Complicated

by Kristen Ashley

  “Thanks, Hixon,” Lance called back.

  His team took their cue and moved to form a loose huddle under the tent.

  Hix didn’t waste time.

  “Hal, you stay here, help the forensics team to comb this place and all around. From here all the way back to the road and don’t be stingy about the distance you check the perimeter of this site. That said, this is a dump site. Unless you happen onto where the crime was committed, I doubt the perpetrator spent a lot of time here. If he went to the trouble of dumping a body in a place like this, he’s not gonna move a man’s body just a half mile away from where he shot him to death. There’s a lot to do. Be smart about the time you spend here.”

  Hal jerked up his chin.

  Hix kept at him.

  “Those boys need anything, you get it for them. Mouth of this trail, such as it is, has enough vehicles at it, one of them our coroner’s van, folks are gonna be curious. Keep alert. While you’re searchin’, you see anyone is curious enough to come lookin’, you send them right back to their vehicle and on their way. Forensics team finishes up, you get back to the department and you get all the pictures printed out. Yeah?”

  Hal nodded. “Yeah, boss.”

  Hix looked to Donna. “Want you back at the department. You call all the sheriffs of the adjoining counties and give them a brief. Tell them where we’re at.” His gaze grew intent on her. “Donna, I want that fuckin’ truck found and I want the crime scene located. From what we got with time of death, whoever did Nat Calloway didn’t have a lot of time to take him somewhere far. But that truck could be anywhere by now. And I want it.”

  “You got it, Hix.”

  “You get done doin’ that, and don’t take a lot of time doin’ it, you tell Reva to watch over reception and I want you to start combing every inch of road between Glossop and Grady’s ranch. Ask the boys down in Grant to help you out seein’ as there’s a chance the crime happened on their patch. You won’t find the truck, but you might find the crime scene and we need that.”

  She nodded.

  “Not gonna be anything to find,” Hal put in, throwing an arm out to indicate the steady wet that was falling around the tent. “Man was probably done outside, seein’ as he was hit runnin’ away. It’s been raining since the middle of the night. Whatever there was is probably washed away.”

  “We’re still looking,” Hix told him.

  “We should be knocking on doors and it’s Grant County Sheriff who should be doin’ it,” Hal returned. “That’s dusty road from here to Grady but it’s got houses on it, farms, ranches. Gunshots are loud. People hear them.”

  Hix’s jaw felt tight. “Yeah, and anything left of that crime scene we can find before this rain takes it, we’ll bust our balls to find it, Hal, before the rain takes it. Not goin’ house to house, some of those houses miles apart, chattin’ with folks while rain washes away a crime scene. We got no cause to believe Nat Calloway was anywhere but on the road between Grady’s ranch and his house, only about two miles of that being Grant County’s patch. Got no idea what happened, but my gut says whatever happened was on that road. Regardless, abrasions on his palms tell Lance he fell to concrete, so if we gotta focus our search, we’re doin’ it on the concrete that makes that road.”

  Hix kept Hal pinned with his gaze as he took a breath and went on, annoyed it was taking time to point out the obvious to one of his deputies.

  “He didn’t bleed a little, he bled a lot, Hal, and it was eighty-six degrees yesterday. That blood had all day yesterday to bake into wherever it poured out. I’m not feelin’ all that lucky right now, but we get a stroke of it, we might find a huge-ass stain. That said, the rain won’t wash away anyone’s memories. We can canvass once we’ve exhausted our attempts to locate where Nat Calloway was shot runnin’ for his life. And that’s what you’ll be doin’ after you’re done helpin’ the team, finding out if someone heard something, saw something, then you can help Donna pinpoint the site.”

  Hal gave him his chastened, pissed look but Hix ignored it when Bets spoke.

  “You want me on that too, boss?” Bets asked, and Hix looked to her.

  “Nope, Bets. I want you to go home and get some sleep.”

  Her eyes grew big then squinty.

