. “You hear anything about his surgery this morning?”

“Nope.” Rachette checked his wristwatch and began walking to meet their two guests. “He’s still in it right now. We should be there, damn it.”

Patterson nodded. “Don’t worry. We’ll go later today, all right? Maybe check you back in for God’s sake. You need to sit.”

“Pssh.” Rachette took a breath in his nose. “I’m all right. Howdy,” Rachette called out.

Deputy Michelson smiled wide with squinted blue eyes surrounded by a bloom of dark eyelashes.

Patterson returned the smile, and then she felt her face flush again. “Deputy Michelson,” she said with a nod.

“Patterson, I take it?”

She nodded.

Michelson’s hand was callused and warm, and he gripped firmly with a quick shake.

“And you must be Rachette. We heard about your injury.” Michelson shook Rachette’s left hand and shook his head with a sympathetic look.

“That’s a bitch, son.” The older man’s voice was gruff as he shook Rachette’s left hand and then shook Patterson’s. His eyes were glimmering slits beneath leathery folds.

“Sheriff Dudley. Nice to meet you,” Rachette said.

The man nodded and poked the underside of his trucker hat. “Used to be. Now you can call me Fred.”

Sheriff Dudley pointed past them. “Hell of a view up here.”

They twisted and looked at the lake, and Patterson exchanged a glance with Michelson.

“There’s quite a lot of activity up here.” Michelson turned around and motioned to the five SCSD vehicles parked in front of the house.

“We had a K-9 unit find Olin Heeter’s body yesterday,” Patterson said. “Buried in a fresh, shallow grave up the mountain. We have all available units checking the area now for more bodies.”

“You find anymore?” Sheriff Dudley asked.

Rachette shook his head. “Nope. But we’ve got some interesting stuff inside, that’s for sure. Or”—he pointed at his sling—“everyone else found a hell of a lot. I’ve been laid up in the hospital.”

Dudley squinted one eye and looked at Rachette, then he nodded at Patterson. “Why don’t you two give us the tour?”

Patterson gestured and they followed her around to the back of the house. Memories of that evening clawed at her with each step, and she had to steel her thoughts as she rounded the corner and faced an open door at the rear of the house.

Deputy Yates stood sentinel, stifling a yawn. He raised his clipboard. “Go ahead inside.”

“Thanks, Yates.” Rachette stepped aside and gestured for Patterson take the lead. Just like the two men from Idaho, she realized, Rachette had not yet seen the inside of this lower level of the house.

Patterson walked into a large rectangular room with a smooth concrete floor, which was lit bright with an uncovered bulb hanging from the ceiling. She walked halfway across the room to the left toward a doorway on the far wall and stopped at a yellow plastic evidence tent.

“This spot is blood, and the rest underneath it has been confirmed as blood,” she said, gesturing to the floor.

“My God,” Michelson said. “It’s huge.”

Fred Dudley pointed at the rust colored smear on the floor. “This the most recent?”

Patterson nodded. “Our ME did a DNA analysis on it, and it matched William Van Wyke’s profile, which was in CODIS from his Idaho Private Investigator’s license registration.”

Dudley pointed at the brown spot beneath the smear. It was a roughly circular shape with a diameter of at least ten feet. “This is where she killed I take it?”

“Looks that way. There’s a lot of old blood here, and check out that wall.” She pointed to the wall behind them and they all twisted.

There was an old workbench against a wall covered with pegboard, and hooks of various sizes hung from the holes.

“We’ve removed everything and put it into evidence, but when we came inside here, there was a razor-sharp machete, hunting knives, and a few filet knives. They all had traces of blood on them.”

Michelson shook his head. “And we heard you’ve identified three of the other bodies you recovered?”

“Yep. All runaways, all reported missing from their hometowns. All three were boys in their late teens, with one or both of their parents deceased, People figured they ran away. No evidence suggested foul play. The other four seem to fit the same mold, but we don’t have definitive ID’s. I’m not sure if we ever will.”

“Hitchhikers.” Michelson said softly, his eyes surveying the old blood.

“That’s what we’re thinking,” Patterson said. “It makes sense. Highway 734 down the valley is a good place to find them. Even today, a lot of them fit the same mold: late teens, early twenties, male, traveling solo.”

Dudley studied the ground and then pointed at the door on the far wall. “And what’s in there?”

Patterson walked over and pushed on the door. The bottom scraped along the top of high pile carpet, revealing a room with a couch, an old television, and a wood coffee table. Paintings of mountain scenery hung on the wood paneled walls, and to the right was a stairway that led up to the second floor.

Dudley, Michelson, and Rachette craned their necks to see past her.

“Just a normal basement,” Michelson said.

“Minus the fact it’s next to a killing room,” Sheriff Dudley said, turning around and walking back to the bloodstain. “William Van Wyke, eh?”

“Yeah.” Patterson stepped next to him and looked down at the brown area. It thoroughly creeped her out every time she looked at this spot, and she was glad to be doing so with so much company this time. “A kill that definitely doesn’t fit the mold. You know him?”

Sheriff Dudley and Michelson exchanged a glance.

“Yeah,” Dudley said. “I do. Let’s get the hell out of here and we’ll talk about it.”

Chapter 58

Patterson led them out onto the back lawn and by the deep breaths it was clear everyone was glad to be back outside.

Dudley stopped and put his hands on his hips. “Let’s see. Where do I begin?”

“Why don’t you start with the cat?” Michelson said.

“The cat?” Patterson asked.

Michelson nodded and looked at Dudley.

The old man leaned his head back and closed his eyes against the sun. “Twenty five years ago, I was a police officer in McCall, Idaho. McCall’s a resort town a couple hours north of Boise. There’s Payette Lake right there, and McCall is a town on the south side of the lake.

