Shadow Ridge

by M. E. Browning

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making a note of the path you’ve taken.” She paused for effect. “Try to retrace your steps. I’d hate to have to say how badly you mucked things up—you getting promoted and all.”

  “You’re such a bitch.”

  “Is that how you talk to your wife?”

  He picked up the overturned bottle on the TV tray. “Johnnie Walker Gold.” He sniffed the premium Scotch whisky. “And here I would have pegged him for a Jack fan, at best.” Cameron tipped the bottle back into place and retraced his steps.

  The latex gloves did nothing to warm her fingers, and Jo shoved her hands in her pockets. Had he changed or had she? “When did you become such an ass?”

  “When’d we get married?” He shouldered past her, swinging his keys around his finger. Outside the streetlamps flickered to life. “I’ll leave you to it. Even you can see it’s a slam dunk.”

  She didn’t want to agree with him. “It’s only a suicide when the coroner says so.”

  “Oh, Jo-elle.”

  There was that laugh again, and she hated herself for warming to him.

  “You’ve got to learn to choose your battles.”

  2

  Squint MacAllister was what Jo’s mother would have called a tall drink of water. He’d earned the nickname as a child, but no one could remember why. Some said it was due to the slight narrowing of his eyes before he pulled the trigger when picking off the prairie dogs that undermined his family’s ranch. Others suggested it was because he couldn’t see past his nose. Considering no one on the department could outshoot him, Jo suspected the varmint story was closer to the truth. It wasn’t until she’d made detective and heard him testify in court that she’d learned his real name was Jessup.

  “What do you think?” Squint asked quietly.

  On television, detectives rarely asked someone what they thought. Fictional detectives peppered their dialogue with declaratives and commands. Jo chewed on the question. Squint had been her training officer when she’d joined the department twelve years ago, and she’d learned that he liked reasoned responses when time allowed, and decisive action when it didn’t. “Glossing over the fact that we haven’t positively identified the victim, initial impressions suggest Tye Horton suicided.”

  Echo Valley had a grand total of three detectives, and two of them were in the room. The third, their supervisor, was on a beach somewhere along the Gulf Coast. Because Squint was the senior detective, he was in charge, although the swing-shift patrol sergeant checked on their progress throughout the night.

  They worked systematically, processing the small dwelling. Sketches, photos, identifying evidence, more photos, collecting evidence. Squint dusted for latents. Jo vacuumed trace evidence. It was a lot like cleaning house, only with an evidence log that established them as the first link in the chain of custody.

  Now they were waiting on the coroner.

  Jo leaned over the body and shivered. His remaining brown hair curled over the neck of a long-sleeved T-shirt emblazoned with a pi symbol. Jeans and furry slippers completed the ensemble. All were in decent condition, other than the blood spatter and brain chunks that had rained down on them. “There’s no sign of a struggle, no defensive wounds, and the angle on the shotgun blast is logical for being self-inflicted. Trying to get that angle on a person who doesn’t want to die would be problematic at best.”

  The conventional wisdom regarding any death investigation was to treat it as a homicide until the facts proved otherwise. Some murder scenes were staged to look like suicide. Some suicides were staged to look like murder. If the investigator was lucky, the distinction was obvious. A person stabbed sixteen times in the back didn’t commit suicide. But not all crime scenes gave up their secrets. Well-meaning family members covered Aunt Betty’s nakedness, hid Junior’s meth, destroyed the suicide note in hopes that their guilt and shame would disappear along with the message.

  “But I’m concerned,” she admitted.

  “Talk me through it.”

  She had to smile. After all these years, he was still training her. “Ideally, to be considered a suicide, three basic things need to be established. We’ve got the gun. And the way he sat on the chair with the gun between his legs is a viable way to inflict the wound.”

  “But?” Squint pressed.

  “Where’s the note?”

  “Not everyone wants to share their final thoughts.”

