TO THE

BONE

By Jeff Carson

http://jeffcarson.co

jeff@jeffcarson.co

Published By

Cross Atlantic Publishing

Copyright © 2015 All rights reserved.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

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.

NEW! The Appointed (Wolf #1 and #2 Box Set) (Save $1.99)

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)

To the Bone (Wolf #7)

Wolf #8 – Coming Winter, 2015

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Chapter 1

The girl was rooting around in her trunk at the side of the road and looked up at the approaching vehicle.

Wolf recognized her immediately, and she must have recognized him because her first reaction was to step back and drop her jaw.

Skidding to a halt, Wolf rolled down his window just as a cloud of dust engulfed them both.

“Hi, Cassidy,” Wolf said peering through the choking dirt.

“Hi, Mr. Wolf.”

Her pristine red German sedan was tilted to the rear passenger side.

“Flat tire?”

“Yes,” she said waving a slender hand in front of her face.

“Sorry,” Wolf said, squinting his own eyes as a hot blast of air came in the window. “Let me pull over, I’ll give you a hand.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said with a mixture of relief and what Wolf thought to be dread in her voice.

He pulled behind her car and shut off the engine. Stepping out onto the shoulder, the weeds snapped and crunched under his old leather work boot, flushing out some grasshoppers that scattered like popping popcorn. Their snapping wings and the burbling Chatauqua River below the opposite side of the road were the only sounds.

It was only 9:00 am and the early August sun was cooking the back of his neck.

The wind cleared the dust and Cassidy Frost stood with her hands in the pockets of her frayed jean shorts, which were barely more material than a bikini bottom in Wolf’s estimation.

Wolf knew Cassidy Frost, had known her well for the last seven months, because she was dating Wolf’s fifteen-year-old son, Jack. She was just older than Jack, and two months into her sixteenth year with a driver’s license, and since Jack was living with Wolf, and without a driver’s license, she had been burning a lot of gas driving up and down this road lately.

But today? He hadn’t expected to see her today.

Her eyes were wild looking, adrenaline still pumping through her veins from the tire, and she stutter-stepped forward with an outstretched hand.

Wolf nodded and took it. Her hand was thin, almost dainty, but her parents had clearly taught her to grip firm when she shook someone’s hand, and so she did.

She really was quite beautiful. Her large blue eyes always reminded Wolf of his late ex-wife, Sarah. And then there was her straw-blonde hair streaming across her face. The resemblance was uncanny, and he knew it was more than coincidence that Jack was drawn to this girl who looked like his mother.

A grouping of skid marks were gouged into the gravel, and here she was pulled over a few yards from that. It was clear she had been travelling just above unsafe speed when the blowout had happened, and now the adrenaline powered look in her eye made sense.

“You all right?”

She nodded.

“You have a spare, right?”

“Yeah, it’s in the trunk.”

He walked to the open trunk. There was a piece of carpeted plastic pulled aside, revealing a thin spare tire and a cheap, insufficient-looking jack. Next to the compartment a sleeping bag was pushed into the corner, and next to that was a duffle bag, dusty with a piece of pine bark clinging to the fabric.

Pretending not to see those two items, Wolf pulled out the tire and jack.

“I was trying to call for help,” she held out her phone, “but there’s no service here.”

“There’s never any service all the way down this road until you hit our house.”

Wolf wondered where Cassidy’s tent was.

“I’m going to help you do this, all right?” he said. “Every sixteen year old needs to learn how to change a tire.”

She smiled sheepishly and put her phone in her back pocket. “I know. My dad keeps saying the same thing.”

Wolf helped her set up the jack, and remove the tire, and put on the spare. She was a quick study, asking intelligent questions and all in all diving into the whole thing with a commendable attitude.

Wolf’s mind reeled as he watched the sixteen-year old girl tighten the last lug nut.

Just a sleeping bag and a duffle bag. Where was her tent?

“Mr. Wolf?”

“Yeah?”

“I … was asking what next?”

“Oh, yeah.” He showed her how to lower the car safely and stow the damaged tire and jack—once again playing the unobservant idiot with the camping gear as he pushed down the trunk with a thump.

“Take it in to Mitch’s tire shop as soon as you can,” Wolf said keeping his hand on the warm paint of the trunk.

They stared at one another for a few seconds.

“And Cassidy?”

Cassidy swallowed. Her face dropped and her lip quivered as she looked into Wolf’s eyes. “Yes?”

“Were you camping with Jack last night?”

Her eyes welled up with astonishing speed.

“What’s the matter?” Wolf asked.

“You think I’m some sort of slut. I know it.”

Wolf’s mouth dropped open and his face went red hot.

“I see it. I know you do.”

Wolf felt like he was getting punched repeatedly in the stomach. “Cassidy, I don’t think that.”

She was openly weeping now, tears splashing in the dust.

He reached out a stiff arm and patted her shoulder, unsure of what else to do. “I don’t think that.”

“I hope you’re telling the truth.” She looked up with desperate eyes and sniffed.

It was the truth. He often questioned where the second half of her outfits had gone, but he’d known a lot of sluts in his day, and Cassidy Frost was not one of them. Her parents were good people and he knew they were good parents, and she was a good kid. And if Jack and Cassidy were now … ugh … “I just saw your sleeping bag. Jack didn’t tell me you were included in the group of his friends going camping.”

Her eyes narrowed for a second and then she looked away, and Wolf knew there was no “group of his friends”.

“Take the tire into Mitch’s tire place. You know it?”

She nodded.

“Tell him I sent you. Or tell him your dad sent you I guess, he knows your dad too. But get it taken care of. You don’t want to get another flat tire and be stranded out the middle of nowhere without any way out.”

She nodded and stared up at him, and then her lip started quivering again.

“That would suck,” Wolf said with a smile.

She burst into a smile. “Yeah, it would.”

Wolf saw a perfect moment of escape so he backed away. “Okay. See you around. Drive careful. Drive slow.”

“I will. Thanks, Mister Wolf.”

She wiped her nose and climbed in the car, started it and drove away.

Wolf watched her trail of dust disappear around the bend.

Wolf drove at a steady clip along the meandering Chatauqua River toward his house. It was times like these Wolf missed Sarah the most. Not that he thought she would know what to do in this situation. In fact, he could picture Sarah’s eyes darkening with a distant gaze, and her jaw screwing shut at the news that her son may have just spent the night with a girl.

He smiled at the thought as he drove up the hill to the head gate of his ranch. He missed having a partner, a teammate, to work these things through with. But she was gone. The problem was all his to bear alone now.

Nate Watson was there already, parked in front and standing on the circle drive next to the tall lanky figure of Jack. Wandering by the barn was Jet, a retired German shepherd police dog Jack had adopted six months ago.

Wolf came to a stop behind Nate’s full-sized pickup truck, which had scrawled on it Watson Geological Services Inc. with a professional looking logo above it.

“There he is,” Nate said with a smile.

Jet lifted a leg and took a leak on the side of the barn and then wandered away with his nose on the dirt.

Jack waved and kicked at a weed.

“Sorry I’m late,” Wolf said, closing his door. “I had to help a motorist with a flat tire. Hey Jack. You’re home early.”

Jack nodded with no further explanation.

Walking to them, Wolf took Nate’s hand and shook it. “I thought you weren’t coming back from the trip until tomorrow morning. Heck, you made a big enough deal about it.”

Jack shrugged, still averting his gaze. “Mitch Henderson drove, remember? His mom called and wanted him home for some emergency reason.”

“Really? What emergency?”

“Psh. I don’t know.”

“I hope it’s not serious.”

Jack shrugged and pointed to the north. “Nate says you guys are cutting trees because there’s a fire up north?”

Wolf nodded and said nothing.

Jack squirmed under his gaze. “Well. All right. I’m going to go inside.”

Wolf nodded.

Jack loped away on his stick legs toward the house. He picked up his camping gear and started stacking it by the door.

Nate Watson stepped forward and clamped his hand on Wolf’s, shaking the thoughts from Wolf’s head with each pump of his hand.

“What was that about?” Nate asked in a low voice.

Nate was a thick stump of a man. Standing at five foot seven, he was at least two hundred pounds, with a thick chest and delta shaped torso, like the men Wolf had served with as an Army Ranger.

Nate’s blond hair was shaved to the scalp nowadays, hidden under a sweated out Colorado School of Mines hat—both ways of coping with his growing bald spot on the top of his head.

Nate and Wolf had grown up playing football together. It was where they had bonded, with Wolf at quarterback and Nate at running back—always there to block for Wolf, always there to throw a bail out pass to when there were no other options.

Through the years, despite the missed blocks and footballs that had hit Nate in the back of the helmet, Nate had always been there for Wolf in time of need and Wolf had always been grateful for it. And true to undying form, Nate was here now.

“I just saw his girlfriend. She blew a tire on the road down to town. He was camping with her, not his friends.”

Nate nodded and gazed into the distance. “Yeah. I know. I was here when she dropped him off.”

Wolf frowned and looked him up and down.

“I was going to tell you.”

Like the other people Wolf chose to surround himself with, Nate was a reliable man, but he was also a man that liked to sugarcoat things. He also had the habit of omitting information if he deemed it would cause someone unneeded stress.

Wolf shook his head. “No you weren’t.”

Nate ignored him and turned to the north. “So you’re freaked about this new fire, huh? I thought you and Jack already had a hundred feet of defensible space cleared around this joint.”

A horrific smell swirled around them for a few seconds and then dispersed on the wind.

Nate wrinkled his nose. “What the hell is that?”

The huge German shepherd had appeared again. Sitting straight upwind of them, Jet sat with a leather glove in his mouth. He dropped it and backed up a couple steps, proud of his find.

Wolf bent over and picked it up. “I lost that glove months ago. Good job, boy.”

Jet’s tail swished and thumped on the crispy grass.

“That’s cool he finds things,” Nate said, “but what’s wrong with his ass?”

“Let me guess,” Wolf said to Jack, “you forgot to give him the medicine before you went camping?”

Jack was back outside, picking up his tent next to the kitchen door. He stared at the sky in thought.

“Why don’t you go get it,” Wolf said.

Jack looked at him.

“What?”

“I don’t know where it is.”

Wolf shook his head. “Maybe Cassidy can give you a ride to refill the prescription today.”

Jack nodded and disappeared back inside.

Six months ago Wolf had gotten a call from a friend on the Vail Police Department asking if he was interested in adopting a retired German Shepherd police dog named Jet. Wolf had looked at the implications of taking in the dog, and knew he wouldn’t have time to take care of it with his job, so he’d said no.

Overhearing Wolf talk about it the next day, Jack told him categorically that he wanted it.

With Jack losing his mother a year ago, and the depression, anxiety, and anger that followed finally showing signs of lifting, there was no way Wolf was going to say no to his son. So he called his friend back and said yes.

When they’d driven up to meet the dog, Wolf had been impressed. He was massive, which concerned Wolf at first because like other German Shepherd police dogs, Jet had been taught various other commands, such as fass!, which was German for attack.  But the dog’s demeanor had been calm and stoic, like a wise old man who had been into battle.

When visiting, they learned Jet had had a nine-year career with the Vail County Police Department as a tracking dog, busting countless smugglers and criminals along the I-70 corridor over the years. In the end, they were charmed by the dog and brought him home.

On many occasions since, Wolf had seen the animal’s intelligence, and had also seen bursts of impressive speed and strength. But Jet was quick to tire, and getting on in age, there was no doubting that.

Along with fatigue and a passion for finding things his human master might find useful or illegal, Jet had developed a bacterial overgrowth in his small intestine common with German shepherds, and now unless Jet kept up with a regimen of pills from the veterinarian, Jet tended to live up to his name—shooting a jet of hot air out the back of him.

Nate cleared his throat and slapped Wolf on the shoulder. “The fire?”

Wolf nodded. “Yeah. Have you heard about it?”

“The brush fire north of Cave Creek? I heard about it from you this morning.”

“Right. Well I had Jeff Adkins up here the other day and he was saying I should clear those trees on the southwest corner.”

Jeff Adkins was the local fire chief and he had been doing house calls making sure everyone was ready if and when a fire hit.

Nate put his hands on his hips and looked to the southwest. “They haven’t been touched by the beetles.”

“They haven’t, but everything out there has.”

The forest to the south howled as a hot blast of wind blew through the trees.

It had been one of the driest summers on record, and after a hundred years of fire suppression coupled with the widespread pine beetle infestation of the Rocky Mountains and mountain west, huge tracts of forest that had once been green and thriving were now rust colored, dead and hollowed out by the voracious bugs.

At least half of the trees visible to the south and west of Wolf’s property had been hit by the beetles.

“And that fire to the north has you spooked, and you want to make sure you’re prepared if some jackass tosses a cigarette butt out the window on Williams Pass.” Nate nodded.

“You know me well my friend.”

While the acreage to the south and west was thick forest, the trees on the east mountainside behind Wolf’s house had been charred and scarred from an explosion years ago, and now saplings grew where the new gaps had been made. As for reconstruction of his house, it had been long, and Wolf had lived in a half-shell of a house with no running water through the long winter. He’d likened it to living in a shallow cave and he wanted none of that again.

“Whatever. I guess you have another two hundred ninety-nine acres of trees to make up for it.” Nate turned and pointed at the trees, counting.

“Seven,” Wolf said. “There’re seven to cut.”

“Piece of cake.” Nate picked up the plastic case at his feet. “I’ve got my Stihl. Yours probably won’t start, so, you just want me to get started?”

Wolf ignored him and went to the barn to retrieve his own chainsaw, knowing full well Nate was probably right and it was going to take some doing to get the finicky motor of his much older saw to turn over.

Jack came back outside and stumbled as he looked at his phone screen.

Probably getting a text message from Cassidy, explaining that their little jig was up. Probably doing one of the other million things he did on that phone every day.

“Dad.” Jack pointed his phone screen at him and then put it to his ear.

Wolf slowed to a stop.

“What’s up?”

Jack answered his phone. “Cassidy?” He said.

Jack walked toward Wolf and held up a finger.

Wolf waited with a furrowed brow.

“Why? …okay, okay.” Jack stepped up and thrust the phone at Wolf. “It’s Cassidy. She wants to talk to you.”

Wolf raised both his hands like Jack had a pistol pointed at his face. “Jack. Tell her we’ll talk later. After you and I have a talk.”

“Dad,” Jack put the phone against his body and covered it with his other hand. “I’ve never heard her so freaked out. Something happened. She said she couldn’t call 9-1-1 on her phone.” He thrust the phone out again.

Wolf took it. “Hello?”

“Mr. Wolf! My—”

There was scratching and then silence.

“Cassidy?”

Nothing.

Nate and Jack stared in mute curiosity.

“Cassidy? Can you hear me?”

“—Wolf? Can you hear me?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“My dad’s been shot. He’s been shot. Can you hear me? I can’t call 9-1-1 on my—”

Silence again.

“Is he hurt?”

No answer. Damn it. Damn the cell service.

“Cassidy? Is he okay?”

“No.”

The simple answer, the clarity and desperation in her voice, made Wolf’s insides sink.

“Go to the sheriff’s station, Cassidy. Go there now.”

Chapter 2

Wolf stood alone in front of the Frost residence next to Ryan Frost’s corpse. The driveway was the size of a baseball infield and about the same dirt consistency. Surrounded by trees and sheltered from the wind, it radiated heat like a skillet, and with the sun blowtorching the back of his neck he felt like a piece of sizzling bacon.

“DOA,” Wolf said into his cell phone.

“Shit.” Sheriff MacLean’s voice was crisp in Wolf’s ear.

A swarm of flies had set in on the body and they bumped against Wolf’s jeans. He ignored them and kept rooted to his spot. “I see two sets of footprints behind the body. No brass on the ground. Shot in the back of the head. Looks like an execution style murder.”

“Ah Christ, that’s all we need right now. That pile-up in Cave Creek, and now a murder? It’s like death came into town …”

Wolf pulled the phone away from his ear and looked down. Cassidy had left for the station after her call to Wolf, and since he’d gone straight here he hadn’t gotten the full story from her, but the dirt beneath his feet told the story plain enough. Small footprints, deck shoes, trailed up to Ryan Frost’s body and skidded to a stop. Wolf imagined Cassidy driving up, wondering what her father was doing as she slowed, the panic as she put it in park and got out of the car, the disbelief when her father wouldn’t answer her, the realization when she got close enough to see the blood…Wolf shivered and blinked the thought out of his mind.

He ignored MacLean’s continuing monologue coming from his phone speaker and felt the weight of the department issue Glock in his sweating palm. Twisting, though not moving his feet, he scanned the woods again.

Cassidy had come and gone unharmed, so it was likely the culprit was long gone, but he wasn’t so sure. Not when it came to the actions of cold-blooded killers. And there was no doubt Ryan Frost had been killed in cold blood. Half the man’s face had been deformed by the bullet exiting his cheek. Then there was another blossom of red in the center of his back.

Some psycho could have driven away, parked somewhere a couple miles out and hiked his way back through the forest to see the ensuing police action. It happened all the time in cities—murderers returning to the scene of the crime.

“Wolf! You there? Damn cell phones.”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Wolf’s pulse jumped as he noticed the front door open.

“Are you listening?”

“I’ve gotta go.”

Wolf pocketed the phone without ending the call and ran to the edge of the house. The front door bumped shut, and then started a rebound action, opening slowly again. The movement seemed to be driven by the wind.

“Sheriff’s department!” Wolf said. “Come out with your hands where I can see them!”

No answer. The door swung open again and then bumped shut again. The house was breathing through the front door. A solid wood design adorned with frosted glass, Wolf could see no movement behind it.

Sweat slid down his temple and he wiped it away and then caught movement in the corner of his eye and aimed his gun.

A chipmunk stared back at him, twitched his tail, and scurried out of sight beneath a downed log.

He stepped up onto the concrete porch, and ducking low on one knee he pushed open the door and aimed his pistol.

The door opened noiselessly all the way in a one hundred eighty degree swing and bumped against the wall.

“Sheriff’s department!”

There was no movement or answer. A soft pulsing high-hat with a steady bass pattern emanated from somewhere inside.

With a final scan of the woods he slid into the house, gun barrel first. He ignored the floor to ceiling windows displaying the majestic views of the green-sloped ski resort and town below as he swept through the main floor.

The kitchen was all stainless steel and shiny rock, with no one inside it. When he entered a home office, he faintly registered the giant boulder in the middle of the carpeted space and the walls of dark wood shelves stocked with countless hardback books. He could stand and gawk at the impressive interior of the house later. At the moment they were distractions that could get him killed. He moved on and through the four bedrooms upstairs. Each had crisply made beds, including Cassidy’s room.

Making his way back downstairs and down a long hall, he reached a lone closed door and opened it, revealing a darkened garage. He snapped on the light and pointed his gun. No one was inside, but Wolf straightened and leaned back at the sight of what was. Two shiny black Land Rovers, a mister and misses pair, were parked on the left, and to the right was a collection of what looked like ancient bones.

Hundreds of them. There was blue masking tape on the smooth concrete floor separating specimens from other specimens, and within each of the cordoned off areas were neat arrays of bones, claws, skulls, and tusks. Some were recognizable: a triceratops skull, a mammoth tusk. Others were just lumps of dirty rock to Wolf’s untrained eye.

Wolf closed his mouth and backed into the house again. Shutting the door, he moved down the hallway, back the way he’d came.

Toward the music.

It was coming from downstairs, he realized. He walked his way along the rustic wood floors in the main great room to the edge of a wide staircase that led down.

“Sheriff’s department!”

He aimed his gun down the stairs and crept closer. A flash-bang grenade as a precursor to him going down the stairs would have done him nicely. In fact, Wolf was not about to go down without one. His six tours of experience in the Army, and a dash of common sense told him descending the steps was out of the question.

The faint sound of an approaching siren floated in through the open front door.

There. Wolf crouched and stepped back when he saw movement downstairs. It was a piece of blue fabric that had come into view and then disappeared.

He backed up another step and crouched to get a better look, but it was no use. The angle between the ceiling downstairs and the stairway was too small.

The sirens were getting closer.

The downstairs level was bright, lit by natural light streaming in through windows that probably matched the enormity of the ones upstairs. He made a quick decision and bolted out the front door and took a right.

Rapidly he moved along the bright front of the house to the south side and paused. Pistol at the ready, he turned the corner. No one was there, so he stalked his way down the slope, slippery with dried pine needles, to the rear of the house.

Wind chimes were swaying and clanging from the underside of the rear deck, the trees moaning and creaking.

He stopped and peeked around the corner and saw no one. Edging his way to the first window, he peered inside and saw the blue fabric again. It was a hanging drape fluttering on the wind which streamed in through an open sliding glass door.

The music was louder now, a steady urban beat playing through tiny top-of-the-line speakers mounted in the corners on the underside of the deck.

He could see everything inside. It was a recreation room, one he had heard plenty about from Jack on many occasions. There was a pool table, and a pinball machine, and two couches with a large flat screen television, and framed European landscapes hanging on the walls.

Wolf stood a full minute staring inside the window, and all the while the sirens were growing in volume over the howling wind, until they were right outside the front of the house.

There was still no movement inside. Nobody fleeing. Nobody spooked by the ruckus outside the house.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

Wolf answered. “Yeah.”

“Where are you?” Deputy Tom Rachette said. “Why aren’t you on your radio?”

“I shut it off. I’m at the rear of the house. I want you to stay out front. I’ll be right there.”

“Are you inside?”

“I’m going to come out the front door. If there’s someone else in here I’ll probably flush them out.”

Wolf pocketed his phone and walked to the screen door. Covering his hand with his shirt he slid it open and walked inside.

The music was louder still in here, and he walked to the stereo and poked the power button with his knuckle, plunging the room into silence.

Once again he stood motionless, listening to the wind outside and the clanging of window coverings throughout the basement. They were the sounds of a hastily abandoned house—a house whose owner had stepped out with every intention of returning, but got sidetracked with a gunshot to the head and back and never returned.

After a quick sweep of the downstairs, he returned upstairs and repeated his sweep of the rest of the house and came out the front door.

Deputies Heather Patterson and Tom Rachette were behind the hood of their SUV with pistols trained on Wolf when he walked outside.

They relaxed and pointed their guns skyward.

“All clear.” Wolf’s voice echoed through the trees, along with another approaching siren. He took his radio off his duty belt, turned it on, and pushed the button. “I’m looking at a pistol discarded right here in the bush next to the front porch.”

Wolf stepped off the cement porch and down the walkway to the beginning of the dirt. “I see four sets of footprints here. They go all the way to the body. And you can see Cassidy’s prints there. And mine.”

Patterson was scribbling in a notebook and nodding.

“Off to your left,” Wolf pointed, “I saw fresh vehicle tracks.”

Wolf stepped back to the porch and walked along the front of the house, then skirted the tree to his deputies. “Looks like two gunshot wounds. One to the head, one to the back. No brass,” Wolf said.

Rachette leaned on his elbows on the hood. “Anything else?”

Wolf clipped the radio back on his duty belt when he got nearer. “Probably a lot else. A bunch of bones in the garage.”

“Bones in the garage?” Rachette’s eyes were wide with alarm.

“Like fossils. Animal bones.”

“Oh.”

The revving engine and roaring tires of the second department SUV drew their gazes down the dirt road. The driver kept his foot on the gas until the last second, at which point he mashed the brake and began a long slide that ended with a rocking vehicle buried in an explosion of dust.

“Easy turbo,” Rachette said. “My God this guy.”

Deputy Patterson had ignored the chaos behind her and stood rock still looking at Ryan Frost’s corpse. Her Colorado sky blue eyes were hard, unblinking, all business and forensic science. She pulled a stray strand of her shoulder length auburn hair behind her ear and looked at Wolf for the first time. “Ryan Frost you said? This was Cassidy’s father? Jack’s girlfriend?”

Wolf nodded.

She shook her head.

Rachette walked to them and pulled off his SBCSD ball cap, revealing a brand new buzz cut of his blond hair underneath. Wiping his forehead he said, “Damn. It’s hotter than Satan’s nacho farts out here.” He pushed his tongue against a wad of chewing tobacco in his lip and spit on the ground.

Patterson twisted her face. “Why don’t you show a little respect?” She gestured to Frost’s body and then to Wolf.

Rachette shrugged and looked at Wolf. “What?”

“That’s Jack’s girlfriend’s father.”

Rachette mouthed the words silently, and then looked at Wolf. “Shit. Sorry.”

Deputies Barker and Hernandez thumped closed their car doors and emerged from the cloud of dust.

Deputy Greg Barker was in front as was his alpha nature, trotting at three-quarters of a sprint. At six foot one, he was muscular with freckled white skin and red hair and moved like a track star. “Sorry sir, we were up at mile marker 137 for the 10-32. Five cars.”

“So I heard,” Wolf said. “You guys got here fast.”

Deputy Jon Hernandez approached with thumbs hooked on his belt, his eyes fixed behind them at Ryan Frost’s body as well. He let out a whistle through his teeth, mumbled a quick sentence in Spanish and crossed himself.

Soft from eating his wife’s meals, but certainly fit enough to make Wolf’s squad, Hernandez was short, an inch taller than Rachette, but had a large personality that everyone had warmed to. Everyone save Barker. Warm feelings and Barker seemed to never go in the same sentence.

Barker stood shaking his head, hands on his hips as he craned his neck to see behind Wolf. His blue eyes were wide and his chest heaved. “Damn.”

Wolf stared back at the swirl of shoe prints in the dirt. A thought knocked the wind out him. He remembered one of the shoe prints behind the body had been about Wolf’s size. They had a diamond tread pattern, and Wolf knew the tread pattern were Converse All-Stars. That was a young person’s shoe, and a tall, young person at that. Wolf knew a tall, young person intimately.

“Sir?” Patterson asked.

“Boss?” Rachette asked. “What’s the matter?”

“Let’s get to work. Patterson, get the camera and start processing the body. Hernandez and Barker, I want you two inside. Is Lorber on his way?”

She nodded. “Yep. He’ll be a few minutes with his team.”

“Rachette, secure the scene. Set up the tape a good hundred yards up the road. I don’t want …” Wolf let his sentence die at the sound of popping tires. A truck was easing down the road toward them.

“Who’s that?” Hernandez asked.

Wolf shielded his eyes and stepped toward it. “I don’t know.”

The truck rumbled at an idle, the tires crackling as it approached at no more than a few miles an hour.

When Wolf put his hand on his pistol the truck skidded to a stop. When the truck skidded to a stop Wolf pulled his pistol and held it pointing at the ground in front of him.

It was impossible for Wolf to see inside the windshield with the glare, but whoever was inside was no dummy. Two arms thrust out the open driver’s window, palms out.

“Don’t shoot!” A voice said, barely audible behind the diesel engine. One hand disappeared and the engine shut off and the truck rocked in place, and then the open hand appeared again. “Don’t shoot!”

Wolf stepped sideways to the edge of the woods to get a view inside the driver’s window, keeping his pistol at the ready.

The man fumbled with the door, trying to open it from the outside. It was locked so he had to reach back inside to unlock it, then he opened it and spilled out.

Wolf saw a shiny leather loafer first, and then a man stumbled out from the behind the truck door. In that moment he also saw that the passenger seat and the rest of the extended cab appeared to be empty.

“Hi,” the man said with a disarming smile. “Scott Levenworth. Please don’t shoot me.”

The man was in his early fifties. His hair was wavy gray, full and swept back like he was sitting in a wind tunnel set on low speed. He wore a snap button cowboy shirt rolled to the elbows, revealing tanned arms adorned with multiple rings on his fingers, a gold watch on one wrist, and a gold bracelet on the other.

His teeth gleamed in the sun like they were under a black light. “Can I put my hands down now deputy?”

Wolf twirled his finger. “What are you doing here Mr. Levenworth?”

The man closed his door and put both hands on the hood of his pickup.

Wolf frisked him quickly and thoroughly, checking the waistline which was wrapped with a handmade leather belt and large buckle. The man’s cologne was thick.

“You can turn around.” Wolf holstered his gun and backed up.

Scott Levenworth had lost his smile. Replacing it was a puzzled look. He kept glancing toward Wolf’s squad of detectives, who stood staring back at the new visitor.

“My God,” Levenworth said. “They killed him?”

Chapter 3

Wolf stared at the man, waiting for more words out of his mouth that never came.

“Who’s they?” Wolf asked.

The man said nothing, still staring at the corpse.

“Who?” Wolf asked.

Levenworth blinked and snapped to attention. “What?”

“You said ‘they’ killed him. Who are ‘they’?”

The man’s eyes were drawn to the corpse, which seemed to override his ability to speak.

“Sir, why don’t you start by showing me your driver’s license.”

The man dug out his wallet and produced his ID, which was an Arizona driver’s license that said he was the man he said he was: Scott Levenworth. Then he produced a business card, which had a raised gold symbol, an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch in its claws, which Wolf recognized as the Great Seal of the United States. The black writing said Scott Levenworth, United States Senator. Apparently he was a Senator of the state of Arizona, because it said so right there on the card.

“Senator?” Wolf asked.

Senator Levenworth nodded absently.

Wolf stepped between the Senator and the view of the body, and Levenworth focused on him as if for the first time.

“What are you doing here, Senator?”

“I’m here to pick up the bones I bought from Ryan Frost.”

Wolf remembered the scene inside the garage. “The bones?”

“The fossils.”

“And what kind of fossils are we talking about here?”

“Dinosaur fossils.”

Things were coming back to Wolf. Cassidy had once come to dinner with Jack at the house, and she had mentioned her father was “into” fossils. Wolf had not known that being into fossils meant he was selling them.

“Ryan Frost ran a business selling fossils?”

Levenworth raised his eyebrows and nodded. “He’s a big deal in the fossil trade industry.”

Wolf nodded.

He apparently looked confused because Levenworth said, “The company is called Ancient Acquisitions. He’s kind of a legend in some circles. A broker who sources bones for buyers. Has a fancy website, has booths at all the big trade shows, but I think he does everything out of his home here. As far as I know he’s a one man operation.”

Wolf nodded again. “You said … you asked if they killed him when you drove up. Please, tell me who you are referring to.”

“I guess I meant the sellers of the bones. Frost is the broker, I’m the end buyer.”

“The sellers?”

Senator Levenworth stared at the ground in deep thought. His breathing was going shallow.

“Senator.”

“It makes sense. They wanted all the money up front.” Levenworth shook his head. “They probably took the money. Hell, they probably kept the bones. Gah! Dammit. I knew I shouldn’t have …” Levenworth turned and rubbed his face.

Wolf thought again about the small set of footprints that ran up to Ryan Frost’s body. He remembered the shaky voice of Cassidy on the phone. “Senator, I need you to start making sense.”

“Yeah, sorry. I gave Ryan Frost a million dollars last week.”

Wolf raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know it was possible to even get that kind of cash in this day and age.”

Levenworth chuckled. “It’s tricky from a bank, but I didn’t get it from a bank. I had it.”

They locked eyes for a few seconds, listening to the howling treetops and the ticking pickup truck.

“I need you to come down to the station and tell us everything.”

Levenworth looked back toward the house. “Yeah. Okay, sure.”

“Barker,” Wolf said into the radio.

“Sir.”

“Please come over here.”

Barker strode over, his small eyes volleying between Wolf and the senator as he neared. “Sir?”

“This is Senator Levenworth. He’s here because he had a business transaction scheduled with Ryan Frost. Please escort him to the station—”

“I know where it is, deputy,” Levenworth said.

Wolf turned to Levenworth. “I still would like my deputy to escort you. I’ll be in shortly. At that time I’d like to take your statement personally.”

Levenworth’s eyes narrowed for a second, as if he rarely took orders from anyone. With a sideways smile he said, “Yeah. Okay.”

Chapter 4

An hour and a half later Wolf pulled into the Sluice-Byron County building parking lot and shut off the engine. Stepping out, the asphalt gave off so much heat he felt it on his chin.

He could scarcely remember feeling so hot in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This was a place that fogged breath most mornings, even in mid-August, and now it felt like the deserts of Arizona.

Stepping through the automatic doors and into the building was like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator. He weaved his way through the shiny halls past the administrative offices, past men and women he had never met but knew by sight. There was a lot of that in Rocky Points nowadays. The locals had been overrun by another set of locals to the south. That went for here in the building, the sheriff’s department upstairs, the bars and taverns in town, and everything else in between.

The town was still Rocky Points, getting a modern update in most places, but still quaint despite a few more people. It was easy enough for Wolf to get used to. But the county building was something else altogether. Because besides the onset of hypothermia, whenever Wolf entered the place he also felt like he was entering a city. The fast pace, the suits and ties, the politics, the bureaucracy, was overbearing.

Wolf walked past the terrazzo stairway that led to the Sheriff’s department and went to the front reception area.

Jack, Cassidy, and Nate were sitting in chairs in a nook near the windows. Jet was lying next to Cassidy’s chair on his side, his chest heaving up and down as he slept.

Jack stared at a muted television on the wall playing baseball highlights and Cassidy sat next to him staring through the carpet.

Wolf nodded to Tammy behind the desk. She stayed in her chair but nodded back to Wolf with a reassuring close of her eyes. Wolf had spoken to her earlier for an update and she had assured him she’d do all she could to keep Cassidy comfortable, and Wolf never doubted Tammy’s word.

Nate rose from his chair and walked over. “Hey.”

“How’s she doing?” Wolf asked quietly.

“She’s in bad shape.”

Cassidy stared at Wolf with an unblinking gaze. By the looks of her sunken red eyes, she was cried out and numb, sitting in a whole other dimension.

“What about her mother? Have you asked where she is?”

Nate nodded. “I talked to her earlier on Cassidy’s phone. She’s sitting at the airport in Sacramento. She was at some health food conference.”

Wolf nodded. Cassidy’s mother was the owner of Mountain Organics Market, which was commonly referred to as “MOM’s” by the locals.

“She said her flight comes in tonight to DIA. It was the earliest one she could get. I wrote down the flight number.” Nate dug in his pocket and produced a wadded piece of paper and handed it to him.

Wolf took it. “Thanks.”

“Ryan took her to Denver to catch the flight yesterday and was supposed to go pick her up from the airport tomorrow night, so she has no ride back here tonight.”

Wolf nodded. “I’ll go get her.”

Nate stared at him and shook his head. “I don’t know how you do this shit.” He glanced over his shoulder at Cassidy. “You got any leads on who did this? We gotta be on the lookout for some psycho running around? My house is less than a mile from theirs.”

“We’re not sure yet, but it looks work related. I’d keep the gun handy, that’s for sure.”

Jack was scooted way forward in his chair, his legs crossed out in front of him, arm around Cassidy.

Wolf slid his gaze to Jack’s shoes, which were of the low-top hiking type with athletic tread on bottom. Perfect for camping, he supposed. The tread was chunky, varying geometric patterns. No diamonds.

Now that he was staring at his son in the flesh, he realized Jack didn’t wear Converse shoes. Never had. Even during his skateboard years. He remembered the old pair of Vans that had disintegrated off Jack’s feet, and then—yes—it had been another pair of Vans that he’d wanted after that, and Wolf had bought them. It had been a whole thing with Sarah about who was going to go with Jack to buy them.

Vans had a universal tread pattern as well, but they were tiny diamonds, or crisscrossing lines, or … hexagons? Octagons? Whatever the pattern, it was completely different than what he’d seen next to Ryan Frost’s dead body.

Why was he still convincing himself?

“…my house.”

Wolf looked at Nate. “What?”

“I said her brother is on his way up from Blue Mesa reservoir. I can take them all to my house when he shows. This is no place for them to be hanging out all day.”

“Did they take her statement?”

Nate nodded. “Yeah. Munford took it. I was there.”

Wolf took his hat off and walked to Cassidy.

Jack pulled his feet in and she stared up with hopeless glassy eyes. Jet stretched and groaned, then resumed his deep sleep.

“I’m sorry, Cassidy,” Wolf said.

She swallowed and blinked.

“I just wanted you to know I’ll go pick up your mother from the airport tonight.”

She nodded.

“I hear your brother is on his way. When he gets here, Nate has offered to put you guys up for the night, or however long.”

Nate nodded and sat down. “We talked about it.”

Cassidy sniffed and closed her eyes and leaned on Jack’s shoulder, and then it looked like she went instantly to sleep.

Chapter 5

Wolf made his way to the third floor via the stairs and walked down the long hallway, not bothering to stop at his office, which was one of a string of four along the west side of the building.

With a good view of Main Street below and plenty of space, it was a dramatic improvement over his last office, but he spent little time there. Just like the rest of the building, the space made him want to be out.

Past the offices and through the cathedral-interior-like squad room—with its maze of desks, swarm of deputies, rumbling discussions that echoed off the vaulted ceiling—the Sheriff’s office was on the west side.

A large cube, enclosed in glass on four sides, one side being the exterior windows, the sheriff’s office architectural design apparently had a psychology behind it. MacLean seemed to embrace it, because he liked to keep the blinds open to impress upon his deputies that he was an accessible leader, transparent in his actions. Or so Wolf had heard him declare once to a county council member.

Not now, though. Right now the wooden blinds were closed. Over the chatter and bustle of deputies Wolf heard the bellow of MacLean’s laugh, and someone else inside coughing as if choking on liquid.

Wolf went to the heavy wood door and knocked just below the gold plaque that said Sheriff William MacLean.

The knob twisted and MacLean peered out. “Oh, there you are.”

He pulled open the door and walked back to his desk. “Come in.”

Wolf followed him in and closed the door behind him. When he turned around Senator Levenworth was sitting across the desk from MacLean, sipping a cup of coffee. Next to him was Deputy Barker, who sat with crossed legs, smothering a smile against his own cup of coffee.

Barker spilled on his chin and stood, then took up position next to Wolf.

“Take a seat with us,” MacLean said landing in his own leather chair, which hissed underneath him.

“No thanks. I’ll stand.” Wolf gave a sideways glance at Deputy Barker.

“You mind freshening this?” Senator Levenworth held up his empty cup. It was unclear whom he spoke to.

Wolf and Barker stared at it for a second, and then Barker stepped forward and grabbed it.

“I’ll take that deputy,” Wolf said.

Barker paused. “Wh—are you sure?”

Wolf grabbed it from Barker’s hand and left the office.

“Two sugars, please,” Levenworth said before the door clacked shut.

Wolf went out to the squad room and walked to the kitchenette counter area where the coffee maker was. He swirled the meager contents of the beaker and poured it into a Styrofoam cup, filling it a third of the way.

“Sir.”

He turned and leaned back at the closeness of the voice. It was Deputy Barker.

“Hey,” Wolf said. He reached over to the water tap and turned on the hot water.

“Sir, I feel I need to fill you in on who Senator Levenworth is.”

The water was scalding in less than five seconds; like the refrigerator-like air conditioning, it was a nice modern feature of the brand new multi-million dollar county building.

“Looks like he’s a friend of yours,” Wolf said, filling the rest of the cup with the water.

Barker blushed, and then frowned. “Uh … you’re just going to fill up the cup with water?”

“No.” Wolf ripped two packets of sugar and poured them in.

Barker grabbed a red plastic stirrer and held it out to Wolf.

Wolf ignored it and walked past him.

Barker stepped next to him. “He’s the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee for the Senate. Or the Senate Appropriations Committee, or whatever it’s called.”

Wolf slowed. “So what?”

“So … that’s the committee that basically controls the federal money. And he’s the head honcho.”

Wolf blinked.

“I’m just saying. We need to be delicate with this guy.”

“Thanks for the heads up.”

“Yes sir.”

Wolf walked back to MacLean’s office with Barker in tow.

“Here you are,” Wolf handed the cup to Levenworth.

The Senator furrowed his brow and swirled the contents of the cup.

“Here you go, sir.” Barker held out the red stirrer.

“Thank you, Greg.”

Wolf cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what you’ve already told the Sheriff and Deputy Barker here, but—”

“Everything.” Levenworth took a sip of his cup.

