by Jane Godman
Isabel frowned as she approached the carcasses. All three cows lay a few steps away from each other, but aside from a couple of spots here and there where the buzzards had started in, there were no obvious injuries to be seen.
Disease? As a large animal veterinarian, she’d had experience with some of the many pathogens that could sicken and kill cattle. The ranch hands were always on the lookout for signs of illness, and any sick cow was quickly separated from the herd and evaluated.
She walked slowly toward the heads of the animals, running her gaze over their bodies in search of any telltale symptoms. Nothing jumped out, but then again, there were several diseases that could only be identified after performing a necropsy and taking tissue samples.
“Damn,” she muttered. It looked like she was going to have a busy night.
She lifted the walkie-talkie to her lips. “Diego, come in.”
There was a burst of static across the line. “What’s up, sis?”
“I’ve got three head of cattle down out here along the east fence.”
“Sorry, you’re breaking up. I thought I heard you say three.”
“I did,” she confirmed grimly.
“What the hell is going on out there?” Her brother’s surprise matched her own.
“I won’t know until I get them home and open them up. Send the flatbed, please.” She told him about the damaged fence, as well.
He cursed. “Ruben and I will round up everything and be there shortly. Let me know if anything changes.”
“Will do. Over and out.”
Isabel clipped the walkie-talkie back onto her belt and stared at the animals at her feet. She walked over to the head of one and squatted, waving away the flies so she could get a better look.
A thin track of dried blood ran from the cow’s nose, but she saw no lesions or any other marks that might indicate what had caused these animals to die. Part of her wanted to get closer, but she knew that without the proper safety precautions, she should leave things alone. If these cows had been infected with something, the last thing she needed was to catch it, as well.
“What happened to you?” she said softly, studying the closest animal. “And how can I stop it from happening to the others?”
* * *
Park ranger Wyatt Spalding rose in the saddle and squinted into the distance. Were those...cows?
He nudged his mount forward. As he got closer, he realized his first impression had been correct. Five cows stood in the small valley, chomping placidly on clumps of grass. They eyed him curiously as he approached, but didn’t seem bothered by his presence.
“Uh, hi, ladies,” he said, pushing up the brim of his hat. “You look lost.”
The cow closest to him flicked her tail at that, but otherwise didn’t respond. Wyatt guided his horse to her left side, wanting to get a look at the flanks of the animals.
It wasn’t unusual to see rogue livestock here. There were a few working outfits that shared a border with the park and while fences separated ranch from park land, every once in a while, a determined cow slipped through. Animals often crossed the shallow stretches of the Rio Grande in search of greener pastures, as well.
These cows sported a backward C snugged up against the letter R. Wyatt recognized the brand immediately. It was the marking for Cruz Ranch, one of the oldest family establishments in the area.
“Well, hell,” he muttered to himself. Protocol stated he needed to call this in so that the response team could bring out trailers and haul the animals away. Livestock that trespassed on park land were usually rounded up, held in quarantine and then auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The problem was, he was friends with Diego Cruz, grandson and heir to the ranch owner, Jose Cruz. The family usually ran a tight ship when it came to keeping their animals off of park land. In fact, Wyatt could count on one hand the number of times Cruz cattle had been found in Big Bend, and he’d still have a few fingers left over. The fact he’d found five rogue animals meant something was wrong.
Wyatt was torn between the desire to help an old friend and the responsibility to follow the rules. He hated to pile trouble onto Diego, but it was his job to protect the park. Cows weren’t at the top of most people’s list of dangerous animals, but they were steady grazers who could clear a patch of grass in a matter of hours. He had to get these animals out of here, the sooner the better.
Maybe he could just “encourage” the animals to head home and then talk to Diego about the situation. One free pass wasn’t the end of the world, and he knew a lot of the nearby ranches were struggling financially. The cattle market wasn’t what it used to be and this was an unforgiving land, especially in the summer. Most ranchers had to bring in food and water for their herds, often at exorbitant costs. The loss of these cows and the accompanying fine would just add to Diego’s difficulties.
He took off his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “You look like you’re enjoying yourself, but it’s time to head on home,” he said to the nearest cow.
She continued to ignore him as he donned his hat once more. But when he began to dismount, intending on giving his horse, Ajax, a break, the cow let out a startled bellow.
Apparently this was a signal. The cattle began to move, ears back, tails swishing as they walked in the direction of the ranch.
“Hey, wait!” Wyatt found himself in the awkward position of one foot in the stirrup, one on the ground. He boosted himself back up into the saddle, earning a soft grunt from Ajax. “I know, I know,” he said to his horse. “But it’s not my fault. Let’s go.”
He set off after the cattle, hoping they’d stay together. Ajax was no cattle horse. And while Wyatt had spent a summer in high school punching cows, he’d never made a good cowboy.
Fortunately for him, the animals stayed in a group as they trudged the mile or so back to the ranch. Like large, brown homing pigeons, the animals headed for a break in the wire fence, slipping through in a single-file line. Wyatt stopped and watched them walk toward the small pond about fifty yards away; apparently illegal grazing was thirsty work.