“Anyway, back then, during the summer, we got a call from a family. They had found their pet cat in the woods. Decapitated, gutted from asshole to neck.”

Patterson and Rachette exchanged sidelong glances.

“I was first on the scene, and I was shown the animal by one Mrs. Katherine Kipling.” Dudley dragged his words. “This was the Kipling’s cat, you see?”

Patterson nodded.

“We were concerned, naturally, and so were Mr. and Mrs. Kipling. Anyone who could commit such an act to a household pet was borderline homicidal to humans. Hell, everyone knows what the textbooks say. So for two weeks we were on edge. My partner and I spent more than a few days and nights out there in the woods. But … we never saw anything unusual. Never had any leads, and the interest in the incident just sort of faded away.

“Until a few weeks later. The Kipling’s neighbors, about a mile away, had a teenaged son named Reggie. One morning a woman was walking her dog, and the dog ran ahead and into the woods. By the time she caught up with it, he was found licking something on the ground. She came up and saw it was the neighbor kid Reggie, his head severed almost clean off, just barely held on by some muscle in back.” Dudley paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “Cut from pubic bone up to his chest. Guts spilling out. And his eyes had been stabbed, along with the rest of his body, multiple times.”

Patterson shivered.

“Well, needless to say, we were all freaked the hell out and on a manhunt after that. The news spread quickly, and the whole town was hysterical. Everyone was afraid of one another. Nobody went out after dark. We were working around the clock, but coming up empty on leads. If we saw anyone out after dark we would bring them in for questioning. You were the unluckiest soul alive if we caught you hitchhiking near McCall that week. We were using that interrogation room a lot for a few days.

“Then a week later, after the kid’s body was found, the Kipling’ house caught fire in the middle of the night, and that’s when all hell broke loose again. The fire burned hot, and there was nothing firefighters could do to save the structure. They had to stand back and watch it burn, along with a few acres of the surrounding woods.

“When it finally burned itself out, investigators determined there were accelerants used, a whole lot of them, clear arson, and we assumed the worst for the family. When we ended up not finding any bodily remains inside, then we were beyond puzzled. Even stranger, the two family cars had still been in the garage.”

Dudley exhaled and pulled his trucker hat off, revealing a shiny dome. He rubbed his hand over it and put the hat back on. “Nothin’. Couldn’t find the Kiplings. Dustin Kipling was kind of a big shot around town with his statewide boat dealerships and all—‘Kipling Boats’—and news travelled fast around the area about their disappearance. It was all the rave for a while on the news channels.

“Their disappearance, along with the news of the murder out in the woods brought a few people of interest into our station, and things got more complicated, or clearer I guess, now that we have hindsight.

“The first visitor was a man named Doctor Lewis, a psychiatrist from Bend, Oregon, who was an old college friend of Dustin Kipling. Doctor Lewis told us Dustin Kipling had come into his office a couple days before their disappearance, looking for a prescription for anti-psychotic meds. When Dr. Lewis asked why he needed them, Dustin Kipling told him a story confessing how he had killed their house cat, and how he was scared of what he may do next. Dr. Lewis was extremely concerned, but stopped short of detaining his old friend and putting him under psychiatric watch, which was within his power. Instead he wrote him the prescription with the caveat that Dustin come back and see him regularly.”

Dudley looked at Rachette and then Patterson. “When we heard about this after the family’s disappearance, our running theory was Dustin Kipling had murdered the neighbors’ kid and fled with his family. Perhaps he’d even taken the family under duress.

“And then a second person came into our station—the child counselor at the twin daughters’ middle school. This counselor was talking about how she thought one of the daughters, Hannah, was highly unstable. She told us about Hannah attacking a boy with a baseball bat earlier that year. Vicious stuff, and she was even expelled from school, but no formal charges were filed. And there were two other incidents of fights she’d gotten in before that were particularly violent, so said the counselor.”

Patterson nodded. “Yeah. We saw that in the BSD report.”

Dudley nodded. “We figured like-father-like-daughter. There was no way a teenaged girl could do the horrific things done to that boy, we thought.” He shook his head and glanced at the door behind them.

“And what about William Van Wyke?” Rachette asked. “Why is an Idaho P.I.’s blood smeared inside this house, while his charred remains are inside a Mercedes SUV in the next county?”

Dudley nodded and held up a finger. “We had a third visitor. A Nevada casino owner, who told us he’d seen Dustin Kipling a few days before. In fact, he’d seen Dustin one day before the Kiplings and his family’s disappearance. It turned out Dustin Kipling had sold his entire business to this businessman from Nevada for cash at an extreme discount. Three million dollars in cash to be precise, which was apparently pennies on the dollar for what all those boat dealerships and all the inventory inside ’em were worth.

“This casino-owner wanted to make sure he was in the clear as far as we were concerned. And it turned out he was. His story checked out. Kipling came to him with the deal, insisting it be all cash. We could find no connection with this man to Kipling and his family other than purchasing the boat business at a fire-sale price. No pun intended.”

“And Van Wyke?” Patterson pressed.

“Van Wyke had apparently brokered the business deal. He was present and signed the business transfer agreement the lawyers had drawn up as a witness. His payment for facilitating the deal was the deed to Dustin Kipling’s lakefront property in McCall.”

Rachette frowned. “The property that burned down?”

Dudley nodded. “The property that burned down.”

“So,” Patterson narrowed her eyes in thought, “Kipling burned down the property before Van Wyke could have it? Why?”

