Colin swept the light along the left side of the truck, and the eyes of some animal flashed like two bright white sparks.
“There!” Colin shouted, and held the beam steady.
I pounded on the roof again, and my brother turned into the field, bumping through the long grass and over invisible bumps and ridges with bone-jarring speed. As we drew closer, the white sparks blinked off briefly, then appeared again.
“Oh, man!” came a disappointed shout from the cab. “It’s just a goat.”
And sure enough, we pulled up beside a brown and white mottled goat, blinking sleepily at us from a nest in the long grass. She could have been the twin of the pushy beast who’d invaded our pickup truck earlier, but this one just eyed us suspiciously without bothering to get up.
“Wonder what she’s doing out here by herself,” I said. “I thought they stuck together.”
Colin grinned and swung the beam of the light into the stand of trees just behind her. Instantly, the spaces between the dark branches were filled with dozens of matching white sparks. Most were near the ground, but a couple peered out from the low sprawling branches of a mesquite tree. I wished Kyla had been there to see, because I knew she hadn’t believed me about goats in trees.
“Where to now?” asked Sam over the thrumming of the engine.
“Let’s go through the Evil,” I shouted back.
“The what?” asked Colin, turning to me as my brother swung the truck wide of the goats and bumped back toward the road.
“The Forest Primeval,” I explained. “It’s about a hundred acres on the south side of the ranch that Kel leaves untouched for the deer. I don’t know who started calling it the Forest Primeval, but when we were kids, all we heard was the ‘evil’ part. It made it seem very mysterious and creepy.”
“And is it?”
“Well, there used to be an old house that’s pretty much a ruin now. You can still see part of the chimney and a bit of the foundation. And there’s an old concrete root cellar that’s full of broken bottles and junk. It’s a snake’s paradise.” I thought about this, then added, “Yeah, it’s pretty creepy.”
“So are we looking for anything special out here?” he asked, still diligently sweeping the spotlight beam from side to side.
“Coyotes,” I answered. “Well, that’s the pretext anyway. Kel’s had a couple of goats turn up without their kids, and a few of the neighbors say they’ve seen a couple of big males.”
“And if we see one?”
“Then we shall shine the light of vengeance upon it,” I answered in my best wrath-of-God announcer voice.
“What?”
I dropped back to my normal tone. “Seriously. We don’t do anything. In the unlikely event that we come across one, we’ll shine the spotlight in its eyes and maybe shout some insults.”
“Then what’s the deal with the rifle?” Here he tapped the back windshield with one finger where a gun hung on a rack.
“Oh, Kel always makes us take that, but none of us is going to shoot anything. We just like looking for nocturnal critters. Our dad used to take us out at least one night every time we visited the ranch when we were kids—it made a big change from Paris, that’s for sure, and we absolutely loved it. You can see some cool animals out here at night that you can’t see any other time—owls, armadillos, ringtails, possums—well, you know that. You grew up out this way. Anyway, coyote spotting is just tonight’s excuse.”
The truck bumped into a serious pothole, and I staggered. Colin moved closer, briefly releasing his grip on the guard to steady me. Another bump made him rethink that plan, but it was nice to be standing shoulder to shoulder. Two gates and a cattle guard later, we came to a narrow lane leading through the heart of the Evil. Sam did not bother to slow down. A branch scraped along the side of the truck like a long fingernail against a chalkboard.
“You two better sit down!” Will shouted, somewhat unnecessarily, because we had both dropped into the bed of the truck at the first shriek of branch against paint.
Colin snapped the light off, and I let him pull me against him, unashamedly deciding that using him as a cushion outweighed my concerns about too much physical intimacy. He didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his cheek against my hair. Under the essence of eau de beer, he smelled of soap and shaving cream, warm skin, and maybe just a little bit of dusty feed sack. It was intoxicating. The darkness wrapped around us like a protective blanket, trying to push away thoughts of a problematic future, or in fact any thoughts at all. Overhead, branches moved like shadows against a black sky, stars flickering on and off in between. His lips brushed against my forehead, sending a shiver southward in a very nice way. I was not sure I would ever understand the intense attraction between us, but then I probably didn’t need to.
“Jocelyn,” he said, voice low. “I…” He stopped.
I shifted my shoulders to try to look into his face, but it was impossible to see his expression in the dim light the moon provided. I waited, but he did not continue. The silence stretched between us like a rubber band waiting to snap, and I braced myself for something either overly romantic or heartbreakingly final. I wasn’t quite sure which I feared most.
At last he said, “I’m glad you invited me here.”
My sigh of relief wheezed out in a gasp, and I realized I’d been holding my breath. I’d been afraid he was going to try to talk about our relationship. I’d forgotten for a moment how unlikely that was, seeing that he was a man.
“Me, too,” I answered a little more heartily than necessary.
“Are you?” he asked.
Apparently I’d experienced premature exhalation. Again, I strained unsuccessfully to see his expression in the darkness, but he didn’t sound like he was teasing.
“Of course I am,” I said automatically. Then reaching for something a little more genuine, I added, “I thought it might be awkward, but with the exception of that last little scene with my idiot brothers, it’s been really fun. I’m glad you came.”