Ajax nickered a welcome. Wyatt glanced to the right and noticed a pretty bay mare standing by a clump of bushes. She was saddled, but there was no rider to be seen.
Wyatt frowned. That seemed odd.
“Hello?” he called loudly. Where was the rider? Had he come out to repair the fence and gotten hurt somehow? The mare seemed a little anxious, but perhaps that was simply due to their presence.
A movement to his left caught his eye. Wyatt turned and saw a head pop up out of the grass. Because of a small declivity in the land a few yards away, he could see some indeterminate dark shapes but nothing more.
“Hello.” The voice that reached his ears was decidedly feminine, and Wyatt felt a rush of embarrassment as he realized he must have interrupted this lady’s bathroom break.
“Uh, I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that five of your cattle were grazing in the park.” He nodded to the animals in question, now all drinking from the pond nearby. “They must have slipped through the fence.”
“Did they look all right to you?”
He leaned back in the saddle at the odd question. “I suppose,” he said. As he started to speak again, the words died in his throat when the woman approached and he got his first good look at her.
Oval face, slender nose, bow-shaped lips. And those eyes—large, dark and luminous, fringed by impossibly long lashes.
“Isabel,” he whispered hoarsely.
Her brown eyes grew wide as she stared up at him. “Wyatt,” she choked out. She blinked hard, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
He understood the feeling. Emotions rushed through him, tightening his chest and making it hard to breathe. It had been ten years since he’d last seen her. Ten years since they’d made love in the bed of his pickup under a blanket of stars. Te
n years since she’d stolen his heart then walked away without a backward glance.
There was so much he wanted to say, to ask. So much he wanted to know. A decade’s worth of questions tumbled in his brain, each jockeying for prominence. But as he opened his mouth, only two words slipped out.
“You’re back.”
Copyright © 2020 by Lara Kingeter
Keep reading for an excerpt from Ten Days Gone by Beverly Long.
Ten Days Gone
by Beverly Long
One
Tuesday, May 10
She’d been killed like all the others.
A.L. McKittridge squatted down to get a closer look at the body. The woman, already stiff, had likely been dead for hours. The coroner had not yet arrived, so there was no official cause of death. But a damn rookie could figure it out. And neither he nor his partner, Rena Morgan, had been rookies for a long time.
But they’d never seen anything like this, either. Four dead women in forty days, each killed ten days apart.
They’d started their shift over seven hours earlier, and as each hour had passed, they’d gotten more and more anxious, knowing the call was going to come, not having a clue what to do about it.
They’d had to wait until Jane Picus’s husband had gotten home from work and found his wife. Naked. Dead. And one pillow missing off their bed.
“He’s going to...” Rena’s voice trailed off. She likely did not want the photographer, the sketch artist and the evidence techs who were doing their thing to hear. She looked tired. They all were. “He’s going to make a mistake,” she said quietly.
The asshole hadn’t thus far. The three other victims, ranging in age from thirty-two to forty-eight, had all been found naked, with their clothes folded neatly in a pile next to them.
No signs of struggle, in their houses or on their persons. No robbery. No sexual assault.
No fucking physical evidence, not even a little skin or blood under their fingernails. Just some cotton fibers, as if their killer had made them wear gloves while he killed them. But those were never left at the scene. Nor was the pillow.
With so little to go on, they’d looked for connections between the three women. Had come up dry.
Now they’d dissect the life of this new victim and try to figure out what led to her ending up stone-cold dead on her kitchen floor. They’d hope like hell they could find something to link her to the other women. Then, just maybe, they’d catch the murderer.
If they didn’t, there’d be another dead woman ten days from now.
A.L. stood up when he heard the front door of the house open. Carrie Stack, the medical examiner, walked into the room, her cloud of perfume preceding her. She wore too much, but nobody ever complained. The smell of death was a worthy opponent. And most of the male detectives had a permanent hard-on when she was within fifty yards, so they weren’t about to bitch that their eyes were watering.
Carrie Stack was stacked. And beautiful. And he’d taken a ride on her merry-go-round more than once. It was an arrangement that suited them both.
“Detective Morgan. Detective McKittridge,” Carrie said, greeting them both. Her tone was neutral. She was a cat in bed, but on the job, she was always professional. And very good at her job. She stood in the doorway and carefully pulled on booties over her shiny black heels. “I was, unfortunately, waiting for the call. Where’s the husband?”
A.L. pointed outside. Terry Picus was in the back seat of a patrol car, his face partially turned away from the house. Five minutes earlier, he’d been bent double in the yard, losing his lunch on the rosebushes.
“Press is behind the line,” Carrie said. “Can’t wait to see the headline.”
The first murder had not gone unnoticed by the Bulletin. But it had been a reasonable four paragraphs—above the fold, of course, because, after all, murders were a rare occurrence in Baywood, Wisconsin. And if it had stopped after the first one, the victim would have been easily dismissed as that poor woman who was smothered in her own kitchen.