“But I’m the Chief Detective of this department, and I’d like to hear it all again. Let’s start with where you were last night.”

Levenworth took his time with another sip of coffee water, then smacked his lips and frowned, like it was the worst tasting thing he’d ever had. “Like I told the Sheriff, who has since confirmed, I was at my residence in DC. I had a committee meeting yesterday. I flew in to Eagle Airport this morning and drove down to Rocky Points immediately after landing. You can confirm with the aviation company, the pilots, the stewardess … especially the stewardess”—he bounced his eyebrows—“you can confirm with the Senate Appropriations Committee members. That enough?”

MacLean leaned forward in his chair. “Detective Wolf, he’s right, we have checked on everything.”

Wolf gave MacLean a lingering look. “Can you discuss this deal, this fossil deal, in a little more detail please?”

“I purchased some fossils from Mr. Frost. I was here to collect my bones.”

“And take them where?”

“To my home in Flagstaff.”

“In the back of … whose truck are you driving at the moment?”

“My own. I keep it at my Beaver Creek residence.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay. These bones cost you a million dollars. You were just going to put them in the uncovered bed of your pickup truck?”

“They’re encased in casting material. The drive wouldn’t hurt them any.”

“Ah.” Wolf took off his hat and scratched his hair. “I’m still confused about the terms of this deal. I don’t see how you could just give Ryan Frost a million dollars and trust him to deliver on his end of the bargain. Wouldn’t you rather use some sort of escrow service, or something? A non-cash mode of payment? To get some sort of guarantee you won’t get ripped off in the end?”

Levenworth smiled and stared at Wolf for a beat. “It was the terms the seller wanted. If I wouldn’t have done it, there’re a hundred other people who would have.”

“Really? A hundred other people could come up with a million dollars cash?”

Levenworth shrugged. “Who’s to say?”

“And you said you ‘had’ this money.”

“Meaning it was not a withdrawal from my bank. I had the reserves in my own private vault at home.”

Wolf pulled the corners of his mouth down and nodded. “Was that part of the terms? That the money would not have a Treasury department trace attached to it?”

Levenworth stared at Wolf for a few seconds then smiled. “Do I need to get my lawyer in here, Sheriff?”

“No,” MacLean said. “I don’ think that’s necessary at all. Do you, Detective Wolf?”

Wolf held up a hand. “So you trusted Ryan Frost with this money?”

“Yes.”

“But you had to trust the seller to deliver on his end.”

Levenworth shrugged. “I trusted Ryan Frost. The digger? He sent photo proof of everything. All the merchandise was accounted for in photographs. I had no reason to doubt Frost. He was my escrow service. The guy’s foundation is his word.”

“Can I see these photographs?”

Levenworth pulled out his phone and pecked at the screen. “I’ve already sent these photographs to your Sheriff.”

“I’ve sent them on to you already, Dave,” MacLean said.

Wolf nodded, and then Levenworth stood up and came next to Wolf shoulder to shoulder, angling the screen so Wolf could see.

“You can see here, these are at the dig site.”

The first picture was an exposed bone, looking like it was dug out, but not yet removed from where it was discovered. It was stone colored with a web of surface cracks, and had two bulbous mounds on either end. Next to it was a tape measure pulled out and laid down on the ground.

“A leg bone?” Wolf asked. He’d seen plenty X-rays of his own leg in the last year. “A femur?”

“Very good. The femur.”

Wolf shifted his weight, feeling a dull ache in his right leg—a nagging symptom from his cracked femur he’d suffered during his fall at Cold Lake.

Levenworth swiped to the next photo. It was of a group of smaller bones laid on a dirty cloth.

“Proximal phalanges, middle phalanges … hand bones. You can see the claws.”

He started swiping through them faster now. “Like I said, you guys have all these photos now.”

“Wait, stop. Go to that last one.”

Levenworth swiped back. “One of the ribs.”

Wolf was more concerned with the footprint in the dirt next to it. It had the identical diamond pattern from the crime scene.

“Thanks,” Wolf said stepping back.

Levenworth sat down.

“Do you know where these bones were … exhumed?”

“Somewhere in northwest Colorado. That’s all I know.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “Is this a legitimate deal?”

Levenworth’s eyes went cold.

“It’s a valid question Senator. You say the bones are from northwestern Colorado. Last time I checked the majority of land up there where they were pulling out dinosaur fossils was a place called Dinosaur National Monument. I would say it’s gotta be against some federal laws to dig up a fossil specimen from there and sell it.”

“It was found on private property. Well outside the boundaries of the National Monument.”

“I thought you said they were exhumed ‘somewhere in northwest Colorado,’ and that’s all you knew.”

MacLean started rubbing his eyes.

Levenworth gave a conceding hand gesture and nod. “Yes, okay. I was told it was private property, away from the Monument. Clearly, with the nature of my job I was concerned about that. Ryan Frost gave me his word. He said he had proof and he could provide it if need be.”

“And he didn’t show you this proof?”

“He’s a broker. He takes a ten to twenty percent cut of the purchase price. I understood his motives to keep the location secret and I didn’t press. Like I say, I trusted him, but I guess he didn’t trust me. Didn’t want me going straight to the seller and cutting him out.”

Wolf let the information settle in his brain for a few seconds. “And, if I may ask, what’s in it for you? A centerpiece in your living room?”

Levenworth chuckled and splayed his hands, like he’d been waiting for someone to ask him the question. “In 2010, a female Allosaurus Fragilis that a team found in Wyoming was sold at auction in Paris for $1.8 million.”

MacLean whistled softly and leaned back in his chair.

“That specimen was considered to be seventy percent complete.” Levenworth twisted a ring on his finger, “this one is seventy-five. At least. And larger.”

MacLean chuckled softly. “That sounds like a payday.”

Levenworth sipped his coffee and shrugged.

“Back to the terms of the deal,” Wolf said. “You were supposed to pick up the bones this morning. When were the bones supposed to be delivered?”

“Frost told me they were going to be delivered yesterday—Sunday. Hence my timeframe of flying in and picking them up this morning.”

“Who else knew about this deal?”

Levenworth pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Hell, I don’t know. I assume the seller had a team. You don’t just dig up a specimen like that alone. Let’s see, then, maybe Frost’s wife? Anyone else he told … his family? I haven’t told anyone else, except for my wife and a contact I have at the auction house in Paris … but I really didn’t get into specifics of what I had with that contact, other than letting him know I was going to be bringing something big. You know, whet his appetite.”

“You tell any friends in DC?”

He laughed. “Friends? Ha!”

MacLean hissed a laugh through his teeth.

“No, I didn’t tell anyone in Washington. I’ve learned to keep my personal affairs private with those jackals.” He smiled at MacLean, just like a jackal, Wolf thought.

“Anything that struck you as odd about the deal? I mean, other than having to put up a million cash, unsecured?”

Levenworth eyed Wolf for a second, like he was trying to figure out if Wolf was needling him or not, then said, “I guess the secretive nature of the whole find was odd to me. I swear, I really was vigilant in making sure the bones came from private property. Because usually, in the fossil circles, a find like this becomes big news fast. People often like to shout from the highest mountain that they’ve found what they have, especially if they’re looking to sell it. I mean, why not call in the newspapers, get some news crews in there? Get some buzz going? It did strike me as odd.” He shrugged.

After a few seconds of silence MacLean slapped a rhythm on his desk. “Well? I think you’ve been a great help, sir. We thank you.”

“And we’d appreciate it if you stayed available,” Wolf said.

Levenworth nodded. “I’m going to stick around for a few days, see how this pans out.”

Wolf nodded. “There is one more thing, Senator.”

“What’s that?”

“It looks like the worst-case scenario happened with your money. I’m sorry, but we didn’t find it.”

The Senator looked unfazed. “I’m not interested in the money.”

Wolf nodded. “I understand. We didn’t find the bones either.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry.”

Levenworth recovered with a convincing smile. “Well, I hear you’re the best. I have no doubt you’ll find them.”

Wolf nodded. “I have no doubt I’ll find the killers either.”

Levenworth hesitated, and then nodded with closed eyes. “Of course. Of course.”

Wolf walked out the door and left it open behind him.

Barker’s squeaking shoes trailed behind Wolf into the squad room.

“What’s next?” Barker asked.

Wolf turned around and eyed Barker. The Sergeant Deputy was the senior most ranking deputy on Wolf’s squad, appointed to the team by MacLean without any input from Wolf.

Wolf still remembered meeting Deputy Greg Barker for the first time. It had been down in Byron County, when it was still the stand-alone Byron County and not merged with Sluice. Barker had been on crime scene log duty, standing with his clipboard, a satisfied grin on his beady-eyed face when Wolf had needed to leave and an ambulance had locked him into his parking spot.

The image of Greg Barker getting ultimate pleasure at Wolf’s misfortune, though how temporary and dumb the misfortune had been, was locked in his mind. In that single shit-eating grin, Wolf had read the man like a Where’s Waldo book. The man was a climber—ready to step on anyone in the process to get where he wanted to go.

“What is it sir?” Barker asked, his face twisted in what looked like mock confusion.

Wolf had a suspicion his detective was thinking about that exact same moment now too.

“Nothing.”

MacLean stepped out of his office, shut the door behind him, and waved Wolf to the windows. “I need to speak to you.”

Barker took the hint and meandered away through the desks.

Wolf and MacLean stepped to the windows overlooking Main Street three stories down.

The stop sign swayed below. People on the sidewalks leaned into the raging air. The pine trees bent and thrashed.

“Damn, something’s rolling in,” MacLean said.

Wolf said nothing.

MacLean put his hand on Wolf’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know this is a particularly tough one. Cassidy’s dad and all.”

Wolf nodded.

“I saw her and Jack downstairs. Did you see them?”

“Yeah.”

They stared outside for a few seconds, and then MacLean looked back at his office. Senator Levenworth was apparently staying a while longer.

“I know what you’re going to tell me,” Wolf said.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. You’ve got your nose so far up the Senator’s ass it’s not hard to figure out.”

MacLean squared off. “One of these days you’re going to learn some respect. Just because you’ve been sheriff once doesn’t mean you are now.”

“The bones weren’t there,” Wolf said. “And even if we find them in the course of this investigation they’re going to be held in evidence for a long time.”

MacLean stood silent.

Wolf looked over his shoulder toward the office. “This guy’s a crook. He’s paying with untraceable bills, all cash? He knows the source of these bones is suspect. And you’re going to help him get his hands on them?”

MacLean made a wishy-washy gesture but said nothing.

“What? You really think this guy can help you with re-election in three years?”

MacLean snorted. “You think he can’t? You’re lucky I took this job. You wouldn’t last a single term.”

There was movement and sound on the street below. A young man, early twenties, was marching away from a vehicle that had been parked across the street—illegally. Another man of the same age had gotten out of the passenger side and was jogging after him.

A muffled honk filtered through the glass as a car stopped just short of hitting the lead kid, who didn’t flinch or bother looking.

“I gotta go,” Wolf said.

“Listen,” MacLean grabbed his shoulder, “I just … want to make sure you’re taking front and center on this.”

Wolf glanced over into the squad room, catching Deputy Barker studying their conversation. “What? You don’t want to put your man Barker on this?”

MacLean looked down and hitched up his pants.

“Detective Wolf, please come to reception. Detective Wolf,” Tammy’s voice said over the speaker system.

Wolf left down the hall.

Chapter 6

“Detective Wolf, please come to reception. Detective Wolf.” Tammy said again, this time with a tinge of impatience.

Wolf upped his pace and skipped a stair between steps. When he reached the stairwell door to the first floor he could already hear the furious barking.

Launching into the hall, Wolf sprinted to the lobby.

There was a swarm of men, with their shouts and squeaking shoes, and Jet barking on the perimeter, searching for an entrance into the mayhem between tangled legs.

Cassidy’s brother had arrived.

“Hey!” Wolf shouted.

Jet flung saliva into the air off his bared fangs as he barked.

“Jet! Heel!”

Jet went quiet, backed up and sat.

Wolf sprinted to the center of the chaos, peeling Jack and Nate’s arms off. Jack saw Wolf and backed away, but Nate stayed in close.

Amid the sweat and adrenaline, the stench of alcohol was strong.

Keegan’s eyes were wild, his lips drooling, teeth bared.

“What the fuck did you say?” He yelled at Nate.

Nate shook his head and backed away, slapping at Keegan’s hand to let go of his t-shirt.

“Stop it, Keegan!” Cassidy screamed at the top of her lungs.

The room went silent.

Keegan looked like he was punched between the eyes. He swallowed and panted, staring at Cassidy.

“Stop,” she said.

“Is it true?” Keegan asked her.

Cassidy stepped to her brother and hugged him around the arms.

“Is it true?” The young man stood motionless, staring past them all for a few seconds, and then he dropped his head and racked with sobs.

Wolf locked eyes with the second man who had come in with Keegan. He looked early twenties, straight out of a sleeping bag and into the car for a few hours—and he looked dumbstruck. His pupils were pinpricks, eyes frozen open.

Wolf walked to him, grabbed him by the sides of his head with both hands and pulled him close, taking a big sniff of his breath. “You been drinking?”

“Last night,” the kid said.

“And him?” Wolf thumbed toward Keegan Frost.

“Last night.”

Must have been some kegger.

“Where?”

“Blue Mesa. The reservoir.”

“Where do you live?”

“Off fifth. Fifth and Wildflower.”

“Walk home.”

Wolf walked up behind Keegan and squeezed his front pockets. “Give me your keys.”

Keegan let go of his sister and twisted violently, just missing Wolf with a flying elbow.

Wolf locked one of Keegan’s muscular arms behind his back and pushed him into the corner.

Keegan fought but Wolf had him solidly. He put his lips to Keegan’s ear. “You need to calm down and give me your keys. You’re in the sheriff’s department and reek of beer. Now I said I want your keys. Got that?”

Keegan’s body slackened and he nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

Wolf held tight for another few seconds and then let go.

They bounced apart, and Keegan faced him and wiped his lips. He dug into his pocket and tossed Wolf the keys.

Wolf caught them and flung them at Nate in one motion. “Can you move that to a proper spot?”

Nate wiped his nose and nodded. “Yeah.”

Keegan looked like the fight had left him now, and he searched the room for his sister again. Without another word he stumbled to her and hugged her tight.

Nate looked like he was going to leave, then hesitated and walked to Wolf. “You all right?”

“Yeah. You?”

Nate nodded.

“You going to talk to him? Take some sort of statement?” Nate asked.

“Not right now.”

“Okay. I’m going to take them to my house. And you don’t have to worry about Jack. I’ll take him to my house and give him a ride home if he needs it.”

“Thanks.”

“And you?”

Wolf shrugged. “I’ll go pick up Trudy Frost and get back to work on this thing.”

They stared one another down for a few seconds. Nate broke first and looked at his feet, and then he scratched his chin. A classic I-want-to-say-something Nate gesture.

“What?”

“I could take Jet … but …”

Wolf waited for the rest of the sentence, then understood. “But Kenny’s allergic.” Kenny was Nate’s youngest of three sons, and the allergy was no joke. “Okay.”

“I could just put him outside. It would be no trouble.”

Wolf shook his head. “No. I’ll keep him here and take him back to my house later.”

“You sure?” Nate asked.

“Let’s go Jet.” Wolf looked around the room.

Jet was already by the bank of elevators sitting patiently.

“Huh.” Wolf smiled without mirth. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

Chapter 7

“Jeffrey Green, professor of paleontology at the University of Utah,” Patterson’s high-pitched voice echoed through the amphitheater squad room. “He was using his University email account to communicate with Frost.”

Wolf stood at the front of the situation room. The polar opposite of the tiny one he’d been used to for over a decade, this room could seat sixty, with rows that climbed up at a twenty-degree angle. He also knew the room could fill up to capacity and beyond, because twice he’d spoken to the entire department, and both times the room had been packed like the ski resort parking lot on New Year’s Eve.

He had since gotten used to the whole feeling, and besides, there were only a few of them. The only discomfort he felt now was in his nose from the billowing smell coming from Jet’s butt.

Wolf walked to the bank of windows on the east side and pulled up the blinds. The panoramic view of the mountains to the east was brightly lit by the late afternoon sun. He opened two windows a foot and took a greedy inhale of the fresh air.

Patterson clicked a mouse button on her laptop and a website for the University of Utah paleontology department flashed on the giant screen at the front of the room.

After a few more clicks there was a bio on the projector screen. The heading said Professor Jeffrey Green, PhD.

In the photo, Professor Green wore round, black-framed glasses that that hid the color of his eyes behind a white glare. His mouth was small and his smile puckered, only a few crooked upper teeth showing. Hair greasy and black, it was in stark contrast to his white skin, and it was combed straight to the side to try and cover a prominent bald spot on the top of his small head.

“Harry Potter did not age well,” Rachette said.

Hernandez and Dr. Lorber laughed, and Rachette leaned back in his chair with a satisfied smile.

Patterson clicked her laptop mouse and an email came up. “According to this email, Green was due to deliver the bones to Ryan Frost last night at 8:00 pm.”

Hernandez’s mustache stretched in a smile. “Such a smart woman. If you could cook like my wife, then you would be fighting me off.”

“Down boy,” Rachette said.

Jet lifted his head off the floor and looked at Rachette.

“Not you. You stop farting. My god, what is Jack feeding this animal?”

“It’s a common gastro-intestinal disorder with German Shepherds,” Dr. Lorber, the county Chief Medical Examiner said. “Especially those that have gotten on in age. You need to put him on, and keep him on, proper medicine.”

“Thanks, everyone,” Wolf said aloud. “Can we get started?”

“We have fourteen exchanges back and forth between Professor Green and Ryan Frost,” Patterson said.

“Professor Green?” A voice came from the doorway at the back of the room. It was MacLean with Undersheriff Wilson behind him.

MacLean sauntered in and wrinkled his nose, then sat down.

Wilson nodded to Wolf and Patterson and sat quietly with a notepad and paper.

“It’s the dog,” Rachette said when MacLean looked at him.

“Sure it is.” MacLean pointed at the big screen. “Who’s Professor Green?”

“Professor Green works at the University of Utah,” Patterson repeated. “He’s been there eleven years according to his bio, and he teaches a few classes in the paleontology department on Jurassic Fauna.”

“Jurassic fauna?” MacLean asked. “Animals?”

She nodded.

“Why don’t they just say that?” MacLean asked.

Rachette nodded. “That’s what I said.”

MacLean ignored Rachette and blinked.

“When ... we found out it was Professor Green,” Patterson said, “I took the liberty of checking his financial records, and according to his credit card statements he rented a UrMover truck from Windfield, Colorado, two days ago—Saturday afternoon—at 12:25 pm.”

“Windfield is south of Dinosaur National Monument,” Rachette said. “I’ve been there.”

“And?” MacLean asked.

Rachette cleared his throat. “And there’s a dinosaur quarry there.”

MacLean grunted.

“All right,” Wolf said. “So Green presumably exhumed the bones from his dig, which is somewhere near Windfield, Colorado, loaded them up and brought them down to Rocky Points. Has anyone called the university? Talked to the paleontology department?”

Rachette raised a hand. “I called and got nowhere. Everything’s closed on Sundays. But we tracked down Professor Green’s cell number. I called twice and it seems like he has his phone switched off. I didn’t leave any messages at the university or with Professor Green.”

“I’ll take over on the calls,” Wolf said.

“I’ll call the locals,” MacLean said, referring to the local law enforcement in Windfield.

“Keep me in on that,” Wolf said.

MacLean widened his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“Let’s get back to the crime scene,” Wolf said.

Lorber leaned forward. “We have two slugs inside Ryan Frost. Both .38 special.”

“And no brass at the scene,” Wolf said.

Lorber nodded. “So a revolver. But there’s more. Hernandez and Rachette?”

“The nearest neighbor,” Rachette said, “a guy named Bob Tinniker? You know him?”

“He drives ski resort shuttles,” Wilson said.

“And he lives down the hill from Frost,” Rachette said. “He says he heard three gunshots at 8:15 pm last night at dusk. Which was right around sunset time last night. He swears he heard three.”

“But Ryan Frost only sustained two gunshot wounds,” Lorber said.

Wolf nodded.

“‘The gunshots were like pop-pop’,” Rachette was reading from his tiny notepad, “‘and then a minute passed, then there was another shot’. That’s what our witness said. He says it was strange to hear three shots like that, because usually Frost is, quote, ‘blasting off a lot more rounds when he’s practicing shooting’.”

“And the other neighbors?” Wolf asked.

“They didn’t hear anything,” Hernandez said.

Lorber crossed one long leg over the other. “Judging by the proximity of the shots fired into Frost, I’m going to venture the third shot didn’t miss.”

“But there’s no body,” Wolf said.

Lorber splayed his hands.

“Fingerprints?”

Lorber looked at Dr. Blank.

Dr. Blank shook his head.

“The only ones that are coming up are Frost and his family’s,” Patterson said. “It doesn’t look like our two visitors went in the house or touched anything.”

“And the pistol in the bushes?” Wolf asked.

“Kimber TLE II .45 cal,” Hernandez said. “Registered to Ryan Frost. No shots fired. Only prints on the gun are his.”

“What about the tire tracks and footprints?” Wolf asked.

Patterson clicked her computer a few times and pulled up a file with photographs in it.

Clicking on the first picture, a picture came up on the screen with an imprint of a tire tread pattern clearly visible in fine dirt. “This tread is our UrMover truck. Tread pattern matches those on the UrMover Moving truck, according to the file we received from the rental agency.” Patterson was clicking through the photos continuously now. “The tracks that come after it are from a full-sized pickup truck with Goodyear P265/70R17 model tires.”

“That’s specific,” Wolf said.

“Yes. But the bad news is many American made trucks from 2009 to the present have this exact model tire on them straight out of the factory. That includes Chevy, Ram, GMC, and Ford. In fact, half of our vehicles in this department have the same tires on our SUV’s, but sixteen instead of seventeen inch. The only thing we can gather is that we’re looking at a full-sized, American model pickup.”

“Why not a Toyota?” MacLean asked. “Nissan?”

“Because of the wheel spacing.”

“And the shoe prints?” Wolf asked.

Lorber stood up from the half desk chair looking like a giant climbing out of a clown-car. The Medical Examiner stood six foot six inches tall, three inches taller than Wolf, but weighing at least twenty pounds less. A former hippie that had kept the hair as a memento, Lorber stroked his pony tail with one bony hand and pointed at Patterson with the other. “Patty, hit me with the folder I sent you.”

Rachette and Hernandez looked at each other and swallowed smiles.

Patterson clicked and a picture of the driveway came up on the big screen. The photo was taken with a wide-angle lens to get the entire space in the frame.

Lorber produced a laser pointer and swirled a green dot around Ryan Frost’s body. “Here we have Frost, and around him we have five sets of footprints we’re worried about—and one set we’re not, which was Sheriff … uh, sorry, Detective Wolf’s. Next.”

Patterson took her cue and clicked the button.

“Here’s a photo of Cassidy Frost’s shoe prints. Clearly her footprints were left last, as they go on top of the other four in question a number of times. It jives with her story that she found her father this morning, and besides, we’ve established Cassidy was out camping with Jack Wolf,” he looked at Wolf over his frameless spectacles, “your son, last night. Jack also confirmed this in his statement to Deputy Munford.”

Wolf felt heat rising in his face, and when Lorber stared at him for a few seconds Wolf raised an eyebrow.

“Right … so that leaves—next—the other four sets of footprints around the body and the rest of the crime scene. Next,” a picture of the ground, filtered digitally with some effects to highlight the footprints came up, “we have two sets of prints—Converse All Stars sized 16 and work boot of unknown brand sized approximately 10 or 11 walking behind two more sets of footprints.”

“Christ,” MacLean said. “My head’s going to explode.”

Lorber stopped and stared at MacLean. “I don’t …”

Patterson cleared her throat. “I think we could probably skip the exact specifics, and just say it’s clear that two men escorted Ryan Frost and someone else from the front door to the spot we found Frost’s body. We are assuming this someone else with Frost was Professor Green, because of the emails. We know these two in question escorted them, because their footprints go over the top of Frost’s and whoever else was next to him.”

MacLean twirled an impatient finger. “I get it.”

Lorber nodded. “Yes. Right. Thank you Patty. Next.”

A hissing sound pierced the air, like someone was letting air out of a tire, and then Jet lurched awake from a deep sleep, licked his teeth, and then dropped his head to the floor again.

“My God,” MacLean said. “I tell you what. Give me the short version, or a gas mask.”

Lorber backed away from Jet and nodded for Patterson to take over.

Patterson scrunched her nose and clicked the mouse, bringing up some more pictures of treads and shoe prints. “Basically the story goes like this. One man drove in with the UrMover rental truck—a box truck we are assuming was rented by Professor Green from Windfield.

“One set of footprints comes out of the rental truck, and a different set, the Converse All-Stars, goes back in and drives it away. Following the rental truck into the driveway was a full sized pickup truck.” She clicked more. “Converse All-Star and the Work Boot got out of the pickup that followed. We’re reasonably certain that Work Boot got out of the full-sized pickup from the passenger side, then left driving the full-sized pickup truck.”

Wolf nodded, seeing what she was getting at. “And let me guess. Converse All Star leaves driving the UrMover truck instead of the pickup truck.”

“Exactly,” Patterson said.

“So we think Professor Green drove the moving truck in to deliver the bones,” Wolf said, “and it looks like two people followed him in and got out of their truck.”

“Yes,” said Lorber. “But the delivery doesn’t happen. Because there’s a shitload of bones in the garage,” he pointed to Patterson.

Patterson clicked and a picture of the garage interior came up.

Lorber swirled his laser pointer on the screen. “But no Allosaurus Fragilis.”

Patterson clicked her mouse again.

A picture of an empty space on the smooth concrete floor of the garage came up. It was cordoned off with blue masking tape and had a sign that said Allosaurus Fragilis—Levenworth.

“And,” Patterson raised a finger, “that brings me to the most interesting transaction on Professor Green’s credit card. He bought a plane ticket to Buenos Aires, Argentina, scheduled to depart DIA this morning at 8:27 am. Guess who was not on the flight?”

“Professor Green.” Wolf said.

Patterson nodded. “And like we said, he hasn’t returned the moving truck.”

They went silent for a moment.

Lorber folded his arms. “So he’s probably toast, too. These two guys knock on the door with gun raised, force Frost and Green out of the front door by gunpoint. Frost was no dummy, was packing heat, but he didn’t have it drawn and the two culprits made him take it out of his waistband. Had him chuck it in the bushes. Shows that Frost didn’t suspect danger until they pointed their gun. Might be a clue right there. They might have known who was at the door. Didn’t think they were dangerous.”

Patterson nodded. “Two shots for Frost, one shot for Professor Green. They take the cash. They take the bones. They … go somewhere.”

“And where’s Professor Green’s body?” MacLean asked.

Patterson shrugged. “Back of the pickup? Back of the moving truck?”

They went silent for a beat.

“Makes sense,” Rachette said. “Professor Green missed his flight. The rental truck hasn’t been returned.”

Lorber folded his long arms and widened his stance. “We’ve gotta find Professor Green’s dig team. Senator Levenworth was right, he had to have a dig team. And this whole trip to Argentina is fishy. Points to motive.”

“How?” MacLean asked.

“Think about it,” Lorber said. “The dig team had to be in on the bones sale, right?”

“And Professor Green buys a ticket to Argentina,” Patterson said, “due to take off this morning. He’d already decided to take the money and run.”

Rachette shook his head. “That makes no sense. How big and heavy is a million bucks in hundred dollar bills? Like half a dump-truck full?”

Patterson pulled up Google and typed in the question.

“20.4 pounds in bundles of hundreds.”

“Still risky taking it on a plane,” Rachette said. “You’d have to check it in luggage, and hope some airport worker doesn’t steal it. Then, hope you don’t get searched in customs when you land.”

Lorber nodded. “Let’s say he’s willing to take that risk.”

“A big risk,” Rachette said.

Lorber ignored him. “But the dig team figures out what he’s going to do, maybe they come across his plane ticket to Argentina, or whatever. They follow him down here and get the money, and off him.”

“And Ryan Frost,” Wolf said.

They descended into silence again.

“And leave a whole hell of a lot of prints and tracks,” Hernandez said.

Lorber raised a stick finger. “But no trace evidence. No fingerprints. No hair.”

Patterson clicked her mouse and a photo of the UrMover box truck in question came up. “Basic white paint. This is a ten foot model.”

It was scratched and dinged to hell on the sides. There was a black and white logo with a guy winking and giving a thumbs up. Underneath it said UrMover Moving, Windfield, CO, and a phone number was listed.

“I’ve called up north to Brushing PD and Summit County,” Barker said in a voice louder than needed, “the truck hasn’t come up on their radar.”

“And south?” MacLean pressed him.

“Same thing. Nothing found south of Williams Pass. Ashland PD said no. We’ve got a BOLO out everywhere.”

Wolf nodded at Patterson. “You have the credit card transactions for Professor Green. I take it he didn’t purchase gas in the last 24 hours?”

Patterson shook her head.

Wolf split two fingers and pointed at Patterson and Rachette. “You two head out right now and get to the gas stations down south. Retrieve footage.”

Patterson paused for a second, glanced at her watch, then nodded and stood up.

Rachette frowned and looked up at her, like she had agreed to kill someone without an argument.

“Wait,” Wolf said, “I forgot. It’s Sunday night. You have something going on, don’t you?”

“Uh, yeah,” Rachette said, “if you count a bridal shower as something important.”

“It’s no problem,” she said. “This is more important. They’ll understand.”

The room fell still and silent.

Wolf pointed at Hernandez and Barker. “You two go instead.”

“How far south?” Hernandez asked.

“Those UrMover trucks come full to the rim with gas. We know Green didn’t fill up from Windfield down to here. Figure out the distance it could have driven to on the remainder of gas and check all those stations within that circle radius,” Wolf said.

“And what if Professor Green drove down here from Windfield, and then gassed up with cash in town?” Rachette asked with a raised finger. “It could have gone further then we think.”

Hernandez turned to Rachette. “The local gas stations would be within that circle, Einstein.”

Rachette tilted his head. “Oh, yeah.”

“Rachette, you take the local stations. Hernandez and Barker head south. Then we’ll start north tomorrow morning. It’s been a long day, and it’s looking like it’s going to be a long one tomorrow. Do what you can tonight and we’ll get started bright and early tomorrow.”

“What about north?” Rachette asked. “Who’s going to check out this dig team?”

“I am.” Wolf walked up the aisle of the room. “Jet, come.”

“Alone?” Rachette asked.

“I’ll have local support.” He nodded at MacLean to follow him and walked up the aisle of the room.

MacLean stood up and walked after him. “Where are you going now?”

“To the airport to pick up Ryan Frost’s wife.”

“DIA?”

“Yep.”

MacLean followed silently through the doors into the squad room.

“Can you do me a favor?” Wolf asked.

“Shoot.”

“Watch Jet while I’m gone.”

“No.”

Wolf stopped and turned, and Jet did the same.

“Have you smelled him? I’m not putting that bag of methane with legs in my office.” MacLean looked around the squad room. “Have one of these grunts do it.”

“I’ll put him in my office. Nate Watson is dropping off some medication down at the lobby to help his gas. I need you to give it to Jet. It’s important. If his bloating gets out of control he could die.”

MacLean rubbed his silver goatee and stared at Jet. “Fine.”

Jet raised an eyebrow.

“How do I give it to him?”

“Shove it in some food.” Wolf pulled out his wallet. “Piece of cake.”

“Where’s the food?”

Wolf handed him a ten-dollar bill. “At the store.”

Chapter 8

Wolf stepped into his office with Jet following. The metal and wood furniture shined in the afternoon light coming in the window like a nuclear detonation so he went to the windows and cranked the blinds.

A brochure sat conspicuously on the desk. He picked it up and leafed through it. “Who in the hell?” Wolf said under his breath.  He dropped it in the trash, sat in the leather chair and closed his eyes. The material beneath him was slippery and smelled like industrial cleaning agents, just like the rest of the building.

His phone chimed and vibrated in his pocket.

Margaret Hitchens.

He stared at the screen for the duration of the call and set his phone down, and now the brochure made perfect sense. If there ever were a time to avoid a Margaret Hitchens call, it was now. The owner of the largest real estate brokerage in the county, Margaret Hitchens was a hard-nosed motherly figure in Wolf’s life, even more so now that Wolf had lost Sarah.

It was clear she felt it was her duty to make sure Wolf was on a proper path of healing, and it was getting on Wolf’s nerves.

Margaret had foregone leaving a message, and the phone started its vibrating and chiming all over again. She was going to call until he picked up. Every once in a while she did that. A week ago, out of curiosity, he’d let her call six times in a row before he’d finally picked up.

He poked the screen and brought the phone to his ear. “Hey, Margaret.”

“Hi, David,” she said in that smug, knowing tone of hers that she had no clue she used.

“I’m in a meeting. I can’t talk right now.”

“Bullshit. I just talked to my niece and she said you just walked into your office with Jet.”

Wolf needed to go over some rules of phone call engagement with Patterson. “You’re so resourceful.”

“That’s the understatement of the year. Did you get the brochure I left on your desk yesterday?”

Wolf leaned over and looked in the trash. The brochure was gone.

He frowned, wondering for a second if he’d gone crazy, and then he saw Jet. The dog sat staring at Wolf, the brochure sitting in his mouth. He stepped to Wolf and dropped it at his feet.

Wolf stared at the brochure, which was now folded and covered with slobber, and then shook his head at Jet.

“You’re working with her?” Wolf asked.

Jet tilted his head.

“What?” Margaret asked.

“Nothing.” Wolf threw the brochure back in the trash.

“And what do you think?”

Wolf said nothing.

“David, you remember what brought Sarah back from the brink of depression?”

Wolf stood and peeked through the blinds.

“Are you there?”

“Yeah. Please, go ahead,” Wolf said.

She huffed into the phone. “Those community meetings in that brochure. That’s what brought her back into your life before she died. Do you remember?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Shit, Sarah’s parents are up in Vail all the time now. They’re checked out. It’s tough raising a kid all by yourself. Even though you guys weren’t technically together, you used to be able to talk to Sarah about all the stuff that happened with Jack: the scraped knees, girls … whatever.”

The overnight camping trips.

Wolf sat down. “You haven’t heard about Cassidy?”

“No. What?”

“Her father was killed.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “My God. How?”

“Shot.”

“Murdered?”

“Yeah.”

She went silent.

“So I have quite a bit on my plate at the moment. Besides, I don’t think that type of thing is for me.”

“That type of thing is not for you?” She stuttered a line of incomplete cuss words. “Happiness is not for you? Being able to communicate your feelings and get help from real people who have gone through similar situations is not for you?”

Wolf stood up and pulled his keys out of his pocket, making a point of jiggling them near the phone. “I’ve got to pick up Trudy Frost from DIA, so I’d better get going. It’s Sunday afternoon, the traffic’s going to be crazy.”

Wolf looked at his watch and calculated he had four hours until the plane landed. He stepped to the door, deciding his argument was pretty valid. Even in the middle of summer, supposedly off-season for the mountains, the traffic was bad, made worse by the road construction, which was everywhere while the weather was good in the Colorado high country.

“I’m out the door.”

She hesitated. “This isn’t over.”

Wolf hung up.

Jet wagged his tail.

“Stay here.”

Jet turned around and seemed just as content to curl up on some slices of sunlight on the floor.

Chapter 9

For the man, staring at the flaming reds and oranges of a sunset, with infinite shifting patterns anew each day, was like staring into the eye of God.

That’s why he had despised sunsets for years.

No one should be so unfortunate to live through what that all-knowing presence on the horizon had put him through.

For thirty-seven years the man had been a devout Mormon, learning and living by the word of God in the footsteps of his father and his father before him—both of whom had died from the strange blood affliction, along with two of his brothers, along with six of his cousins, along with his uncle.

God was chastising him now. He could feel it plain as the heat on his eyelids, and he just didn’t care. If he had a problem with what the man was doing, then He should have poisoned his blood, too, and taken him.

He snarled his lips and glared at the setting sun. The orb seared into his eyes, but he stared a second longer in defiance.

After he got his breathing under control he stepped away from the outbuilding doorway and dialed a phone number on his cell phone.

“Hello?” His daughter-in-law had a soft, lilting voice he loved so much. If he had been in his son’s shoes he would have married the same woman.

“How is he doing?” He blinked and the afterimage of God swam in his vision.

She breathed into the phone for an answer. It was code for he was not doing well. He was suffering. He was watching cartoons to try and forget the throbbing pain in his bones, the hot sweaty feeling, the nausea from the crappy drugs the cheap, inadequate, doctors in her cheap, inadequate circle of approved doctors in her cheap, inadequate health care coverage provided—the kind of crap a seven year old should never have to deal with on a minute by minute basis.

“I’ll be coming up later this week with the money. I just have to … go through some more stuff with the lawyers. You know lawyers, they want every T crossed, every I dotted.”

She sniffed into the phone.

In his mind’s eye he could see her wiping her pretty button nose, nodding with the phone against her ear.

“Don’t you worry. It’s going to be a good year for once,” he said.

“Okay.” She whispered.

“Shoot. I was talking to one of the lawyers about Edinburgh. You know what they wear over there?”

“Kilts?”

“Yeah. Man-skirts.”

She laughed on the other end.

He smiled wide and laughed, and a tear slid down his cheek. “When we go over there, I’m going to put on a man-skirt before I march my grandson into that doctor’s office. I’m going to pull up that man skirt, and underneath it’s going to be a wad of cash so big and I’m going to say, ‘Give my grandson a new life!’ That’s a promise.”

“No, no. You’re terrible.”

He smiled even wider. “You wait and see.”

The conversation died to silence and he nodded. “I’ll be up there to see you in a couple days, all right?”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“Okay,” she said in a louder voice.

“Bye, baby doll.”

“Bye.”

He kept the phone to his ear and listened for the call to end, then dropped it in his pocket and pulled out a throwaway phone he had purchased from Walmart.

“Yeah.” The man’s voice on the other end was squeaky. His tone impatient.

“Well. How was the rest of your day today?”

“How was the rest of my day? Let’s see … very bad. Truly the worst day of my life. Thanks for asking.”

The man turned away from the sun and switched the cell phone to his other ear.

Three mourning doves whistled by on the warm wind. It was almost bearable outside at this hour.

“And what did you find out?”

“To use a big lump of money like this is very difficult.”

“But doable. People do it all the time.”

The squeaky voice scoffed. “The people who do it all the time are called criminals. Most of them are caught by federal agents with sophisticated surveillance techniques. They monitor financial transactions. Certain behavior sends up red flags.”

The man clenched his fists. He hated this defeatist talk. He hated the lies. “And what was your plan in the first place? You were going to split the money with the Professor, fifty-fifty. That’s four hundred-fifty K.”

“I was going to leak it to myself over years. You’re asking the impossible if you want a deposit like this showing up in your account overnight.”

“By Thursday.”

The man tittered through the earpiece. He was cracking. “I can’t believe you shot …”

The man narrowed his eyelids. “So what’s the plan?”

“I don’t have a plan!”

The man stared at the oak trees. The boughs swayed in the wind, the leaves sounded like a roaring river. The way this other man had given up was unsettling to say the least.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” The tinny voice in his ear was barely a breath.  “I’m not a killer.”

The man stared at the phone and then he pressed the call end button.

He looked at his watch and did some calculations. They were going to have visitors from the south, that much was certain.

It had already been the longest of the longest of a weekend, and it had just gotten longer with that phone call. But at least his cut had just doubled.

Chapter 10

The last time Wolf had descended to the plains had been to see the other woman in Wolf’s life that called him every week—his mother. Mom had given up the mountain life, moving to Denver when his father had died all those years ago, and never looked back. She may have been a flatlander at heart, but Wolf was not. And as he coasted down I-70 with his foot on the brake for the third straight hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic with the rest of the weekend warriors returning to their city life, he vowed it would be another year before he did this again.

