Undercover in Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  Kel spoke again, clearly demanding his attention, probably for good reason, Desi thought. “Want to wait and go back with us, or take the flight?”

  “I ain’t sick.”

  “I know, but we could be here for a while.”

  Yes they could, Desi thought, turning back to look at the woods. Metal detectors and a search for a needle in a haystack. With some police assistance.

  “Jos, call the sheriff. We have a crime scene.”

  The helicopter hovered overhead and the side door opened. A refurbished Huey, it was a workhorse. Pretty soon a metal arm stuck out the side, and a helmeted medic began lowering a basket for Don.

  “We can put you in a harness,” Kel said to Edvaldson. “Don might be grateful not to be alone.”

  So that’s what happened. Don went up in the basket, and a few minutes later Thor followed him in a harness. He left his hunting rifle beside the road. In the background Jos’s radio crackled, almost inaudible with the rotor noise. Jos must have turned the volume all the way up.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Kel said to Desi. “But he needed to get out of here.”

  “I could tell. For a while he wasn’t here at all.”

  “Being shot at can do that.”

  “Good job drawing him back,” she said sincerely.

  He half smiled. “I think you did most of that.”

  Desi doubted it. First pulling on gloves, she picked up Thor’s rifle and checked it out. “Hasn’t been fired,” she said, before putting it into the back of her truck.

  “Sheriff’s on the way with forensics,” Jos said. “If you guys want to go, I can lead ’em back in.”

  Desi waited a moment then asked, “Did those guys with the dogs sound legit to you?”

  Jos shook his head. “Not if they were really there.”

  “You think Thor is lying?”

  “How would I know? But either he’s making up something or the guys they ran into really were there. But even if they were, why the hell shoot someone just because he saw you? And why only one of them?”

  “Good question.”

  “Maybe,” said Kel slowly, “whoever it was thought he got both hunters with one bullet. You heard what Edvaldson said. Maybe he hit dirt so fast it looked like they’d both bought it.”

  Jos nodded, stretching and compressing his lips as he thought.

  Desi turned to Kel, wishing she could get rid of the skin-crawling feeling. “So why shoot and assume they’re dead? Why not finish it?”

  “Because one shot can look like an accident, but two can’t? Because if they were both shot, how likely was it they’d get help before they died?”

  “Ugly calculus.” Desi shook her shoulders, trying to ease the deepening tension.

  “Murder always is,” Kel replied. “So they managed to get a cell connection up here?”

  Jos nodded. “Amazing. It was all broken up and I’m sorry to say that some good, long minutes were wasted while I tried to understand what had happened and get their GPS. That apparently was working, and Edvaldson managed to give me coordinates, thank God. Without that...” He just shook his head and closed his eyes.

  “Jos?” Desi asked. “You want to leave this to me?”

  His eyes snapped open and she could see fire in them. “Hell no. I want to find whoever did this.”

  “Not likely,” she pointed out. “All that can be done at this point is collecting evidence.”

  “I don’t care,” he said succinctly. “Bad enough we can’t catch all the poachers. This is worse. I gotta do something, Desi.”

  “I understand.” And she did, but he was so new to this, relatively speaking. It was a shocking incident, but she’d seen other hunters shot, usually by a careless companion. This was Jos’s first time. “Be proud of yourself. You didn’t lose your head.”

  “Unlike his friend.”

  At that Kel strode up the road, away from him.

  “What’s with him?” Jos asked.

  “Thor is a vet, Jos,” she said, keeping her tone as pleasant as she could. “That gunshot snapped him back to Iraq. Thank goodness he didn’t start shooting up the woods.”

  Jos fell silent, finally saying, “Oh. Yeah. He said...” He trailed off and looked after Kel. “Him, too? He’s a vet?”

  “Yes.”

  Jos swore. “I’m sorry, Desi. Should I apologize to him? I was shook up and being stupid.”

  “Maybe not just yet. Later. I think he needs a moment to himself.” Maybe more than a moment, she thought. He’d handled Thor Edvaldson beautifully, but she couldn’t imagine he hadn’t been reminded of ugly things in his own life.

  With effort she forced her attention back to immediate matters. “You get any blood on you?”

  “I don’t think so. The Edvaldson guy was using a T-shirt wrapped around the shoulder to apply pressure. He got covered with blood, but I pulled on my gloves before I took over.”

  “Check and make sure. I’ve got bleach in my truck if you need to wash any off.”

  “Sure.” Jos looked down and started to peel off his bloody blue rubber gloves. Just as long as none had gotten through them or his clothing... She scanned his face and saw no blood there either.

  Jos looked up, and he appeared haunted. “I’m not sure how much good I did. Maybe the bleeding slowed because he’d almost bled out.”

  There was always that ugly possibility. But she reminded herself that Don had managed to open his eyes a bit. And he’d still been breathing when they airlifted him.

  “You did everything you could,” she said firmly. “Everything. Me, I’m going back to the scene, keep an eye on it. You bring the lawmen back when they arrive?”