Dudley raised an eyebrow. “I might have a good explanation for that now that we know the truth about Hannah and Rachel. Twenty-five years ago we found some forensic evidence at the teenage boy’s murder scene, some skin under the nails, and a few hairs that we could never match to anyone. It was public knowledge that we’d found these two pieces of evidence. When the Kiplings disappeared, we scoured Dustin Kipling’s offices for matching hair and DNA, and found a few usable samples, but there was no match. That process alone took over a month. Tracking down samples for Katherine Kipling? We never found any usable hair or skin samples for her. The two daughters Hannah or Rachel? By the time we were done testing Dustin’s samples, we were stumped on where to get any usable samples for Hannah or Rachel. Maybe that was Dustin Kipling’s plan all along with burning the house—to destroy any and all forensic evidence of his family, make it as hard for us as possible.”

Patterson nodded. “That makes sense. Everything Dustin Kipling did was for the well-being of his daughters. That’s why they were here in the first place. But you could have gone to the girls’ middle school, right? Checked their lockers for a forensic match?”

Dudley shrugged. “A month later those lockers had been cleaned and disinfected inside, and different students were using them.”

Michelson cleared his throat. “We think Van Wyke must have heard about the bodies being pulled up from the lake here and put two and two together. He came over here looking for Dustin Kipling, perhaps looking for revenge against him for burning down the house and getting snubbed on payment. Our preliminary look into Van Wyke shows the guy is involved with some shady people with some of his business dealings.” Michelson shrugged. “When Van Wyke got here, he must have met up with Hannah.”

Rachette blew air out of his nose. “And met up with a few bullets, and some gasoline and a match.”

Dudley eyed Rachette and nodded. “When I saw the story on the news, I knew we’d finally found Dustin Kipling. The M.O. of the killer, with the heads severed and everything, was too perfect a match. Van Wyke must have seen the same stories and thought the same thing.”

“What about the second body found burned in his car?” Rachette asked.

Michelson nodded. “We think that’s a man named Darnell Dawkins. He’s been Van Wyke’s personal assistant, or something akin to that, for the last three years. Our department can’t find him, and it seems nobody has seen him in the last week up in Boise.”

They stood in silence for a few moments.

“Have you talked to Rachel Kipling about any of this?” Michelson asked.

All eyes fell on Patterson. “She’s been mute for six days. Won’t talk to anyone. But we’ll keep at it, that’s for sure.”

“Where is she?” Michelson asked.

“Our county hospital under lockdown, recovering from a fractured skull. She’ll be put away for a long time when all is said and done.”

They stood quiet and then Michelson shook his head in exasperation. “And she’s not talking? Not giving any explanation about any of it?”

Rachette scoffed. “You think there’s a good reason behind it all? They were both crazy, and that’s that.”

Dudley and Michelson looked at Rachette, and then his shoulder, and nodded respectfully.

Patterson cleared her throat, breaking the silence. “As you probably heard, we found Katherine Kipling in the lake as well, dropped in a different place than the other bodies. The neighbor, Olin Heeter, saw Hannah and her sister dump their mother’s corpse overboard all those years ago. We think they must have known how Olin Heeter reported what he’d seen to our sheriff’s office, but they’d left him alone all these years until now.

“Whatever the reason they, or Hannah, were killing these boys and dumping them in the lake, it looks like it all came to a head with the Kipling family after Nick Pollard’s murder, and the girls had to get rid of their mother and father.

“Things went cold for SCSD for twenty-two years, and then when we started pulling up those corpses last week, it looks like they were thrust into crisis mode. They killed the neighbor, Heeter, planted some pictures to make him look crazy and throw us off their scent, then they killed Van Wyke and this Darnell Dawkins”—she shook her head—“I think Deputy Rachette puts it succinctly: they were crazy.”

“And they were cornered,” Dudley said. “Not a good combination.”

They stood in silence for a few seconds and Patterson held up her hand toward the side of the house. “Shall we?”

Slowly they walked to the side of the house, and Michelson stepped next to Patterson. “What about the Sheriff’s wife?”

Patterson and Rachette exchanged a glance.

She exhaled. “Ex-wife.  And as of yet, we can’t connect Hannah or Rachel Kipling to those two murders. And of course, Rachel’s not talking to anyone...”

Patterson let her sentence die. She didn't feel right exposing details about the violent crime that had caused endless whispering and speculation among the locals, and who knew how much pain to Jack, and to Wolf, and to Sarah’s family.

At the very least, the department had a responsibility to keep it in the SCSD family, didn't they?

"Yeah," Rachette piped up, breaking her thoughts.  "Something is totally off about Carter and Sarah being together in the first place. And why in Rocky Points? It makes no sense to me. Supposedly that guy was a gay interior designer from Aspen, so why’s he here? Because he and Sarah worked together in the past? Margaret said she didn’t know anything about him coming into town, and if it was for one of Sarah’s real estate deals, Margaret would have been in the know.” He looked over at Patterson. “And if Carter was gay, why was he putting his hand on her leg that night, like you said? If you ask me…”

Patterson took two quick strides to Rachette and stomped her heel on his foot.

“Ah, Christ! What the hell are you…” Rachette read Patterson’s death glare and shut his mouth.

She shook her head and walked, leaving the men following silently behind her.

Reaching Michelson’s Caprice Classic, she turned, hoping the red in her face had dissipated.

Michelson eyed her kindly and broke the silence. “I hope we’ve been able to shed some light. I’ll give you guys whatever you need at your station, and I’ll need everything you have to bring back to my department.”

Patterson nodded. “Of course. I’ll see to it.”

“Maybe you two would like to come get lunch in town?” Michelson asked, clearly directing the question more to her than Rachette.

“Sorry. I have some other things to attend to. I’ll follow you guys back to Rocky Points and get that report for you, though.”

Michelson nodded, taking the rejection in stride. “Yeah. Sure. We’d appreciate that. We’ll head into town and see you when you get there.”

The two men from Idaho walked to their vehicle doors and got in. The engine fired up, and Michelson backed away. With a wave and a nod he drove off in a cloud of dust.