The steep, winding final stretch of chaotic highway, past Morrison and the jutting megaliths of Red Rocks Amphitheater, finally flattened and straightened and the traffic opened up. He drove onward on I-70 through Denver, past the fragrant dog food plant, and out into what seemed like halfway to Kansas before he pulled into the arrivals drive-up at Denver International Airport.

Trudy Frost was waiting patiently on the curb, staring into nothing and sitting on her luggage in the dark. Her long blonde hair was pulled in a ponytail, lying against her straight back.

He squeaked to a stop and got out, and by the time he’d rounded the back of his SUV she’d already opened the rear door and dumped her luggage in back. He got there in time to help shut the passenger door.

Climbing back behind the wheel Wolf said, “Sorry. I misjudged traffic.”

She waved a hand and shook her head.

Wolf checked his mirror, and then turned to her. “I’m sorry.”

She kept her eyes on the windshield. They welled and tears cascaded down her cheeks, but she said nothing.

She said nothing the entire drive, and neither did Wolf. Back through Denver, past the hogbacks near Morrison, up Floyd Hill, past Idaho Springs, through Eisenhower Tunnel, past the darkened slopes of Copper Mountain, past Vail, down south through Cave Creek. They said nothing, and Wolf swore he never saw her blink.

Trudy had been a beautiful girl growing up, and was a beautiful woman now. It’s where her daughter got her looks. She and Wolf had kissed once in first grade. It was one of those tiny memories imprinted on Wolf’s mind—a peck underneath a sheet while playing hide and seek. She was a memorable woman, Wolf guessed, and Wolf knew he would always remember this drive for the rest of his life. Wolf inhaled the grief that saturated the inside of the cab. It was like a thick fog and it steamed off of Trudy Frost’s unblinking eyes.

They pulled into Rocky Points and headed up the hills toward Nate’s house, which sent a fresh wave of tears flowing down Trudy’s cheeks, probably because the route to Nate’s was roughly the same as going to the Frost’s home—where her husband had just been murdered in cold blood.

Pulling into Nate’s driveway, Wolf could see the lights blazing bright inside his log home. Stepping out, he was surprised at the cool stillness of the air.

He opened the door for Trudy and she trudged to the front door and stood motionless in front of it until Wolf came up and opened it for her.

Nate’s wife, Brittnie, was standing inside waiting with sympathetic wet eyes.

The house was quiet and subdued, which was opposite the normal state of Nate’s household. Wolf normally heard circus music in his head when he walked inside here, but not tonight.

Brittnie opened her arms and Trudy walked into them.

Wolf set down the baggage and waited silently as Nate walked down the hall toward him.

Nate flicked a glance back outside and Wolf stepped back onto the front porch.

Sliding the door shut, Nate turned to Wolf with a holy shit expression and walked down the stairs into the driveway.

“How’s it been in there?” Wolf asked.

“Not good. Cassidy and Keegan are in the living room. Jack and Brian are upstairs.” Brian was Nate’s oldest son and Jack’s best friend. “The other kids are asleep. Christ, look at that.”

Nate stopped and looked up.

Wolf had already seen the phenomenon on the way into Rocky Points.

The moon was full, high above the eastern peaks, and it was blood red, tinted by smoke.

“That’s …” Nate stopped his sentence.

“Smoke from the Durango fire. We’ll be in the clear though. They say rain’s rolling in tomorrow night. Going to be a monsoonal flow.”

Nate shook his head. “I was gonna say creepy.”

Wolf stared up and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well that’s good. About the rain. Now we can put off cutting those trees of yours for another few years.”

Wolf smiled, feeling grateful for the tiny jab at humor after the long drive of seriousness and grief.

Nate looked at him. “I think I have more respect for you now.”

Wolf chuckled. “You had respect for me to begin with?”

“I know you always dealt with this type of thing on a first hand basis, but I didn’t know how hard it was. How draining. You know, being so close to the bad stuff. And that’s just what you do. All day. Know what I mean? Shit, sorry. Don’t want to depress you or anything. I’m just saying.”

Wolf shook his head.

They stood staring at the moon.

“I’m headed up to Windfield tomorrow.”

“Big oil up there,” Nate said. “I guess you’ll be putting off your conversation with Jack then, too.”

Wolf looked at Nate. “What conversation?”

“I could tell you were bent out of shape about it today. Learning Cassidy and Jack were together last night.”

Wolf lifted his chin and stared into the night. There was something else that he could put off for another few years.

“Head in?”

Wolf nodded. “Yeah.”

They walked inside and down the hallway, and Wolf stopped short at the scene in the family room.

Trudy stood arm in arm with her two children, Keegan and Cassidy, like they were lined up and going to say something in unison, like in a depressed version of a Disney movie or something. Six red-rimmed eyes, all the identical shade of Trudy Frost-blue, stared at Wolf with such ferocity that Wolf straightened.

“Are you going to get the piece of shit that did this to my husband?” Trudy asked.

Wolf swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”

Chapter 11

Wolf dialed the phone number to the University of Utah paleontology department head again and listened to the message.

“You’ve reached the office of Dr. James Talbot. I’m not in the office at—”

Hanging up, he checked his watch against the dash clock, which said 7:55, and decided he would try again in an hour.

He passed a sign that said Windfield.

Wolf had been driving on two lane highways for just under three hours when he passed a sign that said Windfield 2 miles. The 171 miles had been mountains and valleys and rivers until Grand Junction, where he turned north and the land became harsher, less inhabited plateaus, flat wastelands, and cliffs shaped by ancient seas.

Now, winking in the morning light, Windfield was visible from the two miles away. It was a checkerboard of streets on a sagebrush valley that was tilted down a few degrees to the right. Beyond it the terrain rose and juniper trees and pinyon pines covered the ground and clung to white and red rock cliffs that stood proud in the morning shadows.

The town of Windfield was a less majestic site than its backdrop. The gray asphalt in town was cracked with lines that had faded out years ago. The lawns were bleached yellow, the trees more brown than green, and the houses were different configurations of single and double-wide trailers.

A stray dog got Jet’s attention as it trotted alongside Wolf’s SUV for a few yards, and a kid on a four-wheeler drove by on the other side of a barbed wire fence with his sister in the rear holding a baby. Monday morning traffic in Windfield.

Wolf considered stopping and yelling at the kid to get back home and leave the baby, but the kid turned around and sped off the other direction.

“Here we are,” Wolf announced.

Jet dropped his jaw and panted in the rearview mirror. Wolf had had no choice but to take the dog with him that morning. His presence so far had been unobtrusive, save the occasional blast of gas. The medicine was working slowly, apparently.

Two turns and he was at the Windfield County Sheriff’s Office without a hitch.

The wooden rectangular building had a large window in front and a glass door next to it. It was bland-looking, like the storefront commercial property for a lumber sales office or something other than a sheriff’s office.

The sign above the door, however, confirmed it to be the Windfield County Sheriff’s Department, and two brown painted long bed trucks with gold WCSD logos on the doors were parked in the midnight-black asphalt parking lot.

Wolf pulled in and parked between two freshly painted white lines and got out. Stretching his arms overhead, he let Jet out of the back seat.

The heat rose up his pants legs and he felt it on his eyelids. His feet sank ever so slightly in the asphalt with each step. And it was only 8:05 am.

He gazed at the higher elevations, and hoped they were going there to visit the quarry, and if they were going there, it was cooler.

The two Windfield Sheriff’s department trucks were Ford long beds, about five to eight years old by the looks of the body design and wear. As Wolf walked in between them toward the front of the building he looked down at the tires: Goodyear P265/70R17. Both matches to his crime scene.

Sleigh bells clanked against the glass door as Wolf pulled it open and a blast of cool air pushed his uniform shirt against his chest.

Jet hurried in past his legs and Wolf followed.

“Hello. You Deputy Wolf?” A man stood from one of three desks that occupied a rectangular room. All three desks were in line and faced the windows at the front.

“Yes. Detective Wolf,” he said.

“Deputy Etzel,” the man said holding out his hand. He was low and squat and despite the cool air, there were sweat marks underneath the arms of his uniform.

Etzel’s hand was puffy, but clamped onto Wolf’s like a bear trap.

“One moment please.” Etzel walked to the back of the room to an open doorway and leaned against the doorjamb.

It seemed like they had more pressing business to discuss, and then as an afterthought Etzel jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Etzel turned around and waddled to his desk. “He’ll be right out.”

“Detective Wolf!” The sheriff came out of his office fast, with hand outstretched. He was just about Wolf’s height but a bit thicker and softer, probably ten years older than Wolf—early fifties by the look of his graying, closely cropped full head of hair that was cut into a cube. His skin was tan and his mouth stretched in a smile that failed to reach his eyes.

“Nice to meet you, Sheriff.”

“And who’s this?” Sheriff Shumway asked, bending down to scratch Jet’s head.

“That’s Jet,” Wolf said eying the rest of the room. There were two empty desks that were clearly used on a regular basis.

“I didn’t know you were bringing a K-9 unit,” Shumway said, and then he shrugged. “I guess he could come in handy.”

“He’s a retired dog from the Vail PD. Just a pet now. I’m taking care of him. I hope you don’t mind,” Wolf said.

The sheriff smiled again and he walked back to the doorway. “No, no problem. Come on back. Maybe Jet could stay out here, though. I’m allergic.”

“Stay here,” Wolf said to Jet, and he pointed by the front door.

Jet did as he was told.

Shumway waited patiently at the entryway to his office and slapped a hand on Wolf’s back as he passed. “Have a seat.”

Wolf sat in a squeaking metal chair covered with cracked, fake leather.

The wooden desk in front of Wolf was immaculately clean, smelling faintly of spray cleaner. A green glass pull-chain lamp was perched on one corner and two manila folders—one thick and one thin—sat conspicuously in the center.

“Have a good drive?” Shumway asked as he walked around his desk. His khaki Sheriff’s uniform was dusty and wrinkled, like it was on its fourth day of use between dry cleanings. With a grunt he collapsed into a pillowed leather chair and put his hands on the folders.

“Not bad,” Wolf said.

“You must have gotten an early start.”

“I did.”

“I have to say, we’ve all heard about the Cold Lake incident you had down there last year.” He shook his head and whistled. “What a whacky case that was. Can’t even make that stuff up.”

“It was interesting.”

He gave Wolf a smoky-eyed nod. “I was sorry to hear about your loss. We were all sorry.”

Wolf nodded. “Thank you.”

“I talked to Sheriff MacLean last night for awhile; he had nothing but praise for you. How’re you liking being Chief Detective?”

Wolf nodded. “It suits me.”

“Don’t miss the politics of the Sheriff’s office, eh?”

Wolf shook his head.

Shumway leaned his head back and laughed. When he was done he pulled back one of the folders and glanced inside, then shoved it in the top drawer of his desk.

The room fell silent and Shumway seemed lost in thought.

“You guys have something else going on too?” Wolf asked.

“What’s that? Oh, no. No, it’s just  … a personal matter.” He slapped the thick folder that remained and opened it up. “So. Damn shame what we have going on. I heard about your personal connection to the victim. Goddamn shame, and we’re here to help you catch these sons of bitches. No matter what it takes.”

He gazed hard into Wolf’s eyes.

Wolf nodded. “Thank you.”

“Status is: There’s one way in and out of that dino-quarry we’ve got up there, and I sent two deputies to monitor it as soon as I talked to Sheriff MacLean last night.” He opened the folder and slapped a piece of paper down. “I got a warrant to search the dig camp for the murder weapon, the pistol used to shoot and kill Mr. Frost, and for the two pairs of shoes that left those tracks at the scene.”

Wolf nodded. “And they’re still there? The dig team?”

Shumway nodded. “Yep. The two deputies went into the park and confirmed last night, then they fell back and monitored to make sure they didn’t leave.” The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “I followed MacLean’s request to stand down on bringing them in.”

“Thanks. I’d like to be there for the pickup and initial questioning.”

“I understand.” Shumway spread the three photographs that were on top of the stack. “Here’s what we have on our students at the dig. They had to submit photographs along with a digging permit application with the county. We had them on file here.”

“A permit to dig … in the dinosaur quarry park? On BLM park land?”

“No. They’re on private property. Still have to file though. They’ve set up camp in the park. They straddle the line, with the dig right on the other side of a dry river bed in private property and their access to it through the BLM park.”

Wolf nodded. “I see.”

Shumway tapped the first photograph. “First guy here? Steven Kennedy. We picked him up for DUI last year in town. Stuck him here in our jail cell for two days until his wife bailed him out. How he’s still on the university-sponsored dig team after that? I have no idea.”

Shumway was pointing at a mug-shot of a man in his mid-twenties. He was a handsome kid but looked like he’d seen better days in the photo. Brown hair askew, his green eyes were red and drunk, his thin face covered with a two-day brown beard. He held up a black sign with his name, date, and booking number on it.

Shumway pointed at the next photo. “Felicia Kennedy, Steven’s wife.”

It was a full-body shot taken outdoors of a brown haired woman in her mid-twenties. She was dressed in a tank top and cargo shorts with a big hat that hid her face in shadow, but Wolf could still tell she was very beautiful. Thin and athletic, she was tanned deeply from being out in the sun. Her eyes were kind and her smile wide, flashing perfect teeth.

“She’s also in the graduate program at University of Utah. I’ve never met her. I wasn’t here when she bailed out her husband.”

Shumway tapped his index finger on the third photo. It was another full body shot of a woman. On the heavier side, she was dressed in a flannel shirt and cargo shorts, flashing bright white legs. Her hair was bleached blonde and spiked, and her face was pale and serious, with smallish eyes glaring into the camera.

“Molly Waters. Another paleontology graduate student at the University of Utah.”

Wolf picked a fourth photo out of the stack. It was a full-body photograph of Professor Green. All skin and bones, the man wore khaki pants cinched too high on his waist, a dusty button up shirt rolled to the elbows, and a satchel on his hip with the strap slung across his torso. He rounded out his outfit with a brown hat, which plunged his spectacled face in shadow.

“Then we have Indiana Jones,” Shumway said with a chuckle.

Wolf nodded. “You ever met Green?”

Shumway shrugged. “I’ve seen him around. Never really talked to him. He’s kind of … mousy. Runs around town with his head down, never talks to anyone. Doesn’t break any laws as far as we can tell, so we don’t butt heads with him. But of course, now he’s involved in some stuff, isn’t he?”

“Looks that way.”

“The way I see it? Looks pretty cut and dried.”

Wolf leaned back in his chair and gestured for him to continue.

“We’ve got the mentor-professor who corrupts the students into agreeing to sell these Allosaurus bones they find. Probably under the guise they’d be splitting the money four ways. A quarter-million to each of them. Mentor-professor helps students do all the work, all the while knowing he’s going to take the money and run on these poor saps. Professor plans to skip town to Argentina with the money.  Students find out. Students follow professor and kill fossil dealer in the whole skirmish, and they kill the professor himself. Students take the money. Come back. Done.”

Wolf said nothing.

“You have another theory?”

Wolf shook his head. “I like your train of thought, but I just have some questions that don’t add up.”

“And what are those?”

“For one, why come back and just sit there waiting for the cops?”

Shumway shrugged.

“And where’s the rental truck? If Professor Green’s been killed, where’s his body?”

Shumway pointed. “You guys said the witness heard three shots fired, and only two slugs were found in the dealer.”

Wolf nodded. “Yeah. I know. But until we have a body, until we have a murder weapon, the shoes, the money … it’s all speculation.”

With that Shumway slapped the desk with both hands and pushed back in his chair. “Then let’s get to work.”

Wolf stood up. “What about this land? Who owns this land they’re digging on?”

“It’s a guy from Washington state.” Shumway hesitated for a second, and then walked past Wolf and out the office door.

“Who exactly?” Wolf asked as he caught up.

“Etzel, get the statement paperwork ready. We’ll be coming back with those three students I talked about.”

Etzel looked up. “You got it.”

Shumway looked at Wolf. “Guy named Errol. James Errol. Lives in Seattle. Owns a shit pot of land all over the west.”

“What does he do with it?”

“With that piece out there? Has six thousand acres and eleven oil wells working around the clock.” He looked at his watch. “Makes a ton of money, that’s what he does with it. You know where the Windfield Dinosaur Quarry visitor center is?”

“I’ve got it entered in my GPS. But I’d like to start with the UrMover truck rental place.”

“Right. It’s a few blocks over on the edge of town. I’d say we could ride together, but you’ve got Jet here, and plus if we want to bring these students back for questioning, it might be best to have two cars. One of us leading, the other taking up the rear.”

It was sound logic to Wolf, and he was a little relieved he was off the hook from a morning of small-talk.

They walked outside.

“Christ. Hot.” Shumway climbed in one of the trucks and slammed the door. Firing up the engine, he rolled the window down. “You can follow me.”

Wolf and Jet climbed in the SUV and followed Shumway out of the lot.

Chapter 12

“I just don’t see why he went by himself,” Rachette said.

Patterson felt another lurch in her stomach and saliva gushed into her mouth again. “He’s with the dog.”

Though she was used to starting work at 6:00 am five days a week, she felt ridiculously tired today. How many drinks had she had at that stupid shower last night? Two? She leaned back in the passenger seat and closed her eyes.

“The dog with the lazy sphincter?” Rachette scoffed.

“It’s an ex-police dog.”

“He’s going to find two killers, and he has a dog that releases toxins from his ass as its secret weapon for backup?”

Patterson breathed deeply through her nose, willing her stomach to relax. “He’ll be—”

“Yeah, yeah. Working with the locals.” Rachette slapped his hand on the steering wheel. “I’m just saying.”

She cracked an eye and looked at him. “Bent out of shape much about being left on duty with me?”

Rachette said nothing as they continued through the back and forth turns.

Cave Creek was a winding section of highway 734 north of Rocky Points. Ironically, there was no Cave Creek—as in the name of a stretch of water—because it was the Chatauqua River that carved the canyon and the limestone caves over the millennia.

“How much longer?” Patterson asked, feeling another wave of nausea wash over her.

“What’s your problem?”

“Nothing.”

She kept her eyes closed, but felt Rachette studying her from the driver’s seat.

“We’re almost out of the canyon. I don’t know, another mile? What? You never been up here?”

“Not with my eyes closed.”

“Then open them.”

“No.”

“Don’t feel well?” Rachette asked.

“Nice observation.”

“You’ve always been such a light weight. What? You have two drinks of white wine last night or something?”

She lifted her hand and raised her middle finger.

They rode in silence for another few minutes, and Patterson felt the car straighten out and knew they were on the flat land north of Cave Creek.

Rachette whistled. “There’s that fire.”

Patterson shielded her eyes with her hand against the blazing morning sun.

They were passing by brittle grassland. Looking as parched and unhealthy as the ground they scoured for food, five antelope stood with their backs to the wind inside the barbed wire. Beyond them a column of smoke rose at an oblique angle from the sagebrush-filled high plateau.

“That’s not that bad,” Rachette said. “They were making it out to be another land gobbler like the one down in Durango.”

She looked at him. “Land gobbler?”

“I just thought of that.”

“Clearly.”

Her phone vibrated and rang in her pocket and she pulled it out. “Hernandez,” she told Rachette. “Hello?”

“Hey sister,” Hernandez said.

Normally the pet name would have irked her, but she liked Hernandez and in the short five months they’d been working together on the squad she kind of did feel he was like a brother. One that, unlike her three real-life brothers, she got along with all the time.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“We’ve got nothing on the footage from Ashland, and nothing from the Cold Lake Junction gas station. Barker’s going through the Mackery Gas Station footage now, and that’s the last of what we got … just a second …” Hernandez put his hand over the phone. “Yeah … Barker says that means the truck must have gone north … like I was just going to tell you … the reason I called you.”

Patterson smiled. “All right. Wish us luck.”

“Bueno suerte.”

Patterson hung up. “They’ve got nothing on their footage. So it looks like it’s up to us.”

They rode in silence a beat.

“What do you think of Barker?”

“Could not hate a person more,” Rachette said without a millisecond hesitation. “He’s like hotel soap: he does the job, but not well, and … always leaves a crappy film on your skin.”

She looked at him. “You just thought of that?”

“So, can I ask you a personal question?”

She leaned back and closed her eyes again.

“Are you going to go through with this thing?”

“What thing?”

“Your marriage to Scott?”

She opened her eyes and glared at him. “What?”

Rachette raised his eyebrows, keeping his gaze on the road.

“What kind of question is that?”

“It just seems like you aren’t that excited about it.”

What the hell did Rachette know? Is that the impression she was giving off? The thought made her swallow.

“Sorry. I could be wrong. But I saw some serious hesitation in your eyes last night, when you volunteered to go with me instead of your bridal shower?”

She felt too crappy to respond and closed her eyes again.

“Oh. Wait, I see. Is that it?” Rachette asked.

Sometimes it was best to just ignore Rachette, so she did.

“You know, Charlotte and I are pretty solid right now. So if you’re thinking about me? You’re harboring some sort of deep, secret feelings for me? Well—”

“Pull over!” Patterson rolled down the window and stuck her face into the rush of chilled morning air. “Now!”

Rachette slammed on the brakes and pulled onto the shoulder.

She opened the door and leaned her head toward the ground. A car honked on the way by and the rush of air rocked the SUV, and that was enough to send her over the edge.

Heaving, she vomited on the side of the road.

“Whoa, you okay?”

She heaved again, and then again, and then she was done.  Wiping her mouth and nose, she leaned back and slammed the door. “There. Much better.”

Rachette stared at her. “Christ. I was kidding.”

“Let’s go.”

“Yeah.” Rachette pulled back onto the highway. “You all right?”

“Must have been the food. They had some shrimp that tasted funny.”

Rachette got up to speed and made a show of adjusting the rear-view mirror. “Or it could always be …”

She looked at him.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded to her, like she was supposed to understand what he was saying.

“What?”

“Come on. Sick? It’s the morning? Don’t tell me you and Scott aren’t having sex yet.”

The thought slammed Patterson like they had just gone seventy miles per hour into a brick wall.

For the remainder of the drive they rode in silence.

“Here we are.” Rachette pulled into the gas station on the southern skirts of Brushing and parked under the awning next to a pump. “Check it,” he pointed up, “they have cameras.”

They got out.

Patterson stood and took a deep breath, sucking in gasoline fumes and the aroma of dry weeds. She shielded her eyes and faced the sun, and looked at the new wildfire that was still a ways to the north and east.

Upon closer inspection she could see the glint of the firefighters’ vehicles on the flat land. Beyond the smoke the land rose abruptly, where a rust-colored forest carpeted the side of a mountain.

“I hope it doesn’t reach that,” she said.

“No shit.”

Pregnant? The thought was enough to make her hurl again. She took the lead and marched through the automatic doors of the convenience store.

The air inside smelled like hotdogs and window cleaner. Speakers in the ceiling played a b-side classic rock song she’d never heard.

“Can I help you officers?” The clerk asked. He was a young man with a lot of hair on his head and face.

“Deputies,” Rachette said pointing at his Sheriff’s Department patch.

The clerk looked more confused than educated.

She slapped the warrant onto the counter. “We need to see your security footage.”

The clerk stared at the warrant for a second, then back at Patterson. “Yeah. Sure. Back here.”

The clerk opened the bulletproof glass door and led them both into the cramped space behind the counter and to a tiny office that smelled like all the others—like overflowing toilet and stale cigarette smoke. Her mouth watered.

“I’m going to hit the head.”

Rachette eyed her. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Get started without me.”

Seven minutes later Patterson left the bathroom and returned to the office behind the counter. Rachette sat in front of the computer and the clerk hovered over his shoulder, helping him navigate the footage.

“Anything?” she asked.

Rachette shook his head as he stared at the black and white video screen. “Nothing.”

“How much more do you have?” She asked.

“I don’t know.” Rachette turned in the chair and looked at her. “You gonna live?”

She nodded, ignoring the blushing look from the clerk. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Remind me to never eat shrimp again.”

Patterson tapped his shoulder. “I’ll take the rest.”

Rachette stood up. “You got it.” The squeak of his shoes disappeared behind her.

“You need help?” The clerk asked.

She shook her head.

The guy looked relieved. “All right. I’m going out to have a smoke. Let me know if you need anything.”

She sat down at the dial and knob system she’d gotten accustomed to over the years.

For the next ten minutes black and white images of cars, trucks, and motorcycles flitted in and out of view on the screen from the camera footage from underneath the one fish-eye security camera outside. She was ignoring the interior footage for now, just trying to catch a glimpse of what they were looking for outside—the moving truck. They could scour the recordings more carefully later.

The clock on the footage said she was looking at the 3 am hour of Monday morning now—almost 7 hours after Frost’s neighbor had heard the three shots. She stared at nothing happening on the screen for minutes at a time. This was a 24 hour operation, but she doubted they made any money at it at this time of night.

“Anything?” Rachette said, returning with a tinge of whine in his voice.

And like that, she was through to the present moment on the tape. “Nope.”

“Shit.”

She grabbed the footage tape for the interior and left the office.

The clerk twisted around. “You find what you’re looking for?”

Patterson held up the USB stick. “We’re going to take this video, all right?”

The clerk shrugged.

“Hey.” Rachette was on the other side of the counter knocking his knuckles on the glass of the slow-rotating cooker. “Are these from yesterday?”

The clerk blinked. “What?”

Rachette leaned forward and stared into the clerk’s eyes. “The hot dogs. The taquitos. When did you make these?”

The clerk opened his mouth to speak.

“Tell me the truth now.” Rachette narrowed his eyes to slits.

“Two days ago.” The clerk hung his head in shame.

Rachette nodded, and then he reached in and grabbed two taquitos off the revolving rack. He bared his teeth and hot-potatoed them back and forth in his hands and put them in a wad of napkins.

“How much?” He pulled out his wallet.

“Uh … don’t worry about it.”

“Nonsense. Are you sure?” Rachette gave him a single second to answer. “Well thanks. You want one, Patterson?”

“No,” she said.

Rachette shoved half of one in his mouth. “Ah, hot. Thanks man.” He left out the automatic doors.

Patterson walked through the bullet-proof door and out around to the front of the counter.

Rachette came inside and she pretended to be perusing the items for sale on the counter. She placed her hand on a disposable cigarette lighter, and then a box of mints.

“I need another napkin,” Rachette said walking behind her. “You coming or what?”

She twisted and looked at the rear of the store toward the coolers. “I’ll be right there. Gonna get a drink.”

“Get me a water?” He left.

“Yeah. Sure.”

She walked to the cooler and grabbed two waters and then went back to the counter. Slapping down a twenty-dollar bill, she pulled out the home pregnancy test box from her pocket and put it on the counter. “I need to pay for this.”

The clerk picked up the box and studied it. It had been ripped open and one of the tests had been taken out, used when she had gone in for her bathroom break.

It had mercifully said negative after peeing on it and waiting three minutes.

“Come on.” She pushed it forward and the guy swiped it with his scanner gun. “Actually. You keep it and throw it away for me, okay? And keep the change.”

She dropped a twenty and walked out the door, the euphoria of utter relief making her steps light.

“Don’t you want the other one just in case?” The clerk called.

For an instant she ignored the man, and then she stopped dead and came back inside, the tension already back in her entire body and gut. “What? Why?”

He shrugged. “That’s how my kid came. My girlfriend got a false-negative on one of these things. Talk about a psych-out.” He laughed. “I think that’s why they have two of em’.”

She stared at him.

The clerk scratched his beard.

“Damn it. Here.” She grabbed the box, pocketed it, and left.

Chapter 13

The Windfield Moving Company was a dust encrusted stand-alone two car garage surrounded by chain link fence. There was a lone moving truck parked on a dirt parking lot inside the fence, and a beat up sedan parked next to it.

Wolf parked behind Shumway in front of the building and they stepped out. Jet spilled out of the back door, trotted to the fence, and lifted a leg.

Shumway eyed Jet and hooked a thumb toward the building. “This woman’s a little kooky if I remember correctly. Let’s go.”

“Jet. Stay here,” Wolf said.

Jet ignored Wolf and put his nose to the cracked sidewalk.

The door chimed as Wolf and Shumway entered, and a heavyset woman with greasy gray hair, a dirty blouse, and brown bug eyes looked up from a counter.

“Hello gentlemen. Can I help you?” She leaned back.

Shumway hitched his belt and leaned on the counter. “This here is Detective Wolf from Rocky Points.”

“Oh, yes. Hi, I’m Pamela. Pamela Trunzo. I’ve been talking to … is it Deputy Patterson?”

Wolf nodded.

“Nice woman she is.”

“She called about one of your trucks, rented by one Jeffrey Green?”

“Oh yes, I remember. My heck, I’ve only been thinking about it non-stop for every waking minute since. Have you found the truck yet?”

“I’m sorry, no. We haven’t.”

She shook her head. “Muh. Ain’t got no insurance on it.”

Wolf was unsure how to respond to that, so he moved on. “Was Professor Green with anyone when he rented the truck?”

She squinted and looked to the ceiling, putting a stubby finger on her chin. “I assume he was. He drove off in the truck. And he didn’t leave another vehicle here. I remember noticing that when I was helping him back out. Nobody was out there with him. Had no vehicle with him either.”

“So he was dropped off by someone?” Shumway asked.

“I suppose.”

“Don’t you folks have GPS devices on all these trucks to track them?” Shumway asked.

“Not ours. My stupid husband didn’t comply in time with that. That’s why they pulled our insurance. Good for nothin’ that man. You know what I really hope?”

She waited for an answer.

Wolf raised his eyebrows.

“I hope the truck never gets found. Or if it is, it was dumped off a cliff and it’s destroyed to kingdom come. I hope we have to shut this place down so I can move out of this heck-hole. That’s what I hope.” She slapped the counter.

Shumway gave Wolf a told-you-so look.

“You said you watched him drive away,” Wolf asked. “Which way did he go?”

She waddled around the counter and past them, then pushed open the glass door.

Shumway watched with an amused smile.

She poked her arm out the door. “Went that way.”

Shumway frowned and walked to the door. “Which way?”

“That way.” She pointed to the rising sun.

Shumway pushed past her. “Come out here, would ya?”

She followed, and the door slammed shut with a clank.

Wolf grabbed the paperwork off the counter and followed them outside.

“You mean that way, right?” Shumway pointed to the north, toward the plateaus and the dinosaur quarry contained within.

“No. I watched him roll down 11 to the east. Right there. I told you, I helped him back out of the spot here, and he drove away. I remember plain as day. Heck, I’ve had one customer all month, and it was him. And that’s why I’ve gotta get the heck out of here.” She turned to Wolf. “I’m bored.”

Wolf raised the paperwork. “Is this the time Professor Green rented the truck? Right here?”

The woman walked over. Her lungs wheezing, she mashed her breasts into Wolf’s forearm and looked at the paperwork. “Yeah. Right there. 12:42 pm. Customers get twenty four hours with the truck. Anything over that, and I gotta charge em’ another day, so gotta be precise with the time.”

“Of course,” Wolf said, handing the papers back to her. “Thanks for your help. And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone else with him?”

She widened her already bulging eyes and stared at him.

They stood in silence for a beat.

“Okay,” Wolf said. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She waved a hand and disappeared through the jingling door.

Shumway gave a half-smile. “Told ya.”

“What was all that directional pointing about?”

“She was saying Green drove off east. There’s nothin’ east. No access to the quarry up there.”

Wolf frowned. “Then where was he going?”

“If she’s telling the truth.”

“She seemed pretty sure.”

“Pretty crazy,” Shumway said. “That’s what she seemed like. Let’s get up to the quarry.”

Wolf followed Shumway back to their vehicles.

Chapter 14

Wolf followed Shumway out of town to the north and into the red and white cliff plateaus that overlooked Windfield. He’d entered the dinosaur quarry into the GPS, and on the screen of his center mounted computer was a red line on top of the green digital map display that shifted every few seconds.

It seemed unnecessary, because he passed the third brown painted sign that said Windfield Dinosaur Quarry with an arrow pointing ahead. Apparently every tourist dollar counted.

It was well past 9 a.m. now so he pressed the phone number for Dr. Talbot at the University of Utah and put the phone to his ear.

“Dr. Talbot’s office,” a female voice answered.

“Could I speak to Dr. Talbot please?”

“He’s not in. May I take a message?”

“This is Detective Wolf from the Sluice-Byron County Sheriff’s Department in Colorado, I’d like to speak to him as soon as possible.”

“Oh, yes. I just heard your messages. What’s going on that’s so important?”

Wolf changed the phone to his other hand. “I can’t really discuss it at the moment. Do you know when he’ll be into the office?”

“Well he … ready …”

Wolf looked at his phone. There was a single dot filled for reception, along with a combination of letters he’d never seen.

He took his foot off the gas. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

Wolf pulled to the side of the road and slowed to a stop. “What was that you were saying?”

Shumway continued ahead of him and disappeared around a bend.

“I said he’s usually here. I come in at 8:30 and he’s always here before me. I’m not sure what’s going on this morning.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay.”

“So what’s Professor Green done this time?” She asked in a conspiratorial tone.

Wolf hesitated. “What do you mean by this time?”

She laughed hard. “Professor Green? Oh, never mind.”

“No, really,” Wolf said.

“Well … He just likes to think of himself as some kind of paleontology swashbuckler. Has all these stories about things.”

“Like what?”

“Oh … like getting bones out of Mongolia before the corrupt President catches him, or paying off the corrupt customs officials to get a skeleton out of Argentina, or—”

“Argentina?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess he’s spent a lot of time there. Like I said, he likes to spin tales.”

Maybe there was some truth to the stories she’d heard, at least about bribing customs officials.

“Well, I’ll tell Dr. Talbot to give you a ring as soon as he gets in. Should be any minute now.”

“Thanks.”

Wolf pushed the button and dropped the phone in his center console.

Re-checking the GPS, he hit the gas to catch up.

Wolf drove on, taking a right at a fork in the road where the pavement ended and a graded dirt road began. He continued on for fifteen minutes, past two-track offshoots that disappeared up dry washes into the juniper hills.

As he climbed higher, the road turned rockier, and he passed over a stripe of mustard dirt that changed to bright purple for a few yards, and then red, and to Wolf it was easy to imagine they were pulling dinosaur bones out of the ground here, because Wolf felt like he was stepping into the past with so much geology on display.

He turned a final sharp corner around a hill and a building abruptly came into sight, along with a majestic view.

The Windfield Dinosaur Quarry tourist center was set on a high plateau and tucked against the base of a rounded mountain that towered behind it. It was built from concrete and steel, jutting from the ground to look like a wind sail. Or a dinosaur spine, Wolf realized.

Pulling around the dirt circular drive in front, he passed four American made full-sized pickup trucks parked next to one another. Three had the upside-down triangle logos of the Department of the Interior on their door, and the fourth was Sheriff Shumway’s.

He pulled in next to Shumway’s, edging his bumper up to a jagged black boulder that had been laid out to mark the boundary of the parking lot. Beyond the boulders were twisted junipers, which covered the landscape on the high plateau.

Climbing out of his SUV, he stood in the parking lot, once again stretching his arms overhead, ignoring the ache in his leg and back.

It was still, completely silent, and oven-hot, noticeably devoid of buzzing insects, which had burrowed themselves in the cool depths. The only signs of life were the children climbing on the rocks near a picnic table by the building, and the people who stood in a cluster inside the window.

The people were Sheriff Shumway, a woman, and a man, who looked to be waiting for him.

Wolf nodded and waved, and opened the rear door for Jet.

Jet lifted his head and squinted as the hot air hit his eyeballs, and then he groaned.

“Yeah. I know. I think they have air conditioning inside.”

Jet spilled out the door and Wolf thumped it shut.

Wolf followed the dirt walkway to a concrete pad and the building’s steel and glass front door. A sign said, “Windfield Dinosaur Quarry,” and there was a cartoonish dinosaur skull impression stamped in the concrete wall next to it.

In the distance to the right there were three army green yurts. Beyond them it was wide open, rocky landscape. Mounds of white rock jutted and lunged, striped horizontally or off-kilter from the horizontal, with red and white sedimentary layers, and all of it was dotted with pinyon pines and juniper trees. The land waves darkened to a deep blue in the distance. It was a good vantage point from way up here, and without a single cloud in the sky the visibility was as far as it got.

Somewhere below out there the Yampa River was cutting its way through the rock. How far out there, Wolf didn’t know. He’d have to take a look at the GPS.

Pulling himself back to the space around him, he ignored the staring faces in the window and opened the door next to it.

A man with a khaki button up shirt with a BLM patch on it pushed the door open for Wolf and Jet.

He had a bushy, round silver goatee that was groomed to display his friendly smile. His gray hair was curled upward at the edges of his yellow ball cap.

Looking down at Jet the man said, “Hey, who are you?”

Jet ignored him and bee-lined it to the cool interior.

The man splayed his hand in an “oh well” gesture and shook his head.

“That’s Jet,” Wolf said holding out his hand. “I’m Detective Wolf. Sluice-Byron County Sheriff’s Department.”

“I’m Bradley. Bradley Boydell.”

The man, who Wolf had pegged for early sixties, took Wolf’s hand in a tight grip and pumped. “Nice to meet you. Please, come into the cool air. It’s already hotter than heck out there.”

Boydell pushed the door back for Wolf to enter. Just when he was about to close it the two children shot through with delighted squeals, and Boydell smiled wide, shaking his head as they disappeared into the visitors center.

The children passed under a huge skeleton that looked like a Tyrannosaurs Rex but smaller, and just as one would expect, its mouth was wide open in a silent roar. An Allosaurus Fragilis, Wolf recognized. The twenty foot high fossil specimen fit comfortably in the light interior of the building, as if the building was built around it.

“Allosaurus,” Boydell said watching Wolf.

Wolf nodded and turned to Shumway and the woman, who turned out to be younger than Wolf had thought at first glance through the window. She had bright blue eyes and a wide smile with deeply bronzed skin. Her blonde hair was naturally bleached from the sun and pulled back in a tight ponytail.

She thrust out a skinny arm. “Hi, I’m Megan.”

Wolf nodded and shook her thin hand, and her sinuous arm flexed and bounced with enthusiasm. She wore a tight tank top and short shorts. Tanned head to toe and wearing flip-flops, she gave off a coconut oil scent mixed with perfume.

She held his grip a second too long and eyed him up and down.

Wolf pulled his hand away and nodded with a smile.

Next she walked to Jet and bent over with straight legs, displaying her firm back side. Gripping the dog’s face, she cooed while she scratched. “Look at you, you’re so cute.”

Jet licked his lips and wagged his tail.

Shumway’s eyes ping-ponged between her and Wolf.

Wolf turned to Boydell. Boydell’s eyes were doing the same, but between Megan and Sheriff Shumway.

“You’re going to escort us out to the dig site?” Wolf asked Boydell.

“Yes, sir. Like I told the deputies last night, it’s best that I do. There’s some tricky parts.”

Wolf twisted and took in the interior. There was a round reception desk and another man of college-age stood behind it watching them.

“That’s Phil.” Boydell said. “He and Megan are both interns from the University of Utah.”

Just like Megan, Phil looked no older than drinking age. He had a flop of brown hair that covered most of a forehead that was plastered in pimples. He smiled awkwardly and nodded.

Wolf shook his hand.

“You guys rent out the yurts to tourists?” Wolf asked nodding out the front window.

Boydell chuckled. “No. That’s where we live. I’m in the far one year-round and Megan and Phil live in the other two for the summer.”

“I see. And what’s that in the distance?”

Wolf pointed at a line of blue and red dots tucked among the bushes and trees. They were at least a mile away and shimmering in the heat.

“Good eyes,” Boydell said. “That’s Dig 1.”

“That’s where Professor Green and his students are digging?” Wolf asked.

“No. They’re further on, down the valley beyond that. We call Professor Green’s dig Dig 2. I know, we’re creative.”