And with mild surprise, I realized this was true. Colin fit in with my large and strange extended family. Even in the short time we’d had before the rodeo, he’d spoken ranch with Uncle Kel, football with Scotty, leaped to his feet to assist Aunt Elaine with groceries, and gently teased the younger cousins. He’d even handled the intrusive questions of both my brothers and my insane uncle without blinking. In fact, he seemed more at ease with most of them than I was. And best of all, he did it while keeping one eye on me, the connection between us constant and almost palpable. If this had been a boyfriend test, which it wasn’t, he would have passed with flying colors.
I felt him relax at least a little. “I know it was Kyla’s idea,” he said.
“But it was a good one,” I reassured him. I searched around for a change of topic, but he was too quick for me.
Reaching for my hand, he said, “We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months now.”
I sat up abruptly and pulled my hand away. Were we really going to have this conversation in the back of a moving truck? “One month,” I countered.
Thank goodness just then the truck made a bone-jarring thump across something large and a shower of leaves and twigs sprinkled onto our heads like rain. We were bounced apart, and when he tried to steady me, his chin collided with my forehead hard enough to make us both yelp. Then the truck was out of the forest and both of us were left rubbing our bruises and feeling unhappy.
“What are you two doing back there? Spotlight!” Will shouted impatiently from the cab.
We hauled ourselves to our feet, and Colin fumbled with the switch. The brilliant white beam cut through the darkness far ahead of the headlights and almost instantly reflected off something large.
Sam braked, bringing the truck to a hard stop, and I gave a yip of protest, deciding right then that I was going to drive on the way back. I raised my eyes to follow the beam of light.
About twenty yards ahead of us stood an animal that ha
d no business on a Texas ranch. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what it was, although I could tell it was some type of antelope, and most likely the type of antelope that should have been grazing on an African savannah. Exceptionally tall and leggy, it had a gray-brown coat that was interrupted by a handful of narrow white streaks running vertically from spine to belly and long twisting horns that looked as though they belonged on some mythical beast in a medieval fairy tale. For one long moment, the creature stood frozen in the light, eyes reflecting like white stars, then whirled and leaped away. Colin kept the light trained on it. At the edge of the trees, it halted briefly, turning to gaze back at us with another flash of its eyes, then vanished into the undergrowth.
Switching off the engine, Sam got out, followed by Will and Christy.
“What the heck was that?” asked Will, still staring into the darkness where the antelope had disappeared.
“That,” said Christy, “was a kudu.”
She stretched, putting both arms above her head, and then moving them to her lower back. She was eight months pregnant, her belly round and hard as a large melon. My first niece or nephew to be.
We all turned to look at her.
“How do you know that?” asked Will.
She shrugged. “Everyone knows that. Haven’t you ever been to a zoo?”
“Yeah, but not to look at boring stuff like that,” he answered. “I’m strictly a lions, tigers, and bears sort of guy. You know, the manly animals.”
“I would have said you were more of a monkey man,” Sam said, but he wasn’t really paying attention to his brother. He stared off into the darkness.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I thought I saw something move.” He reached into the cab and turned the key enough to start the electrical system. “Hey, Gallagher, shine that light over there, will you?”
The brilliant white beam sliced through the night air, panning first left then right, following a line of trees and at last dipping down into a depression. Two pairs of green eyes reflected back, weird and alien in the darkness.
“Coyotes,” said Sam, sounding pleased. “Big ones, too.”
I stood on tiptoes so I could get a better view. Sure enough, two large coyotes, looking very much like lean and somewhat flea-bitten dogs stared back at us, confused by the light. The ground under their feet was powdery and white, and I realized they were standing in an old caliche pit. The ranch was dotted with pits of this type, depressions made when ranchers, both past and present, dug up the soft caliche clay to repair their roads. When the clay played out, the pits were used as garbage dumps.
This particular pit was large, one side sloping gently downward like the shallow end of a swimming pool and ending at the deepest some twelve feet below the surface. The deep end was now filled with the refuse of fifty years of ranch life. Anything that couldn’t be repurposed or burned was dumped into the pit. Sometimes it was dumped into the pit and then burned. The moonlight illuminated rusting old barrels, rotten pieces of wood from a decrepit shed, tires, and even the shredded remains of a stained mattress, now probably the home for untold hordes of rats. Trash pits were a haven for rodents of all descriptions, which also made them a favorite hunting ground for snakes, who dug their tunnels in the soft soil. Fortunately, at this time of year, the snakes were hibernating.
Colin, however, was interested in neither the coyotes nor the contents of the caliche pit. He swung the light a few paces to the right and asked, “What do they have there?”
I looked again. The coyotes were standing near a dark lump. The beam moved over the shape, and I saw what looked like the bottom of a boot. A few inches more, and an unmistakable white shape materialized out of the shadows. A human hand.
Colin pushed the spotlight into my hands and vaulted over the side of the truck, a move I’d always envied. How did men do that?
“Flashlight!” he shouted, and Will dove for the glove compartment. The two of them set off at a run, shouting at the coyotes who bolted into the darkness.