  “Okay, fair enough, but you still have to establish why a person wanted to end his own life. What’s his motivation?” The room pressed in around Jo. “I mean, he’s not living in the Ritz, but he had a roof over his head. His fridge is small, but he had plenty of food. Fresh stuff, too. I have lettuce more wilted than his.”

  “What else?”

  Squint saw things. Jo recognized what was missing. The different perspectives made them a good team.

  She pointed at the ceramic bowl with meow scrawled across it in a hard-to-read font. “Where’s the cat?”

  “The window’s propped open. Clean ledge, toilet tank. Easy access for a cat. Could be outside.”

  “Too damn cold.” Until tonight she’d never thought so much frigid air could come through such a small window. “And where’s the food? I only saw a water dish.”

  “Significance?”

  “No idea,” Jo admitted. “It just struck me as odd.” She returned to her scrutiny of the victim. Talking aloud helped clarify her thoughts. “Speaking of odd. Have you ever seen a chair like this?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  Excessively padded, the high, curved back of Tye’s final resting place fused the comfort of a recliner with the apparent efficiency of an executive office chair. Built-in speakers were at about ear level—or would have been if Tye had still had ears. “My guess is he’s an audiophile, although I find it strange that the television is muted. Come to think of it, where are the movies? Music? There’s a DVD in the player, but where’s its case?”

  The remote had been bagged for prints, along with dozens of other small items. Black powder covered the less portable surfaces. The only things still to be collected were the supplements and meds on the bathroom counter.

  Jo grabbed her clipboard, secured a new evidence sheet on it, and relocated to the bathroom. “What’s even odder is the missing laptop.” She separated the health supplements from the prescribed medications.

  Squint wrangled the scattered evidence bags and placed them next to the door. “How do you know he had one?”

  She wrote the name of a supplement on her evidence list and dropped the bottle into a brown paper bag. “He’s a college student. Of course he had one.”

  “Assuming facts not in evidence.”

  “Just making sure you’re still awake,” she teased. “The RP was his classmate. She asked if we’d retrieve it and give it to her. Apparently, it has their team assignment on it.”

  “We haven’t found the car yet. Could be inside.”

  “Along with the note, his movies, and the cat, if we’re lucky.”

  “What did Doc Koster say?”

  Jo selected a vial of insulin and rotated the bottle to read the label. She’d called Tye’s doctor while Squint was throwing powder. “Mixing alcohol and insulin wreaks havoc on the human body. Tye could have easily miscalculated his sugar levels and gone into hypoglycemic shock. Which, by the way, makes the shotgun a bit of overkill.”

  “True.”

  She noted the dosage on her form and added the vial to the growing collection in the bag. The majority of the insulin had been stored in the refrigerator. “When I explained why I was calling, Dr. Koster immediately asked if I suspected suicide. Apparently, it’s not uncommon for diabetics to suffer from depression. But there’s not a single psych medicine here.” She removed a poke-proof tube from her evidence kit and slid three unused hypodermic needles into the clear plastic vial and sealed it with a Styrofoam cork. “Without his patient notes, the doc couldn’t remember if he and the
victim had ever discussed depression issues. I’ll follow up with him at his office tomorrow.”

  Jo’s radio clicked. “David-three, Echo.” The dispatcher’s slight twang was as soothing as morning sunshine.

  “David-three.”

  “Coroner’s en route, ETA less than ten.”

  “Roger.”

  “Call dispatch, your convenience.”

  Jo grabbed her phone and stripped off one glove to dial. “Hey, it’s me. What’s up?”

  “Hang on.” The line clicked. A second later Dakota Kaplan picked up again. “Sorry, I wanted a nonrecorded line.”

  Crap, more sergeant condolences. Jo didn’t know how many more sorries she could gracefully accept before cracking.

  “Thought you should know the coroner sounded soused.”

  “Dr. Ingersleben?” The man was the living embodiment of propriety, and Jo suddenly found herself pining for the promotion pity. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “I saw the posting. You got screwed, Jo.”

  A dead body, a tipsy coroner, and pity. This night couldn’t get any better. “Cameron will do a good job.”

  “Cut the horseshit, honey, it’s me. On an unrecorded line.”