“How many digs are there?”

“Two,” Boydell said.

Wolf nodded, and then gestured out the rear windows toward a building made of steel that looked like an oversized shed. “What about that dig? I looked at your website last night. That’s where they’re digging the predator trap?”

Shumway looked at his watch.

Megan raised her eyebrows and gave him an impressed look.

Boydell nodded. “We don’t have a name for that because it’s already been dug up as much as it’s going to. It’s more of a display. But you’re right, that’s the predator trap—a big bunch of disarticulated bones from a range of species from the Cretaceous period. Mostly predators. No one knows exactly why there’s such a collection of bones, and broken into so many pieces.” Boydell smiled sheepishly. “At least that’s what they tell me. I’m just a BLM employee, not a dino-expert like these two kids.”

Wolf nodded at the big skeleton that loomed over them. “And where was this specimen found?”

“That’s a replica of one found back in 1982, down in the same valley Dig 2’s at right now. But on the park side of the gulch.”

“Park side of the gulch?” Wolf asked. “Rather than the private land side, you mean?”

Megan and Shumway exchanged a glance, but Wolf failed to read anything into it.

“I’m not comfortable with bringing you to the Dig 2 site,” Wolf said to Boydell.

“Really?” Boydell looked concerned. “I escorted those deputies last night, now you two. What’s going on down there?”

Megan nodded. “Yeah, are you going to tell us what’s going on or what?”

Shumway shook his head. “No. We’re not. It’s official business and we need you two to stay up here. In fact, Bradley, if you can just give us directions, you don’t even need to come out with us.”

Boydell looked skeptical. “I wouldn’t know where to begin giving you directions. There’s a maze of two-track roads out there, and you have to avoid some problem spots. I’ll get you to Dig 1 and then let you guys go on by yourself. It’s easy from there.”

Shumway and Wolf exchanged glances and nodded.

“All right. You’ll lead us. I’ll follow, and Detective Wolf can take the rear?”

“Sounds good,” Boydell said.

Wolf nodded.

Shumway was out the door first.

Boydell held the door open and waited for Wolf and Jet.

“Bye.” Megan sang the word and looked at Wolf as she rubbed Jet and slapped him on the haunch.

They were out the door into the blazing heat, and Boydell jogged up alongside them. “Try and keep close. It’ll make things easier on your vehicles.”

Shumway gave a thumbs-up as he climbed in his truck. He put his seatbelt on and fired up the engine.

Boydell jogged to his truck and climbed in, and started backing it out.

Wolf opened his rear door and slapped his leg. “Let’s go Jet.”

Jet paced back and forth, and had a look that Wolf had come to recognize as his bathroom face.

“Not a good time. Come on.”

Jet dropped his head and walked to him.

That seemed to be the go-ahead for Boydell and Shumway, because they shot off in a cloud of dust around the corner.

Jet whined and turned around, then made his way toward the junipers and crouched in a pooping position.

Wolf leaned against his door and crossed his arms. “Make it quick.”

“Uh-oh, they ditched you.” Megan was outside and flip-flopping her way to his SUV. “You’re going to need my help.”

“No thanks. They’re right there.” Though the two vehicles were out of sight and around the bend, Wolf had heard the squeak of brakes and running engines. “Hear that? They’re waiting. Thanks, though.”

She pretended like Wolf said nothing, or she pretended like she heard Wolf say “good idea,” and walked to the passenger side and got in and shut the door.

Jet came over with a bounce in his step and Wolf let him in the back. Tail wagging, he stuck his head in front over Megan’s shoulder.

“Sit down,” Wolf said, and Jet laid on the back seat.

Wolf shut the door and got in front, and Megan had her butt in the air, bending over the seat to pet Jack.

“Sit down,” he said again.

Megan took her time, but eventually sat down and faced forward.

“And now get out,” Wolf said as he fired up the engine.

She frowned and looked at him. “That’s not very nice.”

“Get out, please.”

She shook her head. “You’re not going to be able to find the turn off.”

“They’re right around the corner waiting for me.”

“And if you lose them on the way there?”

“I don’t think your father would appreciate it if I brought you in my car. This isn’t a joyride.”

She turned to face Wolf. Her eyes were cold and her mouth downturned. “My father? He can suck eggs. I work here, he doesn’t.”

Wolf leaned back in his seat. “So that is your father.”

“Huh?”

“Your father is the sheriff.”

She looked at him then smiled. “Oh, you just figured that out? You didn’t know before?”

Wolf nodded. “Yeah. Please. Hop out.”

With lips parted, she looked him up and down again. “You’re a good cop. I can tell.”

“Get out.” Wolf backed up and turned and then scraped to a stop. “Now.”

“Nope.” She took a flip-flop off and put a foot out the window. Her toes bounced in front of the side view mirror. She leaned back and closed her eyes, like she was enjoying a nice country drive.

Wolf took a deep, cleansing breath and pushed the accelerator.

Chapter 15

Patterson stood in the county building bathroom in front of the mirror. She was panting, her chest heaving up and down. Her fingers were cramped from pinching the freshly peed on device in her fingers.

With a deep breath she steeled herself and looked at it.

Negative.

What were the chances of a double-false-negative? Probably pretty small. And the chances of her birth control failing? Very slim according to the doctor who’d placed the device inside her.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Her normally tanned face, usually looking vibrant (if she did say so herself) looked pale and sunken.

Jesus, was it that big of a deal to be impregnated by the man she loved? And she did love Scott. She had already addressed that issue after she failed to answer Scott’s third proposal, which led to a fourth and final proposal, which she had said yes to.

That was already borderline psycho that she had made Scott do all that just to win her hand. Okay, it was over the psycho line. And now? She was a fifth-degree black belt in Karate. The mental and physical fortitude to get to that level was beyond the capability of a normal person (if she did say so herself).

So what was her problem?

She had had bad shrimp and she was sick. That’s why she looked like this, and why she felt sick, and why her hand shook, and why she couldn’t keep away from the toilet.

But … what was her problem?

A vision of her pregnant fat ass waddling into the squad room flashed in her mind. Check that, it was her pregnant fat ass waddling out of the squad room. Out of the entire building. For good.

“Hey, you all right?” Voice echoing through bathroom, Deputy Charlotte Munford walked in at full speed.

Patterson slam dunked the box and pregnancy test into the trash hole in the counter and got busy washing her hands. “I just feel like crap after the food last night.”

“Oh, yeah. The bridal shower. How was it? Get some good gifts?” Munford smiled with that perfect, lots-of-gum-like-a-young-Meg-Ryan smile of hers, her blue eyes alight with mischief, like they were girlfriends or something. “Those in-laws can be tough. My sister got married, and her husband’s mother was a nightmare.”

Patterson nodded in response, and then dried her hands with a larger than needed wad of paper towels and threw them into the trash to bury the evidence.

“Rachette and I are so excited to go to the wedding,” Munford said. “It’s going to be so beautiful. On the top of the mountain like that? Oh. My. God.”

Patterson knew she looked disgusted by the conversation, because she was looking at herself in the mirror. A fake smile was all she could muster in response.

Munford dug inside her bag and frowned. “Shit. You have any more of those?”

Patterson froze. “What?”

Munford pointed at the trash hole. “You have any more? Tampons?”

“Oh. No. Sorry, last one.”

“Damn. All right.” Munford looked at a loss for a second, then turned to leave. “See you.” Before she got to the door she stopped and turned around. “I hope we can be friends some day.” Then she left out the door.

The words sailed through the flowery air of the bathroom and jabbed Patterson in the heart. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her mouth was wide open, her eyes staring in shock.

With a deep inhale and exhale, she walked out into the squad room.

A few seconds later she was back at her desk, staring at a fisheye view black and white video of the customer counter at the Brushing gas station from earlier that morning.

Hand on her chin, she watched yet another patron, a man, walk into the convenience store. This man wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat that hid his face. He wandered to the candy bar aisle, picked one, then grabbed a plastic gas can off the floor and went to the counter. Nothing too out of the ordinary, there had been other men that had had ball caps or other hats that obscured their faces, but the time stamp said 9:21 pm, which was right in the timeline that the perps could have been passing through the gas station after shooting Ryan Frost.

Twisting to her laptop she had set up next to the desktop, she checked the exterior footage for the same time.

Fast-forwarding and then letting the footage roll, she saw a Honda Civic parked in front of one of the gas terminals.

No moving truck.

She clicked the mouse and let the interior footage play again. The man paid with cash, grabbed something off of a counter display, and then walked out with gas can in hand.

“Still nothing.” she said hitting the fast forward button again.

“Just let me know about anything out of the ordinary,” Sergeant Barker said keeping his eyes on his own computer screen.

She glared at Barker’s round, shaved, red head of hair. Let me know?

Everything that came out of this guy’s mouth was a brand new WTF moment. Who did he think he was? Wolf? Even Wolf wouldn’t have said “me”. Because Wolf included his deputies, didn’t treat them like employees that fed his all-knowing mind, so that he, alone may work out the answer.

“Let me know?” Rachette looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. He was standing with Hernandez at the printout map they’d pinned onto a roll stand corkboard.

The map had a red radius circle drawn on it indicating how far the rental truck could have gone on its journey before fueling up. Rachette and Hernandez were marking off the gas stations with red push-pins indicating which footage had already been studied thoroughly.

“Yeah. I’m the ranking deputy,” Barker said. “Let me know.”

Rachette shook his head and pushed a pin into the map.

“You got a problem with that?” Barker said leaning back in his chair. “When you do the time like I have, you can take a little more responsibility yourself.”

Rachette ignored him and pushed in another pin, this time north of Cave Creek. “Patty, you done with that footage?”

She looked down. “No.”

He took out the pin. “Let me know when you’re done.”

Barker stood up. “You making fun of me now, asshole?”

Rachette turned and frowned. “You’re an idiot.”

Barker stood up and walked to Rachette. Rachette exhaled and faced him.

Patterson rolled her eyes and let the posturing play out. She’d seen it so much between these two it bored her at this point.

“Hey, boys.”

Patterson looked up at the sound of Deputy Charlotte Munford’s voice.

“Greg, please calm down, okay?” Munford said in a soft tone.

Barker puffed up even larger for a second. He stood at six foot one and towered over Rachette’s five foot seven frame, but Patterson had to hand it to him, Rachette never backed down an inch to this guy.

“Hey,” Munford pulled Barker away gently by the arm and Barker backed up.

It was clear as day why Barker hated Rachette so much. It was because Rachette had the woman of Barker’s dreams sleeping in his bed. The way Barker slobbered over Munford was so glaringly obvious it was comical.

But men were stupid sometimes, and talking things out was out of the question no matter how obvious they were, so here Patterson and Hernandez were once again watching these two zip up their pants after their pissing contest.

“What the hell’s going on?” MacLean’s voice echoed in the squad room.

She sat up straight and turned around.

MacLean stood with his hands on his hips. “Where’s the moving truck?”

Nobody answered.

“I asked a question!”

“Sir, Patterson hasn’t found anything on the gas station videos yet,” Barker said.

Patterson glanced at Barker.

“And that’s all you got?” MacLean wore the same face that he had after smelling Jet’s gas. “Where’s the truck?”

They stood in silence.

“And what are you doing here?” MacLean pointed at Munford. “I want every deputy out on CP, except for these four, who are supposed to be finding a God damned moving truck.”

Munford’s shoes squeaked out of the squad room.

Patterson cleared her throat. “Sir, it’s true. We’ve scoured just about every bit of video and there’s no sign—”

“Just about? It’s nearly ten and you haven’t gotten through all the video?”

She wondered why ten a.m. was the cut off between diligent and lazy work all of a sudden. “There was no sign of the truck at any of the gas stations, and now I’m looking at the stores’ interior footages.”

“Interior footage? Why?” MacLean shook his head. “If it didn’t show up on the exterior footage, then it didn’t refuel. So what are you going to look for on interior footage?”

Patterson said nothing.

“Since it didn’t refuel,” MacLean said, “not in town, not anywhere within our agreed upon radius, then they must have ditched it somewhere. So I’ll tell you how to find this truck. Okay? Listen close. Ready?”

They stood frozen.

MacLean’s face turned red. “Get in your Goddamn cars and start driving!”

Barker marched out of the room at full speed. “Hernandez, let’s do it.”

Hernandez shuffled after him in silence.

Patterson shut down her computer screen and looked at Rachette.

Rachette pushed his pin into the map and went to his desk.

“I’m not feeling impressed by your enthusiasm right now,” MacLean said.

Patterson shut the laptop and shoved her chair in, banging it loudly into her desk. It was much, much more of a ruckus than she’d meant to cause, but something had snapped inside her.

“You got a problem Deputy Patterson?” MacLean walked over.

Patterson shook her head. “No.”

“No. Tell me. What is it? You have a problem with following orders or something?”

MacLean leaned in close. His breath reeked of coffee.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Now get your asses out there, and find me a UrMover truck. Preferably with a pile of bones inside.”

Patterson followed Rachette out of the squad room.

“And deputies?”

They slowed and turned around. MacLean had a finger pointing at the ceiling. “Do not come back until you’ve found it.”

The sheriff’s eyes meant every word.

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 16

“How did you know?”

Wolf leaned toward the windshield and squinted. Shumway’s and Boydell’s trucks had kicked up a cloud of dust. There was no way to tell how far ahead they were, but it looked like they were going fast.

The dirt road twisted with the occasional straightway, all the while descending back off the plateau’s top.

“How did I know what?”

“That I’m the sheriff’s daughter.” She was preoccupied with rubbing something on the inside of her propped leg.

Wolf kept his eyes out the windshield. “You two have the same blue eyes. Identical. And you have the same inflection in your voices, the same pronunciation of certain words.”

“Really?” She leaned back and laughed. “You are so cute.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m forty years old. What are you, twenty?”

“Bingo. Right again. I bet you think I’m a lot better looking than my dad, though. Right?”

She leaned back and stared at him.

“I was going to say I’m old enough to be your dad.”

“My dad’s fifty.”

Trying to comprehend her logic, Wolf leaned forward and braked. The cloud of dust seemed to get denser, more immediate, but there was still no sign of brake lights.

The cloud dissipated, and Wolf pressed the accelerator again.

She laughed. “You might want to slow down.”

“Why?”

“Because you just passed them.”

Wolf saw the two trucks in the side view mirror. They had pulled off and Boydell was out of his truck, staring after Wolf.

“Shit.” He stopped and turned around.

Boydell was swinging open a wooden gate set in barbed wire. He fastened it open with a loop of rope and jogged back to his truck.

Before Wolf had reached Shumway’s bumper they were already on the move again.

“See?” Megan said. “I told you you’d need me.”

Like a hole in the head.

The SUV drove spongy as they followed in the caravan, sliding in the sandy wash that meandered through terrain strewn with boulders. The rocks were cinnamon colored and streaked with black water marks, some of them dwarfing the SUV. Canyon walls towered up to their left and right, with layers of white on top and maroon underneath.

Dust having dissipated, the scent of juniper flowed in the window, mixing with the dog fur and coconut oil inside.

The curves were tight and Shumway’s truck rarely came into view, so Wolf concentrated on the well-worn tracks in the sand.

“Just go along this wash. I’ll tell you when you need to turn. It’ll be a right in about a half mile.”

Wolf nodded thanks, and they rode in silence for a while.

“So … what’s this all about?” She bounced her eyebrows.

Wolf ignored her.

“Oh, come on.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Wolf asked. “To get the inside scoop?”

She shrugged. “I want to go visit Dig 1. I have a friend there named Karen.”

They rode in silence for another beat.

“And I want to help. Feel free to ask me any question you want to.”

Wolf gripped the wheel as they turned a tight corner.

“So, what about you?” She asked. “How’s Sluice … what county are you from?”

“Sluice-Byron.”

“And how’s that?”

Wolf raised an eyebrow and sighed. “It’s nice.”

“Where do you live?”

“Town called Rocky Points.”

“Oh I’ve heard of that. Skiing. I’ve never been, but I bet I’d love it.”

Wolf plucked his cell phone out of the center console and checked it. It said No Service in the corner of the screen.

“No service except for in town. Doesn’t matter which of carrier you have,” she said. “Okay, turn up here.”

They climbed steeply out of the wash. Wolf only saw blue sky for a few seconds as he pressed back in his seat. The truck slowed to a stop, and he gunned it, tires spinning in the sand and catching, until they dropped down the other side of a hill.

The other two trucks were meandering their way through trees and rocks, already halfway up a rise on the left. Ahead of them, at the top, was the edge of the plateau and then blue sky.

The route started making sense to Wolf. They were going to the dig they’d seen from the visitor’s center, but along a circuitous route off the plateau and back onto it.

To the right the view to the south opened up with rolling hills and plateaus.

“Pretty beautiful,” Wolf said.

She looked at him with a bashful smile.

Wolf ignored her.

“The other dig is down there.” She pointed.

For an instant Wolf saw a blue spot on the floor of a valley below, then it was gone behind a hill.

“Dig two?”

“Well. You missed it,” she said. “But we’ll be able to see it again from the top of the plateau.”

They bounced in their seats as Wolf cranked the wheel and feathered the gas, avoiding the twisted overhanging wood of the pinyons and junipers.

“Used to be our land, you know,” she said.

Wolf frowned. “What?”

She put her hand out the window. “That whole thing, thousands of acres. Until my dad lost it.”

Wolf looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“The private land that Dig Two is on used to be our family’s land.”

Wolf kept his face neutral, but his mind was racing.

“And when my grandfather died, somehow my dad screwed up the whole transfer of land to him … or my grandfather did … or whatever. Nobody will tell me what happened. But anyway, we lost the land. Some other guy got it.”

She clamped her lips shut and looked out the window.

Wolf eyed her. She was blinking a lot. Fighting back tears?

“Watch out!” She pointed out the windshield.

Wolf jammed the brakes, stopping just short of a boulder.

Jet let out a squeal from the back seat.

“Oh, are you okay?” Megan pursed her lips and reached back to scratch Jet’s head.

Jet shuffled back into his comfortable position with Megan’s help.

“Megan.”

She turned around. “What?”

“Can you please finish your story?”

“I thought I did.”

“Not really.”

“Yeah. I did. Dad lost land. Done.”

They sat silent in the idling car. Rays of sun cooked Wolf’s arm through the open window.

“Are we going to go?” She looked over with a devilish grin. “Or just stay here?”

Wolf backed away from the boulder and drove on.

Just underneath the lip of the plateau they passed a red tent and a full-sized Dodge pickup off to the left side of the two-track.

“Who camps here?”

“That’s Levi’s camp. One of the grad students at Dig One. Levi Joseph. See? Aren’t you glad I’m here to answer all these questions for you?”

Wolf slowed to a stop next to the truck and peered at the tires. They were the wrong brand.

“Hello?” Wolf called out.

No one answered.

“Probably up—”

Jet barked, and the sound filled the interior of the cab with the volume of a jackhammer.

Megan screeched and plugged her ears and Wolf jumped in his seat.

“Jet!”

Jet was standing on the rear seat, staring out the passenger side rear window and barking with snapping jaws. Saliva stuck to the glass. After every second or third bark he shut his mouth and looked at Wolf and whined.

Wolf shoved the truck in park and got out. Stepping to the back door he opened it and Jet was out, almost barreling over Wolf.

With ears raised, Jet trotted around the rear of the SUV and turned, barking and staring at Wolf.

“Go!” Wolf shook his head and looked at his watch.

Jet took off down the steep slope toward the south and weaved his way down through the brush.

“What the hell?” Wolf watched the dog trot halfway down the mountain before he stopped and started barking again.

“What’s he doing?” Megan was outside standing next to Wolf now.

“Let’s go!” He yelled.

Jet ignored him and started whining again. He was preoccupied with something on the ground.

“Probably saw an animal and is chasing it,” Megan said. “We used to have a dog growing up that would chase jackrabbits. He would go crazy, just like he’s doing.”

Wolf nodded. Jet looked like he had an animal cornered.

“Dammit … Jet! Come! Now!”

Jet hesitated for another few moments and then trotted back up the slope, weaving in and out of the trees and shrubs, stopping every few yards and looking back.

“Now!”

Jet reached them with a lowered head and followed Wolf’s prompting back into the truck.

Slamming the door, Wolf turned and surveyed the valley below. It must have been five hundred feet to the valley floor. A lone blue tent stood amid the foliage and rock.

“Oh yeah. There’s … Dig Two.”

She stared intently below.

“You know them?” Wolf asked.

“What?” She blinked and looked at him.

“The students at Dig Two,” Wolf said.

“Yeah, I guess. I know everyone. Everyone knows everyone.”

“Is there anyone here that wears Converse All-Star shoes?”

She swallowed and looked at him with a perplexed look. “Converse All-Stars?”

Wolf nodded.

She shrugged and looked away. “I haven’t noticed. Why?”

Wolf stared at her.

She stared back, and then she blinked first.

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“I mean, I have a pair. Why are you asking?”

Wolf left her in her thoughts and walked back to the driver’s side door. She trotted to her door and hopped in.

They got in and Wolf eyed Jet in the rear view mirror. “You got that out of your system now?”

Jet barked and looked out his window again.

“All right. That’s enough.” Wolf put it in drive and the tires spat dirt.

A few seconds later they were at the top of the plateau, and in the far distance Boydell and Shumway had parked their trucks next to one other. They were milling around a complex of tents and tarps, and a man and a woman were walking to them.

“So Levi camps all the way down here and walks to the dig? Do you know why that is?” Wolf asked.

She laughed, like Wolf had asked the funniest question in history. “He probably can’t sleep with all the sex noises coming from the other tent.”

Wolf raised his eyebrows.

She stopped laughing and looked at him. “A guy named Doctor Mathis heads up this dig, and the other student besides Levi is a girl named Karen. Doctor Mathis and Karen think they’re keeping it secret, but they’re clearly screwing. So Levi gives them their space. Although now that I think about it? Even if they weren’t screwing, Levi would probably be camping back there. He’s kind of a loner. Kind of strange like that.”

“And you’re friends with Levi, too?”

She looked out the window. “Yeah. I guess. We’ve gotten to know each other.”

Four people stood in a group watching Wolf and Megan drive in—Shumway, Boydell, a woman, and a man.

Shumway was in mid-sentence with Boydell and stopped and squinted to see inside Wolf’s truck as they approached.

“Stop here, wait,” Megan said. “Wait, wait, wait …”

Wolf frowned and stopped.

Before he could ask why, he pressed himself back into his seat as Megan leaned over him and out his window.

“What the hell are you doing?” Wolf asked with unmoving lips.

“Hey, sister!” Megan shouted out the window. “Long time no see!”

The woman Wolf assumed was “Karen” paused in mid-sentence and waved.

“When did you get back?” Megan asked.

Sheriff Shumway stood next to Karen, his head tilted, his eyes wide and locked on Wolf’s.

For another few seconds Megan and Karen chatted, and then Megan drew her left hand down into the cab and planted it squarely on Wolf’s crotch, then pushed hard off her hand and launched back into her seat. Without a word she opened the door, jumped out, and slammed it. With a happy jog she ran around the front of the SUV and went to embrace her friend Karen.

Wolf sat still for a second, and then let his foot off the gas and pulled alongside the other trucks.

A few seconds later Wolf had Jet out of the back seat and they were walking toward the camp.

Shumway was glaring at Megan with a reddening face, and she chatted happily and ignored her father altogether.

Wolf studied the trucks as he walked by.

The BLM truck Bradley Boydell was driving had the Goodyear P265/70R17’s, and so did the red truck with civilian Utah plates, which since they’d passed Levi’s truck, by process of elimination would have to be either Doctor Mathis’s or Karen’s.

Add Sheriff Shumway’s tires, which also matched, and the whole tread piece of evidence seemed to be getting less useful by the second. But Wolf knew that’s how the truth lulled you to sleep—by hiding in a sea of anonymity.

Chapter 17

“Hello, I’m Detective Wolf.” Wolf held out his hand to the man standing next to Shumway.

“I’m Doctor Mathis.”

The short man stepped forward and pumped Wolf’s hand with a firm, rough grip. He wore Birkenstock sandals with dusty white socks, cargo shorts and a tee shirt that had a picture of a dinosaur with glasses, and “The Saurus Knows All The Words” written underneath.

“Welcome to Dig One, as they call us.”

“I’m Karen.” A bright-eyed woman stepped away from Megan with an outstretched hand.

Wolf took in her slender hand, which was callused and dusty. She was a couple inches taller than Doctor Mathis, a comparison Wolf made only because of Megan letting him in on the “secret”. Karen wore jeans shorts that displayed her muscular, tanned legs. A mesh, wide-brimmed hat sat on her head of short black hair, shading a smile that was bright and pleasant.

“And where’s your other grad student?” Wolf asked. “Levi Joseph?”

Dr. Mathis and Karen looked at one another. “Beats us. Been gone all morning. Heck, he was gone all day yesterday too.”

“Without taking his truck?” Shumway asked.

“Sometimes he takes long hikes,” Karen said with a shrug.

Dr. Mathis looked skeptical. “Yes, but he usually tells us when he goes on his little hikes. He brags about them first, talks about the route for days, then shows us the map in case he doesn’t come back.” He waved a hand, “Sorry, we’ve just been discussing it. He just kind of up and disappeared on us this weekend.”

Shumway glared at Boydell. “You haven’t seen him?”

Boydell shook his head.

Shumway put his hands on his hips and shook his head. Then he gave his daughter a sidelong glance.

There was real urgency in Shumway’s tone.

“Should we be putting out a search party?” Wolf asked.

“Oh my,” Karen gasped.

Shumway peered down the two-track toward Levi’s camp, which was out of sight over the edge of the plateau. “No. But keep us posted if he doesn’t show himself.”

They stood mute for a few seconds, and then Wolf cleared his throat.

“I’m not sure what Sheriff Shumway has told you two yet, but he and I are conducting an investigation and we have some questions.”

“Yes, he told us there was an investigation. What’s it about?” Dr. Mathis asked. “What kind?”

“I can’t discuss the particulars.”

Dr. Mathis gave a skeptical frown. “Well then we can’t answer any questions you might have. I’m sure you understand, Detective. I don’t want to implicate myself in anything. So I’m going to respectfully decline speaking to either of you. And I advise Karen to do the same.”

Karen looked dumbfounded.

Dr. Mathis folded his arms and pretended everyone around him had vanished.

“We’ve had a homicide,” Wolf said. “A fossil dealer in Rocky Points was shot twice and killed.”

Megan gasped, then put her hand over her mouth.

Karen blinked rapidly.

“Wow.” Dr. Mathis unfolded his arms. “A murder? And you’re here now?”

“Yes.” He nodded to the centerpiece of the camp, which was a shallow, wide hole in the ground. “Could I see your dig?”

It was time to get them talking.

“Yes, sure.” Dr. Mathis led the way and waved them to follow.

They stopped at the edge of the hole, and there was a grid of string, and various digging tools and plastic sheets strewn about. Underneath it all were a few exposed fossils.

“What are we looking at here?” Wolf asked.

“It’s really quite a find. An Ornithopod from the late Cretaceous. A Hadrosaur.”

Wolf shook his head.

“An Iguanadon?”

“Yeah, okay. I remember those,” Wolf said, referring to his own childhood dinosaur phase.

“The Hadrosaurs were prolific in the late Jurassic through the Cretaceous. In the Jurassic they were small, and then,” he paused for effect as he stopped at the edge of the hole and spread his arms, “they grew into giants, like these.”

Shumway leaned over and squinted, looking unimpressed.

Inside there were clearly pieces of bone, but it was a jumbled mass that was hard to put into context in the mind’s eye.

Boydell stood back a ways and kicked at a rock.

Dr. Mathis eyed them all in turn. “Well, you’d have to see the GPR readouts to really get a sense of it.”

“GPR?” Wolf asked.

“Ground Penetrating Radar.”

“Ah.”

Dr. Mathis looked dejected, like he was surrounded by three year olds that understood nothing.

They were standing in fine dirt, and Wolf took the opportunity to study shoes, and none of the prints they were leaving matched the crime scene in Rocky Points. Not even close for Dr. Mathis’s sandals. Megan’s and Karen’s feet were way too small. Boydell’s feet were average size, just about a sized 10, but the imprints of his well-worn boots didn’t fit either of the patterns at the scene.

And Shumway’s? They were about the same size as Boydell’s, but the tread was deep and jagged, not the same pattern either.

Wolf realized they were stuck in silence once again. “Do any of you own a pair of Converse All-Star shoes?”

Megan raised her hand and Wolf ignored her.

“That’s quite a change of subject,” Dr. Mathis said.

Wolf shrugged. “It’s what I do.”

“Not me,” Mathis looked at his own feet, “I just stick to my good ol’ Timberlands. These students, though. They wear that kind of stuff. Used to be popular in the eighties, and now they’re all the rave again.”

“Steven has a pair,” Karen said.

Wolf looked at her.

“Purple ones. Can’t miss him when he’s got those things on.”

Wolf and Shumway exchanged a glance.

“We’re talking about Steven Kennedy?” Wolf asked. “Down at Dig Two?”

Karen nodded. “Yep.”

Megan stood mute. She avoided eye contact with Wolf and her face turned red.

“Did Steven kill a fossil dealer?” Dr. Mathis asked. There was a hint of amusement in his eyes.

Wolf gestured to the bones in the ground. “Were these predators? Or plant eaters?”

“Ha!” Dr. Mathis leaned his head back. “The subject changes once again. Yes. It’s an herbivore. Did Steven Kennedy kill someone? I think we have a right to know, him being so close.”

“We are not sure who killed the fossil dealer at this point.”

They stood in silence.

“How often do you two visit Professor Green’s dig?” Wolf asked.

Dr. Mathis and Karen looked at each other.

“Last time we saw it was last year.”

“Early last year,” Karen said.

“When Green and his students used to be more social,” Dr. Mathis said.

“Yeah,” Karen said. “Now we all call them The Hermits.”

“And why’s that?” Wolf asked.

“Professor Green’s made it clear he doesn’t want anyone near his dig.” Dr. Mathis stepped around the pit. “It’s like he’s protecting some masterpiece piece of art he isn’t ready to unveil to the world yet.”

Wolf frowned. “Can’t you just go down there?”

Dr. Mathis shrugged. “Done that a couple times. The last time I went, they had it all covered up. Told me point blank to get back to my own dig. He did pretty much the same thing the first time I went down. And when I asked him about it he just flat told me to leave. I said fine. No sense dealing with crazy people.”

“So you haven’t seen the dig at all?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah. At the beginning, but not recently, though. No.”

“So you have no idea how far along they are with their specimen?” Wolf asked.

“No.”

“You and Professor Green both work at the University of Utah, right?” Wolf asked.

“Yes.”

“Dr. Talbot is your boss, too?”

“Yes, he’s the head of the Paleontology department.”

Wolf nodded. “That is odd, you being part of the same university and all, you’d think he would share the find a little more.”

“You’re telling me.” Dr. Mathis leaned forward and stepped into the pit by accident.

“Why do you think they’re acting the way they are down there?” Wolf asked.

“Internal politics that we don’t know about,” Karen said. “Gotta be. Green’s vying for a job, doesn’t want to share any credit. That, and he’s straight crazy.”

“Pssh,” Dr. Mathis waved a hand. “We both have tenure and the guy is most definitely not looking for more responsibility. Believe me. The guy doesn’t even read half the papers he makes his students write. If anything, he wants less responsibility.”

Karen made a sour face and glared at Dr. Mathis.

Mathis seemed embarrassed at his back-stabbing outburst. “Anyway. Politics wouldn’t make sense. That’s not how things work.”

“When Dr. Talbot came a month ago for his ‘surprise’ visit, they drove away together,” Karen said. “Went to lunch or something. Remember that? I’m telling you, Green’s looking for some sort of promotion or something. Maybe it has to do with—”

Shumway cleared his throat. “If we could maybe get back on track here?”

“Dr. Talbot came in a month ago to check the dig?” Wolf asked. “Why?”

“He does that from time to time,” Dr. Mathis said with another wave of his hand. “Comes down and checks our progress, updates for his report to the board of regents. Peels his butt off his desk chair and makes the obligatory rounds.”

Twisting on his heels, Wolf gazed back toward the two-track road that ran on a straight line across the plateau. “Have you seen Professor Green or any of his dig members drive a moving truck through here recently?”

Dr. Mathis smiled. “What? Like a semi-truck?”

“No,” Shumway said, “A UrMover truck. Like a rental truck you use to move from one house to the next.”

“You just drove up that road. You think one of those could get up here?” Dr. Mathis chuckled.

Shumway looked nonplussed. “So is that a no?”

“Yes. That’s a no.”

Karen shook her head. “I never saw anything like that.”

“So Professor Green is secretive. What about the other three students? What do they act like?” Wolf asked.

Karen and Megan glanced at one another.

“They’re all right,” Karen said, “They’re definitely more friendly than Professor Green. At least Mo will come up and have a beer or two. We’re kind of friends.”

“Mo? Molly Waters?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah. She goes by Mo.”

“She’s a lesbian,” Dr. Mathis said.

Karen looked horrified. “So what, Ted?”

“What? I’m just saying. She is.”

“And what does she say about the dig when she comes up from her camp?” Wolf asked.

Karen peeled her glare away from Dr. Mathis. “Not much.”

“She keeps her lips as tight as Professor Green,” Dr. Mathis said. He ticked off three fingers. “Steve, Felicia, Mo, they’re all just like Green. The whole team’s the same. They’re all hiding something down there.”

Like an empty hole, Wolf thought.

“Did you see Professor Green leave past here on Saturday afternoon at all?” Wolf asked.

“Yeah,” said Karen. “I do remember him leaving. It was like noon-ish. I think Felicia was with him, and Steven followed them in his truck.”

“And not Mo?” Wolf asked.

“No. They always keep a guard dog down there,” Dr. Mathis said. “Someone at the camp to make sure we don’t snoop, I guess.”

Wolf nodded. “And this was after lunch? Noon?”

“Yep. Right around noon.”

“Did you see them return?” Wolf asked.

They both pondered.

“Steven’s truck came back,” Dr. Mathis said. “Not Professor Green’s.”

“Oh yeah,” Karen said. “You’re right.”

“Do you remember who was in Steven’s truck when he came back?”

“Felicia,” Dr. Mathis said.

Karen agreed and glanced at Megan once again.

“And what time was this?” he asked.

“A few hours later, I guess. We were sitting here grilling, so must have been like four?”

“So at noon they left,” Wolf said, “and they came back at four. Four hours.”

Karen nodded.

Shumway had his head leaned back, eyeing Wolf.

“Is this road the only way in and out of here for Dig Two?” Wolf asked, this time addressing the whole group.

“Yep,” Karen said.

This time Dr. Mathis silently agreed.

“Technically, no.” Boydell raised a finger. “It’s a little rough but you can cut straight to the wash we came up just now, along the bottom of the plateau.”

Wolf nodded. “And was there any other vehicle traffic past here that night?”

They shook their heads.

“And how about the rest of the weekend?”

Karen shrugged. “Just the two deputies last night, and Mr. Boydell with them.”

Boydell nodded. “I escorted them last night.”

Wolf saved the best question for last. “And what were you two doing Saturday night?”

Dr. Mathis raised a finger and shook it. “Now, wait a minute. Do we need a lawyer now? What is this? Are you saying we’re involved?”

Shumway held up both hands. “Dr. Mathis, Detective Wolf is just covering every base. It’s within your rights to not answer, but—”

“We were here all night. I thought that much was clear,” Dr. Mathis said.

Karen nodded so hard her hat threatened to fall off.

They looked like they were telling the truth.

“And so it’s clear now,” Wolf said. “Thank you. You two have been a real help.”

“The second Levi comes back tell him I want to speak to him,” Shumway said. “Tell him to come down to the station. It’s very urgent.”

“Sure, yeah. We’ll tell him,” Dr. Mathis said.

Wolf got the feeling Shumway had other motives for talking to Levi, and when Shumway and Boydell nodded at one another, there was an unspoken understanding.

“I may be around for a while,” Wolf said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d stay available if I have more questions.”

“Sure.”

“Of course.”

“And Detective?”

Wolf paused and turned around.

They were pointing down at Wolf’s feet.

Jet stared up with a quizzical brow, a hand shovel in his mouth. He dropped the utensil at Wolf’s feet and backed up and sat.

“What are you doing?” Wolf took the slimy shovel, wiped it dry on his shirt, and handed it Karen. “Sorry.”

“No problem.” Karen laughed and then turned to Dr. Mathis. “Oh. We should get a dog for the dig.”

Wolf left them to debate the point. “Jet, come.”

“I’d like a word Detective,” Shumway said stepping next to Wolf. “What was my daughter doing with you?”

Wolf took a few steps, choosing his words. “I had little choice Sheriff.”

Shumway nodded and scratched his chin. “Yeah. She’s a real … Goddamned handful. I’m sorry for the embarrassment you had to endure because of her.”

Wolf eyed him. “It’s no problem. She’s a … seems like a good kid.”

Shumway snorted and stopped suddenly. “Boydell, you’ll take Megan back?”

Boydell poked up the bill of his cap and nodded.

Megan stretched her arms overhead, ignoring the conversation about her.

“And how do we get down to Dig Two?” Shumway asked.

Boydell stepped to them. “Can’t miss it. Just keep going, and then down the hill. It’s steep, and at the very end there’s a doozy of a bump, so go slow. It curves right. Follow it and you’ll hit the camp a quarter mile up.”

“Thanks.”

Boydell nodded. “I’ll keep you posted if I see Levi.”

“Maybe you could swing by his camp tonight,” Shumway said.

Boydell walked to his truck. “Will do.”

“I’ll lead the way,” Shumway said walking to his own truck and climbing in.

“Up,” Wolf told Jet as he opened his rear door.

Wolf stared at Megan as she walked silently to Boydell’s passenger door. A pair of purple converse was hard to miss, and Wolf had specifically asked if anyone had worn them. She had inserted herself into the situation, and now she’d made herself out as a liar.

With eyes laser focused on the ground in front of her, she opened the door and got in.

Chapter 18

Patterson cranked up the air conditioner in the SUV and leaned toward the windshield.

“Okay, sounds good honey. I love you,” Rachette said in a cuddly voice that made Patterson’s stomach turn again.

He hung up the phone and slowed and crept around a tight turn. Around the next corner was another tight turn the other way. They were five minutes off Rocky Points’s main strip and already socked into pine trees and steep hills.

“This is dumb.”

Rachette looked at her. “This is necessary work. That’s something you’d say to me.”

“Wandering around on hundreds of miles of road, only able to see a few hundred feet in front of us until the next bend, with no clue as to where we’re going? This is dumb.” She shook her head. “We need to think this through. Not get reactionary because MacLean has a hard-on for Senator Levenworthless and his precious bones. And while you’re at it, speed it up.”

Rachette let out a rhythmic hiss between his teeth. “Whoa, woman. You are not in the best of moods today. You need to find a toilet again or something?”

She ignored him and released her jaw when she realized it was locked shut.

“Hernandez says Senator Levenworth is buddy-buddy with everyone,” Rachette said, “which includes the district judge.”

“Whatever. Doesn’t mean the guy can get evidence crucial to a double-murder released,” she said, hoping her skepticism was founded on reality. Could this senator really corrupt the system so flagrantly like that?

They rode in silence for a while.

“Hey.”

With a roll of her eyes she looked over, taking the Rachette bait.

“It’s going to be all right. Okay? I know you’re probably going through some … stuff with the wedding coming up and all. Maybe some second thoughts?” He held up his hands. “Hell, I don’t know. And I saw the way you looked when I mentioned the pregnancy thing.”

She turned back to her window. “This is dumb.”

After another few moments Rachette asked, “So?”

“So what?”

“What did it say?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on. You think Charlotte’s blind? She saw the pregnancy test in your hand. What did it say?”

Patterson’s heart raced. “When the hell did you guys even discuss that? Just now?”