I dropped the light, ignoring Colin’s immediate cry of protest, and clambered over the back of the truck, half falling in my haste. Sam hurried to join me.
“They need the light!” he said.
I grabbed the power cord and hauled the spotlight over the side and thrust it into his hands, then raced after them. Behind me, the beam sparked to life, throwing my own shadow into the scrubby grass before me, elongated and black.
“Stay back!” shouted Colin, throwing up a hand.
I skidded to a stop at the edge of the pit next to Will, looking down the incline to where Colin was inching forward, sweeping the flashlight over the ground at his own feet.
“Who is it?” I called. “Is he … she … Are they all right?”
Colin raised his head briefly, but didn’t answer. He reached the still form and squatted beside it.
Will swallowed. “I don’t think coyotes would come that close to a human if he was alive,” he said in a low tone.
My thoughts flashed with sudden horror to Ruby June, still missing.
“Colin, who is it?” I asked sharply.
Colin stood and began retracing his own steps, careful not to disturb the scene more than necessary.
“I don’t know,” he answered as he drew near. “It’s a man, though. Young, maybe early twenties. We need to call the police.”
I relaxed slightly and heard Will blow out his breath. He must have been thinking about Ruby June as well.
“Either of you have a phone?” asked Colin, holding a hand up to shade his eyes against the beam of the spotlight, which either Christy or Sam was now training directly on us.
We both shook out heads. “Left mine in my purse,” I said.
Will said, “Mine gets zero reception out here. I don’t even bother to take it out of my car.”
We started back to the truck. The spotlight was absolutely blinding. No wonder the animals always froze. You couldn’t see six inches in front of your own nose.
“Hey! Point that thing somewhere else,” Will shouted, and the beam abruptly jerked to the side.
“Your eyes are bright red,” came Sam’s voice. “Kinda creepy. So what’s going on down there.”
“Dead guy,” said Will, always succinct if not exactly sensitive. “Either of you got a cell phone?”
They hadn’t. Sam now pointed the spotlight at the ground, the light reflecting back up from the ground so we could see each other in an eerie campfire storytelling sort of way.
“What happened to him?” asked Christy in an anxious tone.
“You think it was a hunting accident? There’s a lot of guys with guns and beer out here this weekend,” asked Sam, his eyes on Colin.
“There’s no way to tell right now,” said Colin, shaking his head. “You four go back to the house and call the sheriff. When he arrives, one of you can show him the way.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I’ll wait here, keep an eye on things.”
Christy nodded and climbed into the truck without protest, looking sick and shaken. Sam joined her and started the engine.
“I’ll wait with you,” I said to Colin.
Will glanced around uneasily. “I’m not sure sticking around is a good idea. Why don’t you both come back? You don’t know who or what else might be out here. Besides, it’s not like that guy’s going to get any deader.”
“I need to secure the scene,” said Colin. “But you should go back with them, Jocelyn.”
I felt a flicker of alarm. “You don’t really think it’s dangerous, do you?”
“No, not at all,” he said, tone bright and reassuring like that of a doctor telling a toddler the shot wasn’t going to hurt a bit. “The only thing that might come back are those coyotes, and they aren’t any danger to a man.”
“Then I’m staying, too.”
He frowned at me. “I’d feel better if you left.”
“I’d feel better if we hadn
’t found a dead guy,” I said, then turned to Will. “Hurry back. Tell Sheriff Bob it’s an emergency.”
He took me at my word and moved quickly to the passenger door, hopping in as Sam shifted into first gear with a grinding noise. Like a barge on choppy water, the red truck turned a huge slow circle and then bumped off into the forest. As the headlights vanished, the night closed in around us, moon and stars brighter, shadows behind every blade of grass darker. The breeze played over my skin like a breath from a graveyard. I sneezed and then, with a glance toward the pit, gave a little shiver.
“You’re so stubborn,” said Colin. “There wasn’t any reason we both had to stay.”
“I couldn’t leave you alone,” I protested. “Don’t killers sometimes return to the scene of the crime? What if whoever did this comes back?”
He snorted. “That’s ridiculous. He’s already dumped the body—there’s no other reason to come here. And anyway, if he does, what are you going to do about it?”
“Probably wet my pants and hide behind you. Or,” I added brightly, “you could use me as a human shield.”
He started laughing. “As long as you know you have only yourself to blame. It’s cold and it’ll be close to two hours before anyone can get here.”
“Sheriff Bob will take two hours, but someone will be back in forty minutes tops, probably with snacks and beer.”
“What? You’re not serious.”
“You met my family, right? At least half of them are basically rabid hillbillies hopped up on Judge Judy and reruns of CSI. You’d need riot gear to keep them away from their very own crime scene.”
“Maybe Will and Sam will have the sense to keep it quiet.”
I laughed at that. Scornfully.
He sighed, shining the flashlight around us. “We might as well sit down while we wait,” he said, leading the way to a couple of low rocks.
I stamped my feet against the cold, my breath a puff of smoke in the frosty air, and decided to remain standing. It was too cold for snakes to be moving about, but I still didn’t care for the look of the crevasses and deep grass.
Death Rides Again (A Jocelyn Shore Mystery) Page 7