  Jo cradled the cell phone between her ear and neck and dug out another latex glove. “He will.” If she said it enough times, maybe she’d start believing it.

  “Just so you know, I’m sending him to every shit call I can on his first day.”

  “Remind me not to piss off a dispatcher.”

  “Damn straight. Sunday. Little Pine Creek. Bring your snowshoes. We’ve got trail to break and bodies to bury.”

  Headlights raked the dirty window.

  Jo dragged on the glove. “Gotta go. The coroner just pulled up.”

  “Oh, hey, I’m screwing with you about Doc Ing.” The line disconnected.

  Jo stared at the screen, then shoved it in her back pocket. “I need a new best friend.”

  “It’s been my experience that the ones worth keeping are the same ones you most want to strangle.” Squint straightened the contents of his crime scene kit, making sure everything was in its place, and set it with the evidence bags by the door.

  The coroner tapped a rapid staccato against the door. Squint pulled it open to admit Dr. Sidney Ingersleben. He doffed his flat tweed cap, brushed the snow from his field coat, and nodded a greeting. Give him an over-and-under shotgun with a break action and he could be coming in from a gentleman’s hunt. In Scotland.

  Both detectives waited, silent.

  Dr. Ingersleben cleared his throat. “Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.”

  Thirty seconds passed before Squint spoke. “Marcus Aurelius?”

  “Not all great quotes about death originate from warriors, Detective MacAllister.” Ingersleben ran his fingers around the brim of his hat. “Detective Wyatt?”

  Jo repeated the quote to herself. Something about the doctor’s ritual calmed her, reminded her that even death had purpose. “It strikes me as Victorian. One of the Brontës?”

  “Closer, but no. Any other guesses, educated or otherwise?” He glanced between the detectives. “Well, then. This stark admonishment comes from the inimitable Virginia Woolf.”

  “Room With a View?” Jo asked, fully aware that Forster and Woolf could never be confused.

  “Detective, surely you jest.”

  Jo had never been outside the country. She’d been over the state line only a handful of times. But she’d read far enough beyond her borders to earn a scholarship to Western Colorado University in Gunnison. “Yes, Doctor, I do.”

  He cast about for a place to put his cap before setting it next to Squint’s Stetson on the CSI kit. “You are incorrigible, my dear. Now shall we to it?” He pulled paper booties over the feet of his knee-high wellies and picked his way carefully to the deceased. “No doubting he’s dead, I see.” He looked at the ceiling. “Bit of a mess, there. Eh?” He pulled wire-rimmed spectacles from his breast pocket and put them on. Peering over the top of the lenses, he addressed the detectives. “You’ve got everything you need, I’m assuming?”

  “Everything we could get without you present.”

  The coroner placed his hands on his thighs and squatted in front of the body, his face mere inches from the goop that Jo wished she’d never seen. “Shotguns are such efficient delivery systems. Shall we?”

  Jo and Squint positioned themselves on either side of the body, careful not to dislodge the paper bags taped around the victim’s hands to preserve trace evidence. Even knowing what to expect didn’t fully prepare her for the unyielding rigidity of Tye’s body as she worked her hand under his armpit. Together they leaned him forward, his body retaining the bent posture of the chair, while Dr. Ingersleben examined the back and buttocks of the victim. “A rather strapping lad, no? Can you tip him a bit further? I’ll get a look at his thighs. There. Yes.”

  Jo turned her head away from the carnage uncomfortably close to her face. Even the Vicks VapoRub she’d smeared under her nose wasn’t up to the task of masking the smell.

  “All right now. I’ll hold while you get your photographs.”

  Dr. Ingersleben exchanged places with Squint, and the body swiveled a bit toward Jo.

  Squint retrieved his camera and snapped an overview photo of Tye’s back, then several more close-ups.

  Dead weight was technically no different from any other weight. That said, Jo was pretty sure the numbers on Tye’s driver’s license vastly underrepresented the mass she held in her arms.

  “Still quite stiff, I see. Do we know when he was last seen?”