  “I found him. I should be able to—”

  He cut her off. “You been up all night and a man’s been murdered. Your dedication to finding him has been noted, Bets, and it means a good deal to this case that you found him and he wasn’t out here for days, weeks, before someone bumped into that body. I appreciate it. This team appreciates it. But now I need all my deputies fresh and alert and you been up all night. You need to go home, unwind, try to relax and get some sleep. I don’t want to see you for six hours.”

  When she opened her mouth, he leaned an inch toward her and lowered his voice.

  “I’m not cutting you out of this case, Bets. We need to find the person who did this and I’m gonna need all of you to help do that. But we gotta go about it the right way, clearheaded and smart. I’ll give you your duties when I know you can perform them the way I already know you can perform them . . . doin’ shit right.”

  She looked about to argue but then she ducked her head and nodded.

  He turned to Larry. “You’re with me. We’re goin’ to talk to Faith Calloway. Then we’re goin’ back to Grady. After that, we’re helpin’ Donna and Hal.”

  Larry looked sick a second before he hid it.

  Hix got that look.

  Larry had not ever had to tell a woman her husband and the father of her young children had been murdered.

  Hix himself had only done it once, back in Indianapolis.

  To say the experience sucked was an understatement, and to say that he remembered every second of it like he’d just walked out of that woman’s house was not an exaggeration.

  “Wanna help Lance carry him out.”

  Bets’s words took Hix’s attention from Larry back to her.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  She lifted her chin. “I found him. You’re right. I’m tired. Been up all night. I’m also hyper. So I’m good for now. And I found him. I want to help get him out of this fucking place.”

  She wasn’t dainty. She didn’t have Hix, Larry or Hal’s power.

  But she could help them carry the deadweight of a body out of there, and even if she couldn’t, right then she’d do it if she had to will it to be done.

  Yeah, Bets was still mostly a rookie.

  But she was a good deputy.

  “Larry, front end,” Hix ordered then looked back at Bets, “You take the foot. Lance and me’ll take the sides. Donna, you lead the way and go at a good clip. We got company at the road, I want you pushing them back.” He drew in breath and finished, “Let’s get him out of here.”

  They moved. Hix sent looks to Hal and the forensics team then he took his position at Nat Calloway’s left side.

  They hefted him up, and by the time they started out from under the tent, Donna was twenty yards down the trail.

  They fortunately had no onlookers watching as they got him in the back of Lance’s van (though a number of cars slowed as they drove by).

  The coroner didn’t waste time taking off. Donna and Bets didn’t either.

  But Larry approached Hix at the side of his Bronco.

  “It’s gonna freak her out,” Hix said. “But this is an official visit so we need to hit the department and get a Ram before we go to her house.”

  Larry nodded but started, “Hix, I’ve never—”

  “I know,” Hix interrupted. “And it’s gonna be one of the most shitty memories you’ll hold on to for the rest of your life. But she needs to know as soon as we can get to her. And we need to give her what she needs to put the worry to bed and start her mourning.”

  Hix got closer to Larry and stood in the gently falling rain with his hand on his deputy’s shoulder.

  “You go in her house, you are not her friend,” he said quietly. “You’re a sher
iff’s deputy. You’re sorry for her loss. You make no promises we’re gonna find who did this. You make no assurances that it’s gonna be all right, because it’s not. Even if we find who did this, for her, it’s never gonna be all right. She’s gonna get on with her life eventually but this will be a black spot in it and that is never gonna change.”

  Larry nodded and Hix kept on.

  “You can tell her we’re gonna do everything we can to find who did this. And you’re gonna watch her to see if there’s anything we mighta missed yesterday. This is not the time to grill her or ask more questions seein’ as you did a thorough job of that yesterday. We can ask her to get in touch with us immediately if she thinks of something. We’ll make certain she understands she can contact us at any time if she has questions, and we’ll make certain she knows we’ll keep her as up to date as we can on the investigation as it unfolds. Other than that, this is the time to tell her she’s lost her husband, her babies have lost their daddy, we make sure she’s got someone with her and then we leave and get on findin’ the person who ripped that family apart.”

