But I couldn’t have stayed away from Kabe if’n I tried. Beyond the looks, and there was a good bit of looking that could be done on Kabe, he and I just meshed. Our souls got woven together somewhere up along the face of a cliff. I recognized how much I loved the mountains shining out of a set of eyes that stole from the forest for their color. Kabe may have been born and bred a city boy, but the wild wind flowed in his veins same as it did mine.
I stared at the toes of my boots and offered Fred about the only thing that might sum it all up, “Right person, wrong time.” Jawing wasn’t going to get this scene processed any faster. I sucked it up and went back to tying lines.
He blew out a frustrated breath. “That sucks for you.”
I tried to reassure myself as much as him. “It won’t come to nothing.”
“I hope you’re right.” Fred tucked the papers away in a waterproof bag. Then he pulled out a handheld metal detector and a set of little wire flags. He fiddled with the settings and then began to sweep the perimeter I’d established, looking for bits of metal that might be hidden under snow and debris.
I got it all gridded off in one foot square sections then stood up and stretched. The crab-walking along in a set of hip-waders weren’t all that easy on my legs. I looked over at Fred. He’d pulled out the camera and photographed a few places he’d marked with flags. Then Fred and I walked the grid, pushing the pipes through the snow to try and get a sense of where the body lay, whether it was balled up or spread out or even in one piece. Each little bit we uncovered with our prodding got photographed; size and compass direction indicated by plastic markers Fred brought with him. And we hadn’t even gotten down to the real work yet.
Although I hadn’t wanted to talk about my problems, having an ear sometimes helped. Going through the tasks, with Fred just there beside me, concerned, but not judging, hit me down deep. “Thanks, Fred.”
Fred lowered the camera and raised his eyebrows. “For what?”
“Caring.” I did appreciate him, even if he was prodding me to think about things I didn’t want to think on. “Caring enough to say something.”
“Joe,” he huffed it out with the sound of a man watching an avalanche starting down the mountain and knowing he couldn’t help nobody at the bottom. “I ain’t never given a rat’s ass how you lived your life, ‘cause it just don’t make no difference to me. But, damn it, I sure wish you’d found someone else, or tied your dick in a knot for a couple of years. You say it’s handled, but it could get bad.”
I might have said something, but that’s about the time I heard the rumble of the snow-cat. In a few minutes there’d be more hands to do the work and way too many ears for what we’d been talking on. Best just to let it drop on Fred’s last thought. With the basic setup all done, we’d be on to digging the body out of the snow, layer by layer. We’d have to treat it like it’d been buried in sand: strip off a couple of inches and sift it all out…just in case. That meant I’d be busy as all get out for the next few hours.
Hopefully, too busy to think on the things Fred stirred up.
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Chapter 4
Kabe dropped his butt in the chair at the desk across from mine and spun it back and forth a bit. “Hey, what’re you up to?” Somebody’d gone and decked the edges of the desk out with tinsel. I laid odds on the dispatcher, Noreen. I knew she did up the tree by the front door and kept leaving cookies and such in the break room.
I spared him a glance and mumbled, “Reading.” Wasn’t quite used to him just dropping on by the station. I mean, I knew it was all out about us, but still, that pretty publicly staked his claim on me.
“What?” He scootched on over and rested his elbows on the desk I used when on shift. “Anything cool?”
I shrugged. “The original file on Lane Walker’s disappearance.” Papers and photos and such from the file lay scattered across the laminate desktop. I’d sorted then resorted piles near three times trying to wrap my head around the facts.
“Who?”
“The dead boy.” Just to be ornery I added, “You know, the one you stepped on.”
Kabe shuddered. “Don’t remind me, I had zombie nightmares all that night.”
“Anywhoo…” I picked up the most recent addition to the file, the Office of the Medical Examiner’s preliminary report. “O.M.E. compared the dental records out of the missing persons file and they confirmed a match to Walker.”