“That was her on the phone.”

“Well, duh. That was like a two minute phone call.”

“Not gonna tell me?” He eyed her. “I don’t see why you’re so cranked up about kids. Charlotte’s ready to churn them out when she gets married. Shit … I guess I need to pop the question soon. You think it’s too early?”

Patterson stared out the window.

“Thanks for the pep talk.”

Rachette pulled his phone out again and dialed a number.

“Damn it. It goes straight to voicemail.”

“He’s out of range.”

Rachette stared out the windshield shaking his head, looking like he was on the verge of tears he was so upset.

“What’s the problem?”

Rachette looked at her. “What? Nothing.”

She always marveled at Rachette’s loyalty to Wolf. She felt it too, but not at Rachette’s level.

Rachette’s jaw was flexing. It was times like these she would have paid a few bucks to know his thoughts.

“So … seriously?” He turned to her with a big smile. “You’re not going to tell me? Preggers? Heather Patterson, a mom?”

Maybe a few cents.

She leaned back, and closing her eyes, she focused on her hara, the spot just below her naval, and pushed it as she drew breath in, filling her lungs from the bottom to the top. She exhaled, pulling in her abdomen, blowing the air out her nose in a steady, powerful stream.

This was abdominal breathing, a technique she’d learned from her sensei in Aspen long ago to calm her mind and promote peace within her body. It was a technique that came in handy being Deputy Thomas Rachette’s partner.

With each exhale, with each jet of air shooting from her nose, the built up tension in her body released. The fire in her body was further extinguished. In the real world, fire grew hotter, blew embers and spread with wind, but in her body the heat dissipated. In her mind, the fire blew away, and set Rachette on fire.

She opened her eyes. Her concentration was weak today. With a jolt she sat upright. “Wait. Stop.”

“What?”

“Stop the car!”

“Shit.” Rachette cranked the wheel and jammed the brakes hard. The antilock brakes shuddered as they swerved to a stop on the gravel. “Get the door open! Don’t puke in here!”

She looked at him. “I’m not going to vomit.”

“Then what the hell?”

“I figured out where the moving truck is.”

“What? How? Where?”

Patterson glared in thought, nodding her head. “Yeah. I’m sure of it. Turn around and head north.”

“Why? I’m not going back to the station. I don’t care if you’re pregnant or not, you can get out and walk your ass back there.”

“Shut up for a second and listen. Tell me this. When did that fire start?”

Rachette blinked. “Which one? The Durango or the new one?”

“The new one.”

“Sunday morning? That’s when I heard about it.”

“Could have been Saturday night, though.”

Rachette narrowed his eyes. “Yeah … I guess. I don’t know.”

“And what was the cause?”

Rachette sat silent.

“I just watched a video before we left the station of a guy purchasing a gas can. The Brushing gas station. The gas station near that fire.”

“With taquito-boy?”

“There was a guy on the video who went inside with a big hat on. He bought a gas can, a candy bar or something, and then he picked something up off the counter after he was done paying.”

Rachette shrugged.

“When you were mooching your taquitos, do you remember what was on the counter, just to the right of the clerk window?”

“Napkins?”

She rolled her eyes. “Matches. The guy purchased the gas can, then grabbed some matches, and walked out.”

Picking up his can of chewing tobacco out of the cup holder, Rachette opened it and took a pinch and put it in his lip.

Patterson ignored the smell as it permeated the cab and climbed up her nostrils. Normally it was a well-established rule that Rachette put his “dips” in outside, in the bathroom, anywhere but in front of her, but he also used to have a little sister he liked to beat up on when he was a kid and liked to treat Patterson as her from time to time.

“It fits,” Rachette said, finally looking over. “Embers blow off the truck, set the brush on fire.”

“No shit.”

“But Barker called up there and they said they hadn’t seen the truck.”

She shrugged. “We know how communication can get muddled sometimes.”

Rachette cranked the wheel, hit the lights, and pushed the gas. “It fits,” he said again, tapping the wheel. “Nice work.”

“It all came from the thought of setting you on fire.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

Chapter 19

The SUV kicked sideways off another rock and Wolf lurched in his seat.

Shumway reached the bottom of the decline well ahead of Wolf. Hitting it way too fast, his truck bucked and bounced high with an explosion of dust.

Slowing to a crawl, Wolf edged his way off the same section, and then he reached the flat dirt two-track road below.

After hanging a hairpin right, the road continued over a low hill ahead.

Dr. Mathis had been right, there was no way a UrMover truck could have made it down that slope. Much less back up it.

So how did they get the bones out? There was also no way they packed a 75% complete, twenty-five foot high set of dinosaur bones into the bed of one truck and went up that hill on Saturday afternoon. They probably split the bones between the two trucks.

Or maybe there was a storage unit, Wolf thought with a nod. That would make more sense—shuttle a few bones out, store them in a unit, repeat the process over time until the whole skeleton was out, then load them all up in a rented UrMover truck and drive down to Rocky Points.

Wolf eyed Jet in the rearview mirror. “You all right?”

Jet opened his mouth and panted.

They were at the bottom of a canyon now with a dry wash on Wolf’s left, and gradual, juniper, pinyon, and boulder covered hills on either side of it.

Winding side to side, up and down, it was an easy drive.

A quarter mile later Wolf pulled up behind Shumway’s parked truck and stopped.

Shumway was already out and leaning on his door.

Wolf shut off the engine and stepped outside.

There was a lingering whine of a commercial jet overhead. A blast furnace wind rustled the sage and junipers, and there was a hiss of sand blowing across the ground. A tarp flapped in the distance, and Wolf peeked through the swaying foliage and saw three people doing the same to him.

He opened the rear door and Jet lumbered outside after a brief protest and loped to the shade of a tree and lay down in the powdery dirt.

Wolf grabbed a couple pairs of rubber gloves from the box on his floor and shut the door.

Wolf walked to Shumway, who stood with a hand on his holstered Glock.

“You have the warrant?” Wolf asked, holding out a pair of rubber gloves for Shumway.

Shumway took the gloves and nodded and then extended a hand. After you.

Wolf passed him and led the way. Off the road and down a gradual slope they walked.

There was a red tent to the right, a blue one beyond it, and darker blue tent off to the left. In the distance there was a fluttering blue tarp that was set up at an angle, shading a large pit.

The camp had all the fixings of a paleontology dig, with shovels of all sizes and types strewn about, dusty brushes near the hole in the ground, leather gloves, and then there were the paleontologists.

“Good afternoon,” Wolf announced.

Standing in front of the complex of tents, they were all there—Steven Kennedy, his wife Felicia, and Molly “Mo” Waters—and they were all staring at Wolf.

A trio of camp chairs sat underneath a white shade tent that was staked at the corners, and three paper plates with half-eaten sandwiches lay on a fold out table. Underneath the table was a box haphazardly filled with dry goods and in the dirt stood a half-empty bottle of scotch.

“I’m Detective Wolf from Sluice-Byron County, and this is Sheriff Shumway from Windfield County.”

They nodded, their faces frozen masks.

Steven stepped forward first and held out a hand.

Standing just about Wolf’s height, six-two or three, he was slim and fit, looking better in the face than he had in the DUI photo Wolf had seen earlier. His eyes were clear and bright, intelligent, and his skin was deeply tanned.

Steven’s smile was confident and easy, framed by dark brown stubble. He tipped up a worn New York Yankees ball cap with one hand and shook with the other.

“Steven Kennedy, nice to meet you. This is my wife, Felicia.”

Felicia squinted underneath a wide brimmed hat and then stepped forward with outstretched hand. “Hi. Felicia,” she said.

Felicia was thin and small and athletic, and looked like she feared no ultraviolet radiation anywhere but on her face, because she wore a tank top and short cargo shorts, which displayed her sunbaked cocoa skin.

Molly Waters stepped forward. She wore a baggy tee shirt and jeans with hiking shoes. A few strands of white hair jutted out from underneath her floppy hat, which shadowed her freckled face. She glared at Wolf with her small eyes and swallowed, offering no greeting.

“Mo?” Wolf asked.

Her grip was rock solid. “Molly. My friends call me Mo.”

Wolf nodded. “And Professor Green? Where’s he?”

Molly’s hard gaze dropped and she took a step back.

“He’s up at the University,” Steven said. “Had some business up there. What’s this about?”

“What kind of business?” Wolf asked.

Steven shrugged and the two women pretended like they’d gone deaf.

“Eighteen year, huh?” Wolf asked.

They all three frowned with confusion.

“The scotch.” Wolf pointed behind them. “Glenlivet 18 year. That’s an eighty dollar bottle there. You guys must be connoisseurs. Or are you celebrating something?”

They all kept their attention on the bottle, lips closed, waiting for someone to say something.

“Yeah,” Steven said with another winning smile. “We don’t drink much, but when we do we want it to be the good stuff. What can we do for you officers?”

Shumway stepped next to Wolf and stopped.

Steven held rooted to his spot and raised his chin.

“We’re looking for Professor Green,” Wolf said.

“And like I said, he’s not here. Is there anything else we can help you with?”

“Yes,” Wolf said. “We need to take a look around your camp. You can help by standing still right here while we do.”

Wolf made a production out of pulling on his rubber gloves, unnecessarily snapping the material a few times.

“You can’t do that,” Steven said.

“Yes, we can.” Shumway produced the warrant and handed it to Steven. “We have a warrant right here.”

Wolf stood still and studied their boots while Steven read the warrant with Felicia.

“Hey, what the hell? It says here you’re looking for a gun. W-what?” Steven’s confidence had disappeared. “Why are you looking for a gun?”

Molly’s breathing was accelerating.

“Something wrong, Molly?” Wolf asked as he stepped past her.

“Yeah. You’re looking for a gun. What the hell does that mean? Someone’s been shot and you think we did it?”

“I never said anyone’s been shot,” Wolf said. “Do any of you have any weapons on you now? A gun?”

“No, we don’t,” Steven said.

Wolf lifted Molly’s baggy tee shirt and checked her waistline. The other two were clearly not packing underneath their slim fitting clothing.

“Hey, are you arresting her?” Steven asked. “You can’t search her like that.”

Wolf ignored him and stepping to the red tent, he unzipped it and looked inside. It was strewn with women’s clothing, though he couldn’t tell which woman’s it was. Outside the tent’s opening hung two pairs of panties clipped to clothes hangers.

“Like what you see?” Felicia asked.

Wolf caught the tail end of a snarl on Felicia’s face as he ducked inside the opening. It smelled like perfume and campfire, and he got to his knees and started rooting around under her sleeping bag and strewn clothing.

“Just tell them.” Molly said outside.

“I will, just—”

“Tell us what?” Shumway asked.

Wolf started to duck out of the tent and then paused at a revelation. Clearly Felicia lived out of the tent, but there was no sign of her husband ever being there—no sleeping bag, no musky body odor scent of a man who showered little. No man’s clothing.

Wolf backed out and stood up. “Tell us what, Molly?”

Felicia spoke up first. “We have a gun.”

Shumway raised his eyebrows and gripped his pistol.

“Where?” Wolf asked.

“It’s for emergencies, you know?” Steven said, twisting and pleading to Shumway too. “There’s frickin’ animals out here. Rattlesnakes galore. It’s dangerous. Not that we ever use it. We’ve actually never even used it. It’s Green’s gun.”

Wolf nodded. “I understand. Can you show me where the gun is please?”

Steven stepped toward the white shade tent, and then veered to the backside of the second tent.

“Slowly now,” Shumway said, drawing his pistol all the way out.

Steven gave him a double take and raised his arms. “Jesus, I’m not … it’s there. Hanging from Professor Green’s tent.” He pointed and his jaw dropped.

“Come back over here.” Shumway crooked a finger and held his pistol loosely at his side.

Steven stood frozen, still looking.

“Right now,” Shumway said.

Steven raised his arms higher and walked fast, back next to the two women.

Wolf rounded to the other side of the second tent. An empty leather holster hung from a hook off the tent fabric. The retention strap was unbuttoned and bouncing in the breeze.

“I swear it’s usually there,” Steven said.

“What?” Molly’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? It’s not there?”

“I don’t know, he must have taken it,” Steven said with clenched teeth.

“Oh my God.” Felicia put both hands over her eyes.

Wolf peeled open the half-circle zipper and slipped inside of Professor Green’s tent. It was hot, the air stagnant, and a single fly buzzed against the domed nylon interior.

A light cloth sleeping bag was neatly laid out with a pillow at its head opening. Two pairs of white socks were lined up next to each other, and next to that lay a stack of neatly folded clothing. The shirts were all button-up, the shorts cargo. A worn copy of a book called Systematics and The Fossil Record lay next to it all.

Wolf lifted the lid of a wooden box. It was full of rocks and crystals, and a carton of .38 special rounds. He pulled a pen from his chest pocket and lifted open the box lid. Half the rounds were missing.

Backing out of the tent he said, “Got a box of .38 specials. Half of them are gone.”

“Well, this is definitely not looking good for you three,” Shumway said.

“Why?” Steven turned around. “What did we do?”

Wolf walked to the third tent and poked his head inside. There was a dirty pair of men’s jeans wadded up in the corner, and a men’s tee shirt. Everything was small. Mo Waters’s tent.

Wolf dug through the clothing and personal effects and found no pistol or pair of Converse shoes, not that she’d have worn a sized 16 shoe.

Wolf ducked back out and stood. “I’m confused. Where do you sleep, Steven?”

Steven lifted his chin. “Down the wash a ways.”

Wolf pointed to his right and then left.

“That way.” Steven pointed to the west.

“Why do you sleep away from the rest of the camp?”

“That’s not really any of your business,” Steven said. He glanced at Shumway and back at his wife, looking like he instantly regretted the outburst.

Felicia stared into the distance. She had thoroughly checked out of the conversation.

Shumway was squinting in thought, flicking his gaze between them. He’d seen Felicia’s reaction too.

“You have a pair of Converse All-Stars, Steven?” Wolf asked.

“Nope,” he answered immediately.

Felicia’s steely gaze cracked, and she scratched an eyebrow.

Molly seemed to flinch at the question too, but she recovered and looked at a nearby bush.

“We had a homicide down in Rocky Points Saturday night,” Wolf said. “A fossil dealer was shot once in the head and once in the back. The two slugs found in his corpse were .38 specials, which I’m sure we’re going to find match those bullets in that box.”

They said nothing.

“We just had a conversation with the people at Dig One, Steven, and they say you have a pair of purple Converse All-Stars.”

Steven made a so what gesture and said, “Not anymore. Haven’t had them for over a month.”

“And why’s that?” Wolf asked.

Steven licked his lips. “I think an animal took them.”

Shumway snorted.

Wolf resisted smiling and frowned instead. “That’s what you’re going with? An animal took them?”

“Did I stutter? I keep my shoes outside the tent. One morning they were gone. So, like I told you, I don’t have a pair of Converse All-Stars. Why are you asking me, anyway?”

Wolf looked at Mo and Felicia. They met Wolf’s gaze, as if their earlier stress was gone with Steven’s explanation.

“How far?” he asked.

“How far what?” Steven asked.

“How far to your tent?”

“Up a couple of bends.”

“And your truck?”

“Up next to my tent.”

“Okay. Let’s go take a look. You lead the way, then Felicia and Molly can follow, and then the Sheriff and I will take up the rear. But first, I want you to take us by the dinosaur bones and show us those.”

The three students stood in frozen silence.

“Why?” Steven asked.

Wolf waved his hand. “Let’s go.”

Steven exhaled and crunched past Wolf. Felicia followed, smelling like a fresh spray of the perfume that permeated her tent. Mo Waters followed, giving Wolf an unreadable look on the way by.

Shumway gave him the after you hand again.

They passed underneath the shade-tent and squished their way through the dry wash, and then climbed up a few yards onto the other side.

“Is this a private land dig?” Wolf asked. “Or part of the BLM park?”

Mo turned around. “The dig is on private land. That side of the wash is BLM.”

Wolf nodded, sneaking a glance at Shumway. The sheriff might have blinked, but that was it. “And where will these bones go once they’re dug up?”

“To the university,” Steven said stopping at the edge of a wide and deep pit. “The land owner donated them.”

Wolf was confused by Steven’s actions. He was looking down like the bones were still there, like he was willing to play this off until the bitter last second.

Wolf and Shumway reached the edge of the pit too, and Wolf stiffened. What the hell?

Inside the enormous pit were stone-colored fossils. Judging by the skull and rest of the bones, it was most definitely an Allosaurus, and to Wolf’s untrained eye, it looked to be about 80% complete.

Chapter 20

Patterson stepped on a carbonized chunk of stick and it crumbled under her boot.

“Shit, ah,” Rachette said behind her.

A gust of wind kicked up a blast of soot and ash from the surrounding landscape and whipped it into their faces.

Her eyes stung as she clamped them shut. Holding her breath, she put her face into her sleeve and tried to wait it out.

Patterson dared a peek and saw Rachette stumbling away. She followed his lead and a few seconds later they were back outside the fire line in sagebrush country.

“Damn. Nice idea.” Rachette brushed his face and scalp.

Tasting charcoal, she spit and saw flecks of black in her saliva.

A Brushing fireman named Danny Chase, a quick talking individual with a bushy goatee, stepped away from Patterson. “Careful.” He smiled and winked, and then his eyes raked up and down Patterson for the third time in as many minutes.

They stood at the apex of a V-shaped burn pattern, so the line of scorched earth extended away from them in two directions.

“Nothing at all?” Patterson asked.

“Couldn’t find anything,” Chase said. “Not that uncommon. It was a fire. The source of it could have burned up in the flames. But this is definitely the ignition point. Like I said, our lead investigator is due in later today and he’ll check it out. Sorry.” He lifted his hands and turned a circle. “No charred moving truck.”

She turned to face the county road where their vehicles were parked a dozen or so yards away up a slope.

“Classic cigarette butt fire,” Chase said. “If you ask me.”

“But you didn’t find the butt.”

“Right. But those were some high winds Saturday night. It could have landed in the top of these bushes here, ignited it, and then kept blowing along with the flames until”—he snapped his fingers—“poof. Gone.”

Rachette spit a wad of chew out of his mouth and it stuck to a dry branch.

She turned away and walked back toward the SUV.

Rachette kicked pebbles against her heels as he followed. “You like it up here in Brushing?”

“Not bad. Wish I was in Rocky Points like you guys. A lot more action down there. Got my application in with your department actually. I guess they’re hiring a driver down there. We’ll see.”

Rachette made an uninterested noise.

They ducked through the barbed wire, Chase making too much effort to help Patterson in the process, and reached their SUV’s.

“Thanks, Chase,” Rachette said. “We’ll let you get back to work.”

“It’s no problem. We’ve got it contained so the work’s pretty much over. Anyway, glad I could assist, but sorry I couldn’t help with what you’re looking for.”

Patterson scratched her chin with her engagement ring finger, just in case Chase got any bold ideas, and glared at the line of cars moving like ants in the distance. She spotted the gas station, and then another car cut left across the expansive valley in front of them a half-mile away. “What’s that road?”

“I don’t know,” Chase said. “Why?”

“How far could an ember travel on the wind?”

“A couple hundred yards, I suppose. But the embers are all down at the other end. That’s why we’re here, to make sure they’re all out.”

Patterson shook her head. “No. An ember from a moving truck.”

Chase folded his arms and gazed the same direction as Patterson. “You think your UrMover truck was burned on that far road and a burning ember blew all that way here? Not this nearest road?”

“What is it to that farther road, four hundred yards?” Patterson asked.

“No.” Rachette said. “Like five hundred. A short par five.”

Patterson and Chase turned to him.

“What? I play golf, and that’s about five hundred yards to that road. I can tell.”

“That’s too far.” Chase shook his head. “No way.”

Patterson pointed at a grove of oak trees between the two roads. “That’s less distance. Did you check near those trees?”

Patterson’s arm sizzled and looked like a burnt hot dog as it rested out the open window.

Rachette’s window was up and he had the air conditioning blasting on him.

“Why don’t you roll down your window? What if we can smell something?”

Rachette looked at her.

“We passed your grove of trees. There was nothing in there. We’re done.”

She gritted her teeth and shook her head. She knew what she saw on that tape. It fit.

Danny Chase was no longer behind them. He’d been just as dejected as Patterson when the oak trees lining the creek held no burned secrets and he’d returned to his prior task of burying embers on the burn line.

Now Patterson and Rachette crept along, another few hundred yards reaping nothing but more anger from Rachette.

The road dropped down and veered left ninety degrees toward the line of oaks that hugged a creek, and they were travelling perpendicular toward the first county road they’d been on earlier.

A short distance later there was a ninety-degree turn to the right.

Rachette took the bend and stopped. “Look at that.”

There was a mound in the road up ahead with a sign that said Hedge Creek.

Rachette rolled down his window and stuck his head out. Letting off the gas he said, “Look for tracks going off the road.”

A second later Patterson saw exactly that. “Stop!”

Rachette scraped to a halt and then jammed it in park.

It was immediately clear they had found their quarry. She stepped outside and punched a fist into the wind she was so excited.

She pointed down. “Dual rear tires.”

“Stay off em’,” he said.

They stepped over them and followed the barbed wire fence down to the creek, which was a trickle of water in a twenty-foot wide swath of dirt.

Smashing through crispy grasses and kicking up grasshoppers, Rachette led the way down to the shore. The barbed wire fence gave a wide berth to the right, leaving plenty of room for a truck to pull down into the gently sloped ravine, and so the tracks led, leaving bent weeds and stalks of grass where it had driven.

“Thar she blows,” Rachette said.

The underpass for the creek was actually a big box-culvert, a concrete rectangle tunnel that ran under the mounded road.

Inside were the tangled black remains of the UrMover truck.

“Whoa.” Rachette’s voice echoed in the culvert. “I’m no fire expert, but it looks like it burned hot.”

Patterson nodded, entranced by the twisted skeleton of the vehicle.

The wind whipped at their back and sucked past them into the culvert.

“It’s like a wind tunnel,” she said. “So you’re right. It probably burned hot with a constant fan hitting it. Strange. Look how there’s barely any burned brush past it.”

Through the space between the burned truck and the blackened concrete walls they could see untouched brush land and then the grove of oaks.

The fire trucks were invisible behind the trees, and therefore this culvert had been unseen from their earlier vantage point.

She stepped closer to the truck. It was twisted and mangled, with so much reduced to ashes it was hard to even imagine it as the truck.

“Check out the footprints in the dirt next to the tire.”

Patterson nodded. It was the same diamond pattern.

Patterson tilted her head and stepped nearer the charred remains. “These are bones.”

“What kind of bones?”

She touched a gray piece of material and it disintegrated to dust, revealing a human skull behind it.

Rachette stepped back. “Professor Green?”

She snapped on some rubber gloves and poked her finger at some wire next to the blackened skull. “Looks like eyeglasses. I think it’s him. I recognize the front teeth. One of them is set in front of the other. Remember his smile? I remember thinking he looked like a chipmunk with these teeth. Lorber can make the call, but I’d bet your salary it’s him.”

“Confidence. I like that in a woman.” Rachette walked past her to the side of the truck. Leaning his head in, he pointed at a lump. “What’s this crap? There’s a ton of it.”

She stepped over and pressed on it.

Rachette leaned back a few inches.

She knocked on it with a knuckle. It was solid. Bending down, she picked up a rock and smacked it on the lump.

“What are you doing?”

With a glancing blow, she hit it again, and a piece of material flaked off, revealing lighter material inside. As she hit it again, a chunk came off and it was stark white inside. She poked her finger on it.

“Casting material.” She widened her eyes and realized what she was looking at, and suddenly the jumbled mass of rubble made much more sense.

“Casting material?”

“Looks like they’ll be unscathed. There’s a bunch of them, look.”

Rachette made an “O” with his lips. “Bones.”

“Yep. But these are a lot older.”

Chapter 21

“What kind of dinosaur is this?” Wolf knew the answer but could think of no other questions as he gaped down at the hole.

“Allosaurus Fragilis,” Steven said. “It’s a good specimen. Female, more than 75% complete by our estimates. One of the best finds in history.”

Wolf had never seen anything like the full skeleton sitting in the ground, precisely in the spot where it had died millions of years ago. He stared at it, trying to imagine the beast alive. The head was fully cleared of dirt, and looked to be ready to remove. Mouth stretched open, it was a skull that Wolf could fit half his body inside.

He marveled at how much earth these people had moved to get down to this skeleton. And only with shovels and brushes.

Steven watched him. “Classic death pose.”

“What?” Wolf asked.

“That’s what they call that position the skeleton is in. Head thrown back, jaws wide open. Whether it’s strong ligaments in the animals neck tightening after death, or just how water deposits them, it’s all up for debate.”

Shumway stood with thumbs hitched on his duty belt looking down. “Why have you guys been keeping this a secret from everyone up at Dig One?”

Steven shrugged, “It’s just a rare find. We wanted to keep it a secret until the bones were all uncovered. Superstition I guess. We didn’t want to jinx it. You know … say we’re finding a great specimen, one of the most complete ever, and then we all of a sudden can’t find any more bones.”

The two women went red in the face and avoided eye contact. Steven was doing a good job of lying, but these two were showing signs of dishonesty with everything they said, every movement they made. He needed to get them away from Steven, and he would.

“What were you three doing on Saturday?” Wolf asked.

Steven made a show of thinking about it, and then he shrugged. “I don’t remember. Not much. We don’t usually work on the weekends much. Try to keep a normal schedule to avoid burnout. What did—”

“We went into town,” Felicia said.

Steven shut up and froze.

Wolf nodded. “Yeah, the team up there said three of you left and went into town in the afternoon, and Molly stayed here. What were you doing?”

“We dropped Professor Green in Windfield,” Felicia said. “He was renting a moving truck.”

Steven held his poker face.

Felicia’s gaze was steady.

“You dropped him off?” Wolf asked.

She nodded.

“And where did you go?”

“Back here,” she said.

“Where did Professor Green go?” Shumway asked.

Felicia shrugged. “Said he was going up to the University. Wouldn’t tell us why.”

“Mo,” Wolf said.

Mo jerked to attention.

“Is that true? They dropped off Professor Green and then came back here?”

Mo took her time and then nodded.

Four hours later.

“And where’s Professor Green’s truck?” Wolf asked. “His pickup?”

Felicia’s eyes darted up and then she shrugged.

Another lie coming, Wolf knew before she spoke.

“He left it in town. Near the moving place. Steven and I came back together in Steven’s truck because Professor Green needed his truck when he came back.”

“But he didn’t tell you when he was coming back.” Wolf nodded. “Okay. Let’s take that walk to your camp, Steven.”

Steven began walking, and Felicia and Mo followed silently.

Wolf looked at Shumway and held back a few steps.

“What the hell is going on?” Shumway whispered to Wolf. “I saw those photos of the dinosaur bones Green was selling. They were out of the ground. There was date proof with our local newspaper in one of the pictures. That gives time and location of those bones being dug up somewhere around here.”

Wolf nodded but said nothing.

“So, where did those bones come from?” Shumway’s voice was barely audible over the squish of their footsteps on the sand and pebbles.

“I don’t know,” Wolf said.

They walked in silence for another beat and Shumway leaned close again. “I’m thinking, we really have nothing. I mean, nothing. Not unless we find that revolver and that pair of shoes up here.”

“We have something. They’re lying about the four hours they killed on Saturday afternoon. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see any vehicles parked near the Windfield Moving Company. We have mountains of probable cause for arrest. Steven and Felicia look like they might lawyer up and not talk, but Molly’s conflicted. We just have to separate them.”

Shumway nodded. “Yeah. You can take Molly in your car. I’ll take the other two. We keep them separated all the way back to the station. We have two interrogation rooms and two holding cells. This is strange. Why camp all the way out here?”

Wolf was thinking the same thing.

Molly, Felicia, and Steven marched in silence. Their heads were down, their shoulders slumped, like they approached execution.

Steven looked over his shoulder. “Just up here. Next bend.”

As they followed the swerve of the wash a pickup truck gleamed on the hill to the right. A blue tent was erected near it. It was the same blue tent Wolf had seen from on top of the plateau at Levi Joseph’s camp.

He did a double take as he looked up the mountain. Megan Shumway was atop it staring down at them.

Steven stopped. “Here it is.”

Felicia and Molly stood a few feet away and folded their arms.

“You three stay here,” Wolf said.

They failed to respond, because they were all looking up now too.

Megan and Boydell must have stopped at Levi’s camp. Boydell’s truck sat behind her, and she walked around the back of it and climbed inside.

Shumway’s daughter seemed like she was on a single-minded mission to shake up her father, and Wolf was an integral prop in her act. He felt his face warm up.

“You,” Shumway said. “It was you.”

Wolf frowned and turned.

The sheriff launched past Wolf and barreled head first into Steven’s chest.

Steven was too slow to react and took the collision standing still, and then he was flying through the air and landed on his back with a grunt.

Shumway landed square on top of him, got to his knees and his fists started flying.

The first slap of fist on face spurred Wolf into action, and he caught the third right hand punch in its backswing.

“Sheriff!” Wolf pulled back on his clenched fist.

Shumway ignored him and wrenched his arm free, then started another flurry of punches, this time with alternating rights and lefts.

Wolf pointed at the two women. “Stay back!”

They shuffled away.

Wolf straddled Shumway’s back and pulled him off and into the air. He dropped him on his feet and then grabbed his arm and secured it in a wrap wrist lock.

“Dah! What are you doing?” Shumway sucked in air through his teeth. “Stop, stop.”

Wolf held firm as he walked them up the wash.

“Calm down,” Wolf said.

“You’re gonna break my wrist!”

Wolf let go and Shumway spun on him.

The Sheriff’s chest was heaving, eyes wide. He pushed his chest into Wolf’s and then backed away, pointing at Steven. “You son of a bitch. It was you.”

Steven was slow getting to his feet, checking the blood seeping out of his lip with the back of his hand.

“It was you,” Shumway said. He bent over and put both hands on his knees to catch his breath.

They all stopped and turned at the sound traveling up the draw—four paws pattering at full sprint. Jet came skidding around the corner and barked with snapping jaws.

“Jet! Heel!”

Jet immediately slowed to a stop.

“Sit.”

He sat.

“Keep that thing away,” Steven said backing up.

Wolf stood, taking it all in. Felicia and Mo kept their distance from Steven just as much as from Jet. Steven rubbed his chin, dejected and humiliated. Shumway clenched his fists and glared at Steven.

“You three stay right here. You move and Jet runs you down.” Wolf had no intention of using the attack command. In fact, Jet’s Vail handler had made Wolf swear to never use it, but the threat had the desired effect.

Wolf jerked his head at Shumway and walked up the wash.

Shumway walked over with more than a little reluctance.

“What the hell was that?” Wolf asked walking behind a juniper tree.

“I don’t want to talk about it. But that guy deserves a hell of a lot more than what he got!”

“We need to keep the situation at hand under control.”

Shumway put his hands on his hips and nodded.

Wolf backed up a few steps and peeked around the tree.

Jet was staring at the three graduate students, who were staring back and frozen in place.

“I’m going to search that tent,” Wolf said. “And I want you to come with me.”

Shumway rolled his eyes. “Yeah. All right.”

Wolf gave him the “after you” hand.

Steven’s tent was a three-man design, much like the other three had been. He had a fire pit dug out and ringed with rocks, and it was blackened and well used. A lone camping chair sat next to it, and a gas stove and fold out table stood under an overhanging juniper tree.

There was a black plastic trash can next to a bush. Wolf opened it up and looked inside. It was filled with dozens of empty cans and food packets. Shutting the lid he followed Shumway to the tent.

Lined up along the exterior tent wall was a pair of running shoes and hiking shoes.

“Got your gloves?” Wolf asked.

Shumway pulled them out of his pocket and put them on.

Peeling back the zipper, the sheriff knelt down and rummaged around in the tent, then came out with his hands splayed. “No gun.”

“These are sized fifteen and a half,” Shumway said picking up one of the running shoes. “And these are sixteen. Phew, I can see why he keeps these things outside.”

As he ducked inside the tent to take a look, Wolf caught the scent of untreated athlete’s foot coming off the shoes.

Keeping his ears open in case Shumway made any sudden movements outside, he started sifting through what looked like an explosion of dirty clothing. The tent held a superheated pocket of air saturated with body and foot odor. Steven’s cloth sleeping bag was askew, and there was a duffle bag with clothes billowing out of it.

There was no other pair of shoes. No Converse All-Stars.

Wolf rifled the bag and found no gun, and no shoes there either.

After a thorough search of every nook and cranny, Wolf backed out of the tent, grateful for the fresh air.

Shumway was staring toward the wash. His fists were clenching and releasing. “They’re talking.”

Wolf nodded. “I’m sure they are.”

“They’re going to lawyer up.”

Wolf searched the rest of the camp. He opened a cooler and looked inside. Lifted a conspicuous looking rock with his toe.

Walking to the Ford pickup truck, he bent down and checked the tires: Goodyear P265/70R17.

“A match?” Shumway asked.

Wolf nodded.

“You know, I have those tires too,” Shumway said.

Wolf nodded. “So I saw.”

“I’m pretty sure any government vehicle up here’s going to have them. You’ve got the same ones but sixteens.”

Wolf nodded.

Shumway said nothing.

Wolf lifted the passenger handle and the door squeaked open. It smelled faintly of cologne and coconut oil. Faintly like Megan Shumway, Wolf thought. He thoroughly checked the interior and found no gun or shoes, and then he shut the door. The rear of the truck had tiny chunks of white crumbly material. It looked like chunks of plaster.

“Check out these tracks.” Shumway was in the trees pointing down at tire marks.

“Looks like they’ve been taking another way out of camp.”

Wolf took off his rubber gloves and wiped the sweat off his hands on his jeans. He bent down and felt the dirt. It was hot and soft and held no shape or tire tread pattern, but the depressions clearly ran all the way back to where Steven’s truck was parked.

“This looks like an old road,” Wolf said.

Shumway nodded. “Sure does.”

Wolf eyed him. “You’ve never been out here on this road?”

“No.”

Wolf stared at him for a few seconds.

“What?”

“Megan told me this was your land growing up.”

Shumway shrugged. “It was our family’s land. Just had some cattle. I never spent much time here. We’d go visit my Granddad at his ranch house, which is south over that hill a long ways. My mom and dad moved in there when he died. I was already moved out of the house by that point. My dad might have come out here, but I never did. It was a big piece of property. I haven’t been on a lot of it.”

“And you got rid of the land when your father passed away?” Wolf asked.

“When my dad died my brother and I sold everything, the cattle, equipment, the land. We weren’t going to ranch and it wasn’t making us any money the way it was.”

Wolf nodded. “You didn’t know about the oil?”

“Psh. That bastard knew something we didn’t when he bought it from us. That’s for sure. We should have charged him twenty times the price and he would have taken it.”

Wolf tried to decide if the man was lying or not. It was clear either he or his daughter was.

“What?” Shumway asked.

Wolf looked down the road. “Let’s take pictures of these tracks leading to Steven’s truck and take this route too. We need to prove this is another way out of here.”

Chapter 22

Wolf kept his eyes on the sandy desert bottom and followed the tire depressions as they weaved in and around trees and boulders.

He met Steven’s eyes in the rearview mirror again, and Steven turned away and looked out the window.

“That wasn’t me. It was your dog.”

Wolf said nothing as Jet’s toxic stench attacked again.

“You were displaying a lot of control over those two women back there,” Wolf said rolling down the windows.

Steven blew air between his lips.

“What was Shumway’s outburst all about back there anyway? Megan?”

The question hit home. Steven closed his eyes and shook his head.

“That Megan is something else,” Wolf said.

Steven glared at him in the rearview.

“Apparently you know that. And apparently so do your wife and Sheriff Shumway.”

Steven looked out his window.

“I’ve heard of being in the dog house, but what you have going on is … well, that’s another level. Kicked out of camp? Living in exile up the wash?”

“I’m not going to talk to you,” Steven said for the fourth time. “None of us will.”

“What I don’t get is if you got caught messing around with Megan Shumway, why are you sticking around? You just moved up the wash? Why not just leave and save your wife the heartache?”

“I’m not talking.”

Wolf nodded. He wondered what was happening in the truck behind him.

“It doesn’t matter if you talk to me or not,” Wolf said. “The evidence will speak for itself.”

Steven smiled. “What evidence?”

Wolf slowed when the tracks disappeared over an edge and out of sight.

“This a navigable hill?” Wolf asked.

Steven said nothing.

Wolf got out and checked. The slope was a good thirty-degree slope and there were deep gouges where vehicles had gone up and down. At the bottom there were more bushes and boulders and then the dry wash they’d driven up earlier behind Boydell.

Wolf climbed back behind the wheel and drove over the edge. “Speaking of a piece of evidence. Here’s the way you and the girls could have left your camp without the other dig team knowing. According to Dig One, you three came back in your truck at around 4pm Saturday. With that ten-minute jaunt we just took, and the rest of the drive down to Windfield … I’d say it takes just about three and a half hours to drive down to Rocky Points from your camp. If you left at 4 pm, That could put you guys in Rocky Points right in time to commit the murder.”

Steven shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, man.”

“That was smart of you guys to do a drive by past Dig One. Make it look like you were returning for the night.”

Steven shook his head.

Wolf and Steven drove in silence the rest of the way down the wash, and then they reached the barbed wire gate. It was still open, so Wolf drove through and pulled over. He waved Shumway past him to lead the way back to the station.

Wolf rolled up the windows and turned on the air conditioning. Stomach churning air, he was getting well beyond irritable and needed a whole lot of food soon. Jet had to be starving too.

Steven scrunched up his nose. “Oh. Man. Roll down the windows again.”

Wolf followed the good advice and then pulled over and let Jet out.

Jet squatted in the shade of a juniper.

Beeping and vibrating, Wolf’s phone came alive in the center console and multiple messages came streaming in.

He picked it up, and there were two text messages from Rachette and two voicemails, one from Rachette and one from MacLean.

He tapped the text message and the stream came up.

Patterson and I found the truck! It was burned out. Green’s body inside, and the bones.

Where are you? Call us when you get this. We’re getting worried.

Wolf read the message again, then lowered the phone.

Steven kept his oblivious stare out the window.

Wolf pressed Rachette’s number and listened to the digital purring in his ear.

“Hey, where the hell are you?” Rachette said.

“Hey.”

Wolf stepped down the road out of earshot of Steven.

“We’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

“You found the truck?”

“Yeah, we did.” Wind ruffled the microphone on Rachette’s side. “We’re all at the scene now. Patterson got a hunch from looking at the video footage from the Brushing gas station. They doused it with gas and left it to burn in a culvert under County Road 39. Turns out it started the brush fire. We’re here with Summit SD now, and Lorber’s up here, and he confirms this is Professor Green’s body. MacLean’s up here with Senator Levenworth. They’ve got a hard-on for me and Patterson right now.”

Wolf frowned. “And why is that?”

“Because we found the bones.”

“What bones?” Wolf asked looking over his shoulder at his SUV. Steven sat motionless in the back.

“The fossils. The Allosaurus bones Levenworth was buying. Hello?”

“You’re sure?” Wolf asked.

“Positive. Levenworth just cracked one out of its shell and looked. Identified it as a shin bone or some shit.”

Wolf narrowed his eyes. “Out of its shell?”

“Yeah. They’re all encased in casting material. Levenworth said they call it a field jacket. Protects the bones … or the fossils, sorry … Patterson’s correcting me here.”

“I just went to Professor Green’s dig site and they had a full Allosaurus skeleton sitting in the ground.”

Rachette said nothing.

Wolf looked at his phone. “Hello?”

“What?”

“They had a full skeleton sitting in the ground.”

“An Allosaurus? So … what the hell? Professor Green was selling bones from another dig somewhere?”

“Could be. Which would mean I’m in the wrong spot altogether.”

“Yeah … which means … I’ll let you give that news to MacLean. He’s been calling you too. Did you see?”