But then the second murder had occurred ten days later. It had been the lead story for three days running. The television folks in Madison, sixty miles southeast, had picked up the story.
The headline after the third murder had been expected. Baywood Serial Killer Strikes Again. So far they’d been able to keep most of the details under wraps, simply offering up the cause of death, the absence of any sexual assault and the location in the home where the bodies had been discovered.
But the press was getting antsy to find out why the police weren’t releasing any more information about the crime scenes. No one just lies down in their kitchen and waits to be smothered. That had come from James Adeva, the crime reporter at the Bulletin who was probably smarter than most.
He was right. Mostly. A victim might start off compliant. Yes, Mr. Bad Guy, I’ll be happy to take off my clothes and lie on this cold floor. Of course, she’d be hoping to get the upper hand at some point, or that her attacker would have a change of heart when he saw how accommodating she was. Maybe the killer had told the victim that it would be fast and painless if she didn’t struggle, but long and torturous if she did.
But no matter how it started, when it came right down to it, once the air supply got choked off, victims would instinctively put up a fight. The will to live was strong.
While Carrie did her thing, A.L. and Rena walked around, pointing at evidence that the techs needed to tag and bag. The clothes on the floor, the cell phone on the counter, the computer on the small desk in the kitchen.
After the second murder, they’d asked for resources from the state. A.L. had worried they might get in the way, but instead, they’d been helpful, especially with the computer and online activity analysis. The Picuses, like the other three families, would have no secrets by the time they were done.
The money trails they’d helped uncover had yielded a few coincidences, as one might expect. Baywood wasn’t that big, after all. Didn’t have that many grocery stores or nail salons or gas stations that their three previous victims hadn’t overlapped at times. Now, they’d find out just how much in common Jane Picus had with any or all of the others. And regardless of how slight the connection might be, it would get followed up on.
He and Rena stood back while Carrie saw to the loading of the body into the ambulance. Then they followed her outside and watched as she walked over to Terry Picus. The two spoke briefly.
Carrie was good about remembering that while her focus was on the dead, the living couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t possible to pretty up the indignity of an autopsy, but she would, at the very least, convey to Terry Picus that while his wife was in her custody, she would be handled with the utmost care.
She walked back to them. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done,” she said. Then, looking at Rena, she asked, “What about Friday?”
Rena shook her head. “I’m pretty sure we’re canceling it. I’ll let you know. Nobody feels like celebrating these days. It’s not fair, but it just feels wrong.”
He waited until Carrie was gone before turning to his partner. “Another jewelry party?”
“Baby shower for Violet,” she said.
Maybe that was why Rena looked tired. Violet O’Brien was popping out her fourth kid in about as many years. And Rena and her husband had been trying for a while with no luck.
“She’s been on maternity leave more than she’s worked as the department’s secretary,” he said.
“I guess. We should talk to the husband again.”
“Yeah.” They’d exchanged basic information with him already. The guy had made the 911 call and had been waiting on the front steps when the first patrol car arrived. He and Rena had been just minutes behind. Mr. Picus had been pale and sweating, but he’d managed a few coherent sentences before his stomach had taken over.
Jane Picus had worked at the fl
oral shop on Division. Today was her day off. She’d made him eggs and toast this morning before he’d left for work at the food plant at the edge of town. She’d still been in her pajamas. He had not talked to her or communicated with her in any way during the day. That wasn’t unusual. They’d been married for twenty-one years.
It was that last sentence that had sent him running for the rosebushes.
At some point, Jane had changed out of her pajamas into a white denim skirt and a blue T-shirt. That’s what had been neatly folded less than two feet from her dead body.
Rena knocked on the window of the patrol car before she opened the door. “Mr. Picus. I know this is a very difficult time for you, but can you answer a few more questions for us?”
The man licked his dry lips. “Our daughter is at college in Milwaukee. I...need to tell her.”
It wasn’t the kind of news a daughter should get over the phone. Unfortunately, because of the lightning speed of social media, there wasn’t a better option. The Picus family lived in a nice, middle-class neighborhood, and several neighbors were already gathering. Some idiot had probably already taken a photo and put it on Facebook. They weren’t going to be able to keep this under wraps.
A.L. saw that the man had a cell phone on his belt. “Call her. Tell her what has happened, and then we’ll have someone drive you to Milwaukee,” he said. “Before you do that, however, can I ask you about the following names and whether they mean anything to you?”
Picus nodded.
“Leshia Fowler. Marsha Knight. LeAnn Jacobs.” He didn’t need to refer to a list. He’d been dreaming about these names almost every damn night.
Picus shook his head. “They’re the other women who got killed,” he said, his voice flat. “Jane and I had read the articles in the newspaper. Had talked about the three women. How horrible it was.” The man swallowed hard. “I don’t think either one of us realized,” he added, his voice barely audible.
When had Jane Picus known that she was number four? And why the hell hadn’t she fought like a crazy woman? No. It seemed as if she’d simply gotten undressed, lain down and let the bastard smother her.