To the Bone (David Wolf Book 7)

by Jeff Carson

  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.”