Patterson had no clue why she’d let herself mislead the man so much on the phone the last few days. She had needed someone to talk to, someone besides Scott, someone in the business, and Michelson had been there for her. To think for a second she should jeopardize what she’d built with Scott over the last year for—what? An out of state flirtation?—was ridiculous.

Patterson shook it off and eyed Rachette. “How you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

“Get in my car. I’m taking you home.”

He nodded but he didn’t move.

“What’s up?”

“You know,” he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next month with our jobs and everything, but I want you to know I’ve enjoyed working with you more than anyone else on the force. You’re a good cookie.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve … liked working with you, too.”

“I know I’ve been a pain in the ass to you over the last couple years. And I’m thankful for your loyalty despite everything. I know that was a bad situation with those pictures of that girl and me. And I know you didn’t want to get on the wrong foot with MacLean, and I’m going to talk to him this week. Make sure he knows loud and clear that you had nothing to do with any of that BS.”

“You don’t have to do that, just—”

“No. I do. And I’m going to. I’ve already called and made an appointment with him down in Ashland.”

Patterson exhaled and nodded.

Rachette took a deep breath. “You know, there was this time way back, when I was a senior in high school, when I really liked this girl, and she really liked me too. We even said the L-word to each other, you know? It was that kind of thing.”

Patterson lifted her chin. “Look, Rachette. You don’t have to tell me this. Whatever it is.”

“I know. I just … want you to know where I’m coming from, all right?”

Patterson nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

“So me and this girl, her name was Libby, we were tight. My dad used to be real tough on me growing up, and she was always there for me. Helped me through the bad times. She even helped me realize I wanted to be a cop.”

Watching Rachette speak, Patterson swallowed back a tear when she realized this was the first time she’d ever seen him really open up.

“Because I suspected she was cheating on me. So I put an audio recorder in her car. You know, to try and catch her in the act?”

Patterson tilted her head.

“And then I caught her. Got her right on audio tape, getting it on with some guy from the marching band.” Rachette glared into the distance. “I beat the crap out of that guy. And then I had a topless picture of her on my phone, so I sent it to every—”

“Okay, okay.” Patterson closed her eyes and shook her head. “Listen. Are we good?”

Rachette looked at her. “Yeah.” He nodded. “We’re good.”

Patterson smiled and stared at Rachette.

“What?”

She shook her head and walked toward her SUV. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 59

Three Weeks Later…

Wolf started at the knock on his front door. He looked over at the roll table next to him and reached over for the TV remote control, pushing it further away.

“Shit.” He gripped and wheeled the table closer, sending the almost empty bottle of scotch thumping to the carpet.

The second knock was more insistent.

Wolf picked up the remote and lowered the volume. “Come in!”

The hinges squealed and there was a shaft of morning sunlight, and then the silhouette of a man with a cowboy hat stood in the doorway.

Wolf squinted. “Come in and shut the door.”

MacLean did as he was told. “It’s pitch black in here.”

Wolf screwed his eyes shut, his eye sockets throbbing as MacLean hit the light switch. “Shut it off.”

There was a soft flip and the room went dark again.

Wolf opened his eyes. With the sound of shots ringing out, he looked at the TV in time to see The Rifleman squeeze off five rounds from his customized Winchester. He pointed the remote and pushed mute.

“You look like shit.” MacLean walked to Wolf’s hospital bed that was set in the middle of his living room, crunching a plastic cup with his boot on his way over. “Jesus. Really. Don’t smell much better either. Don’t you have someone to come give you a sponge bath? I can probably get someone up here to do it. A girl if you want.”

Wolf glared.

MacLean held up his hands. “Or not.”

“Sit down.”

MacLean looked around and turned up his palms.

“There’s a chair in the kitchen. Grab me a glass of water while you’re in there.”

MacLean eyed him for a second and walked away.

Wolf picked up a plastic bottle and rattled out two pills into his left hand. Cupping his fingers around the pills, he felt a lance of pain in his purple and yellow middle finger.

“Where’s that water?”

MacLean appeared and held out a glass.

Wolf stared at it, holding up his other hand.

MacLean smiled and walked around the rear of the bed to the correct side.

Wolf popped the pills in his mouth and tipped back the glass. Some water streamed off his chin, down his chest and onto his crotch beneath his hospital gown, but the pills hit the inside of his stomach.

“You’re not gonna sit?”

MacLean shook his head.

“Can you pick up that bottle of scotch and put it back on the table please?”

MacLean snorted and smiled in response.

Wolf stared at him.

MacLean walked around the back of Wolf’s inclined bed and picked up the bottle with a grunt. With deliberate steps that squeaked the floorboards under the carpet, MacLean walked back into the kitchen and rattled around in Wolf’s cabinets. There was the sound of a glass slapping on the counter, a cork being pulled, and the glug of the bottle.

A second later MacLean strolled back in, put the full glass of scotch down his throat and slapped the empty glass on Wolf’s plastic roll table.

“That’s enough dicking around now.” MacLean walked to the front of the bed and assessed Wolf. “How would the voters like it if they saw their favorite candidate now?”

Wolf felt a drip of water leave his chin.

“You’ve been ignoring me, Sheriff. And since you garnered the sympathy of the voters with your personal tragedy and”—he quoted his fingers—“heroics of late, your numbers have surpassed mine. And you didn’t even have to speak in front of a podium.”

Wolf gazed at the television.

“Well?” MacLean bent in front of him and jutted out his lower jaw.

Wolf blinked and looked at him.