  “No,” Jo answered. “He was supposed to meet some people last night but didn’t show.”

  “That’s quite a time window.” Dr. Ingersleben applied pressure to the arm, checking its resistance. “If he died before his engagement, I’d expect rigor to have started dissipating by now, but then again, it’s cold in here. That will certainly impede the process.”

  Squint unwound the camera strap from around his neck. “I’ll take the remaining photographs when the mortuary fellows place him on the gurney.”

  “Fair enough. They should be along anytime now. I telephoned them on my way here.”

  They eased Tye back into the chair. Jo rubbed warmth back into her hands.

  Dr. Ingersleben extracted a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and polished his glasses. “How does a ten-thirty autopsy suit you?”

  Squint nestled the camera into the foam of the Pelican case and snapped it closed. “I’ll be there,” he confirmed.

  “Ah, that means you drew the proverbial short straw, eh?” the doctor said to Jo. “The psychological autopsy is so much harder than weighing organs and such. It’s a difficult task to delve into the recesses of a man’s mind.”

  They all looked at the crownless man in the chair.

  “Metaphorically speaking, of course,” he added.

  3

  Quinn Kirkwood opened the door of her yellow Mini Cooper and dropped her cigarette into the snow, where it sizzled until it died. Frosty night air invaded the car. She shivered and clicked her heater knob up a notch.

  The lighted police sign in front of the Echo Valley station cast a dingy glare through her windshield. What the hell was taking the detective so long?

  The two-story building guarded a corner lot a block east of the city’s main drag and a block west of Broadmoor Avenue, where overpriced Victorians were painted in nausea-inducing pastels. Black letters identified the department, as if the boxy structure and surveillance cameras didn’t make it obvious.

  The distance from her car to the door was a no-man’s-land of icy sidewalk. Spindly shrubs and two iron park benches flanked the covered entrance. She’d already used the emergency call box next to the locked lobby door to talk to a dispatcher. Braving the cold, Quinn sprinted across the salt-strewn path to the box and pressed the frozen receiver against her ear a second time.

  “Communications, what
’s your emergency?”

  The dispatcher spoke with a god-awful twang that suggested she was a few states north of home.

  “It’s Quinn again. Any update on Officer Wyatt returning to the station?”

  The dispatcher clicked off to check, and Muzak flooded the line with a bad rendition of Metallica’s “Fade to Black.” James Hetfield should sue.

  A low retaining wall surrounded frozen bushes and separated the building from the street. At the corner, a life-sized bronze police officer held a young girl in his arms. Snow had dusted the edges of his hat and settled on his shoulders. It looked like he had a bad case of dandruff.

  The music switched to a bubblegum pop hit. By the second stanza, Quinn wanted to kill herself. It took two more refrains before the dispatcher came back on the line. “Detective Wyatt advised it shouldn’t be much longer.”

  “Great,” Quinn answered, but the dispatcher had already disconnected.

  She retraced her steps to the car and drew her hoodie closer around her body. She couldn’t put it off any longer; she’d have to get something filled with feathers. Patagonia, maybe a Marmot. Something easy to boost from the mountaineering store on Main.

  She reached for the pack of cigarettes in the console and stopped. The nicotine kick had kept her up as she waited for Wyatt, but did she really want to stay awake all night?

  She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. The image she’d glimpsed of Tye replayed for the gazillionth time. Her eyes shot open, and before she knew it, she was drawing warm smoke deep into her lungs. Holding it hostage. Taking everything it would give her.

  Tye.

  Sad sack of shit, truth be told.

  She released the smoke, and it bounced against the windshield and curled back at her.

  She’d miss him.

  Main Street was ground zero in Echo Valley. From there, the streets either shared the same altitude or climbed into the mountains that kept the city from escaping. On warm days, it reminded her of her home in San Francisco. Hills she knew. Add a layer of ice to them, however, and they became the equivalent of a Slip ’N Slide, only colder and not nearly as much fun. Even now, headlights fishtailed as the drunks headed home.