  “Sure thing.”

  She glanced to where Kel stood, hands in pockets, staring at the woods. She gave him a little wave, then turned to hike back to the scene. It shouldn’t have been left unattended, not that they’d had any choice.

  Anyway, needle in a haystack barely covered it when it came to finding the bullet or a casing. That shot could have been fired from some distance, and it was anybody’s guess where the bullet had wound up. She hoped the sheriff brought his new K9 Unit. The dog would probably be better than the metal detectors, given how many bullets had likely been fired by hunters in this area over the years. And that wouldn’t even include other metallic trash.

  Hell. If she’d been unhappy about the poaching before, now she was almost blind with fury. Bad enough killing animals without a permit, bad enough wantonly wasting the meat, but to shoot a human being? For what? Because he’d seen them, seen the dogs? Really?

  She wondered if something else had happened, something that Thor hadn’t noticed or had forgotten. He’d sure been hanging on to reality by a slender thread for a while there.

  She heard feet crunching pine needles and leaves behind her, and she didn’t really need to glance back to know who it was. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked before he reached her. “This has got to be a lot more like Afghanistan.”

  She thought of the way he’d stood there alone up the road, hands in his pockets, staring at the woods. An ache for him pushed aside some of her anger.

  “Yes,” he answered just as he reached her side. “Whatever lunatic shot Don might still be around.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So do I, but why take the chance?”

  She couldn’t argue with that. “This whole thing stinks. If it was an accidental shot, the guy obviously ran. If it was deliberate, why hang around?”

  “Because bullets carry identifying marks.”

  “True. But useless until we find the weapon.” She plowed on, scanning the woods. “I’d like to try to figure out where the shot came from, if we can. Thor said Don had broken some branches to guide them. Maybe that’ll
help.”

  “It’ll at least have us looking in the right direction. But if the bullet deflected any when it emerged from Don, that’s not going to help a lot.”

  “No.” Which brought up a chilling idea she hadn’t wanted to consider. “Thor was standing almost behind Don. Maybe the shooter meant to get them both.”

  “I was pondering that.”

  “God, Kel! This isn’t supposed to be a war zone.”

  “I know.” His voice lowered a bit. “But it sure as hell feels like one now.”

  Chapter 9

  Fifteen minutes later they stood at the edge of the clearing. Efforts to save Don’s life had really stirred up the ground, not that she thought footprints would be any help in this case.

  In the bright sunlight, one thing sure stood out: blood on the dead leaves, probably more in the dead pine needles and soaked into the ground. “A lot of blood,” she said. She wasn’t squeamish by nature, but somehow this was different.

  “A lot,” he agreed. “But it always looks like more than it is. It takes about six minutes for a grown man to bleed out from an artery. This went on a lot longer. Thor had time to apply pressure. Clearly from what Jos said, Don was still bleeding when he arrived and he had to work at stopping it. So it’s more than we can see, but not enough to kill him.”

  “Which says what exactly?” She hated the note of impatience in her tone.

  “I’m just thinking, trying to envision. I don’t want to walk all over that blood. It’s evidence. I’m trying to figure out how to get a sight line without doing that.”

  “Sight line?”

  “I know how snipers work. He’d have to find a clear sight line through all these woods. That limits his range. Let me think about it.”

  He knew how snipers worked? That made her heart lurch. She hadn’t really given much thought to all he might know, all he might have seen, all he might have done. Or the size of the burdens and scars he must carry. God, he seemed so well-balanced, but here he was talking coolly about snipers?

  She couldn’t stop the words from emerging. “Were you a sniper?”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “That I was trained to do that job. I wasn’t. But I learned some things from those who were. And, I was a soldier, remember? If I can’t figure out a sight line for a shot, who can?”

  He had a point. “Stupid question,” she said.

  “Natural one,” he replied. “Relax, Desi. I’m not going off the rails here.”

  Was that the impression she had given him? She felt awfully small just then. Following on Jos’s ill-conceived comment, he must be feeling really good right now.

  But he’d fallen silent, scanning the clearing intently. Then he took a couple of steps to the side. A minute later he pointed. “Come here and look. You can see the bent branch.”

  She stepped to his side, but he moved her in front of him and pointed again. “See it?”

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t a bent branch, but a broken one. A trail marker. She looked past it. “So they were probably standing much like we are, looking in that direction.”

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  “But the forest is thick with undergrowth and saplings there.”

  “It’s not a good sight line,” he agreed. “I have only the vaguest idea of what direction he was struck from, so let me work my way around and see what I can find.”

  She was busy listening and looking at everything else. The forest had absorbed the shooting and subsequent ruckus, and had moved back into its normal patterns. She listened to the breeze in the tops of the firs, a faint sigh. Other sounds of small animals scampering across the floor reached her. Birds were rare above eight thousand feet, but she heard the distant call of an eagle. The turkey vultures had probably already begun their southward migration. A few crows might be hanging around in piney areas, but they weren’t as common as they once were. Some did prefer the heights, however, at least until late autumn. Regardless, birdsong wasn’t a chorus this time of year up here.