Most everything else indicated that the rest of the report wasn’t yet finished—but the examining M.E. knew we needed to know pretty quick who had died. Without that we’d never find out why. “Although, he had his wallet and ID on him, wearing the clothes Lane was last seen in, but, you know, I wanted to be sure.”
What I didn’t tell Kabe was the other little item we’d found in Lane’s pocket…a note zipped up in one of those plastic storage baggies, basically saying he couldn’t take it no more and hoped everyone knew that he loved ‘em. Normally, something like that might make my job of putting this incident to bed a whole lot easier. But the note almost raised more questions than it settled.
See, once we dug the body out, it looked as though Lane’d been shot—right up in the face. Had to wait for the Chief M.E. over in Salt Lake to sign off on that as a cause of death, but it seemed pretty likely. Problem being, we didn’t find no gun or rifle or nothing and we’d turned a good half acre inside out with metal detectors and probes. Could be that some hunter or hiker found a weapon but didn’t notice the body and walked off with it. Or, if it was coated with blood, a scavenger could have dragged it off. Still, reason said if’n he’d shot himself, Lane’s gun should have been within a few feet of his body. The other ways I’d seen folks kill themselves; well, no rope around his neck, no knives, no nothing. Only thing I could think of, a least up in the mountains, was if he took pills up with him and OD’d. That’s usually how gals took themselves out, but I’d have to wait for the O.M.E. to run tox screens and tell me yea or nay on that.
Then there was the problem I eked out of the file: Lane weren’t blue when he went missing. Least not so’s anyone had noticed. And even if family and friends don’t note that down mood at the time, when a boy goes missing most folks start putting the little odd comments, sulky fits and other out of character behavior together in their minds. Nobody, least that we’d interviewed, made that connection.
I heaved up a hard breath and pushed the open file a little away. “Like I said, I needed to know for certain it’s him before I head over and notify the family.” Tried to rub my eyes to get ‘em to quit aching. Been deciphering handwritten notes and typed summaries for what felt like hours. “That’d be a shock if first I said it’s your boy and then came back a day later and had to backtrack.”
“Wow.” Kabe rocked back in the chair. “You have to do that?”
I gave him another shrug. “Someone has to, might as well be me.” That was one of the jobs that came with the territory.
“That’s gotta suck.” He hissed it out.
I agreed. “It ain’t ever a barrel of laughs.”
“So,” Kabe used my technique of redirecting the conversation when he weren’t comfortable with the subject, “the body’s from a missing kid?”
“Little older than kid, nineteen.” Lane’d pretty much crossed into that fuzzy territory of old enough to know better but young enough to make stupid mistakes. Unless those mistakes rated rather big, the law generally don’t pay much mind to you at that point. “Honestly, at his age normally not anyone we’d consider much of a missing person. You’re nineteen, you can just get up one day and decide you want to take off.” And usually we didn’t take extensive reports in such situations. The family or friends had to have some indication that the missing adult was, for whatever reason, at risk—advanced age, mental issues, critical medications or the like. “Only here, Lane went missing one day and a good friend Chris Harris, eighteen, went missing the next. That starts looking a little suspicious.” Suspicious en
ough that the department went through a round of interviews and tracked down a few leads. “Plus that was the weekend after Thanksgiving where we got hit with that huge snowstorm and so that might mean something happened to the boys.” When nothing turned up, both files got relegated to the ain’t much we can do drawer.
“Wow.” Kabe moved some photos around the desk with his fingers. “That’s creepy.” Then he paused and went back to one of a dark haired boy with knife blade features and deep brown eyes. “Which one is this?”
“That’d be Chris.” By this time I’d memorized the features of the Lane and Chris as well as their circle of friends. “The other missing boy.”
Kabe considered the photo for a bit longer. “I’d do him.” He added one of his wicked grins.
I snapped back. “He’s all of eighteen.” Sometimes Kabe’s line between appropriate and not wandered into gray areas.
He hit me with, “And I’m all of how old?”