  Larry stared him in the eyes before he swallowed and mumbled, “Yeah.”

  Hix gave his shoulder a squeeze, let him go and watched as Larry walked to his truck.

  He swung up into the Bronco.

  They drove to the department and switched out to a Ram.

  Then they drove to Faith Calloway’s house.

  “Was not wrong about the hands. It was concrete. He went down forward, did it hard, also has abrasions on his knees,” Lance stated, going through the motions of starting to fall, hands lifted in front of him, but not finishing that.

  Hix and Larry were standing in the coroner’s examination room with Lance, Nat Calloway’s dead body on a table, all of it covered but his head and his feet, his toe tagged.

  It was late evening after a really shitty day.

  “Like I said at the scene, neck hit did him in,” Lance continued. “Bullet went through his neck, don’t have that. Got the bullet out of his shoulder. Both wounds came from the same caliber of gun, which I’d hazard to guess was the same gun. Put that bullet in the system, it comes back with a hit, you’ll get the notification.”

  When he paused, both Hix and Larry gave him nods, so he kept going.

  “No drugs in his system. No alcohol. Last meal was a ham and cheese sandwich and chips.” Hix watched as Lance’s manner changed. “Nothin’ else, boys, ’cept the man had sex sometime the day he died. Got vaginal secretions and sperm on his genitals. He was dumped face down, wet did seep in but not enough to wash that away.”

  “He was married, Lance,” Hix told him.

  Lance nodded. “Then sorry to say, you gotta ask his wife if they had relations before he took off for work but after he had his morning shower, if that’s when he cleans up.”

  Fucking great.

  “We’ll do that tomorrow,” he muttered and glanced at Larry.

  Larry’s mouth was tight.

  “The only other thing I can give you is I reckon you’re right,” Lance declared. “This was done on a stretch of road, maybe, outside guess, a parking lot. Those abrasions and debris I found aren’t from somethin’ like a sidewalk. There’s too much debris, abrasions too rough. Besides that and the two holes in him, man was fit. Healthy. Young. No defensive wounds under his clothes. Nothing that gives indication he was held captive or bound. Nothing under his fingernails but dirt and not a lot of it, but foreman on a ranch is gonna have dirt under his fingernails after a day on the job.”

  “So outside of the fact he had sex, had this shitty-ass last meal of a goddamned ham sandwich and got shot on concrete, we got nothin’,” Larry said.

  “Sorry, son, but yeah,” Lance muttered. “That’s all we got.”

  Larry blew out an audible breath.

  Hix turned to him. “First thing tomorrow, want you to take Bets or Donna to Faith Calloway’s house. You’re there because she talked to you first and you’re her point person on this because of that. She needs to know you’re on it, you’re her man, you’re following through, and she can count on you. You give her the minimum you can to update her on our progress. Don’t get bogged down, just assure her she has all of the department’s resources devoted to solving her husband’s murder. But if she blushes tellin’ you she got pregnant at seventeen, want Donna or Bets to ask her about any activities she and her husband got up to before he went off to work the day he died. You with me?”

  Larry nodded.

  “He didn’t have time to have a quickie in his truck on that stretch of road, Larry,” Hix told him in a lame effort to make what wasn’t going to be easy a little easier. “And no woman dragged his body from where she shot him and then carried him to the dump site. Nat Calloway made love to his wife before he went to work. It won’t be fun she has to share that with a female deputy, but she’s not gonna be gettin’ bad news that her husband cheated on her coming on the heels of her hearing the worst news she’ll probably get in her life that her husband’s dead. What she will get, if she gets to the point she’s thinking rationally at all, is that we’re being thorough.”

  “Right,” Larry mumbled.

  Hix took him in, noting the frustration and exhaustion written plain all over him, before ordering, “It’s been a long day, man. Go home. After you get back from Faith’s in the morning, we’ll have a team brief and get back on it.”

  “Yeah,” Larry replied, looked at Lance and said, “Thanks, bud.”

  “My job,” Lance murmured.