“Yeah, I saw. What about that security tape from the gas station? Can we get a good look at the guy on it?”

“Not really. Patterson just got a quick look this morning. We still need to go back and take a closer look at the footage. I haven’t even seen it yet.”

“Let me talk to Patterson.”

There was a rustling and then Patterson came on. “Yes sir?”

“What did you see in this footage?”

“I saw a man with a big cowboy hat on. It was covering his face, so I paused and took a good look at the guy. He purchased a candy bar, a gas can, and then took a book of matches off the counter. But I didn’t really realize about the matches until later. We kind of got run out of there by MacLean.”

Wolf nodded and walked to his SUV and let Jet back inside. Steven pressed against the door to make room as Jet circled in the seat and plopped down.

“Hello?” Patterson said.

“Yeah. I’m here.” Wolf leaned on the searing hot side of the SUV. “Definitely a man in the footage?”

“Uh … yeah. I’d say yes. For sure.”

“What about height? Weight?”

“I can’t say for sure. I need to look at the footage again.”

“Then you do that. Get back to the station ASAP and call me back.”

“Okay,” she said, “but what’s going on up there in Windfield? What did you just tell Rachette?”

“I’ll let Rachette relay it to you. Check the video footage and call me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wolf hung up and pocketed his phone. Climbing in behind the wheel, he glanced in the rearview.

Steven was looking at him.

Wolf ignored him and shifted into drive, and then they were rumbling down the road back to Windfield.

Chapter 23

“You think she’s gonna crack?” Shumway asked.

Wolf swallowed the half-cheeseburger down. Lifting the paper cup off the sheriff’s desk, Wolf sucked down a third of the grown-adult-head-sized Coke and exhaled. “I don’t know.”

Shumway dug into the greasy bag and produced a box of French fries and pushed them in front of Wolf.

“Thanks.”

Shumway shook his head. “These Kennedy’s are tough. I don’t see any budging in them. But Mo Waters? I was watching her in the truck on the way down here. Felicia was trying to give her steely looks, like ‘we can do this’, and Mo was ignoring her.”

Wolf finished chewing a handful of salty fries. “That’s good I guess.”

Shumway eyed the clock on the wall. “Lawyers are coming from Ogden. Three o’clock now … that’ll put them here at six or seven. So we have some time. Maybe one of the women will talk.”

Wolf shoved the second half of the first cheeseburger in his mouth.

“I think the location of the UrMover truck points to Steven and these other two,” Shumway said. “Ditched on the side of the road heading north from Rocky Points on the route to Windfield? What a bunch of dumbasses. I would’ve left it south, or east, or west, or just left it sitting there at the crime scene. Anything would have been a smarter move.”

“It was burned out under a bridge on a remote road,” Wolf said.

“Yeah, whatever. To the north. And burning it? What if someone saw the flames? They would have been caught.”

Wolf chewed some fries. “I think it means they had to burn it. They had no choice.”

“Why?”

“To hide something.”

“Like what?”

Wolf swallowed another sip. “Like forensic evidence that would prove who’d been in the truck. Which begs the question, why take so much precaution with the forensic evidence and be so flagrant with the shoeprints?”

“Yeah. And now we can’t find his shoes. He’s ditched them. So we have nothing.”

“Or he’s telling the truth about his shoe stealing coyote,” Wolf said.

“You’re saying someone stole his shoes and committed the two murders with them on?”

Wolf chewed another handful of fries.

“Could have been the two women.” Shumway glared at his desk and went silent.

“You gonna tell me what the hell happened up at that camp with you and Steven Kennedy?”

Shumway concentrated on eating his fries. “You have a kid.”

“Yep.”

“Teenager, right?”

Wolf nodded.

“Yeah, but you have a boy. Girls are … they just,” Shumway shook his head, “they’re so damned hard sometimes. I don’t know what to do. She’s promiscuous. Do you know what a nightmare that is?”

Wolf said nothing.

“It’s tough raising a kid alone. Right?”

Wolf unwrapped his second cheeseburger and nodded. “Yeah. But you’re still not answering my question.”

Shumway slapped his cup onto the desk. “I sure as hell am. Don’t you get it? She was screwing that guy we have in the holding cell. A married man. There. You happy?” He grabbed a handful of fries and shoved them into his mouth.

Wolf ate the second burger in silence, then said, “You yelled, ‘It was you,’ and then you tackled him.”

“So what?”

“It was an interesting choice of words. It was as if you had been searching for the man who had slept with your daughter.”

Shumway leaned back. “That’s because I was.”

“I’m just trying to understand the full situation I’ve walked into here.”

“You think my daughter and Steven Kennedy … being with one another has anything to do with this?”

“Why is Steven Kennedy still at that camp? After that? Most men getting caught doing that would tuck their tails and run. And he’d obviously been caught. That’s why he’s sleeping up the wash. Then there’s the DUI he got last year. So you knew Megan was sleeping with someone, just not that it was Steven? Or …”

Shumway dropped his cheeseburger in the wrapper and lifted the trashcan off the floor, and then raked the rest of his meal into it. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

Wiping his hands on his already dirty pants he stood and walked past Wolf out of the office.

Wolf finished his third cheeseburger and fries, and then dug Shumway’s unsullied fries out of the trash and finished those.

He once knew a field surgeon in the army that used to slap Wolf on the back and repeat the surgeon’s maxim, “Eat when you can, sleep when you can, and don’t fuck with the pancreas.”

Chapter 24

Molly “Mo” Waters sat like a rock in the interrogation chair. Her arms rested in her lap and she blinked occasionally.

Wolf pulled the wobbly plastic and metal chair back and took a seat. “We found sized 16 shoe prints at our murder scene. We have our crime scene techs looking to match those bullets we found in your camp to those that murdered two people.”

Molly frowned, but said nothing.

“We just found Professor Green’s body in the moving truck he rented on Saturday. The truck your two dig team members took him to rent.”

Her chest rose and fell faster now. She blinked and darted her eyes.

“The truck was burned to a crisp with his body inside. It looks like he was shot, point blank with a .38 revolver, much like the one missing from your camp. We also found sized 16 shoe prints. Converse All-Stars. Steven’s size. He has these shoes, doesn’t he?”

She said nothing.

“And if we find him guilty, and you keep acting the way you are, you’re going to be charged as an accessory. What other choice do we have?”

She closed her eyes and her mouth dropped open.

Wolf waited for words to come out.

“He …”

“He what?” Shumway asked a little too loud for Wolf’s taste.

Wolf gave him a sharp glance.

“I’m pretty sure Steven left that night,” Molly said, looking like she had betrayed her own mother.

Wolf gave Shumway another glance. “Okay. Can you please elaborate?”

“When he and Felicia got back, he went to his camp. Later that night I was outside and saw his headlights coming in.”

“Coming in the way we drove out of camp today?” Wolf asked.

She nodded. “I could see his lights as he drove in. Couldn’t see his truck, just the lights. I was outside going to the bathroom.”

Wolf nodded. “And what time did Steven and Felicia get back from giving Professor Green a ride to the truck rental place?”

“I guess four or five?”

Wolf tapped a finger on the wooden table separating them. “And what time did you see Steven returning that night?”

She shrugged. “Must have been midnight, I guess.”

Wolf nodded. “Was Felicia with you all night Saturday?”

Molly frowned. “Yes.”

“Did you know where Professor Green was going with that rental truck?”

Molly said nothing and held still.

“Was he going to pick up the second skeleton?”

She narrowed her eyes for a moment, but said nothing.

“He was found with a full Allosaurus skeleton, Molly. And Felicia said that she and Steven came back right after dropping Professor Green off at the rental truck business. But we know from your testimony right now that they came back four or five hours later. What were they doing?”

She said nothing.

“Were they helping load up this second skeleton into that truck?”

She closed her eyes and swallowed.

“Where? Where did this second skeleton come from? Are there more people we need to be worried about? There could be more dead people, do you get that? Or they could be out there, the ones getting away with murder.”

She shook her head a little, then a lot. “No.”

“No what? Tell me. We’re confused here. You don’t have to go along with Felicia and Steven’s lies anymore, Molly. They’re not here. Tell us.”

Eyes screwed shut now, she shook her head.

Wolf softened his voice. “Do you think Steven did this, Molly?”

She opened her eyes. “No. It doesn’t make any sense. He never even fired that gun before. He’s a wimp with it. Felicia and I have fired it, he never has. And he’s telling the truth about those shoes. I haven’t seen him wear those things for over a month.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay. So where do you think he was that night?”

She looked at Shumway, then back at Wolf. “I don’t know.”

Wolf stared hard into her eyes until she looked down.

“We’re going to figure all this out,” Wolf said, “and it’s not going to go well for you if you’re hiding knowledge of who did this.”

“I told you what I know. I’m done talking. I have to talk with my lawyer first.”

Wolf checked his watch: 6:14 pm. They’d gotten nowhere, and these lawyers were going to be here any minute to consult with their clients. Apparently these lawyers had made it clear to all three of them to not speak, because Molly was the only one who had said a word all afternoon. Felicia and Steven had said nothing.

They had another 69 hours allowable by law to hold these three, but they had nothing beyond circumstantial at the moment.

Wolf tapped a finger.

Molly Waters bounced her knee and her shoe squeaked.

He thought of Cassidy’s tiny shoe prints next to her dead father and the heat rose in his face. He wanted to reach across the table and grab Molly by the neck, but instead he stood and walked out of the room.

Shumway followed on his heels.

When they got out into the hallway they almost ran into Deputy Etzel, who held a wireless phone in his hand. “Sir, you have a call.”

Etzel held the phone to Shumway.

“Shumway … yes, hi Bradley.” Shumway looked at Wolf. “We’ll meet you at the gate in a few minutes.” He hung up and handed the phone back to Etzel. “That was Boydell. Levi Joseph still hasn’t come back to his camp.”

Chapter 25

Patterson reached her desk and pulled open the laptop. It whirred and clicked and labored through a full minute of startup and when she was typing in her access password she felt a presence at her back.

She recognized Munford’s perfume.

“You told Rachette about the pregnancy test, huh?” Patterson said.

Munford said nothing, so Patterson swiveled in her chair and looked up at her.

“He … told you about that?” Munford’s mouth dropped open.

“That’s your boyfriend for ya.” Patterson poked the power button to her desktop. “In case you haven’t learned by now. Tom Rachette has the secret-holding ability of a five year old.”

“I’m sorry.” Munford stepped up into Patterson’s peripheral. “I wasn’t being vindictive or anything. I was concerned for you. You looked very upset, and that’s what I was talking to Tom about.”

“Whatever.” Patterson concentrated on pulling up the footage of the man in the huge cowboy hat.

“What’s going on?” Munford asked.

“Just doing some work.” She paused for effect. “What are you doing?”

Munford narrowed her eyes for a second. “What’s your problem with me, Heather? What have I done to you?”

Patterson’s face flushed and she tapped on her keyboard. A few seconds later she opened the footage. As she drew the video player slider to the right, the interior footage flickered in ultra-fast motion, until she found the spot and pressed play.

The man with the big cowboy hat on walked in and did his thing again—grabbed a candy bar, a gas can, paid cash, grabbed some matches and went out. It was impossible to gauge a height, because the man crouched on his way out.

Smart bastard.

Munford stepped behind her and mouth-breathed over Patterson’s shoulder. “Where’s Tom?” she asked.

Patterson rolled her eyes and opened up the exterior footage on her desktop. “With Barker and Hernandez up at the gas station. Trying to get some prints. It’s gonna be futile.”

“Ah.”

Patterson pulled the video player slider to the proper spot on the exterior video and pressed play.

The man in the ten-gallon hat walked out and went to a far gas terminal and ducked down behind it.

“What’s he doing?” Munford asked.

“Filling up ten bucks worth of prepaid gas.”

Patterson rewound to a point where the man was shown walking and leaned into the screen. The man’s shoes were barely visible underneath the wide leg of his jeans, but they were unmistakable. She took a screen shot of the man in mid-stride and saved it to her desktop.

“He’s wearing the shoes.”

Patterson flinched. Munford’s breath was on her neck.

“Jesus, can you back up a bit?”

“Sorry. I just heard about the case from Barker.”

Patterson took a deep breath and continued the tape. The man in the hat was careful the whole time to keep his face shielded. Not only that, Patterson realized, when he stood up and left with his gas can, he walked in a perpetual crouch, loping with rounded shoulders like he was a Sasquatch or something.

Smart again, still masking his true height.

The man disappeared from view and out of the video footage forever.

“Did you see that?” Munford asked.

“What?”

Munford came up next to her and sat on the edge of the desk. “If I tell you, you have to tell me what your problem is with me.”

Patterson stared at Munford for a second and shook her head. “I don’t have any problem with you.”

“Bullshit.”

“What did you see on that footage?”

Munford reached onto the side of Patterson’s monitor and fiddled with the dials. The screen went almost completely dark.

“I saw shit footage. The contrast is way too high. Rewind it and look again.”

Patterson was intrigued, because the video footage was much darker and held much more detail. Whited out areas popped with shadow now, and grayed areas darkened to black. They were looking at sharper black and white images now.

Patterson rewound, and she was astonished to see a rectangle appear in the upper right hand corner. She picked up a picture of the truck they’d gotten from Windfield Moving Company and held it to the monitor. “The truck.”

Munford showed serious gum as she smiled wide.

“Okay.” Patterson felt like an idiot for not trying that, and she probably would have gotten to messing with the contrast in a few minutes, but there was no ignoring the sheer joy radiating from Munford’s face. “Nice work,” she said.

Munford leaned into the screen. “I saw the truck already. I want to look at the guy’s shoes. Rewind a little bit more.”

Patterson pulled the slider back until it showed the man in mid-stride.

“Check those shoes out,” Munford said.

Patterson frowned. “I already said I saw the shoes. They’re converse.”

Munford looked at Patterson, as if waiting for her.

Patterson shook her head and looked closer. The front of the shoes had been white, almost completely invisible the first time she’d looked at them in the overexposed footage. Now they were a light gray against an almost black background and the effect was that the shoes had grown from one viewing to the next.

“The size.”

Munford nodded, her eyes alight.

“This guy’s feet are huge,” Patterson said.

“Too huge.”

Patterson pulled her cell phone from her pocket and dialed Wolf’s number. It went straight to voicemail. “Sir, call me as soon as possible.”

She relayed her and Munford’s thought process, mentioning Munford’s help, much to Munford’s delight, in the message. When she hung up she stood and paced. “Damn it. There’s shit cell service up there.”

Munford sat quietly, and then she looked away and stood. “Okay. Well, have a good one.”

“Wait.”

Munford stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

“I really don’t have a problem with you. I just … have a problem with what you … I really have a problem with myself.”

“Okay. And being rude to me makes you feel better?”

Patterson rolled her eyes. “I’m about to get married.”

“Yeah?”

“And I’m going to get some pressure to start a family now.”

“So? Do you not want kids?”

“I do.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“There. That’s the problem.”

Munford frowned. “I’m not following.”

“I mean, I’ve seen how you talk about family. About having a family, and I can’t even imagine trying to have a family and keeping this job. It’s impossible, isn’t it?”

Munford shrugged. “Says who?”

Patterson felt a surge of annoyance. “This is what I’m talking about here. You don’t see the roadblocks standing in front of you? I watched my mother resent us for years, because she had to quit her job as a public prosecutor to raise four kids. You think you can keep a career with the department and have a family?”

Munford shrugged again. “I think I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

Patterson smiled momentarily and then shook her head.

“I think y—”

“Period.” Munford glared at her. “My mom kept her job and raised three kids. She had no choice, because my dad got coked up and ditched us, and if she stopped working we would have starved. If she can do it, I can.”

Patterson blinked.

“I think if you have concerns, you should talk to Wolf. Not me. But if you want my opinion, life is what you make it.”

Patterson suddenly felt dumb. She knew what it meant to make a goal and commit until it was accomplished. Her martial arts, her career so far? That had been how she had lived her entire life.

“Thanks.”

Charlotte smiled. “You got it.”

Chapter 26

Jet the dog had been trained by the Vail PD as a “Detection Dog”. He would ride around with an officer in the pre-legalized-marijuana era and assist on routine traffic stops, often sniffing out weed, magic mushrooms, and other illicit substances that Coloradans tended to carry around in their cars more often than jumper cables.

It was lights, pull to the shoulder, “Do you know how fast you were going?”, and then Jet had his paws on the trunk sniffing out a doobie inside.

Other specialty dogs included Cadaver and Search and Rescue, both dogs that spent their days sniffing out human scents. Cadaver dogs were often bloodhounds. SAR K-9 units were German Shepherds in Vail. Vail had enough money to fill its back bowls with twenty-dollar bills. If they needed another SAR dog, they’d get and train it. Same with a cadaver dog. Multi-tasking a dog would be out of the question. Or so Wolf had thought.

Because now, for the second time of the day Wolf followed Shumway and Boydell up the dry wash and onto the plateau, and for the second time of the day Jet went berserk when they reached Levi’s camp. And now Wolf had the sinking feeling this dog had had some other specialty experience under its collar.

Wolf endured the air shaking barks as he pulled up behind Shumway’s truck and parked. He shut off the engine and let Jet out, and once again Jet went to the back of his SUV and stood expectantly.

“What’s going on?” Shumway asked.

“I don’t know. Go on, Jet.”

Jet sprang off the edge of the road and scurried down the side of the hill, weaving his way past bushes and trees, heading in the same general direction that he had before.

Wolf followed.

“Where you going?” Shumway asked.

“I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Wolf slid on his heels down the steep dirt at the beginning, and then he was among the trees and shrubs.

He paused and listened, and heard Jet panting below and to the right, his paws pattering on the dry earth.

With plenty of assistance from gravity Wolf was going at a fast jog pace, slaloming left and right to avoid sage and cactus, ducking to miss juniper and pinyon boughs, jumping up and over red and white rocks and downed logs.

As he rounded a large sage, Jet came into view. The dog’s rear was low, his ears standing straight up, head bouncing and jaw snapping as he barked.

Wolf walked up and put a hand on Jet’s back and he stopped barking and whined.

“Good boy,” Wolf said.

Jet sat.

Wolf stared at a low mound of sandy dirt that was all too unmistakably shaped. He tilted his head. A sand encrusted patch of grass at his feet had been uncovered by Jet, and Wolf stepped back when he realized it was a tuft of hair.

“What d’ya got?” Shumway yelled down.

Shovel marks were gouged into the earth all around—next to the mound, behind Wolf’s feet—and amid those was a flurry of shoe prints with the diamond pattern.

“Wolf!”

“You need to come down here. Mr. Boydell needs to stay up there.”

Wolf stood back as Shumway snapped on a pair of gloves and pushed the dirt away. Smooth skin emerged immediately, so shallow it was a wonder how the animals had overlooked it. The skin was ghost white and crusted with maroon dirt. There was more hair, this part caked with red mud, and brown eyebrows and then dirt-packed slit eyes. As Shumway removed more of the fine earth with his rubber-gloved hands a crooked looking face emerged.

“Levi Joseph?” Wolf asked.

Shumway looked at him and nodded. “Yeah. That’s him.”

“What’s happening down there?” Boydell was pacing at the road on top and stopped. He was a silhouette against the reddening sky. “What did you find?”

“Don’t say anything,” Shumway said in a low voice. “Boydell was close to this kid.”

Wolf was standing and out in the open from Boydell’s vantage. He held up a finger and said, “We’ll let you know when we know, Bradley.”

Boydell scoffed and resumed pacing.

“Holy mother of …” Shumway said as he brushed away some more dirt from the neck area, revealing a slash of dark red that was all the way across the throat. “Just about cut off his head.”

Wolf watched as Shumway pushed and pulled more dirt off, revealing more and more carnage as he did so.

“Chest is slashed to hell,” Shumway said unnecessarily, because the shredded, red-stained clothing and dirt packed crevices explained it all.

Wolf grabbed a rock and bent down next to the body. He scraped off some of the caked on dirt and revealed a wound underneath. It was seven or eight inches from end to end, canoed up on both sides.

“A shovel,” Wolf said.

“My God,” Shumway said.

They stood in silence for a moment, neither one of them needing to point out how many stabs with a shovel would make a body look like that. Clearly it was more than one could count on two hands.

“Shit,” Shumway said, standing up.

“What is it?” Boydell called down from up above.

“Uh, just … hold your horses Bradley! We’re trying to make sense of this now.”

“Make sense of this?” Boydell shook his head and started pacing again.

Shumway turned downhill and lowered his voice. “There’s more to this, Wolf.”

Wolf stared at him.

“What the hell is this?” Boydell was yelling at the top of the hill now, pointing down on the ground. “What is this?”

“What is what?” Shumway yelled back.

Boydell was further down the road than he’d been before, a good twenty yards behind Wolf’s rear bumper. Boydell bent down and then stood up abruptly and staggered back. “Is this blood? Oh my God, is this blood? What did you find down there, Sheriff?”

“Shit,” Shumway said and assessed the climb back up to the road.

“I’ll go up,” Wolf said.

“Hell, I’ll come up too. Gonna have to radio everyone. It’s gonna be a long one tonight.”

Chapter 27

Wolf climbed back up to the road as fast as he could with legs that ached from so much driving and activity in one day.

Bradley Boydell was leaning on his elbows against the front of his truck. Head down, tears were streaming onto the hood making a tiny puddle that reflected the orange clouds. “It’s Levi, isn’t it?”

Wolf stood breathing hard next to his SUV.

Shumway was grunting his way up the slope behind him and Jet was over sniffing where Boydell had been earlier.

“Jet. Come.”

Jet came over and sat down, a low growl coming from his throat.

Wolf went and studied a bloody scrape that went across the road. He’d driven over it twice without seeing it, and so had Shumway and Boydell, leaving numerous tire tracks running through it, but it was visible now, plain as day.

It was no wonder they’d missed it. The road was rusty orange, made from the pulverized rock from the area. The blood was a darker shade of the same color. Without the prior discovery of a mutilated corpse, the marks looked like nothing.

Spotting the first Converse shoe print, he followed them across the road from right to left—from the camp to the edge of the road. There was a gouge in the soft shoulder where the killer had dragged the body off the edge. Wolf walked to the edge and there was a dirt groove that went twenty feet down the slope until it disappeared behind the bushes.

Standing still, Wolf scanned the slope back and forth, studying it inch by inch.

Shumway crunched up next to him, his lungs wheezing in his chest. “My deputies are on their way up. They’ll call in the crime scene techs. They’re on-callers, spread out all over the county, so it’ll take a while.”

Wolf pointed and lowered his voice. “The Converse tracks go down with the body there, and come back up a few feet over.”

Shumway nodded, still breathing hard.

“We need to get Boydell out of here,” Wolf said.

Shumway coughed. “Yeah. I know. But we don’t want to have him drive over this. Shit.”

Boydell was standing next to his truck now, staring at them. His eyes were red, his cheeks wet.

“Mr. Boydell,” Wolf said walking toward him, “I’m afraid it’s exactly what it looks like here.”

Boydell sagged and closed his eyes. “My God.”

Wolf stopped in front of him and hooked his thumbs in his jeans pockets. “I’m sorry, Bradley. We need to get you back to your quarters. This is a crime scene now and we need to restrict access to law enforcement only. I know you understand.”

Boydell opened his eyes. “Is this why you asked about the Converse shoes? Because I saw those shoe prints. Those are the same as you found in Rocky Points, aren’t’ they?”

Wolf drew his mouth in a line, but said nothing.

Boydell looked at Shumway. “Was this Steven?”

Wolf turned and eyed Shumway.

“Uh … listen, Bradley.” He put his hands on his hips and studied the camp. “I tell you what, let’s walk it back to your quarters. We’ll need to keep this road right here as pristine as possible for evidence gathering.” He raised his hands and dropped them. “I’ll walk you back.”

Boydell waved it away and turned. “I can walk myself.”

“No, Bradley, I can—”

Boydell turned around with raised eyebrows. “Sheriff, I said I can walk myself, and I’ll walk myself. You stay here and do your job, and figure out who did this.”

“Mr. Boydell,” Wolf said.

“What?”

“What were you doing Saturday night?”

Boydell stared at him with peaked eyebrows. “What? Me?”

Wolf nodded.

“I was in my quarters. You can ask Megan and Phil.” He looked at Shumway with a pleading look.

“Okay, thanks Bradley,” Shumway said. “You know we have to cover every base, right?”

“I was up at my quarters.”

Wolf nodded. “Okay.”

Boydell gave Wolf a final resentful look and turned around. He opened his truck door and dropped his car key inside on the seat. “In case you need it.” Then he slammed it and walked up the road and disappeared over the top.

Shumway shook his head. “What the hell was that?”

“And what were you doing Saturday night?” Wolf asked.

Shumway stared long at Wolf. “Are you serious?”

“I am. What were you doing?”

Shumway shook his head.

Wolf held his gaze. “Just covering every base.”

“You’re runnin’ the wrong direction around the bases, Detective.”

“Am I? You have motive, just like the rest of the people I’m meeting.”

“Motive? What motive do I have?”

“That land used to be yours. I don’t know, maybe you’ve been resentful of their find all along, wishing you still had the land, so you could make all that money with a fossil sale. Maybe you know a lot more about fossil trade than you’re leading on. Maybe you know exactly where that second skeleton came from—somewhere on your family’s land.

“Megan told me you lost the land. Maybe she was telling the truth. Is she? Which one of you is lying about that? Did you and your brother sell it? Or did you lose it?”

They stared at one another for a few seconds, and then Shumway stormed away toward his truck.

Shumway opened his door and bent inside, searching the floorboards for something. He looked in the side pocket on his door, then picked a piece of paper out and brandished it at Wolf.

“Here.” Shumway walked over and handed it to him.

It was a credit card receipt for a Chuck’s Grill and Tavern.

“Look at the address.”

Wolf did. It said 1823 Garland Street, Windfield Colorado.

“And look at the time. The date.”

10:29 pm. Saturday, August 11th.

Wolf shrugged. “So your credit card was at Chuck’s Grill Saturday night. Doesn’t mean you were.”

Shumway put his hands on his hips. “Okay. Fine.” He walked back to his truck and leaned inside. “What does that total say on there?”

“What?”

“The total price after tip?”

Wolf was already convinced now. The man was telling the truth and all it would have taken to verify it was a trip to Chuck’s Grill and Tavern, but he went along with Shumway anyway. “Forty eight dollars.”

Shumway scribbled something on a piece of paper, ripped it out of a notebook and walked back to Wolf.

“Let’s do a little handwriting check, shall we?” Shumway said.

He held the piece of paper next to the receipt. It was the number 48 with two 0’s after it and a line underneath. The handwriting was identical, along with the little line underneath the zeros, and it was such terrible chicken scratch that there was little doubt they were both Shumway’s hand.

“So that puts me at the bar, right? If you want we can go in there and ask around.”

Wolf gave him back the receipt. “Okay. I believe you.”

Wolf rubbed his temples and walked toward the ring of scorched earth Levi used as a fire pit. There was a patch of dry grass beyond it smattered with blood.

The spatter was barely visible in the oblique light, but it was there, telling a story. Wolf pictured the killer hauling up and driving the blade down, then repeating, causing long streaks.

This spot looked to be where Levi had sustained most of his wounds. Probably where Levi had been felled initially by a knockout blow to the face and then where he’d been stabbed a dozen or more times.

Closing his eyes and erasing the movie playing in his mind, he turned to the final warm rays of the sun. Hills and jutting rocks cast shadows that painted streaks through the air and darkened the landscape—the western faces gleaming, the opposite sides already lost in the advancing night.

“This is where he was killed.”

Shumway walked up next to him.

“We’re missing something. Something big.”

“Who killed these people? Yeah, no shit.”

Wolf shook his head and walked to the edge of the road. “Look at this. The footprints go off the edge of the road here, then come back up the hill …”

“Yeah, you said that earlier. So what?” Shumway said.

“If it was Steven, wouldn’t there be a set of tracks from his camp up to this camp and back?”

“Not if he drove up here, got out and murdered him, then put Levi down there and hiked back up to his truck.”

Wolf nodded. “In the process leaving a shit-pot of evidence, once again. Only this time it literally points in the direction of his own camp.”

“Maybe he was just plain dumb about the shoe prints.”

Wolf said nothing.

“I mean, you can’t be in a right state of mind to be killing people like this. Maybe he just let the shoeprints slip.”

“Both of them.” Wolf looked at Shumway. “There were two sets of footprints at the scene in Rocky Points. Only one set here.”

“Not following you.”

“I’m just saying.” Wolf folded his arms and stared down at Steven’s tent and truck sitting in the darkened valley. “The pit this morning down at Dig Two—they had a tarp shading the pit, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And would you consider that covered up? I mean, we walked right up to the edge of the pit and looked inside, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And what about that plaster in the back of Steven’s truck?”

“What about it?”

“My deputies said they found the bones in that burned truck encased in plaster. And there’s chunks of plaster sitting in the back of Steven’s truck.”

Wolf walked away toward his truck.

“Where are you going?”

“Down to Dig Two.”

“What? What about this crime scene?”

“We’re going to find he was killed with a shovel. The shovel’s going to be missing, and the only evidence worth anything will be those shoe prints. I’m done with this crime scene.”

Chapter 28

Wolf left Shumway shaking his head in the side view mirror and drove up the road and onto the plateau.

As he twisted on his headlights, the straight two-track lit up. Then he clicked on his brights and the tents and tarps of Dig One reflected back at him.

Karen Orpia and Dr. Mathis stood up from their camp chairs and moved steadily toward the road to intercept Wolf as he passed.

Slowing to a halt, Wolf leaned an elbow out his window.

“Hello, Detective,” Dr. Mathis said. The doctor wore a headlamp that shone straight into Wolf’s eyes.

“Could you point that down?” Wolf asked.

“Oh yes. Sorry.” He pointed the beam down. “What’s going on up there?”

Wolf sat for a moment in silence, then asked, “When exactly was the last time you two saw Levi?”

They looked at one another.

“Shit, is that why you’re there? He still hasn’t shown up?” Karen leaned her head on Dr. Mathis shoulder.

“Is that true?” Dr. Mathis asked.

Wolf nodded. “Can you please answer the question?”

“Uh, I guess it must have been … heck I hardly know what day it is when we’re out here.”

“It’s Monday,” Karen said. “We saw him Saturday. Saturday morning he came in and had coffee with us, then went back to his camp and we haven’t seen him since.”

Dr. Mathis nodded, his beam of light bouncing up and down. “Yes. And he never mentioned where he was going that day. Not once. Never even said he was going hiking.”

Wolf nodded. “Can I ask you two for a favor?”

They nodded.

“Can you two come down with me to Dig Two? I have some questions I need answered and the Dig Two team is no longer there.”

Dr. Mathis’s light beam twisted to Karen. She had her eyebrows raised high.

In unison, they said, “Yeah.”

Wolf parked at the main camp of Dig Two and kept the headlights on. They got out and walked through the swirling dust in the beams of light toward the tents.

“Where are they?” Karen asked quietly.

Wolf flipped on his flashlight beam. “They’re in jail at the moment.”

“What?” Dr. Mathis asked. “You’re kidding, right? They’re your murder suspects?”

Wolf said nothing as he led them between the tents and through the white shade tent, which still had three half-eaten sandwiches on plates underneath it, plus a few dozen insects.

“Shit,” Karen said, focusing her beam on a hairy spider walking on a white piece of bread.

Jet sniffed close and the spider raised its front legs.

“Jet, no.” Wolf said on the way by.

Jet whined and followed.

“Where are you taking us?” Dr. Mathis asked. “To the pit I hope.”

Wolf stepped to the open pit and stopped.

Dr. Mathis had beaten him there and had all but skidded to a stop, kicking some dirt into the hole.

“My heck.” Dr. Mathis swept his headlamp beam up and down the length of the spine of the fossilized skeleton. “My ... heck …”

The doctor probed the bones with his headlamp beam, with clear methodical purpose, inhaling sharply and staring at a leg bone, then turning and studying the claws, then gasping while he stared at the skull.

“This is the most complete Allosaurus specimen I’ve ever seen. And the condition … it’s spectacular. Female … You can tell by the pelvic structure and the lacrimal crest.”

Karen was gripping Dr. Mathis arm at the edge of the great pit, following the beam of light as it took in every detail.

“What a bunch of assholes keeping this secret,” Karen said. “What the hell?”

“Look at the skull,” Dr. Mathis said. “It’s larger than Omega by at least ten centimeters. Look at the quality of fossilization.”

“What’s Omega?” Wolf asked.

“Oh, the replica in the Visitor’s Center,” Karen said.

Wolf put his hands on his hips. “How do you go about finding a skeleton like this? Do you use that GPR you were talking about earlier today and search a grid pattern or something?”

Dr. Mathis laughed. “A lot of people think exactly what you just said—that in this day and age we can head out into the wilds of Colorado, or Utah, or Siberia, or Australia with our ground penetrating radar and just start scanning until we find the mother lode, like the one we’re looking at right now. Sure, that is the hope one day. In fact there are some people working on scanning by aircraft … but that technology is farther in the future than we’d like, and in reality finding a fossil is akin to the old time gold prospectors looking for a vein of gold.

“Firstly, we seek out a place where known dinosaur fossils have been found. Like say, Dinosaur National Monument and surrounding areas. Check. Secondly, we seek out places where erosion is taking place year round, doing the unearthing of the bones for us.” Dr. Mathis twisted with his arms out. “This dry riverbed in this ancient valley for instance. Check. Thirdly, we walk up and down the bottom of the valley with our foreheads inches from the ground searching for tiny fragments of fossilized bone. When we find it, we move up stream, looking for larger chunks. When the fossils peter out to nothing, we know we’ve passed the potential mother lode and move our way up the sides of the hills and look for the larger bones.

“More often than not we find absolutely nothing. Sometimes we find a large fossil specimen, say a leg bone or arm bone, or rib, and the rest of the skeleton sat in the wrong material for millions of years and simply decayed away into nothing.

“But in the rarest of cases we find something as magnificent as this. The animal has died, and before scavengers were able to devour him the animal was buried rapidly, say by a mud or landslide event. Perhaps a catastrophic event that killed the animal in the first place. Then over thousands of years the organic material decomposed, the minerals seeped in to replace the decomposing bone, and now here we are. We’re left with rock in the shape of the original bones. And in this case, rock curved and hardened into a magnificent three dimensional picture of exactly how the animal existed underneath his skin at that very moment of death almost a hundred million years ago.”

Dr. Mathis’s chest heaved.

Wolf frowned. “And that’s what they did? They found a piece of a bone, followed the other pieces up stream, came a few yards up this hill and excavated this?”

Dr. Mathis nodded and wrapped both hands around a huge bone. “Green liked to tell anyone who’d listen. They found a claw, then some smaller fragments, then came up on a femur sticking out of the ground. And voila.”

“A femur, like that bone you’re grabbing in your hand right now?” Wolf asked, pretty sure he could recognize a femur.

Dr. Mathis froze for a few seconds then let go, like he realized he was just holding a hunk of plutonium.

“And how about that other bone right next to it,” Wolf asked.

Dr. Mathis stood up. “What in the heck? What’s going on?” The man twisted in a circle. His light swiveled wildly in the hole.

Wolf nodded. “Which leads me to my next question. What are the odds of pulling out two complete fossil specimens like this out of the same hole?”

Chapter 29

“Two skeletons?” Karen asked with a chuckle. “Not likely at all.”

Dr. Mathis shined his light on Wolf and held up a finger. “But hold on. However ridiculously rare it would be to find something like that, Detective Wolf’s question is actually not far off the mark of ... hmmm.”

“What? No way,” Karen said. “What are you talking about?”

“Karen,” Dr. Mathis nodded at her, “remember the first time we saw the progress of this dig? It was two years ago. We’d been here for two months, flipping dust off partial caudal vertebrae, and here comes Green and his students finding an Allosaurus femur poking out of the ground. And less than a mile away from us.”

Karen said nothing.

“It was a femur, do you remember?”

Karen shook her head, and then she nodded. “Yeah, okay. It was.”

“Yes, it was. Do you remember the disgust?” Dr. Mathis asked with a chuckle. “The anguish?”

Karen rolled her eyes and wiped her nose. “Whatever.”

“And do you remember the location of it?” Dr. Mathis tilted his head.

Karen started nodding now. “It was right on the surface.”

Dr. Mathis looked at Wolf. “So you’re right, they must have found bones from two dinosaurs. There’s no other explanation. These bones here are all meters below the surface, and I’m looking at two femurs right now, and we saw a femur. Heck, look at the amount of earth they’ve removed. But you asked if they pulled a second, complete skeleton out of this same hole? No. No way. The odds are too astronomical.”

“We found a second skeleton,” Wolf said. “Allosaurus. Female. Thought to be almost eighty percent complete.”

Dr. Mathis stepped toward Wolf. “What do you mean, we found a second skeleton?”

Wolf nodded. “At one of our crime scenes.”

Dr. Mathis looked down. “That’s impossible. Isn’t it?” He went to the edge of the pit and dug a chunk off the side. “Sandy, but very dense. I guess it could be.”

“And now it makes sense why they were hiding the pit for a year and a half,” Karen said. “All this time, they were digging out the top skeleton to get to the bottom one.”

Wolf nodded and kicked a bucket on the ground. “They encased them in field casting and transported the bones out as they excavated them. But how would they hide this kind of thing from your boss? You talked about using ground penetrating radar on your dig up there. Wouldn’t they be able to see a second skeleton underneath it from the beginning readouts?”

Dr. Mathis bent down and picked some more soil off the edge of the hole. “Not necessarily. We do GPR readings for initial funding. This soil is pretty dense, and we use a 1000 MHz antenna for fossil detection. With the second skeleton this low? Could have gone undetected until they found the second one with their bare hands. Or maybe it was … yeah,” he walked to the end of the hole and kept walking into the dark, “this specimen ends here, and there’s another pit to the side of it. This over here must be where the first skeleton was found. So they weren’t on top of one another, they were side by side, this one being a little deeper. They were more overlapping.

“You can check it all for certain. They’ll have the funding package on file at the university, you can bet on that. And really, you couldn’t hide a second skeleton if it came up on the readout. There are smart people who write those funding checks.”

Wolf nodded.

Dr. Mathis chuckled and shook his head. “Okay, so all this is making sense now. The fossil dealer that was killed? Did Professor Green kill a fossil dealer? What happened, was he selling the bones and decided to … or wait a minute … did Professor Green die?”

Karen and Dr. Mathis stared at him.

Wolf said nothing.

“He did.” Karen covered her mouth. “That’s why he’s gone all of a sudden?”

Wolf waved a hand. “I’m sorry. I really can’t discuss the details of the case. But you’ve really helped.”

“How did he hide this from Dr. Talbot?” Dr. Mathis chuckled. “That’s what I want to know. Must have crapped himself. What if he got caught? ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, we found a second skeleton.’”

Wolf turned to leave.

“Mr. Wolf?” Karen called after him. “Are you leaving?”

Wolf kept walking. “I’m headed into town. You guys don’t mind walking back up to your camp, do you?”

Wolf heard an answer but didn’t listen. He and Jet climbed in and drove away from the main camp toward Steven’s truck. He passed the pickup, passed Steven’s tent, and passed underneath a swarm of lights on the side of the mountain, some of which pointed his way. As he followed the tracks into the northwest Colorado desert, he thought he heard a voice through the open windows say, “Wolf! Where are you going?”

He switched on his radio and it auto-tuned to their active frequency.

“Sheriff Shumway, this is Detective Wolf, come in.”

“Wolf!” Shumway’s voice was crisp and clear. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the station. I need to speak to you.”

There was a long hesitation. “Negative, Wolf.”

“It’s urgent.”

“Then stop and come back up here and tell me about it.”

Wolf kept his foot on the gas. “I need to speak to the students again.”

Another hesitation. “What the hell’s going on?”