Now there was a thicket I didn’t want to walk through. Kabe was pretty much closer to the age of the missing boy than he was to me. Still, he’d never, not since I met him, come off as a kid. A little wild sometimes. Could get his bitch on, as he said it, when something irritated him. And if he forced me to listen to any more of that dance-pop stuff he downloaded, I might shoot myself. But he was no kid. I think a lot of it had to do with his two years behind bars. Sobered him up, matured him, in ways other bucks his age just never had to think on.
Since I really didn’t want to talk about that whole issue, I changed the subject. “What are you doing ‘round the station?”
“I thought I’d come over and see if you wanted to get dinner with me.”
“Weren’t you working today?”
“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes like I was stupid or something. “Started at seven, did my six hours and got off like three hours ago.”
I started doing the math in my head, and it weren’t quite adding up. “What time is it?”
“Like four.” I’d come up with the same answer, it just hadn’t made sense.
“Oh, great.” I started shoving papers back into the file. “I’m gonna get chewed for overtime.” My shift started around five a.m. That meant I should have clocked out hours ago. “Managed to work through lunch too. Let me go talk to my boss a moment and clock out.”
“Okay. I’ll be outside.” Kabe stood up and shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie jacket. “The whole police station being the county jail kinda creeps me out.” As he walked out he added, “You know?”
“Meet you out there in five,” I called to his back.
Actually, the station weren’t the jail…they were just attached to each other. There’s us deputies, the magnificent seven, ‘cause that’s how many of us covered the county, over on one side. State troopers had an outpost over on the opposite side of the building. Most of the rest of the place served the jail—twenty-five corrections officers and one-hundred-fifteen beds. Not all of ‘em, the convicts, were really ours. Utah Department of Corrections contracted out housing of lower risk offenders to counties like Garfield.
I knocked on the door jamb to Sheriff Myron Simple’s office. “Sir,” I eased on in when he looked up. “Sorry to disturb you, I’m heading out and I figured I’d let you know I let time get away from me and I’ve clocked a bit of overtime.”
He gave me a look that said I should have known better. “What were you doing?”
“Getting myself up to speed on the case files for Lane Walker and Chris Harris.” While I shouldn’t have gone over hours unauthorized, I figured Sheriff Simple weren’t going to bust my chops too hard under the circumstances. “Missing Person files.” I added that to jog his memory. I’d turned in my reports earlier about the identification on the body and the files I found we had. “O.M.E. confirmed the body we found up on Mount Dutton was Lane’s and since both boys disappeared about the same time frame and were friends…”
“Okay, that’s fine.” He clicked the pen he’d been writing with closed and stuck it in his pocket. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. The whiny old springs creaked in protest. “What else do we know?”
I took that as a cue to sit on down. “So far the death is looking suspicious.” I filled him in as best I was able. “Official COD hasn’t been called, won’t be for awhile, but there’s visible gunshot trauma to the jaw and skull.” I touched the areas on my chin and under my nose where Trooper Dougherty spotted it. “So unless a healthy teenager had a coronary, fell on a rifle that we ain’t found and shot his face off…” I let the thought hang for a moment. “Best we can figure, it’s possibly a suicide, but smells more like a homicide.” Sometimes when you got a hunch, you had to run with it. Better to be wrong about the death than have some murderer walking around and you not know it. “The examining M.E. needs some more time for a full report, but she told me, unofficially, to start digging.”
The Sheriff looked right pleased. “Looks like you pulled a good case to get back in the saddle with.”
I’d been kinda riding a desk since August, pulling up some of our old cases, running some of the evidence through databases that hadn’t even been imagined back when they’d gone cold. It all equaled part of my punishment for getting involved with Kabe while he was still a person of interest at a suspicious fall I’d been investigating, that and other things. I’d taken a suspension, pay cut and reprimand as well.
Felt right nice to be back in the saddle.
Still, a nineteen year old boy weren’t ever coming home. “I ain’t ever calling some boy’s death good.”