“Fine.” MacLean waved a hand in the air. “That was your last chance. Your time is officially up. I’ve called a press conference today up at the resort, where I’m going to let our voters know about everything—your drug running deputy, and the way you covered it up. And it’s really a shame what you’re doing. I actually liked Deputies Rachette and Patterson. They’re good kids. Deputy Rachette had the balls to come down and apologize to me about the whole thing. And Patterson? She seemed like she would have been a good addition to my department. But, thanks to you, they’ll be packing up and looking elsewhere for work. And with that on their record, I doubt they’ll find anything in the field of law enforcement.”

MacLean turned toward the door and stopped. “Oh yeah. And I’ve decided to add a few more pictures to the mix. I’m not going to show them to you now, but I can describe them if you like?” He raised his eyebrows, and when Wolf kept silent he continued. “They’re of you and that dead serial murderer woman. A few pictures of you and her coming into your house, and then a few of you two coming out the next day. All within the time period of your investigation. Good stuff.”

“I’m out.”

MacLean stood straight. “What?”

“I’m out. I’m officially out of the race, as soon as you fulfill your end of the bargain. I’m out.”

MacLean’s laugh boomed in the dark space, and after making a show of forming his hat he wiped his eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t care. Any sympathy I had for you or your deputies is long gone, and I think the voters of our new county need to know what kind of fraud you really are.” Pulling his thumb and forefinger down the corners of his silvery mustache, he turned and walked to the front door.

“I’ll be releasing what I have to Renee Moore,” Wolf said, “from Channel 8, down in Denver. The FBI will also be interested in what I have to say.”

MacLean stopped and turned. “What are you blabbering about? What do they have you on, there? Percocet? Hydrocodone?”

Wolf lifted a finger and pointed it toward a manila envelope laid conspicuously on the otherwise bare coffee table. “That’s yours.”

MacLean walked over and looked at it.

“That’s right.” Wolf smiled. “I have an envelope for you now.”

“What is it?”

“Pick it up.”

MacLean picked it up and pried it open. With a frown he pulled out the single sheet of paper. “What the hell is this?”

“My demands. I admit my handwriting is less than stellar, but I’ve been barely conscious for almost four weeks now, and when I’m awake I’m usually pretty buzzed on pain pills and scotch. And since I can’t get up to use my printer, I had to write it.”

MacLean shook his head with impatience and reached into the envelope. Burying his hand to the elbow, he pulled out a USB memory stick.

“My Deputy Baine, you’ll want to keep a good eye on that guy by the way, tracked down your friend Ms. Gail Olson. He brought her into the station and had a little chat with her, and you’ll see he’s a persuasive guy with his technical and legal jargon, and the way he uses cuss words. He had her spinning, and then shitting her pants, and then spilling everything, about how she was coerced by you to first seduce Deputy Rachette, then to carry out a drug transfer with him in the pre-arranged place and time, where we all know your photographer was in waiting. It’s all there on that USB in your hand, the interrogation video, her confession that she took your payment, everything.”

There was a thwack as MacLean dropped the USB into the envelope. His eyebrows slid down and one side of his mouth turned up. “Bullshit. It’ll be her word against mine.”

“And expunging her record? Did you go through the official court procedures for that? Or was it you and your pal, Lieutenant Bentman in the Ashland PD records department, who made that deal happen off the books?”

MacLean’s eyes darted back and forth.

Wolf lifted his eyebrows. “You and Bentman will be looking at hard jail time for that little move. Gail Olson put us onto that track. She told us about that little carrot you hung on the stick in front of her in addition to the two thousand dollar payment. Again, it’s all on the video.”

MacLean blinked. “Touché.” He looked at the crumpled piece of notebook paper and frowned. “And what’s this chicken-scratch say? Because I can, in fact, not read a single word of it.”

“That’s just saying that once you’re sworn in as Sheriff you’ll hire deputies Rachette, Patterson, Wilson, Yates, and Baine into the department at their current rank or higher. I’ll be adding names to that list as I see fit in the coming two weeks, and the employment contracts will be looked over by my associate Margaret Hitchens. When I get the word that all has been done, I’ll continue to hold myself back from releasing this information.”

MacLean shoved the paper into the envelope and dropped it to his side. With a puff of air from his lips he looked at Wolf. “You’ll continue to hold back from releasing this information?”

Wolf nodded. “And I’ve already told Deputy Rachette you had a change of heart about the photographs, and you’ll have to tell him the same as soon as possible. He doesn’t know anything about you setting him up, and I don’t want him to know. That would only cripple your and his relationship going forward, and cripple his ability to do a good job for the department. But, as far as I’m concerned, you owe him. You owe him big time. So you’d better tell him something that makes him feel off the hook for good, like he never even made a mistake. I don’t care how you do it, just do it.

“Deputy Baine, however, can’t un-learn what he’s figured out about you. But he’s agreed to keep silent about our counter-investigation into your activity, of course, I’m sure it will cost you in the terms of his employment.” Wolf raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, but you reap what you sow there.”

MacLean’s chest heaved as he wiped his nose. “And what about you?”

“Me?” Wolf’s eyes glossed over. “I have to take some time to mend things.”

“Well, no shit. I mean after that, what do you want from me? You clearly don’t want Sheriff, so what do you want? Undersheriff? Money? What the hell?”

Wolf dragged his eyes back to MacLean. “For now, I’d like you to go into my kitchen, go into the cabinet to the left of the refrigerator, and pour me a scotch.”

MacLean stood still, his eyes hardening.

He locked eyes with MacLean. “And then I’ll let you know.”

MacLean bit his upper lip, and with a shake of his head he marched into the kitchen. A few seconds later he slammed the bottle next to Wolf and stormed to the front door.

The hinges shrieked, and a shaft of light burned into Wolf’s retinas, and then the door slammed shut.

As the sound of tires crackled into the distance outside, Wolf reached over and picked up his phone. There were nine missed calls from Rachette, Margaret, Patterson, Burton and his mother.