  But the important thing was that she could not detect any sign of disturbance from wildlife. The shooter must have moved on, and peace had returned.

  Despite this, the hunting for bighorns, at this altitude, would soon become excellent if it wasn’t already. They moved down from the high crags as the autumn deepened, looking for lower valleys for mating.

  A good reason for hunters to be about, especially on horseback because carrying large game out of here required help. But dogs?

  Bothered, she shook her head as if she could shake loose a useful thought of some kind.

  “Desi?”

  She looked over and saw Kel a few feet away. He gestured for her to come over. She took two steps and he put her in front of him again.

  “See?” He pointed.

  It took her a moment, but she did see. A straight line between the trees, though it didn’t go that far. A few hundred feet?

  She followed the invisible line across the clearing. It led directly to the bloodstain. “Okay then,” she said on a long breath.

  “No accident,” Kel said. “The shooter could see.”

  “And I don’t believe in magic bullets.”

  “Me neither.”

  Bright sunlight on Don and Thor, both of them in orange vests and caps...definitely not an accident.

  “I’ll move a little farther, keep looking for other possibilities, but between the bent branch and what Thor said...”

  “Yeah.” Desi’s tone was clipped. Her stomach rolled over just once. She’d dealt with a lot in her career, but murder was a first. Forcing herself to calm, she looked at her watch. “The first of the sheriff’s team should be arriving within a half hour. Maybe sooner if they push it.”

  “Okay.” He walked a little farther around the clearing, apparently checking for other sight lines, but as she stared at the one across from where she was positioned, she felt certain that this was it. If so, the sheriff wouldn’t have to search that far for expended casings. Maybe they’d find one, if it hadn’t been picked up. Then she turned around and glanced at the woods behind her. She doubted that a bullet would have had enough force to embed itself in a tree after passing all the way through Don, but she had no idea which type of rifle or load had been used. Some could travel quite a distance, but they weren’t usually the kinds of guns used for hunting. You needed power, yes, but you didn’t want bullets flying for a thousand yards or more if they should happen not to hit a tree. Nor did you want a bullet so strong it would rip open the far side of your quarry. Best case, the bullet entered the game and didn’t go beyond. Not that that could be guaranteed.

  God, her head was racing in circles with this. She’d seen accidental shootings as a warden, but never a deliberate one. Nobody in their right mind would do such a thing.

  Kel returned to her side. “That’s it. That’s the only remotely decent sight line I can find.”

  She pivoted and faced it again. “This must be hard for you.”

  He surprised her by slipping his arm loosely around her back. “It’s got to be harder for you. I’ve seen worse.”

  “I imagine. But this...a trigger?”

  “Not so much for me as it was for Thor, but don’t ask me why.”

  “It was like he was in two places at once.”

  He sighed. “I’m sure he was. And it had to be all the harder because his memory of Iraq wasn’t squaring with what his eyes were seeing even if his mind tried to shift to the past.”

  She leaned a little closer, surprisingly grateful not to be alone right now. For a person who naturally enjoyed the solitude of the woods, the feeling crept through her like a warning. Something inside her was changing. For the good? She didn’t know. “So he was aware he was here?”


  “As far as I can tell. I’m not saying it’s not possible to slip so far into a memory that for all intents and purposes you’re living it again and everything else vanishes. He just didn’t strike me as having fully severed the connection with here and now.”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Slipped my moorings in time? Once in a while. Not recently, though. Yeah, I still have triggers, but I know where I am.”

  She nodded. That was usually what happened to her. She’d know perfectly well where she was and who she was talking to, yet her brain spilled things that should have been said to Joe. She sometimes only realized it when someone would begin to look at her oddly, as if she were overreacting to something. Thank goodness it didn’t happen often. She seemed to have a very narrow set of triggers.

  “Thanks for the hug,” she said presently. “I guess I need it. This is really getting to me. It’s so senseless and brutal.”

  “Yeah, it is.” He tightened his arm briefly. “Just let me know if I’m trespassing too far. This is bad enough without me upsetting you.”

  “It’s a hug, Kel,” she said, failing to achieve the humor she wished she could. It was a friendly hug, nothing to set off her memories of the rape, but it sure felt good. She made up her mind to accept the comfort and stop analyzing it.

  Because right now, as the horror really began to come home, she needed the comfort. It surpassed her understanding that someone could attempt murder for no real reason except the possibility that...the possibility of what? It just didn’t add up. “Do you think the shooter might be one of the poachers? That he feared he might be remembered coming through here with a string of horses?”

  “Don’t a lot of people do that?”

  “Not with a pack of dogs.”

  “True. Maybe. But murder ratchets things up an awful lot. Greed can make men do terrible things, but this seems excessive.”

  “That’s what I’d say, but it happened.” Sickened, she stood staring into the pool of sunlight that revealed the day’s ugliness, and wondered how even a hundred illegal hunts could be worth this.