Wolf pressed the button. “I’ll tell you at the station. Over and out.”

“Shhhhhhhhit. I’ll see you there.”

Wolf switched off the radio and spun the wheel to avoid a clump of cacti.

Chapter 30

Wolf rubbed an eye as he descended out of the high country toward Windfield while Jet snored in back. His dash clock said 9:04 and Wolf was looking forward to joining Jet in dreamland, but he knew it might still be a long time coming.

Picking up his phone, he checked cell service and still had nothing.

Wolf felt the pressure mounting to get the job done—for Cassidy, and Keegan, and Trudy Frost.

Wolf knew how it felt when someone took away a person you loved with all your heart. After the initial shock and longing for ridiculous things like time reversal, or a miraculous resurrection, next comes an insatiable desire for justice. There was no way of moving forward until that justice was served.

The Frosts were stuck in a kind of mourning Purgatory, and it was up to Wolf to help them out. And for once he felt like he was close.

Wolf’s phone buzzed and he picked it up. He’d missed calls from Jack, MacLean, and Patterson.

He pushed Jack’s number and listened to it ring.

“Hello?” Jack’s voice was barely audible over the rumbling of Wolf’s SUV.

“Hey, man. How’s it going?”

“What’s going on? Are you all right?” Jack asked. “I’ve been calling you.”

Wolf nodded. “Yeah. I’m all right. Bad cell service up here. How about you?”

“I’m all right.”

“How are Cassidy and her family doing?”

A long pause. “They’re not doing too well. They keep crying and they don’t talk. They’re sleeping now, though. I guess that’s good.”

Wolf and Jack sat silently with one another for a few seconds. “Everyone still at Nate’s?”

“Yeah.”

“And what are you doing?”

“Sitting out on his deck worrying about you.”

Wolf smiled.

“Are you finding anything out?”

Two pinprick headlights shone in Wolf’s rearview mirror—Shumway finally catching up. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Good.”

“Yeah. Listen, get some sleep. You need it. It’s been a long day.”

“I will.” Jack said. “How’s Jet?”

“He’s fine. Get your ass to bed.”

“I will. Love you.”

Jack had scarcely said those words since he was much younger.

“I love you, too.”

Wolf hung up and opted to dial Patterson. MacLean could wait.

“Hello?” Patterson answered in a weak voice.

“Hey, I saw you called. Crap, I guess it was a few hours ago. Sorry, you asleep?”

She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry. I was just resting. Yeah, I called. Did you listen to my message?”

“No.”

“I went through the footage … actually Deputy Munford helped … anyway, the guy at the gas station was pretty careful with not letting the cameras catch his height against the height strip. He walked out of the building stooped over.”

She was talking about the multi-colored height indicator that was drilled into the wall next to most convenience store doorways nowadays.

“But what we noticed outside was the man wore the Converse All-Star shoes. And the guy’s feet were enormous. If you’ve met a guy with clown feet up there, then he’s your man. But otherwise, I think the guy was wearing shoes that were too big for him. In fact, I went back to the crime scene and confirmed the pressure the person exerted onto the front of the shoe was conspicuously low. Like, either someone never put their full weight on their toes, or they were wearing huge shoes. I’m going with huge shoes by the looks of the video.”

The headlights grew in his mirrors.

“Sir?”

“Yeah. Okay. You got a color on those shoes?”

“Black and white footage, so no. But they’re a dark color. Like a blue or black.”

“Or purple.”

“Yeah. Or purple.”

“What was the guy wearing?”

“A cowboy hat, Carhartt jacket, jeans … I can make a video snippet and send it to your phone.”

“Good idea.”

She paused. “I’m … um …”

“What?”

“Well I’m at home now. I don’t have the footage on my laptop. I left it on a flash drive in the station.”

“Don’t worry about it. Tomorrow morning is good enough. Get some rest and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Anything else?”

“Not really. We went back to the gas station and couldn’t get any prints off the gas terminal. Let’s see … they found a .38 slug lodged in Professor Green’s skull. Matched the other two in Frost.”

“Okay.”

“And that’s about all we’ve got here. MacLean’s on pins and needles waiting to hear from you.”

Wolf said nothing.

“I hope that shoe thing helps.”

“It does.”

“What’s going on up there?”

Wolf had slowed to a crawl and now Shumway was on his bumper, his headlights lighting up Wolf’s cab.

“I gotta go. Talk to you later.” Wolf pushed off the phone and dropped it in the center console.

Pulling over, Shumway pulled up next to him with a rolled down window.

“What the hell’s going on with you?” Shumway asked.

“You find anything else up at the scene?” Wolf asked.

“No.”

“I went down to Dig Two with Dr. Mathis and Karen Orpia.”

“Yeah?”

Wolf told him about the second skeleton.

“Two skeletons … that’s not possible, is it? What, two dinos were doin’ the nasty and got hit by a comet?”

Wolf told him about the location of the bones the team initially found and the second skeleton, and how the university would have pictures on file in something Dr. Mathis referred to as a “fund package”.

“All right. So we go to Utah tomorrow.”

Wolf nodded.

Shumway rubbed his chin with his hand “This case against these kids is more solid than the rocks up at that dig. If this second skeleton theory is right? That means all three of them are lying. Which means we go back to our original motive we talked about on day one: They were in on the deal four ways and figured out Green was going to take the money and run so they killed him. They’re acting like they don’t know about this second skeleton, because they knew they were going to ditch it and take the money.”

“But why kill Levi?” Wolf asked.

Shumway shrugged.

“And why come straight back and wait for the cops to come ask them about everything? They would have known we’d come to them, right? And the plaster … they left plaster in Steven’s truck. They left buckets down there with plaster all over the place inside of them. If they wanted to pretend like that first skeleton didn’t exist, why didn’t they wipe away all the evidence, especially if they knew they were going to kill Green and the cops would be crawling all over them at any time?”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m just saying, these three students are acting like the last thing they expected was for cops to show up. Their actions are not consistent with having just killed three people. And why Levi?”

Shumway shook his head. Lifted a hand.

“I just talked to my deputy. She has the gas station video footage showing one of our perps wearing Converse shoes.”

Shumway raised his eyebrows. “There we go. So?”

“She says the man’s face is covered and he ducks down as he’s leaving the convenience store so she can’t get a height. But she also says she’s positive the man’s shoes were too big for him. He either has clown feet or is wearing shoes five too-many sizes big for him.”

Shumway gave him a dubious smile. “She thinks?”

“If this deputy thinks something, it’s usually right. She’ll send us the footage tomorrow morning so we can see for ourselves.”

Shumway took a huge breath and let it out. “So what now?”

“Now we know they had a second set of bones. I want to know where they kept them,” Wolf said. “There might be a clue there.”

“What are you going to do? Ask those students? That’s why you wanna talk to them? Psh. Why do you think they’ll talk now?”

Wolf said nothing. He had a point.

“I’m stopping for food on the way back.”

“Had to have been a storage unit,” Wolf said. “There aren’t any in Windfield, so how about east? East of the UrMover truck rental place.”

Shumway shifted into park and his truck rocked back and forth. “I told you that Pamela was crazy. She didn’t know where she was pointing.”

“And if she wasn’t crazy?”

“Then she’d be pointing to the nearest town, which is Logan’s Ferry, which is an hour east toward Steamboat Springs on 40.”

Wolf shrugged. “That would fit our timeline. They rent the truck at 12:30 pm, drive into Logan’s Ferry, start loading up the bones at 1:30. Let’s say it takes an hour to load them, so they finish at 2:30, come back to Windfield by 3:30, and then the students and Professor Green split—Green goes south to Rocky Points, and Felicia and Steven go back to the dig.”

Shumway nodded. “Then Steven and Felicia make their drive by of Dig One, and they come full circle, past their camp, and back down out of the quarry. They follow Professor Green … wait, Green was already driving south, so they couldn’t follow him. They must have known where Frost lived.”

“And why was it someone else in the video footage wearing Steven’s shoes?” Wolf asked.

Shumway rolled his eyes as if he was ultimately annoyed by the facts. “I’ll believe that footage when I see it.”

Wolf had his phone out and was searching for storage rental units in Logan’s Ferry. “There aren’t any storage unit rentals in Logan’s Ferry.”

“Ah Christ.”

They sat listening to their idling motors for a few seconds.

“Where else?” Wolf asked.

Shumway started to say something then his face dropped. “Wait.”

“What?”

“I know where they kept them.”

“Where? Let’s go.”

Shumway pointed to his dash clock. “It’s nine frickin’ thirty. You said you wanna go talk to these students, and we got a murder scene up there, and my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. If anything, let’s go eat, and we can get a fresh start on this in the morning.”

“You’re right. The students aren’t going to talk anyway. Tell me where this place is, I’ll let you know what I find.”

Shumway rolled his eyes and rolled forward. “Yeah, right. Follow me.”

Chapter 31

Wolf followed Shumway down a cracked asphalt county road, five miles past the Windfield Moving Company. They were traveling in the direction Pamela had pointed earlier, along flat country lit by the moon, surrounded by dark hills that blotted out the blanket of stars.

Shumway’s brake lights blossomed as he slowed and took a left at a grove of deciduous trees that hugged the banks of an unseen river.

Wolf slowed and followed, and hundreds of insects swam through Wolf’s headlights as he bumped onto the rutted and potholed dirt.

Continuing on for a quarter mile, Shumway slowed as their bobbing headlight beams lit a ranch house squatting in the trees ahead.

The windows of the broken down house shined, revealing cracks and holes in the glass. A wall of weeds higher than a grown man stood against the warped wood panel siding. Next to the house sat an aluminum building that looked much newer.

Shumway slowed at the outbuilding and parked. Keeping his headlights on, he illuminated two white oversized garage roll doors.

Slowing to a stop next to him, Wolf shut off the engine, grabbed his Maglite and got out.

Jet moved an ear, but otherwise remained dead asleep, so Wolf left him inside and shut the door.

“This is it.” Shumway swiveled and looked into the dark recesses of the property.

The sweet smell of weeds and grasses was thick, and the call and response of crickets came at them in stereo from every angle.

“This is what?”

“Where my great grandparents homesteaded a hundred years ago,” he pointed, “where my grandfather taught me how to shoot a .22.”

Wolf nodded and waited patiently for Shumway to finish a flashback, and then Shumway turned around and took hold of a roll door handle and twisted it. The clack of the locked handle echoed through the huge metal building. The other one was locked too.

“There’s a side door.”

Wolf followed him and clicked on his Maglite.

The side of the shed was overrun with huge weeds and grass that grew out of gravel. Behind the foliage was a window, and next to the window was a tan door with a cracked concrete landing at the foot of it.

Shumway twisted the knob. “Locked. Damn it.”

Shumway parted the weeds and pushed his way to the window. An orb of light glowed on the glass and the interior of the building lit up.

Wolf stepped next to him and shone his own flashlight inside.

Inside was vaulted space with metal crossbeams above and a crumbled concrete floor. A dusty pickup truck was parked inside.

“Professor Green’s truck?” Shumway asked. “Dodge Ram. Black. Can’t see the plates but that’s gotta be it.”

Shumway flipped his Maglite around and smashed the butt-end into the window. It smacked and the glass broke into large pieces and dropped. “Watch out!”

Wolf and Shumway jumped back as pieces shattered inside and out. A particularly large razor-sharp pillar leaned toward Wolf and toppled out onto the ground in a thousand tinkling shards at his feet.

Wolf glared at Shumway.

“Sorry.” Shumway straightened his pants. “You can probably reach inside and unlock it now.”

What was left in the window frame was a yawning mouth of glass fangs.

Shumway patted his belly. “I can’t reach. Too fat.”

Wolf stepped up and knocked the rest of the glass out with his flashlight, then reached inside and twisted a lock on the knob. “Try it now.”

Shumway twisted the knob. “I think there’s a deadbolt.”

There was a deadbolt, so Wolf leaned back in and pulled at it. The bolt was sluggish, like pulling a nail out of wood, and Wolf suddenly felt exposed in his position, so he pointed the light in Shumway’s eyes.

Shumway held up his hand. “Hey, watch it.”

“There.” Wolf said as he opened the deadbolt and lowered his flashlight.

“What the hell?” Shumway said.

Wolf ignored him and opened the door. Snapping on a light switch, two fluorescent tube bulbs buzzed overhead. Wolf squinted at the sudden blast to his retinas and walked inside.

The interior was vast, dwarfing even the full-sized pickup truck inside. The once-smooth concrete floor was chipped and crumbly, darkened with old oil stains where farm machinery once sat, and on top of that were chunks of white plaster.

“I don’t remember that being there.” Shumway pointed at a steel cabled winch attached to a boom arm. The base of the six-foot high contraption was bolted to the concrete floor.

Wolf pulled on some rubber gloves and went to the passenger side door of the truck and opened it. Inside the glove compartment was a registration card.

“Jeffrey Green’s truck.”

“You’d better take a look at this.”

Wolf closed the door and walked to Shumway on the other side.

Shumway had his beam pointed at a duffel bag tucked against the aluminum wall. On the floor next to it was a shovel with a yellow handle.

“And now we have a murder weapon,” Shumway said. “Looks like the same size as those cuts on Levi.”

As if there was any doubt. Blood painted the blade and had spattered up the handle and smudged where the person had gripped it.

Wolf unzipped the bag and parted the opening, revealing stacks of cellophane covered bundles of hundred dollar bills. Each stack had a blue $10,000 band on it.

“Jesus. There it all is,” Shumway said.

Shumway was referring to the other items in the bag: Two purple Converse All-Star high top shoes, Purple with huge dollops of blood on them, a Smith and Wesson four-inch barrel revolver, and a pair of leather gloves that were stiff with blood stains.

Shumway sniffed. “Reeks like the rest of Steven’s shoes.”

Wolf nodded.

“Well,” Shumway gingerly picked up the shovel and studied the smudge marks. “No prints by the looks of it. Obviously they wore these gloves. These gloves are going to be the nail in the coffin. We can scrape DNA out of these, check it for a match against Steven, Felicia, and Molly.”

Wolf crouched down and pushed aside the stacks of money.

“You listening?”

“There’s only twenty stacks here. Two hundred thousand. Where’s the rest? What’s the point of all this being here?”

“They’re in jail at the moment.” Shumway smiled. “They haven’t had the chance to deal with all this.”

Wolf stood up. “They …”

Shumway put down the shovel. “I gotta tell you, I’m liking Mo and Felicia doing this. Let’s say Steven is telling the truth, and his shoes were stolen. They come back from loading the bones, and Steven leaves for some reason, to do something else. Felicia, or Molly strap on Steven’s shoes, take the gun off the tent, and drive down into Rocky Points and … shit, but then how’d they get past Dig One? How did they even drive down to Rocky Points?”

Shumway held up a finger. “Wait a minute … the Dig One people said that Mo didn’t leave with the rest of them that afternoon. Is that something? Did they use this truck? And Mo said Steven left and came back late that night.”

Wolf raised his eyebrows.

“Well?” Shumway sagged and his face turned red. “You have any thoughts? Or are you just going to sit there and stare at me some more?”

Wolf looked at the duffle bag. “I think I agree—if it was Mo and Felicia, then how did they get down to Rocky Points? And there was a second set of shoes that were sized ten or eleven. Way too huge for those two women, who are both short with small feet.”

“One of the two women and Levi?” Shumway paced. “Is that it? Maybe this here is Levi’s cut of the money. Brought here after the perp killed him. It was a double cross.”

Shumway stopped and held up a finger. “Maybe all three of these students were in on this, but little did Steven know that Mo and Felicia decided they were going to kill Professor Green. Maybe Steven stayed back Saturday night at the camp, and Felicia and Mo drove down to Rocky Points, telling Steven, ‘Hey, we’ll be back in a few hours, with our cuts of the money.’ But they had other plans—they killed Professor Green, putting it all on Steven and making it look like someone else was with Steven. They had Steven’s shoes, they had the revolver …”

Wolf stared at him and pulled down the corners of his mouth, because despite the wild look on Shumway’s face, the theory fit. “I think I desperately need to go to sleep. And more importantly, I think you desperately need to go to sleep. I think there’s a lot of evidence to process and we need to get your crime techs here, so you’d better get on the radio.”

Wolf rubbed an eye and yawned.

Shumway eyed him. “Where are you sleeping?”

Wolf shrugged. Like always when he left town, he had the essential camping gear in the SUV.

“Let’s get CSU down here and we’ll go crash. We need to sleep, and we need to eat. Either that or I’m gonna start murdering people.”

Wolf conceded with a nod.

“You can sleep at my place.” Shumway walked to the door as if it was settled and pulled his radio off his belt. “Deputy Etzel come in …”

Chapter 32

Wolf woke from a dead sleep to the sound of a phone ringing somewhere in the distance. He sat up and momentarily had no clue where he was. The spring cushion couch squeaked underneath his butt.

Jet stood and stared at him from two feet away.

“Huh?” A gruff voice said.

Only then did Wolf fully snap out of his sleep and realize he was in Shumway’s Windfield home.

“All right … fantastic … we’ll be in.”

Wolf opened his sleeping bag and pushed his bare feet into the soft yarn of a mid-length shag carpet. His watch said 6:20 a.m.

Standing up and stretching his arms high, he bent over and pressed on his lower back, feeling like he’d slept folded in half.

Jet whined and walked to the front door and stood expectantly. Wolf opened it and a cool breeze smelling like cut grass and sagebrush fluttered inside and Jet squeezed his way out and squatted on the lawn.

Shumway walked out of his bedroom and put his hands on his hips. He wore boxer shorts and a white tee shirt that were both twisted on his body. His gray hair that usually stood in a box was crushed to one side, and his face had a red line where the pillow had pressed into his cheek all night.

“Just talked to Deputy Etzel. The techs were busy all night. Matched the blood on the shovel to Levi, got the ballistics going on the revolver. Found all four of their prints on the shovel—Felicia, Steven, Molly, and Green’s.”

Wolf nodded. “But not in the blood.”

“Nope.”

“So it proves the shovel came from their camp, and nothing else.”

Shumway smiled with one side of his mouth. “They’ll have the DNA match test done early this morning. They took the gloves and the three student’s cheek swabs down to Grand Junction overnight. That’ll get us the perp. Coffee?”

Shumway walked down the hall.

“Sure,” Wolf said, smelling the coffee already brewing.

“Sleep all right?”

“Yep.”

Wolf followed him into the kitchen.

Shumway sat down at a table in front of a window and sipped. “Cups to the left of the sink.”

Opening the cupboard, Wolf dug out a World’s Greatest Dad cup that had years of swirling scratches inside of it and filled a steaming cup of jet-black coffee.

He sat and sipped the hot liquid. It was a hazelnut blend, sweeter than Wolf would have liked but the caffeine started doing its job. “Hell of a view,” he said.

“Yeah. Not bad.”

A neatly trimmed lawn glistened with dew outside the window, ending at a barbed wire fence. Beyond was vast open sage country and shadowed hills lit by the morning sun.

Jet walked in front of the window outside with his nose to the grass.

Shumway reached out and touched the side of Wolf’s coffee cup and smiled. There was deep sadness in his eyes.

Wolf suddenly wished he had chosen a different cup.

“I did lie to you,” Shumway said.

Wolf said nothing.

“About the sale of my Grandfather’s land.”

“Okay.”

“My brother and I didn’t sell it.” Shumway stared out the window. “I sold it without my brother’s permission. I mean, I didn’t really need my brother’s permission. My dad left it all to me in his will … but … I did need his permission. At least that’s what the other people around me thought. Especially my wife. She hated me for it, and she and I got into a huge fight over it all. I sold it to this guy from Washington, and I took the money and ran for the sheriff’s office with it.”

Shumway took a long slurp of his coffee. He hung his head and then chuckled to himself.

“I spent that money wisely. Bought a television and radio ad campaign. It was for the future of my family, for God’s sake. Got myself into the minds of the people in Windfield County, and then … my opponent died of a heart attack before the polls even opened. In the end I won unopposed.”

Wolf was unsure of what to say, so he sipped his coffee.

“My wife flipped out and left. Left her daughter and her husband and went to California or Las Vegas. Or somewhere, who knows.” He looked at Wolf. “Can you believe that? Leaving your daughter high and dry?”

They sat in silence for a beat.

“And ever since, my daughter’s blamed me. And now she lives her life trying to hurt me in bigger and bigger ways. And right now she’s stabbed me and she’s twisting the knife.”

Wolf was stuck on thinking about how Sarah had checked out of his and Jack’s lives for years. “Was your wife on drugs?”

Shumway looked at Wolf for a long time. “You know what? You’re the first person to ever ask me that.” His took a sip of his coffee with a quivering lip and then looked at Wolf again. “Thanks.”

They watched Jet half-assed chase a squirrel outside.

“What was the second file on your desk?” Wolf asked.

“What?”

“When I first came up here yesterday morning, you had a second file on your desk. You and Etzel had something else going on.”

“Oh. Yeah. I was … just checking on some of the local men. The whole my daughter screwing Steven Kennedy thing.”

“How were you checking on them? Why?”

“Financial records. Looking for specific charges, ATM withdrawals.”

Wolf frowned. “Explain.”

Shumway stood up and went to the coffee maker. “There’s a little more to the whole Steven and Megan story I’m afraid.”

Wolf set down his coffee cup.

Shumway took his time stirring some sugar into his cup and sat back down. “She was pregnant, with Steven’s baby, and had an abortion.”

Wolf blinked.

“I was looking for men who’d paid with a credit card at a clinic, or made an ATM withdrawal for large sums … I was grasping. That’s what that file was—eight men in town and their recent financials.”

“You didn’t know who it was?”

“I figured out with you yesterday it was Steven who’d gotten her pregnant.”

Wolf stared at his coffee. “I need you to start from the beginning of all of this. Why were you looking for this guy who’d gotten Megan pregnant now? This weekend?”

Shumway leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes with his palms. “I told you Levi Joseph and Bradley Boydell used to be good friends.”

“Yeah?”

“Well I guess Levi came to Bradley the other day and told him a little secret he’d been keeping—that Megan had been pregnant with someone’s baby and had gotten an abortion.”

“And how did Levi know about this?”

“Levi took her down to the clinic in Grand Junction to do the procedure.”

“And Levi didn’t know who had gotten her pregnant?”

“No.”

“And Levi told Bradley just recently?”

“Yeah. A few days ago.”

Wolf shook his head. “And you didn’t think of telling me this yesterday, when we were looking at Levi’s corpse?”

“Why? What would that have to do with anything?”

Wolf sat silent for a moment. “When did this pregnancy and procedure happen?”

Shumway shrugged. “I guess it was a couple months ago. I don’t know when exactly.”

“And you learned about it this weekend.”

“Yeah. Why? What?”

“What did Megan say about the whole thing?”

Shumway sipped his coffee.

“You haven’t talked to her about it?”

“Hell, no. It’s not a conversation I’m looking to have with my daughter. It’s enough I learned about it and know the bastard who did it. I don’t need to hash it out with her, get in a big ol’ fight and have her hate me more.”

Wolf thought about Jack and Cassidy’s camping trip and how he needed to get a handle on that before this exact situation became a possibility. With a shake of his head he erased the thought and stood up to pour some more coffee.

“What?” Shumway’s voice was low. “Was that judgment? You judging me?”

“No. I’m not. Like you said, it’s tough raising a kid by yourself. But I think you should talk to her about it, that’s for sure.”

“Oh you do, do you? Well, thanks, Dr. Phil.”

Wolf swirled the final sip of coffee in his mug and thought better of the idea of refilling it. “Maybe I’ll head up to the University myself this morning. It’ll give us—”

“Sounds like a fuck-all of a good idea.”

Wolf set down his mug and walked out of the kitchen. “Call me the second you get those DNA match test results.”

Cradling his mug to his lips, Shumway stared out the window and grunted in response.

Chapter 33

Wolf walked to the SUV and put Jet in the back seat. The air was warm and the light breeze carrying the scent of juniper did little to dry the sweat building in his armpits already. Wolf wondered if Rocky Points would be getting relief from the heat today.

He felt bad for steering the conversation with Shumway into a brick wall like that, but he also felt the insatiable desire to catch the murderer of Ryan Frost, so if some people got their feelings hurt in the pursuit of truth, so be it.

Another thing he felt an insatiable desire for was enough food to fill a garbage can lid.

He started the engine and tried to remember which way to go, then consulted the GPS and drove down the road, looking forward to a plate of eggs and bacon before he started on the road to the University.

He had yet to get in touch with Dr. Talbot and was getting eager to know some particulars about what exactly what the head of the paleontology department knew about Dig Two’s specimen, or specimens. Because it was a good question that Dr. Mathis had raised last night: How did Green hide that second skeleton from Dr. Talbot?

“What the hell?” He swerved left and jammed on the brakes as a pickup truck pulled off the side of the road right in front of him.

It was Megan, he realized, in her DOI pickup truck. She was waving her hand out the window, motioning for him to follow.

Wolf steadied his breath and pulled behind her.

After a few turns to the right and left, she finally pulled over.

Jet poked his head out the window and whined.

Wolf got out and she met him at his bumper.

“What’s going on?” Wolf asked.

She looked spooked, averting eye contact and clutching a cell phone in a white-knuckle fist. “I talked to Bradley Boydell and Deputy Etzel last night about what happened to Levi.”

“Yeah?”

“And I heard you guys are thinking it was Steven.”

“How did you hear that?”

She folded her arms. “I just saw Deputy Etzel this morning in town. He told me about all the evidence you and my dad found.”

Wolf shook his head. What kind of training had Shumway given his deputies that they go around discussing open murder cases with civilians?

“I have a piece of evidence that proves he didn’t do it.”

Wolf raised his eyebrows.

She was staring at her cell phone, twisting it in her hands. “It’s on here.”

“What is?”

Her breath quickened and she was rubbing her lips together. “Shit. Just get inside, okay?”

Wolf walked to the passenger door and opened it. It smelled like coconut oil inside, just like Steven’s truck had. The leather bench seat creaked under him as he climbed in. He left the door open and stared at her expectantly.

She cradled her phone and stared at it, as if she were waiting for an update from the starship Enterprise. Checking her mirrors, she pointed at the door. “Can you please close that?”

He closed the door and the cab went silent except for her labored breathing.

She was shaking, all the while holding up her cell phone.

Wolf felt the overpowering urge to pull out his own phone, because all this staring at a cell phone reminded him he wanted to check again for the video clip from Patterson he was expecting. Instead he let the urge pass and asked, “What’s on the phone, Megan?”

She tapped the screen and thrust the phone into Wolf’s lap.

She put her hand over her mouth and slid over to the driver’s side window and stared outside.

“Hey, baby,” a male voice cooed from her phone’s speakers.

Wolf looked at the screen and there was such a pulse of blood that rushed to his face his skin prickled, because he was looking at a video of Megan’s naked, spread-eagled body. She was smiling and reaching for the camera, her skin illuminated by a yellow light. The shaky video hovered over her, pushing close to her face and then her breasts, and then it backed away to display her entire form again.

Megan giggled on the video.

“You ready for this?” Wolf recognized the voice of Steven Kennedy.

Wolf tapped the screen and set the phone on the bench seat between them. “Oh, I wish I could un-see that.”

Megan reached over and took the phone. She pressed some side buttons and muted it, and then studied the footage, tapping and sliding her fingers on the screen. “Here. Look again. I won’t press play.”

He closed his eyes for a breath and then opened them.

Megan was holding up the phone, which had a still shot of Steven’s face twisted in pleasure. “It’s Steven. With me.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“Look at the time stamp. On the top of the video.”

Wolf blinked. “Saturday, 9:37 pm.” He looked at her, then back at the time stamp. “You were with Steven on Saturday night?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Where?”

“In the back of my truck.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Just out in the sticks. He met me.”

Wolf nodded. “He drove? You drove?”

“We both drove. We have a secret spot where we meet.”

The blood was draining from his face now, but he had to blink to remove the image of Megan’s naked body from his retinas. “Wait a minute. That said Saturday. How do I know it wasn’t some other Saturday?”

She picked up the phone and tapped the screen. “Here, see? Saturday, August 11. 9:37 pm. Satisfied?”

Wolf sat in silence for a beat. “You could doctor the time stamps.”

She made a face and shook her head. “How the hell would I do that?”

“You could have been anywhere. You could have just shown me proof that you were with Steven just after the murders.”

Megan looked horrified. “No … we were just up the road, toward the quarry. You take a left on—”

Wolf held up a hand. “I can check the location of your phone through the GPS in it.”

She nodded. “Yes. Exactly. You’ll see that we were up the road.”

Wolf looked at her. “Send me the file.”

He gave her his cell phone number and she texted it to him.

Wolf stared at the side of her face as they waited for the packet of information to make its roundabout way to Wolf’s phone.

Counterintelligence training in the army had introduced Wolf to the subtleties of telling lies convincingly and how to spot liars, and over a decade and a half of experience as a cop he’d seen his fair share of lying people. Megan was not one of them. She was troubled, betrayed by a mother that had ditched her, betrayed by her father who’d made it all happen, and had a whole lot of associated problems going on there, but she was telling the truth.

His phone beeped, and he took the file and sent it off to Patterson.

“I just sent this to my deputy. So if there’s nothing more, I need to leave and call her as soon as possible to explain. I’m going to have her check the file to see if you’ve tampered with it in any way. I think they call that stuff meta-data or something. My deputy knows. And if you’ve messed with it, she’ll know.”

“I didn’t mess with it,” she glared at him. “I’m not lying.”

Wolf held out his hand. “And I’ll need to take your phone.”

She handed it over.

Wolf nodded and opened the door.

“I think this is going to be it for me and him,” Megan said.

“You and Steven?”

“No.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Me and my dad. He’s already pretty much done with me. This video’s going to be the final straw.”

Wolf watched her cry for a few seconds.

His phone chimed and a message from Patterson read “?!”.

Wolf typed in the message I’ll explain in one minute and pressed send, and then he pocketed the phone. “Your dad knows about your pregnancy with Steven and your procedure. Did you know that?”

Megan looked down and a fresh tear slid down her face. “I figured. And what’s he going to think about me now? Jesus …”

Wolf watched her sob. “It’s tough being a father, you know? You try your best for your family, and sometimes you’re misunderstood. Sometimes you’re blamed for things, for hurting your kids, but you’re just trying to help.”

“I know. It’s tough being my father. I know that.” She shook her head and whispered with a thick throat. “I know.”

Wolf slid off the seat and slid her phone in his pocket. Before he closed the door he ducked back inside. “Megan, when was your procedure in Grand Junction?”

She wiped her eyes. “June third.”

“June third?”

“Yeah.”

Wolf slid back up onto the seat. “Two months ago?”

She nodded.

“Is that why Steven sleeps up the wash from the rest of the dig members? Because his wife found out about this?”

She nodded.

“How did she find out?”

“It was Levi.” Megan sniffed and shook her head. “Levi told Felicia. He brought me back to my quarters up at the visitor’s center and then drove off all fast. I guess he drove down to the Dig Two camp and jumped Steven. Picked up a shovel and started hitting him with it. I guess Mo and Professor Green had to wrestle him away.”

“Steven told you about this?”

“Yeah. He said Levi came in yelling and screaming about getting me pregnant and told everyone about taking me to Grand Junction and about the clinic. Levi kind of had a thing for me, and he was mad that Steven put me through all of that. But Levi got it wrong. I didn’t blame Steven for anything. He wasn’t doing anything wrong, because I never even told him. He didn’t even know about my pregnancy until Levi barged in and started hitting him with a shovel.” She shook her head. “I’m such an idiot. I’ve caused so much pain for these people. And Levi? Poor Levi …”

Wolf stared at her intently. “So Levi went down to that camp on June 3rd? You’re sure?”

She nodded and looked at him. “Yeah, after we got back from Grand Junction he drove off fast, like I said. And Steven told me later that week. It was the 3rd.  And I saw Levi up at Mr. Boydell’s yurt that night of the third. I was resting in my camp chair outside and saw him walk up. I could tell he’d been crying and he looked messed up. I called out to him and he glared at me and wouldn’t talk. Just passed me by and then he went into Mr. Boydell’s.”

Megan’s eyes glazed over.

A text message chimed on Wolf’s phone, but he ignored it. “June 3rd. All this happened.”

She frowned now and looked up at him. “Yes. Why are you asking?”

“Does Bradley Boydell have a landline phone in his quarters?”

She nodded. “Yes. Why?”

“Thank you.” Wolf slid off the seat and onto the curb again.

“Are you going to show that video to my dad?” Megan asked.

Wolf pulled his lips into a hard line. “I don’t really have a choice here, Megan.”

She looked away so fast she looked like she’d been slapped, and then with a face devoid of emotion she nodded and started the car.

He shut the door and walked back to his SUV with his phone pressed to his ear.

“Uhhhhh, hello?” Patterson said.

“Hi.”

“Interesting video.”

“Yes. Sorry about that … are you at work yet?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you just get my message? I just sent you the video footage from the gas station. It’s only a thirty second clip, but it shows all the footage we have of the guy.”

“I need you to check the time stamp on that video I sent you and make sure it hasn’t been tampered with.”

“If I can pull it away from Rachette, I’ll get right on it. Is that all?”

Wolf climbed behind the wheel.

“Actually no,” he said. “I’m just getting started with what I need from you.”

“Okay.”

“First of all, how do I check where a phone’s been in recent days, preferably at a specific time?”

“It’s actually pretty simple. First of all, do you have access to the phone?”

Wolf watched Megan pull away ahead of him. “Shit, just a second.”

Pulling out her phone, he pushed the button and the screen lit up. She didn’t use the home screen access code feature, so he had immediate use of her phone.

“Yeah,” he said with relief.

“Good. And how about a computer? You in front of one?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Never mind. I am.”

“That a girl. And I hope it’s warmed up, because we have a lot of work to do.”

Chapter 34

Two hours and ten minutes later Wolf drove into the Windfield County Sheriff’s Department parking lot.

His tires squealed as he came to a stop and Jet bumped into the seat behind him.

“Sorry, boy.”

He let Jet out and marched to the front door.

“Stay here,” Wolf said.

Jet walked to the front of the building and lifted a leg.

Shumway was standing inside talking with Deputy Etzel. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to Utah?”

“I need to talk to you.”

Shumway waved a piece of paper in front of Wolf’s face. “Well, good, because I need to talk to you.”

Wolf grabbed the piece of paper from his hands. The heading on it said Nordicran DNA Labs, Grand Junction, Colorado. Four horizontal graphs were printed on the page. The first two graph lines were identical, with the same peaks and valleys. The second two were not.

“DNA inside the bloody glove matches our man Steven Kennedy.” Shumway flicked the page.

Wolf frowned. “And the second two graphs?”

“Not quite as reliable. They found two different profiles in the shoes—Steven and unknown.”

Wolf nodded. “Of course they did.”

“Of course they did?”

Wolf pulled out his phone and showed Shumway and Etzel the video clip of the perp filling the gas can south of Brushing.

When the video was over, Shumway and Etzel looked at one another.

Wolf stared expectantly.

Shumway blinked slowly. “All right. You have my attention. That wasn’t Steven in the video, it was someone wearing his shoes. That doesn’t change the fact that his DNA was in these gloves.”

“Was there an anomaly with the gloves? Some sort of foreign substance they couldn’t account for?”

Etzel and Shumway looked at one another.

“What?”

Shumway hitched up his belt. “The lab tech told us there were traces of,” he picked up another sheet of paper from Etzel’s desk and read it, “Na, Mg, K, Ca … hell, whatever these letters are. They said there were some traces of the powder from our crime scene techs’ latex gloves.”

Deputy Etzel nodded.

“Did you talk to your crime scene techs about this yet?” Wolf asked.

“Well no. We just got this back a few minutes ago. Why?”

Wolf nodded. “Because there are a lot of types of latex gloves. Our CSU in Rocky Points uses powder-free gloves. The lab could probably test conclusively if they were gloves worn by the crime scene techs or the assailant.”

“The assailant?” Shumway asked.

Wolf nodded. “That’s residue from the killer wearing latex gloves and the leather gloves over them.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I need to speak to Steven. Right now. And then I’ll let you know.”

Shumway narrowed his eyes, looking unconvinced.

“Sheriff. If I’m right, your daughter is up at that quarry right now with the killer. We need to move.”

A minute later Wolf stood over Steven’s bed and slapped him on the leg.

Steven snorted awake. He wiped drool from his lip and sat up straight, then saw the three men standing in front of him and pushed himself back on the bed.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Tell me about the day when Levi Joseph jumped you at the camp.”

Steven smacked his lips and rubbed his forehead. “You know about that … why?”

“Just answer.”

“Um, okay. I was lying there, just doing some work, and he came up and attacked me. He hit me on the back with a shovel.”

“Steven, we know about the two skeletons. We figured that out last night with Dr. Mathis’s help.”

Steven closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t want to talk to you. I … know I’m just going to implicate myself. I’ve talked to my lawyer, and I’ve taken law classes, guys.”

“Just listen.” Wolf squatted down and looked up at him. “I know the three of you are spooked about what you agreed to do with Professor Green. You found the extra skeleton and you guys were in the process of selling it when all this happened, and now you’re freaked. I get it. Because the bottom line is, we’ll easily prove that second skeleton came from that hole, and you will be in a heap of trouble. You didn’t report the skeleton to your University or the owner of the private land you were digging on. You four were engaging in criminal activity. You’re gonna have to face the music on that. But I know you’re not murderers.

“Someone else is, though. Someone else who knew about this sale. Someone who went down to Rocky Points, killed the fossil dealer and Professor Green, killed Levi Joseph, and is now making it look like you did it.” Wolf pointed at him. “I need you to answer these questions, or else you are probably gonna get locked up without a key on this one.”

Steven said nothing.

“Why don’t you tell him about the shoes, the bag of money, the pistol, and the shovel we found last night, Wolf?” Shumway said.

Steven looked between them and shook his head.

“And the DNA we found matching him,” Shumway said.

Wolf nodded. “We found your shoes, the same ones that left all sorts of prints at the scene of three murders. We found murder weapons. We found your DNA on the gloves used to kill. And we also found two-hundred thousand dollars. It’s not looking good for you.”

Steven bit his lip and his knee bounced. “Whatever. What’re your questions?”

“Did Levi see the second skeleton that day he attacked you?”

Steven deliberated for a few seconds. “Probably not.”

“Probably not?”

“He jumped me in the pit. And there were two skulls in there at the time. Couldn’t have been more obvious. So, we suspected he did. But he never told anyone, so we decided that he probably didn’t notice.”

Wolf nodded. “Dr. Talbot came and visited after that. When was that?”

“I don’t know. Like a week later.”

“Unannounced?” Wolf asked.

“No. Green knew he was coming.”

“And did he see the second skeleton?”

“No. We learned our lesson from Levi. We kept it covered before, but we took further precautions for Dr. Talbot’s visit. Green rented a garage near a farmhouse and we started moving everything as fast as possible there. Then we started keeping everything covered even while we were working.”

“And when Dr. Talbot came in to see your dig, you had everything out and moved?”

“No. Not even close. Just … better covered. We even put some dirt over some bones.”

“And how did that visit go down exactly? Was he fooled?”

Steven shrugged. “Professor Green kind of worked his magic on the whole thing. Got him out of there without even looking.”

Wolf stared at him for a few seconds. “Dr. Talbot didn’t even look at the bones?”

Steven shrugged. “He did, but not under the tarps. Just kind of nodded at them and left.”

Wolf looked at Shumway.

Shumway held up his hands.

“Thanks,” Wolf said, and he left the holding cell. When they got back into the hallway Wolf turned to Shumway. “Sheriff, you need to call your daughter and tell her to leave work right now.”

Chapter 35

Shumway snapped his ancient cell phone shut. “Damn it! No one’s answering yet. The visitor’s center doesn’t usually open for another ten minutes. I don’t picture any of those three getting to work early. It’s going to be impossible to warn her.”