He ignored them and pushed the voicemail button for the hundredth time.

“Hi, David. It’s me.” Sarah’s voice was timid, full of tension. “I need to talk to you. Call me back. Okay?”

Need to talk to you.

Wolf closed his eyes and lowered the phone. He cursed the political game he’d been roped into over the last few months, because it was so clear to him now—Sarah was dead because of that game. If he hadn’t been so pissed off about Chama’s visit that night, Wolf would have answered this very phone call. He would have helped her. She would be alive.

Wolf reached over and picked up the bottle of Glenlivet 18 year he’d gotten from Burton on his fortieth birthday. A twinge of pain arced up his back as he twisted the cork, but the paper seal gave way and the stopper slid up with a squeak and then popped.

He poured a few fingers in the water glass and scrolled to Jack’s phone number. Wolf swallowed and stared at it, once again pulling forth the fuzzy memory.

He knew it was a memory now, but for weeks Wolf had thought it had been a bad dream. One of many of late. But now he was certain. Through the haze of pain killers and agony of healing wounds, Wolf had only recently realized Jack had not been once to see him. And he wasn’t answering his phone calls, either. And then the truth had settled on him like a pile of rocks.

It hadn’t been a bad dream. It was a memory.

After one of Wolf’s hip surgeries in the county hospital, Wolf had cracked his eyes and Jack had been there waiting for him. He had gotten up from his cloth covered chair, stood next to Wolf’s bed, leaned over so close Wolf could smell his son’s breath, and Jack had said those words.

“It’s your fault she’s dead.”

And then his son had left.

Wolf’s breath caught at the vague recollection, and then he gritted his teeth and pressed Jack’s phone number.

After a single ring it went to voicemail.

“This is Jack, you know what to do.” The crack in Jack’s voice on his voicemail greeting had the simultaneous tone of confidence and self-consciousness.

Wolf inhaled and shuffled the right words in his brain, and then the beep sounded in his ear.

“Hey, Jack.” His voice wavered. “It’s dad.”

After a few breaths, he screwed his eyes shut, then opened them, staring at the ending credits of The Rifleman as they flashed on the TV screen. He pushed the call end button and dropped the phone on the bed.

“One of these days you’ll answer,” Wolf mumbled to himself. “I’m not giving up.”

With a numb motion he took a sip of the warm liquid, feeling the burn slide down his throat. Sloshing a dollop onto the cart table as he replaced it, his body sank into the hospital bed as if he was pulling five g’s in a fighter jet.

As his eyelids drooped, he saw Sarah’s beautiful blues, and her wide smile. Then he saw Jack next to her with a big grin of his own. And then their image swirled and vanished.

Wolf would find justice for Sarah and his shattered family.

Through this whole ordeal, at least Margaret Hitchens had been right about one thing.

“I never give up,” Wolf said, closing his eyes.

THE END.

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David Wolf Series In Order

Gut Decision (A David Wolf Short Story) – Sign up for the new release newsletter at http://www.jeffcarson.co/p/newsletter.html and receive a complimentary copy.

Foreign Deceit (Wolf #1)

The Silversmith (Wolf #2)

Alive and Killing (Wolf #3)

Deadly Conditions (Wolf #4)

Cold Lake (Wolf #5)

Smoked Out (Wolf #6)

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Read on for an excerpt of Smoked Out (David Wolf Book 6) …

CHAPTER 1

Two thumps ripped Wolf out of his sleep.

Or so he thought. The silence in his ranch house living room was absolute save the ticking clock. The walls flickered in the darkened space as muzzle blasts puffed out of an actor’s revolver on the muted television.

With a slow breath he tried to blank out the throbbing pain in his limbs. Every time he woke the pain seemed to have multiplied anew from the previous conscious moment; of course being drugged up on Percocet and a smattering of other pain pills, adding doses of scotch to the cocktail of medication, made it hard to remember previous conscious moments.

This must be what it’s like to have Alzheimer’s. How many times had he repeated that thought in the last few days? What day was it?

He craned his neck as crunching footsteps approached his front door outside and then there was a knock that echoed in his skull.

He cracked his lips and peeled his tongue from the top of his mouth. “Come in.”

There was no response.

“Come in!” Pain shot through his pelvis.

The knob turned and the doorway burst with light that assaulted his eyeballs.

“Mr. Wolf?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Special Agent Cumberland with the FBI.”

Two men were silhouetted in his open doorway holding square ID wallets in his direction. He laid back and closed his eyes, staring at their after-image burned into his retinas. “I’ll have to take your word for that. Come in.”

“This is the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Denver Field Office Steven Frye. We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

Wolf reached over and grabbed the handle of the oversized plastic cup of water and sucked from the straw. He was vaguely surprised it was so full, cold, and rattling with ice. He drew a blank when trying to remember who had filled the bottle for him. It could have been any number of people who came in and out of his house as of late. Probably the big nurse.

“Open those shades,” one of the agents said.

His living room brightened and Wolf tried to straighten in his reclined hospital bed, sending another bolt of pain from his pelvis up his spine. He broke into a sweat and pulled off his sheet, and the relatively cool air caressed his skin through the damp gown.

Fumbling at his sides for the bed controls, he found the plastic box next to his leg cast and pushed the incline button.

As the bed whirred one of the agents stepped in front of the television. He was tall and wide, and filled out his suit with muscle underneath. Holding mirrored sunglasses in one hand, his badge wallet hung in his other.

“Let me see those badges and IDs again.”

The big agent looked at the other and then they both handed over their wallets.

Wolf studied their authenticity. The badges were real, and the ID cards looked real enough. Cumberland was the tall guy in front of him, and the ASAC Frye was the other guy to his left that he’d yet to look at in real life.