“Yeah,” Sheriff Simple nodded, “got to agree with that.” He clapped his hands together and pointed both index fingers square at my chest. “Switching gears here.” His tone actually seemed a might heavier than just a moment ago. “Are you going to be seeing that boy of yours tonight?”
“Kabe.” I couldn’t fathom why he cared about my dating life. “Reckon so, he was just here.” I’m fair certain my tone carried my confusion loud and clear. “He’s outside, now, waiting to go get some grub.”
“Oh.” That one syllable didn’t answer nothing. “Who’s around?”
“The station?” The question he asked both confused and worried me some. Kinda cautious I answered, “You and me. Jail staff’s around and about, but everyone else is out on patrol. Why?”
“Got some business with him.” The Sheriff reached over to a pile of paper in his inbox and grabbed a manila envelope. “Official business.”
“Like what?” I had a sinking feeling about what was in that envelope and that it had a lot to do with the letter I’d gotten a while back.
“Take a wild guess there, Joe.” Then he stood up, using the envelope to point toward the door. “I’ll walk out with you.”
I stood too. “Alright.” Couldn’t say I was quite comfortable with my boss not telling me direct, but my suspicion pretty much got confirmed by how he said it. Normally, I’d expect him to let me handle it. If it was what I now figured it might be, my Sheriff would be under instructions not to let me touch it. Both of us grabbed our coats—charcoal colored and emblazoned with gold letters declaring Sheriff across the back and badges stitched on the front left side.
We walked out and I caught sight of Kabe. Reminded me, all over again, why I fell for that boy. For all the city in his upbringing, Kabe’s attitude, frame and attire melted into one lean, sexy, outdoorsy kinda guy. He leaned against the battered black front-end panel on his otherwise blue Toyota mini-pickup. A red stocking cap stitched with the word Staff covered the tips of his ears and his longish hair curled out crazy at the bottom. Although he’d swapped out his snowboarder pants for tight jeans, Kabe’d kept on the oversized hoodie with the resort logo and had one ungloved hand shoved in the front pocket. He swigged a jolt from a can of a so-called energy drink. I kept telling him a handful of NoDoz and a cup of sugar water would give him the same effect for half the price.
As he zipped up his jacket, Sheriff
Simple called out, “Hey Kabe, how you doing?”
Kabe pushed away from his truck. “Okay, Sheriff.” He smiled. “How’s life for you?”
“Fair to middl’n.” By that time we’d come up right on next to Kabe. “Hear you got a job up at Brian Head, how you liking it?” Sheriff Simple jammed the manila folder between his arm and side then held out his now free hand.
Untangling himself from his own pocket, Kabe took the shake. “It’s good, except for the tourons who think they’re ready for the Olympics.” Kabe snorted out the derision we all kinda felt for people who took stupid risks without even realizing it. “I’m doing some volunteer hours on the ski rescue patrol too. If I get my full EMT, not just my outdoor medical cert, they may offer me to come back paid next season.”
“He’s getting himself all on straight.” The sheriff may have had to get on me for bending the rules, but it didn’t sour him none toward Kabe. “Doing his courses online, same place I did my EMT…getting better grades than I did though.” I was right proud of him for that. If it weren’t for the felony record, I’da encouraged him to take it farther. It put him out of the running for most non-seasonal full-time gigs.
“Yeah, I’ll have to go do, like, five days of hands-on after I’ve finished all my other classes.” Kabe tossed the day-glow can into the bed of his truck and shoved both hands back in his hoodie pocket. “Probably around the end of ski season.”
“Glad to hear it.” The sheriff kinda huffed around a bit then a grim smile tightened up his face. He held out the envelope. “Look, son, this came across my desk.” When Kabe reached for it, he added, “I’ve been asked to serve it on you.”
Suddenly a little suspicious, Kabe asked, “What is it?” He still took it, but I could tell he thought whatever was in there might bite him.
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