  He glanced at them both and took off, his shoulders drooping, the weight of the day weighing visible and heavy.

  Hix and Lance watched him go, and when he disappeared, Lance spoke.

  “You get anything?”

  Hix turned back to the coroner. “Nothin’. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. No lock on the truck. No crime scene found. Rain stopped, still couldn’t find dick. Talked to his boss. Talked to the men who worked under him. Talked to his friends. Canvassed that road. Canvassed his neighborhood. Outside of everyone bein’ anything from pissed as shit a good man’s dead to dissolving into tears a good man’s dead, we got dick.”

  “Forensics get anything?” Lance queried.

  Hix shook his head. “No footprints. No tire tracks. Can’t even tell a person walked out there carrying a body, rain beatin’ down the grass and game goin’ through that area. Might not be lookin’ for a criminal mastermind, but my hunch says it’s someone who knows the area, since they took him to that spot. That still doesn’t give us shit. Any hunter or outdoorsman can spot a game trail in his search for a dump site. There’s no motive. No witnesses. My only guess is, we can’t find that truck, someone wanted it. But it was a five-year-old Ford F150 that wasn’t top of the line when Calloway bought it. Not a pimped-out ride that would garner attention or envy. So if he was done for that truck, the person who did it was either desperate, whacked out or just an asshole.”

  “No truck, you reckon you got two people to look for?” Lance asked. “Person would have to have their own vehicle and you haven’t mentioned another set of wheels. That road is dusty, but someone’d notice an abandoned vehicle, and then they’d notice Calloway’s truck if the shooter had to leave it to go back and deal with his own car.”

  “Either that or we got a drifter with a gun who knows the area and is strong enough to heft around a five foot eleven, one hundred and seventy-five pound body.”

  Lance’s attention to Hix turned into scrutiny.

  “He had sex, Hix. Could be the woman lured him, her man got him, one took his truck, the other took their car.”

  “I’ve learned anyone can get up to anything in this world, Lance. But I’d be out-and-out shocked Nat Calloway scored himself some, got murdered after he did the deed, then got his cheating ass dumped in his own town. We spent all day yesterday essentially investigating that man and there wasn’t even a hint he had that in him. And we checked all that road, but if I had to wager, he was done close
to Glossop, so for the sake of time and convenience he was dumped just outside of Glossop. But bottom line, there simply wasn’t enough time for him to get his rocks off and then get himself dead. So he was murdered close to home, unless the killer knew him, and out of some act of remorse, dumped him close to home. Or the murderer didn’t mean to kill him, and again out of an act of remorse, dumped him in a place he’d be found. But I’d stake my badge on the fact no woman was involved.”

  “That happens,” Lance noted. “That kind of act of remorse.”

  “Yup. And since we got nothin’, we’ve got nothin’ we can rule out.”

  Lance looked to the table and back to Hix.

  “This man a man who’d stop for someone who looked like he needed some help?” he asked.

  “Yup,” Hix answered.

  “So you gotta find that truck,” Lance said quietly.

  “We gotta find that fuckin’ truck,” Hix replied.

  Lance tipped his head to the side. “Wife hold it together?”

  Hix clenched his teeth before he forced himself to release them but still had to bite out his, “Nope.”

  “This guy’s twenty-eight, how old’s she?”

  “Twenty-six and they got two kids, eight and five.”

  “Shit,” Lance muttered.

  “Yeah,” Hix agreed.

  “She got kin close?”

  Hix nodded. “Her sister, his sister and brother, all their folks. Before Larry and I left, his mother was there. As we were walkin’ out, the rest were descending.”

  “Least she’s got support,” Lance muttered.

  “Least she’s got that.”

  Lance held his eyes. “Somethin’ll break, Hixon.”

  Hix had worked as a detective for two years in crimes against persons at Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

  He and his partner had a good close rate.

  They also had cases they couldn’t solve.

  And from that first look he had of Faith Calloway’s face while she was sitting next to Larry’s desk yesterday, Hix knew the sour feeling in his gut was not only about what they were going to find when they found Nat Calloway.