Both men had military cuts in their pictures and no-nonsense blank facial expressions. They wore white dress shirts and black ties cinched on muscular necks.

When Wolf looked up, the two men were identical in dress and presentation to their IDs. But from each other they were different in every way. Cumberland was tall and imposing, while Frye was short and wiry. It looked like Cumberland had to endure a grueling physical routine to hold his shape, and Frye looked like he had to eat to hold his.

Wolf handed the wallets back. “What questions?”

Cumberland tilted his chin up. “We need to ask you about the night Sarah Muller and Carter Willis were murdered. Straighten up a few things.”

“Straighten up a few things? What’s there to straighten up?”

Cumberland clenched his fists and spread his hands while gazing around Wolf’s living room.

It was a reflexive move for the big man, Wolf thought, like the agent was trying to contain anger.

Agent Frye cleared his throat. “What were you doing the night of Sarah Muller’s and Carter Willis’s deaths?”

Wolf took a deep breath. “I was out having a drink.”

“With a woman who was a suspect in your murder investigation up at Cold Lake, correct?” Frye asked.

“At the time she was a person of interest.”

“Until what time were you two having a drink?”

Wolf shrugged. “I don’t know. Nine-thirty? Ten?”

“You’re not too sure about this because?”

“I left under extenuating circumstances.”

Frye blew air from his mouth. “And I guess what you mean by that is that you were in a fight with a man named Carter Willis, knocked unconscious, and dragged out of there by this woman of interest in your murder investigation?”

“Something like that.”

Cumberland squeezed his hands into fists again.

“Did you hear that that woman of interest, Miss Kimber Grey, a.k.a. Rachel Grey, has just committed suicide at County Hospital?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Ah. Well she did. So there goes your alibi right there.”

“Actually, you don’t have your facts straight. I don’t think I was having drinks with Rachel that night. I think it was her twin sister, Hannah Kipling, whom I pulled off a cliff and killed. So, actually, my alibi was long gone before Rachel offed herself.”

Frye smiled without teeth. “So you have no alibi for your whereabouts for the rest of that night. We talked to the bartender at the Pony Tavern. You were dragged out of there at closer to nine p.m., so you had the whole night ahead of you to recover from your fight and take care of whatever you needed to take care of.”

Wolf ignored the bait.

“You’ve got motive like nobody else,” Frye continued.

“What’s this guy here for? To stand and flex? You mind moving away from the TV there, Hulk?”

Cumberland’s face darkened, and then he turned and poked the off button.

The flat screen squeaked as it rocked back and forth on its stand.

Frye smiled again, this time displaying his teeth, which seemed to glow. Clearly a fan of whitening agents. “We’ve been checking on your recent movements, specifically before the murders of your ex-wife and Carter Willis. Turns out you and Carter had a little run-in at the Antler Lodge, the restaurant on top of the Rocky Points Ski Resort?”

“Is that a question?”

“And from what we’ve been able to gather, it looks like Carter Willis and your ex-wife hugged at that encounter, and you overreacted, causing a scene.”

“I reacted the appropriate amount.”

“Out of jealousy?”

“The guy was a sleaze ball. He was groping my date in front of me.”

Frye nodded. “I’m just going to cut to the chase, maybe save us all some time here. Did you kill Carter Willis and your ex-wife, Mr. Wolf?”

“No.”

“Because it looks like you did.”

“Can’t arrest someone for looking like they might have murdered someone. Listen, I’ve got some Rifleman to catch up on, so if you guys don’t mind leaving and lifting your legs on some other tree? Thanks.”

“What are these?” Frye slapped a manila folder on the plaster cast that covered Wolf’s lap.

Wolf stared at it but didn’t move.

Frye opened it for him and pushed the contents, splaying a stack of photographs.

They were photos of his Deputy, Tom Rachette, and the girl they’d come to know as Gail Olson. They were familiar—Gail Olson handing Rachette a bag, Rachette hugging the woman, Rachette putting the bag in his car, Rachette and Gail driving their separate ways.

They were an innocuous set of photographs under normal circumstances, but Wolf knew Gail Olson had been caught months earlier by the Ashland PD with marijuana and money in her car, lots of both, and these photos were supposed to implicate Wolf and his department being involved in the smuggling of drugs.

Only Wolf knew better.

When Wolf kept silent Frye picked up a photo and studied it. “Sheriff Will MacLean of Byron County told us he brought these photos to you. He knew all about Gail Olson’s past and mentioned that he might make these photos public. He said you freaked out and dropped out of the race. He’s done right by giving the pictures up to us now.”

“Yes,” Wolf said, “these photos were a blackmail attempt by Sheriff MacLean, who set up Gail Olson to make this fake drop while he took these pictures in order to make my deputy and my department look bad.”

Frye straightened with a confused look. “MacLean set the whole thing up, which you figured out, and yet you dropped out of the race? So the blackmail attempt worked? I’m confused. You say it was a setup, but yet, you dropped out of the race in order to keep these photos under wraps.”

“I dropped out of the race because I didn’t want the job.”

“And why’s that?”

“I learned I didn’t fit the job description. MacLean did perfectly.”

Frye laughed. “That’s an interesting angle on the whole thing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that’s not what we heard.”

Wolf leaned back. “Heard about what?”

Frye smirked and walked away from the hospital bed.

“Hey, why don’t you take a look around.”

“Thanks. I will,” Frye said, his voice coming from inside Wolf’s bedroom.

Cumberland stood motionless, gazing at Wolf.

Engines revved and tires rumbled on the drive out front, getting louder as they approached.

Frye appeared next to Wolf and gestured to the window. “The rest of our crew.”

“Why?”

Frye stepped to the window and forked open the blinds with his fingers. “Did you kill Gail Olson, Sheriff Wolf?”