Wolf pushed the gas harder and the engine screamed underneath the hood.

Shumway honked his nostrils into his handkerchief for the tenth time and shoved the thin fabric back into his breast pocket. “This dog is the deadliest combination of fur and gas I’ve ever encountered.”

The sheriff was wiping his nose maroon with his knuckles, and Wolf decided it was mostly anxiety that was driving his twitchy movements and less his canine allergy.

They were just outside of Windfield and climbing up the winding paved road toward the quarry. The speedometer quivered at eighty-five miles per hour and their seats vibrated as the engine roared, almost completely drowning out the siren on the roof.

A line of flashing deputy trucks were twinkling dots in the rearview, falling further behind by the second.

“At least tell me he’s an attack dog.”

Wolf looked at Shumway. “I won’t be using Jet as an attack dog.”

Shumway scoffed. “And why not?”

“If Boydell has a gun and I tell you to attack, are you going to run at him and take a few bullets? I’m not going to use Jet as an expendable chess piece.”

Shumway gave Wolf a sour look and then waved a hand. “Yeah. All right. Sorry.”

Wolf turned and eyed Jet in the back seat. The dog was hunkered low on his stomach, all four legs splayed out for stability.

“How long does it take to get there?” Wolf asked.

“Going the speed limits? Thirty minutes.” Shumway grabbed the ceiling bar. “So probably fifteen minutes the way you’re going.”

They sat in silence for a beat, and then Shumway blew his nose again.

“Okay,” Shumway said. “Tell me what the hell you were doing this morning.”

“Checking phone and financial records with my deputy, making some phone calls.”

“And?”

“And we figured out how Bradley Boydell is behind all of this.”

“Bradley Boydell and who?”

“Dr. Talbot.”

Shumway made a sour face. “The head of paleontology up at U of U?”

Wolf nodded.

“The guy you still haven’t met?”

“And I never will. He’s dead.”

“What?”

“Dr. Talbot’s wife filed a missing person’s report yesterday. The SLCPD found him this morning buried in his back yard garden.”

Wolf turned a corner and passed by a vehicle like it was standing still.

“You kiddin’ me?”

Wolf shook his head.

“Okay. My daughter’s in danger up there, so get talking.”

“Those students and Professor Green found the two skeletons, and instead of reporting the second skeleton to the University, they decided they were going to sell the bones. So Green contacted Ryan Frost down in Rocky Points, and Frost found a buyer.”

Shumway nodded. “I get that. But how does Boydell end up on a killing spree? How’s he even involved?”

Wolf gripped the wheel and pumped the brakes as he came into a corner too fast. “It has to do with Megan and Steven. They were having an affair, and then Megan got pregnant. She got Levi’s help to have the abortion down in Grand Junction. Levi got angry about what Steven had done to Megan, so right after taking Megan to the procedure, Levi went down to the Dig Two camp and attacked Steven Kennedy. And in the process of rolling around in that hole with Steven, Levi saw the second skeleton.”

They came onto a straightaway and Wolf gunned it. The transition from pavement to dirt approached fast but Wolf kept his foot on the gas.

“Levi came back up to the visitor’s center and told Boydell that night. June 3rd.”

“How do you know that?” Shumway asked.

“I talked to Megan this morning.”

“What?”

Wolf held up a hand. “Let me finish. Megan saw Levi come up to Boydell’s quarters, and then they made a forty five minute phone call to Dr. Talbot up at the University of Utah.”

Shumway said nothing.

“For the next month Boydell and Talbot talked repeatedly, and then, according to the phone records, they stopped. It looks like Boydell bought a throwaway phone and started using that to call Dr. Talbot’s office. They were clearly in on the whole second skeleton information, and they were concocting a plan.

“Only Boydell knows the specifics, because he’s the only one still alive, but basically Levi figured out about the second set of bones and told Dr. Talbot and Boydell.

“Maybe Levi was distraught and wanted to ruin all those student’s careers. He was upset. Or maybe Levi figured out what they were doing and wanted to get back at Steven by blackmailing everyone down there, and Dr. Talbot and Boydell went along.”

Shumway looked out his window, shaking his head.

“All we know is when those three got together with the knowledge of the second skeleton in that hole, they were seeing dollar signs. With Professor Green, they were going to split it four ways. Two hundred fifty thousand each.”

“Four ways?” Shumway shook his head. “Seven ways with the three students.”

“Professor Green had no intention of ever coming back to the dig. Dr. Talbot visited him a week after Levi found out about the second skeleton—we know that from multiple sources. And when he visited, Dr. Talbot didn’t even look at the bones, because he already knew what was under those tarps. He wanted plausible deniability if the students and Professor Green were caught selling them illegally. But he wanted a cut of the money, so he drove away with Professor Green and told him the jig was up, and if he didn’t get a cut then they were all ruined.

“Professor Green decided he would cut the students out, so he bought a plane ticket to Argentina. He left the students thinking they had a payday coming as soon as he returned from Rocky Points. But he never did. We came into their camp instead, and they had no idea what was happening.”

“And Boydell and Talbot go into Rocky Points behind Professor Green with the intention to kill everyone and take the money,” Shumway said. “They cut out Professor Green and the students, and made it look like Steven did. Let me guess—Dr. Talbot has the same make and model tire we’re looking for from the crime scene?”

Wolf nodded. “Yes. We looked at Dr. Talbot’s credit card statements. He bought gas in Windfield Saturday afternoon. He stayed in a local motel, using his Visa card. He used his cell phone to call the visitor’s center twice.”

Shumway frowned.

“So I don’t think Dr. Talbot knew what was really coming. I don’t think he came into the situation thinking they were going to kill people. Or else he wouldn’t have left such a clear trail of his actions. I think Boydell decided to start killing. He had a whole plan concocted, stealing Steven’s shoes, the revolver, the shovel, the leather gloves, snuffing out Levi to take his cut of the money, and then killing everyone.”

Shumway scratched his chin and stared into nothing. “Steven and who? Who was supposed to be the second set of prints?”

Wolf smiled grimly. “I don’t think Boydell thought that far ahead. Or maybe he didn’t even care. He just assumed we’d pin it on one of the other students. He just worried about covering his own tracks. Literally. He got Talbot to come pick him up from the Visitor’s Center so he could leave his truck there and claim he stayed there that whole Saturday night. He wore Steven’s shoes to cover his tracks the whole time and make it look like it was Steven. He wore a big cowboy hat to shield his face when he needed to. He burned the UrMover truck because he knew forensic evidence would be found inside—hairs, fibers. He killed Levi, with Steven’s shovel, wearing Steven’s shoes and leather gloves with latex gloves underneath. Buried Levi shallow in the direction of Steven’s camp, as a subtle reminder of who we’re supposed to be blaming for all of it. And he was even there to literally remind us in person.”

Shumway stared at Wolf. “Jesus. This just … it’s so crazy.”

“He’s slipped up in so many ways it would be comical if it wasn’t so sick.”

“You’re saying he’s just psycho?”

“That, and extremely desperate. The SLC field office went to Boydell’s daughter in law’s house this morning. She said Boydell was in the process of inheriting a lot of money from an obscure relative she’d never heard of and he was going to help her pay for her son’s blood treatment in Scotland.”

Shumway nodded. “His grandson a rare disease. He sold his house a couple years ago and moved into that yurt to help pay for treatment.”

Wolf hit the brakes hard and skidded to a stop at the barbed wire gate.

Shumway stared at him as a cloud of dust overtook the SUV. “This whole thing is crazy. Are you sure about all of this?”

“There’s nothing sane about killing four people. You want a better explanation? Like he needed the money to help save his grandson? That those four lives were less important than that little boy’s? Mind you, that amount of cash would have set off all sorts of treasury department alarms. More slip-ups that haven’t even happened for the guy. So yeah. I guess I’m saying he’s just a psycho. A very desperate, very crazy man who is highly motivated to kill people. And your daughter is up there with him. You gonna get the gate or what?”

Shumway’s breathing went shallow, like he finally realized the true gravity of the situation. He launched out into the dust. Unhooking the barbed wire, he walked the gate open as fast as he could.

Wolf drove through and Shumway ran and got back in, and just as he shut the door, three Windfield Sheriff’s Department vehicles flew by them, leaving them in a new roiling brown cloud.

Wolf hit the gas.

Chapter 36

Bradley Boydell walked between the wind-twisted junipers and stopped at the pinnacle of the hill. Grains of sand hissed against his pants and dust swirled against his face. As he dug his knuckles into his eyes, giving them a good massage, he saw the flash of the pistol and the man’s head jerk forward.

He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. The haunting reminders of what he’d done were relentless.

In the army he’d killed, but only with the pull of a trigger from a distance. He’d never looked into the eyes of someone who knew it was coming like he had four times now.

Now he felt like a walking zombie—a corrupted, diseased former-self, wandering through the motions of life in a world where he didn’t belong. Looking into the eyes of those four people had done it to him.

No. It had been eleven years ago, looking into the eyes of his son as he had taken his last breath. That changed a man. That made every pliable thing in a man hard. Frozen. Brittle.

And when Jeremy had contracted the disease he had cracked.

He was fractured like a shattered windowsill clinging to its frame. The only thing keeping him from falling into a million pieces was his grandson’s heroic fight.

The good night’s sleep had served him well. He always liked getting his blood pumping, his lungs heaving, and this hike was making him feel better still.

Standing on a rounded hilltop, he looked down at the shining windows of the visitor center. It had been a week since he’d been here, where he could always count on getting some peaceful time with himself, away from the cluttered minds of the two young people he was stuck with every day in his dead end job.

Speaking of that, he checked his wrist and saw he had ten minutes until the 9 a.m. opening. It was time to unlock the place, make his excuse to the two kids, and head out.

He had a long day ahead of him. He had some shady individuals he would have to do business with to help launder the cash and send it to Scotland via some means he still didn’t quite understand. Some way of manipulating online bank accounts and sending electronic payments.

He clenched a fist, thinking about the day, because he knew these men would be younger. They would think him a soft old coot and be out to steal his money, using electronic jargon to confuse him out of thousands of dollars.

Hitching up his belt, he felt the Beretta M9 he’d acquired in the army wedged against the waistband of his pants and his freshly showered skin. He pulled it closer to the tight spot next to his hipbone and began walking.

He paused, because a line of cars was already kicking up a plume of dust in the distance. He could scarcely remember the last time they’d had three visitors right at opening. And why were they following so close to one another? They were like a caravan, clearly together.

He squinted and brought up his hand. They were far away, but Boydell’s vision had always been sharp, even in his old age, and he could clearly see that the three vehicles were identical.

Trucks.

With flashing lights.

Everything inside of Boydell’s body moved at once.

For five seconds he watched with constricted breath. His heart pumped wildly in his chest.

But it was strange. Because the trucks were all slowing down. Yes, he was sure of it. The three trucks were inching close to one another as they slowed.

The tension in his body melted as he saw the three trucks pull to a complete stop and the driver’s doors open. They were at least a mile away, but Boydell could see the tiny dots of men milling about next to their trucks.

Maybe they were doing a search of the desert in that spot. But why? There was nothing there.

The hairs on his neck began crawling. They were convening, preparing something. The three stick figure forms of men walked to one another and stood in a tight cluster in the middle of the road.

They were waiting for something.

Why were they standing in the middle of the road like that? Were they blocking people from coming up, and waiting to move on him? He came to his own conclusion and took off at a run down the hill.

Slipping every few steps, he landed on his ass and felt the gun dig into his hip.

“Damn it,” he muttered.

He forced himself to slow down to a manageable speed, which was tough because his thoughts were racing.

All he could think was he needed to escape. He needed to get in his truck and drive. He knew this country better than all three of those deputies combined. There was more than one way to get off this plateau without passing along that road. He had the money stashed in his truck. He could get through, and he could get to Salt Lake City.

Out of breath, his feet stomping the ground with hurried steps, he reached the bottom of the hill behind the visitor’s center and began jogging.

“Mr. Boydell?”

Boydell froze and reached back for his gun on his hip, but stopped himself short. It was Megan. He forced a smile. “Hi, Megan.”

“Everything okay?” she asked.

Megan was standing near the rear door to the visitor’s center, and only then did Boydell realize she was waiting for him to unlock the door and begin the day inside the building.

“Are you going to open the door?” she asked.

Boydell stared at her, trying to gauge her expression. Was she messing with him? He looked toward Phil’s yurt, which stood flapping gently in the breeze.

“Where’s Phil?”

She smirked. “It’s Tuesday, remember? He’ll probably sleep another five hours.”

Was she in on this whole thing? Was she trying to trap him? It would have been dumb to think otherwise, so he pulled out his pistol and pointed it at her.

She held up her hands and backed into the wall of the building. “What are you doing?”

“You are,” he said. She was trapping him.

“What?”

“You’re in on it, aren’t you?”

“In on what? Mr. Boydell, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please. Don’t.”

He walked to her and waved the pistol to the left. “Let’s go. We’re going to take a drive.”

She stood frozen like a dumb deer.

“Move!”

Stumbling, she thrust her hands up and walked around the building, all the while whimpering to herself.

“Into my truck. You’re driving,” he said.

Chapter 37

Wolf slid to a stop next to the scarred ring of earth that used to be Levi Joseph’s campfire and shut off the engine.

Levi’s tent was still there, the table with his personal effects still there, in fact the whole campsite looked unchanged, despite the law enforcement activity the night before. The only indication they’d been there was the new footprints and yellow crime scene tape around the perimeter, which was fastened to poles and bouncing in the wind.

“Etzel come in,” Shumway said into his radio as he climbed out.

Wolf let Jet out the back of the truck and ducked underneath the tape.

“Go ahead.”

Shumway followed Wolf and Jet. “We’re at the camp.”

“Copy that. Let us know when to move.”

“Will do.”

Shumway put the radio back on his duty belt and jogged up next to Wolf.

They trudged up the path out the rear of the camp to the top of the plateau in silence. Shumway had not said much on the way up the two-track road, and neither had Wolf as he concentrated on avoiding boulders, trees, and cacti.

The plan was simple: sneak in from the rear and get into position, making sure neither Megan nor Phil were in harm’s path, then bring in the cavalry and move on Boydell.

Still silent, Shumway was already breathing hard halfway up the sandy rise.

“You all right?” Wolf asked.

Shumway picked up his pace and took the lead.

Wolf felt the strain in his lungs and legs. He’d let himself get too soft over the past year, and he vowed then and there to change that. Adrenaline helped power him forward though, and he kept the new pace easily enough.

At the top the land flattened and they entered a maze of juniper trees and man-sized sage bushes. Though flat as a pancake, there was sporadic foliage obscuring their view. Depending on the moment in time, they could see as far as fifty yards ahead. All the while the top of the visitor center, the concrete dinosaur spine, jutted above it all, shining in the sun.

Wolf estimated the distance at a half-mile, and checked his watch. “Can you pick up the pace?”

Shumway shot him a hard glance and grunted in response, and then he sped to a pace just below a jog.

Jet trotted behind them, happily stopping at a hole or bush of interest, then running briefly to catch up before doing it all again.

For five minutes they swerved between bushes and trees, catching glimpses of the building as it grew closer, and all that time their crunching footsteps and huffing breath was the only sound. Until there was something else.

“Wait,” Wolf said pulling to a stop. “Stop.”

Shumway ignored him for a few steps than stopped and turned. He put his hands on his hips and bared his teeth. “What?”

“Hear that?”

A car engine revved and there was a squeak, then another staccato burst of gas followed by more squeaking.

“Someone’s driving toward us.”

Shumway turned away from Wolf and walked around a juniper to get a look. Just as he went out into a clearing, he stopped and hurried back to Wolf. “There.”

After a long squeak the engine revved and then shut off.

“Shit,” Shumway said. “It was a quarry truck. I think it was Boydell. Fifty yards that way, coming straight at us.”

Wolf pulled his pistol and Shumway did the same.

Peering through the gaps in the foliage, there was a thump of a car door.

“He’s out,” Wolf said. “You go left, I’ll go right.”

Wolf skated right, keeping his gaze focused through the branches of the nearest juniper. Wolf crept to the right and saw a shiny bumper, and then the front of a quarry pickup truck, and then the whole thing. Wolf paused, because both doors were ajar.

Why?

“Come out boys! I saw you!”

Wolf and Shumway locked eyes and held still.

“Daddy!”

Wolf’s stomach sank.

“Got your daughter here Shumway. You have five seconds to come out in the open or I shoot her in the head. Five, four, three …” Boydell counted with barely a second pause between numbers. “Two.”

“Okay, okay! Hold up Bradley!” Shumway held his hands high in the air and ran out into the clearing between him and Wolf. “Please, Bradley. Don’t hurt her.”

“Drop the gun.”

Shumway lowered his gun and dropped it with deliberate, slow movements. “Now your buddy. I saw someone else moving behind that tree.”

Wolf clenched his teeth. Damn it. They had gone from ambushing Boydell to walking straight into him in mere seconds. He searched his mind for ideas and came up empty.

Jet appeared from behind a sage and trotted at Wolf, oblivious to the gravity of the situation entirely. He stopped and jammed his nose into an animal hole.

“I’ll give you three seconds! Three, two …”

Wolf ran into the clearing with his arms up, pistol aimed at the cloudless sky.

“Okay. There you are,” Boydell said. “Drop it, Wolf.”

Wolf dropped the pistol on the sand.

Boydell had Megan in a headlock with a pistol to her temple.

Her head was tilted to the side as the barrel of the gun pushed hard against it, and she was on her tiptoes, held that way by Boydell’s wiry-armed chokehold.

“I’ll give the other deputies three seconds to show themselves now.” Boydell’s eyes darted from bush to bush.

“There aren’t any, Bradley,” Shumway said.

Boydell narrowed his eyes. “Three! Two!”

“There aren’t any! It’s just us!”

“There’s no one else!” Wolf said at the same time.

“One!”

Wolf raised his gaze to the sky and held his breath. The few seconds of silence that followed was the deepest he’d ever witnessed, as if his heart had stopped beating.

“Okay then,” Boydell said.

Megan began to sob.

“You,” he pulled on Megan’s neck, “shut up. You two, turn around slow and lift up your shirts,” Boydell said.

Shumway turned and lifted his shirt, and Wolf watched Boydell as he did so. Boydell kept his pistol against Megan’s head.

“You too.” Boydell aimed his gun at Wolf.

Wolf turned slowly and lifted up his shirt, half expecting the punch of hot lead in his back at any moment.

But none came, and he turned full circle.

“Now. Walk toward me. Slowly.” Boydell’s voice shook.

Wolf and Shumway exchanged a glance and inched forward, one foot in front of the other, like they were approaching a cornered bear.

“Please. You don’t want to do this, Bradley,” Shumway said.

“Walk!”

They were forty yards from Boydell.

Stepping another ten paces to within thirty yards, Wolf kept his eyes on Boydell’s. The man was alternating between steeled resolve and ultimate despair, but all the while keeping his hold on Megan.

Her face was dark red and trending purple, and she hung her hands on Boydell’s arm.

Shumway held his hands out. “Bradley. Please. We know why you’re doing this. We know you just want to help your grandson. But it’s over now. Don’t take away my daughter.”

“And what? That would be a fair trade? This alive hooker for my dead grandson?” Boydell’s lips shined with saliva. “Walk at me boys. Keep coming.”

They continued their slow steps toward Boydell.

Wolf’s muscles were tense, because Boydell had a crazed look in his eye and he seemed to be rehearsing something very bad in his mind. And as Wolf neared the crazed man, with no weapon at his disposal, he was coming up with no plan other than to dive for cover when the bullets started flying.

The gun was a Beretta M9—shiny and well-oiled looking, like Boydell spent a few hours per week caring for it.

“It’s over, Bradley,” Wolf said. “Let Megan go.”

Boydell lifted his gun and Wolf froze in mid-step.

Then Boydell slammed the butt of the Beretta onto the top of Megan’s head.

There was a muted thud and then she dropped instantly to her side without using her arms to catch her fall.

“No.” Shumway stepped forward and stopped when Boydell aimed his pistol at him.

Megan lay motionless on the dirt and a stream of blood raced across her forehead like a red lightning bolt.

Boydell tracked his pistol to the side and aimed at Wolf’s chest.

“What do you think we’re going to do, Bradley?” Wolf said. “Get you a helicopter? A jet to take you to Canada? You know that’s not gonna work.”

The pistol quivered in Boydell’s hand.

There was movement at Wolf’s right, and he knew it was Jet without looking. He could see Jet’s loping walk in his peripheral vision, and then the dog sat a few yards away, resting in the shade of a juniper. If Jet came out, there was no telling what would happen.

“There’s no way out of this,” Wolf said. “You don’t have to kill more people. The FBI is talking to your sister right now. They know you killed Dr. Talbot. They found him in his back yard. We know everything, Bradley. Let’s not make this even worse.”

Boydell’s eyes whirled for an instant and his face went slack. Boydell brought the gun to his own temple for a second and screwed his eyes shut, and then he scratched his head with the Beretta and lowered the gun to his side.

Wolf glanced at Shumway.

Shumway looked preoccupied with Jet. “Drop it!” He yelled out of nowhere.

Wolf watched in disbelief as Shumway walked toward Boydell.

“Whoa,” Shumway stopped just as suddenly as he started, “look what Jet has, just put down the gun, Bradley.”

“What?” Boydell was utterly annoyed. “Look what Jet has?” Boydell aimed the gun at Wolf. “Where’s that huge dog of yours?”

Wolf shook his head. “He’s not here. He’s back at the station.”

Boydell stared at Shumway and blinked. “Are you messing with me?”

Wolf stole a glance at Jet.

Jet panted, sitting on his haunches, staring at Wolf and Shumway like he wanted to know what game they were playing but didn’t quite have the energy to join in yet. He closed his mouth and lowered his head, and finally Wolf saw it. Sitting in the sand near his paws was a slobbery Glock 17.

Boydell’s gun was wavering, pointed at no one in particular as thoughts tormented him.

“Just say when,” Shumway said, gesturing to Boydell with his hands.

“What? Why are you messing with me?” Boydell aimed at Shumway and it looked like he was about to fire.

“Now!” Wolf lunged to his right toward Jet and Boydell’s gun popped an instant later. A bullet zipped through the air above Wolf as he ran the few steps to Jet.

“Ahhhhh! Over here!” Shumway screamed like a crazy man.

Wolf reached Jet and dropped to a knee. Along with some warm dirt, Wolf clutched the gun and raised it, throwing a cloud up as he aimed for the center of Boydell’s chest.

Boydell was firing his second shot, this time aimed at Shumway, who was flailing his arms and running at Boydell like one of those inflatable wacky waving tube men.

Wolf fired just as Boydell’s hand was kicking from his second shot, and then Boydell spun and dropped.

Shumway stumbled forward and landed on top of Boydell.

Jet joined the mayhem, bounding at the two downed men with thunderous barks.

“Heel!” Wolf yelled, and Jet looked thoroughly dejected as he obeyed the command.

Both men lay motionless, heaped on top of one another like the two dinosaurs found in that pit.

Wolf rushed to them and pried the Beretta out of Boydell’s hand. Tucking the pistol in his waistband, Wolf bent over Megan, pulled aside some blood soaked hair and felt her neck for a pulse. It was strong.

“Is she all right?”

Wolf turned and raised his Glock.

Shumway rose to his hands and knees.

“Yeah,” Wolf said, holstering his gun. “She’s just knocked out.”

“Sir!” Etzel’s voice was frantic over the crackling radio. “Sheriff, come in! We heard shots fired.”

Shumway got to his knees and pulled the radio. “Yeah. We got Boydell. We need an ambulance. My daughter’s been injured.”

“Yes sir,” Etzel said. “Is she shot?”

“Negative. Just send the ambulance.”

“Copy that. And we’re on our way.”

Shumway turned down his radio. “This asshole’s still alive.” Shumway pulled his fingers away from Boydell’s neck and stood on shaky legs. Pressing his hand against his side, he pulled it away with a palm slick with blood. “Shit.”

“You’re hit.”

“I am.” Shumway bent down and put the back of his hand on Megan’s face. “Poor girl.”

“She’ll be all right. Probably just a couple stitches.”

Boydell whimpered and writhed on the ground, like he was a child having a nightmare.

“And what about him?” Shumway asked.

“I hit him in the shoulder. Hollow point, but looks like he’ll live. I’ll take him home and they’ll throw away the key.”

Shumway looked at Wolf. “You so sure about that? He’ll go to trial, and your son’s girlfriend and her family will spend those countless months on pins and needles, hoping this psycho gets what he deserves.” Shumway stood up, baring his teeth as he pushed his palm on his wound again. “And maybe he’s just crazy enough to plead not guilty. Maybe he gets some public defender that’ll pick apart our procedures over the last couple days.”

“He just shot the sheriff of Windfield County. If the rest of it falls through the cracks, at least he’ll rot for that.”

Megan’s eyelids fluttered.

Wolf squeezed her shoulder. “Megan, you—”

Before he could react he felt the Beretta slip from his waistband.

Shumway stood over Boydell and aimed down.

“Don’t do it, Shumway.” Wolf held out his hand. “You shoot him, I’ve gotta report the truth of what you did. You’re going to be put in jail along with him. You want to put your daughter through that?”

“You’re gonna take away my chance to make my daughter proud?” Shumway looked at Wolf. “I wrestled with Boydell. I took the gun away and shot him in the heat of the moment. It was pure self-defense. I saved my daughter’s life.”

“Daddy, don’t do it.”

Shumway flinched at the sound of his daughter’s voice. “Honey.”

“I’m sorry about the video, Daddy.” Megan started crying.

“What? What video, honey?”

Wolf held out his hand. “Come on. It’s over. Let me take him back. That family needs this man to face justice. Your family needs you.”

Shumway lowered the gun and collapsed to his knees. He studied the blossoming red spot on his stomach and then fell to his side.

“Daddy!”

Wolf cuffed Boydell and got to work on blocking Shumway’s wound.

Chapter 38

Margaret Hitchens sniffed and leaned on Wolf’s shoulder. “My God. It’s so beautiful,” she whispered with all the awe and reverence in the universe. Not bothering to wait for Wolf’s reply, she clasped her hands at her chest and faced forward again.

Wolf had to admit it was an impressive setting for a wedding.

The horizon for three hundred sixty degrees was a never-ending sea of peaks, with light green swaths of aspens cutting through the sea of pines.

The air was crisp and cool, and still, not a breath of wind, which was about as rare as finding a nugget of gold on the ground for the top of Rocky Points Ski Resort. The sun shone bright, with low clouds lazily floating past it now and again, painting the mountaintops and valleys with their shadows.

It was times like this that he renewed his vows to Rocky Points that he’d never leave her.

“You seeing the knockers on the third bridesmaid?” Rachette spoke out the side of his mouth in Wolf’s ear.

Wolf turned and looked at him.

Charlotte Munford was next to Rachette smiling and nodding at Wolf. “Beautiful, huh?” she said.

Wolf contemplated her question.

“It is,” Margaret leaned across Wolf’s lap. “Oh my God, they did such a good job with the decorations.”

“Shhhhhh.”

Margaret turned and glared at someone behind them. Jack sat next to Margaret, sharing a roll of his eyes with Wolf. Cassidy was conspicuously absent from the festivities, as was understandable having just put her father in the ground the day before.

If the setting was beautiful, then Patterson was a Goddess. She was dressed in a tasteful white dress that displayed her lean shoulders and thin waist. Her auburn hair was pulled back with flowers framing her glowing freckled face.

She looked up at Scott Reed and beamed with a toothy smile that kicked off more energy than the sun. In fact it was such a happy, contented expression that Wolf couldn’t help but feel envy for Scott.

Scott seemed struck by the moment too, and though he towered over her, standing at least six foot four to her five foot two, he looked humbled by her huge presence.

Wolf looked at the slender shoulders and straight, shiny brown hair of Special Agent Kristen Luke, who sat in the front row next to a muscular man Wolf had just met before the ceremony named Gestad, which Wolf guessed was Swedish for muscles. Kristen leaned close and with a conspiratorial smile whispered something into the man’s ear, then started laughing uncontrollably.

Margaret reached over and grabbed Wolf’s hand, and Wolf gave her a toothless smile.

The ceremony continued and finished without a hitch, and when the officiant pronounced them man and wife, Wolf wondered if they’d be calling her Deputy Reed now.

After a heartfelt round of applause from Wolf and the guests, which was a considerable crowd by anyone’s wedding standards, the bride and groom wandered off along the mountain top with the photographer toward a wildflower-covered ski run.

Everyone else walked and mingled, making their way along the ridgeline to the Antler Creek Lodge.

Wolf put his arm around Jack and steered him to a spot devoid of people.

“What’s up?” Jack asked.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

Wolf stared at an eagle circling in the sky.

“Dad?”

“Yeah. Listen, I want to talk to you about sex.”

Jack’s eyes went wide and his face went red. “Uh, okay. You think this is the place to have this conversation, Dad?”

“I don’t care. We need to have this talk.”

“Kind of a bad place for it.”

“I know about you and Cassidy camping together, alone, last weekend.”

Jack nodded.

“You want to talk about a bad place? Think about the place you’ll be in if Cassidy gets pregnant and you aren’t even old enough to drive yet.”

Jack huffed and kicked at a piece of grass.

“Look at me,” Wolf said.

Jack did.

“I want you using protection. I want you two acting responsible.”

“We haven’t had sex yet.”

“Hey, there you two are.” Margaret came up and looked at both of them. “But … this is a bad time … so I’ll talk to you two later.” She walked away and warned someone else to stay clear as she disappeared into the crowd.

Wolf could think of nothing else to say, so he put his hands on his son’s shoulders and gave him a meaningful nod. When they were done understanding one another telepathically he ruffled Jack’s hair and began walking.

“How’s she doing?”

Jack stepped next to him. “They’re sad. I’m not sure what to do for her.”

“Well, you know how it is. It’ll take time, and even then, it still sucks.”

Wolf and Jack walked to Rachette and Munford, who were standing and talking on the trail.

“’Sup dude?” Rachette asked Jack, giving him a mock uppercut to the stomach.

Wolf and Munford stood shaking their heads as Jack and Rachette wrestled for another few seconds, and then Jack spotted a friend named Chip, whom Wolf had once heard was a “bomb” skier.

“I’ll see you guys in there,” Jack said and ran to his friend.

“I don’t know about you guys. But tonight I’m gonna get housed.” Rachette looked at Wolf. “Of course, I’m off work tomorrow, so you’re fine with that.”

“Just don’t fall off the gondola on the way down.”

Rachette’s face dropped. “How would I fall off? Those doors are locked tight, aren’t they?”

Wolf smiled and checked his watch.

“What?” Munford asked. “You have somewhere better to be?”

Wolf put his hands in his pockets and said nothing.

They walked in silence for a beat, and then Munford bubbled over. “Oh, I’m so excited. I’ve never been here.”

“That’s because you’re dating Tom Rachette,” Wolf said.

“Ha. Good one.” Rachette looked down and kicked a rock.

Wolf felt a tinge of regret for throwing Rachette under the bus. “If he took you here he’d be spending five hundred dollars on a meal. I’ve actually only eaten here once.”

Munford whistled. “There’s gotta be over two hundred people here. Apparently Mr. Patterson is well-to-do.”

“Entertainment lawyer in Aspen,” Rachette said. “I’m gonna get on his good side tonight. The guy knows TC personally.”

Munford frowned at him. “And what? He’s going to introduce you to him?”

“Never know, babe. Maybe he has some extra memorabilia lying around.”

Munford laughed and then looked like she remembered Wolf was still there. “So you thought she was beautiful?”

Wolf was taken aback by the phrasing of the question. “Yeah. She looked very beautiful. Scott’s a lucky man.”

“No. I mean the bridesmaid that Tom pointed out.”

“What?”

Rachette bounced his eyebrows. “Charlotte knows her pretty well. Small world, eh? We can introduce you if you want. She knows who you are.”

“She thinks you’re hot,” Munford said, flashing a mischievous smile.

Wolf tried on a few facial expressions, and ended up mumbling something incoherent.

“David!” Margaret yelled behind them.

“I’ll see you guys,” Wolf said, dropping out of the procession.

“Wait up.” Margaret jogged up and stopped, twisting an ankle. “Ah, dammit.”

“Why’d you wear those shoes?”

“Why did I wear these shoes? Have you seen them?” She pointed down.

Wolf took that as a joke so he smiled. He checked his watch again.

“You’ve been checking your watch for the last … you’re not thinking of leaving, are you?”

Wolf nodded. “I’ve got a thing.”

“You’ve got a thing? This is Heather’s wedding. That’s your thing for the night.”

A woman stared at Wolf as she passed by, leaving behind a cloud of perfume that choked his nostrils. A few people behind the nameless woman, Kristen Luke and Gestad strolled arm in arm.

Kristen was cuddled close to the man’s ample pectorals and laughing, and then her face dropped as she saw Wolf.

They smiled and nodded at one another as she passed.

“Anyway, I’ve gotta go.”

“Heather will be devastated.”

Wolf caught a glimpse of Patterson and Scott through the throngs of people. They were laughing and holding one another in front of the photographer. Wolf looked at the gondola terminal and then back at the bride and groom and felt a wave of guilt wash over him.

“I’ll talk to you later.”

Wolf walked away from the throngs of people, out among the long grass of the mountaintop toward the bride and groom. He waited patiently with his hands in his pockets, and he ruined a couple shots as Patterson broke her pose and looked at him.

“Just a second,” she said to Scott and walked toward Wolf.

“Sorry. I just have to leave and I wanted to say congratulations.”

“You have to leave?” She looked heartbroken, but tried to play it off. “No problem. Thanks for coming.”

Wolf nodded. “I’m sorry.”

They stood in silence for a moment, and Wolf waved to Scott.

“Congratulations, Scott.”

Scott smiled. “Thanks Dave.”

“Sir?” Patterson stared up at Wolf with a troubled expression.

“Yeah?”

“What happens if I have a kid?”

Wolf frowned. “What happens if you have a kid?”

“If I decide to have children, am I screwed?”

“Yes.”

She frowned.

“Because anyone who has a child is screwed.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Are you talking about your job?”

“Yeah. I mean, I can’t hold my job and have kids, can I?”

“I have a kid, and I hold my job.”

She gave him a look that said she was seconds from killing him.

Wolf put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re the sharpest detective I have. I’ll never let you go as long as you want the job. If you decide to have children, then we’ll work around it.”

She instantly burst into tears, and then she lunged forward and hugged him tightly, dropping her flower bouquet on the ground next to them.

Wolf stared at Scott with wide eyes and patted her back.

She pushed away and smiled so brightly he couldn’t help but return one of his own.

“Thanks. I hate that you have to leave, but thanks.” She turned and walked back to the photographer and Scott.

The photographer’s jaw dropped and he looked at Wolf with naked contempt.

Wolf walked into the steamy, beer-vapor-infused restaurant and searched the pine booths lining the windows.

“Table for one?” A disheveled looking hostess grabbed a menu and looked at him.

“No, thanks. I’m meeting that man over there.”

She dropped the menu back in its slot and left, disappearing into the sea of loud drinkers in the bar area.

Wolf walked over, loosening and taking off his tie and shoving it in his jacket pocket. Stopping at the table, he slid onto the creaky pine bench.

“You’re late.” Senator Levenworth didn’t bother looking up as he sawed into a steak that looked like a burnt hockey puck.

Wolf nodded.

“Can I get you something to drink, David?” A female voice said next to him.

“No thanks, Kim.”

She smiled warmly and looked at Levenworth.

Levenworth pointed his steak knife at the half-drunk glass of golden liquid. “Another Dewars. Less water this time, more Dewars.”

She nodded and left.

“This food is shit. This is the best place you could come up with to meet? And you’re not even getting anything?” Levenworth shook his head and took another bite.

Wolf stared at him. “I saw the bones weren’t in the back of your truck. I thought you already picked them up from the building.”

“My assistant is driving them back in a rented truck.” Levenworth set down his knife and fork, then took a long pull of his scotch and eyed Wolf over the rim of the glass. When he was done he exhaled and put down the glass with a clank. “I don’t have any obligation to help you with your request.”

Wolf said nothing.

They stared at one another until Kim came over and slid another glass of scotch in front of Levenworth.

“But I like you,” Levenworth said as he looked around the room. “And I like kids. Don’t have any of my own, but I find them tolerable.” His eyes came back to Wolf. “I sent the money via my personal foundation to the medical clinic in Scotland. Wasn’t cheap. Three hundred forty five thousand American dollars.”

Wolf said nothing.

Levenworth gripped his scotch. “The kid and his mom have a first class plane ticket that leaves tomorrow morning from Salt Lake City, and he’ll be under the knife, or whatever they use, in two days.”

Wolf nodded.

Levenworth finished his almost empty scotch and pulled over the new one. “I know you think I knew about the illegal nature of those bones. But I didn’t.”

Wolf nodded.

Levenworth stared at Wolf for a few seconds and then shook his head. “I’ve been looking at those procedures they do up there. That treatment has a sixty-five percent success rate. There’s no guarantee this is going to work for the kid.”

Wolf nodded and looked at his watch. 6:54 pm. “I’ve gotta go.” He slid to the edge of the booth and stood up. “See ya.”

“That’s it?” Levenworth looked up at Wolf with an incredulous smile.

“That’s it.”

Wolf walked through the loud bar area of “Stan’s Pub and Grill” and out through the side entrance. The door creaked and slapped shut behind him, and the bar noise was muted to almost nothing.

He crunched his way on top of the downed pine needles, through the twenty yards of forest and out onto the community center parking lot.

His dress shoes crackled as he stepped on the pebble-strewn asphalt, and he walked to the front door and went inside.

Wolf felt like he was immediately punched in the stomach, because Sarah was right there to greet him. Her smile was bright, her eyes radiant with a gleaming orb in the center of each of her pupils from the picture flash. Underneath her photo there was a brass engraving that said Sarah Muller.

“David?” A woman’s voice said.

Wolf turned. “Hi, Carol.”

Carol Fitzsimmons was a short and squat individual. With a puffy wave of white hair and thick glasses, she was in her seventies, but moved like a woman twenty years younger. She got up from the desk in the reception room and hurried over to him with a tiny outstretched hand.

Wolf shook it and smiled.

“What brings you to the Old Bank?” She asked, referring to the nickname the community building held, as it was once the bank of Rocky Points, over a hundred years prior.

Wolf stayed rooted to his spot inside the door and looked back at Sarah’s photo. “I’m here for the meeting tonight.”

Carol looked at Sarah’s photograph and back at him. “Oh, I see. The grief support group.” She gave Wolf the most compassionate smile he’d ever seen in his life and took his hand again. “Come. It was a good thing to come in here. It’s a good thing to seek help.”

Wolf nodded. “So I hear.”

“This way.”

She led him around the corner and down the hall.

He was bombarded with memories, and swore he still smelled Sarah’s perfume as he passed by her old office. With every step the floor squeaked underneath his feet, just like the last time he’d been here. With her.

And now he was here alone, smelling her perfume, and looking at her face hanging on the wall. As he followed Carol into the room, he felt a surge of something—not quite panic or regret, but something close to both. Like he was a fraud walking in there, like he really didn’t mean it, because he probably didn’t really need the help, and he was being disrespectful to these people who were here for a real reason.

There were seven of them sitting in a circle, sipping coffee and happily chatting: four men, ranged from younger than Wolf to twice Wolf’s age, and three women, all much older than Wolf.

They hushed at the sight of him and stood up from their chairs.

“Everyone, this is David Wolf.”

Wolf swallowed and approached, and shook each of their hands, and with each new greeting, Wolf felt a tiny surge of strength well up inside, like he was standing much taller by the time the round of introductions were done. And as he finally sat down the apprehension was gone, replaced by the unrelenting vision of a smug, knowing smirk plastered on Margaret Hitchens’s face.

THE END.

David Wolf Series In Order

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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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