Wolf frowned. “What? No.”

Frye twisted and stared at him.

Wolf looked at Frye and Cumberland in turn. “Gail Olson’s been murdered?”

Both agents held their stares.

Frye blinked first. “She’s been missing since the night of Carter Willis’s and Sarah Muller’s deaths. Vanished.”

The vehicles outside came to squeaking stops and car doors opened and closed. Chattering agents and squawks of radio static filled the silence.

“You guys seriously think I shot my ex-wife, Carter Willis, and Gail Olson?” Wolf counteracted his escalating blood pressure with deep breathing.

Frye gestured toward Wolf’s bedroom. “Could have been with that Walther PPK sitting in your nightstand drawer.”

“The bullets that killed my ex-wife and Carter Willis were nine millimeter parabellum. Since a blown off right hand isn’t one of my current injuries, clearly I didn’t use the PPK to fire those rounds. You got a warrant inside that empty head of yours? If not, then get the hell out of my house.”

“And your department issue Glock 17?” Cumberland asked.

“My deputies already checked to see if my piece was fired the day we discovered the bodies.”

“We discovered the bodies?” Frye asked. “They. Your deputies discovered the bodies. You were supposedly here with a psychotic serial murderer at the time doing hell knows what kind of sick things in that bedroom of yours—or at least, you say you were here. And when your deputy checked your weapon? We heard about that visual check and sniff. That’s not going to cut it. We’ll need to do some ballistics.” Frye slapped a folded sheet of paper on his bed. “And here’s our warrant. We’re going to take a look around now. You just sit here and make yourself comfortable while we do.” Frye pulled a radio from his belt. “All right, let’s move.”

Calls and responses echoed outside and the front door blew open. Two male agents entered in full stride.

“Go ahead, make my day,” Wolf leaned back, his confident words sounding not so confident to his ears. Because the truth was, he remembered little of that fateful night a few weeks ago, when Sarah and Carter Willis were shot dead and left in a BMW sedan.

There were still unanswered questions about that night—as in all of the questions.

“Agent Frye.”

Frye paused in mid-conversation with an agent and stepped close to Wolf. “What?”

“Carter Willis.”

“What about him?”

“I’ve been looking into him. Who the hell is he? Aren’t you guys worried about that? He’s not in any of the databases, no public record, nothing. He doesn’t exist. He’s a ghost. And you guys are worried about me?”

“That’s not your concern.”

“Not my concern? He was found dead with my wife.”

“Your ex-wife.” Frye squinted and tilted his head. “Is that all Mr. Wolf?”

Wolf leaned back and closed his eyes. “Is Special Agent Luke here?”

Nobody answered. When Wolf cracked his eyes open Agent Frye was gone.

Wolf looked on his bedside roll-table for his cell phone, and it was gone. A young-looking FBI agent was dropping it in a plastic bag.

“Is Special Agent Luke here?” Wolf asked the agent.

The agent kept silent, but after a quick glance around the room he gave a nod.

“Tell her to come talk to me,” Wolf said quietly.

The agent ignored him and stepped away.

Wolf sat back and pulled up his bed sheet, feeling exposed in more ways than one. There was nothing he could do but breathe and remain calm.

He leaned back and racked his brain again, like he’d done in every waking moment between pain-pill and scotch induced sleeps the last couple of weeks.

He’d relived every memory from the night of Sarah’s and Carter’s deaths countless times, but the problem was that the memories were few. Wolf had been with a woman he thought to be Kimber Grey having drinks when Carter Willis had come into the bar with two of his cronies. It had been only a few minutes, when Carter Willis had approached Wolf, leaned close, and told him his ex-wife was an unforgettable piece of ass. He remembered that clear enough. And then Wolf had attacked him without hesitation.

Wolf had gotten some good shots in, and taken a few, too. But the lights went out when he’d taken a pool cue to the head from one of the two men with Carter.

From that blackout moment onward, Wolf had been at the mercy of a woman who had murdered an unknown number of young men, mutilated their bodies, and dumped them into Cold Lake south of town. The rest of that night was a complete blackout.

Then there were the memories of the last few weeks since his plummet off a cliff. Those were chopped and jumbled, and trying to remember anything in any order was like trying to put together a thousand-piece puzzle with the pieces turned upside down.

“David.” The voice in his ear was feminine and full of concern.

Wolf opened his eyes.

“You look like shit,” Special Agent Kristen Luke said.

Luke’s brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, her face chiseled, yet soft. Her wide cinnamon-bark eyes were bleary but still as stunning as ever.

“You look good,” Wolf said. “Tired, but good.”

She darted a glance to the nearest agent and waited for him to move on. “I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. I can’t really … talk to you.”

Wolf leaned back and nodded. “Deputy Baine has proof that MacLean was behind those photographs with Rachette and Gail Olson—a video interview Baine conducted with Gail Olson. Which makes me think MacLean might be behind the disappearance of Gail Olson. Get to Baine, and get that video file he has.”

“Of course I…” she stopped talking and stepped away.

A few seconds later she came close, this time avoiding eye contact with him. “Go ahead.”

“MacLean also said he had photos of me and Hannah Kipling here at the house that night. Those photos might be my alibi.”

She walked away as if he’d said nothing.

Agent Frye appeared next to Wolf, his eyes trailing Luke. “She tells me you’re innocent.”

“She’s a smart agent.”

“So am I. That’s how I became ASAC. And I know when emotions get involved investigations go sloppy. So I’m not listening to a thing she says.”

Wolf closed his eyes. “Let me know what you find. I’m confident I’ll see you again soon, and you can apologize to me then, okay?”

When Wolf opened his eyes Agent Frye was gone, back in the bustle of agents ransacking his home.

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Table of Contents

David Wolf Series In Order

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59