Murdered in Conard County Read online

  * * *

  THEY’D THROWN A party for him. Even a bottle of champagne, decent champagne. Jeff felt pretty good and kept his lone slipup from Karl and Will. He figured that one shell casing couldn’t give him away. Like he’d already thought, the heat of the exploding powder it had contained probably would have burned away any oils his fingers might have left behind. No reason to mention it.

  At best they might find a partial, and fat lot of good it would do the cops even though he’d been fingerprinted when he joined the Army. A partial wouldn’t create a match strong enough to stand up on its own. He knew because he’d looked it up.

  But once they parted ways, he began to gnaw worriedly on the idea of that shell casing anyway. Useless, he kept telling himself, but part of him couldn’t believe it.

  So, without telling the others, he decided to go back and scout around a bit. If they hadn’t found the casing, he’d remove it. Simple. Make sure there was nothing there. And he’d drive up just like any other tourist so there’d be no risk.

  But that shell casing was haunting him, causing him so much anxiety that he was having trouble sleeping.

  Worse, it was probably too soon to go back. He had to be sure the local authorities felt the site had nothing left to offer them, that they were totally ready to release it and forget about it.

  And he’d need a cover story in case anyone wondered about him being up there. Time. He had to make himself wait a little longer.

  He had a couple of weeks before he started teaching again. If he wanted to. He’d considered applying for a sabbatical for the fall term, and his department chair was agreeable, asking only that he give the department a couple of weeks warning so they could arrange for a stand-in.

  But the idea of the sabbatical no longer enticed him. Sitting in his comfy little house on the edge of Laramie was proving to tax him psychologically.

  Because of what they’d made him do. Because of what he’d done. Because the cries of a young child still echoed in the corridors of his mind.

  Hell, if he were to be honest, the shell casing was the least of his worries. The biggest worry was how he would live with himself now. And an equally big worry was that they would insist he do this again. That they wouldn’t buy that he now was so deeply involved he couldn’t talk.

  Damn, this was supposed to have been a game. Not real killings, merely the planning of them. How had Will and Karl moved past that? He’d never guessed they were so warped.

  How could he have known them for so long and failed to realize they were probably both psychopaths? No real feeling for anyone else.

  And how could they have known him for so long and not believe him when he said he’d never tell. Loyalty would have stopped him. But they didn’t believe him, they didn’t trust him, and that told him even more about them.

  Friends? He’d have been better off with enemies.

  Finally, anxiety pushed him to look up the state park’s website. He needed to make a plan for going back there, maybe with a metal detector. After all, people still sometimes panned for gold in the streams in these mountains. It wouldn’t be weird for someone to want to wander around with a metal detector hoping to find a nugget.

  So he could get a metal detector and look around until he found the shell casing and then get the hell out. Easy plan. No reason to tell the others because he still didn’t want them to know he’d left that casing behind.

  Slow down, he told himself. Take it easy. Don’t make a mistake that could get him into serious trouble.

  He hadn’t really looked at the park’s website before. They’d taken a brief drive up the road to do recon and that didn’t require a website. All he had needed to find was that rustic campground that vehicles couldn’t. It had been easier than anticipated, too. GPS was a wonderful thing, as was a satellite receiver to track where he was. No need for a nearby cell repeater.

  Thus he really didn’t know anything about Twin Rocks Campground. The web page had the usual scenery pictures, one of an RV campsite, another of a rustic site and some general information for day hikes. Clearly nobody had spent a whole lot of time or money on this page.

  He was about to move on to something else when he saw a name at the bottom of the page:

  Blaire Afton, Chief Ranger.

  Everything inside him felt as if it congealed. He had seen her from a distance on their one recon, but had thought he was mistaken.

  Blaire Afton. That couldn’t be the Blaire Afton he’d met in the Army and asked to go out with him. She’d declined, then he’d been injured in that training accident and mustered out. Turning to her brief bio page, he looked at her photo. It was the same Blaire Afton.

  He hadn’t really known her.

  But what if she remembered him? What if his name came up somehow and she recalled him, either from the Army or from him passing her on his way up the road?

  Suddenly a partial fingerprint on a shell casing seemed like a bigger deal. If the cops mentioned that it seemed to belong to a Jeffery Walston, would she remember the name after all this time? What if she saw him at the park and remembered his face?

  He closed his laptop swiftly as if it could hide him from danger. Bad. Bad indeed. He knew the ranger, however slightly. She might be able to identify him if they somehow came up with his name. But Jeffery Walston wasn’t an unusual name. It could be lots of guys.

  Unless she saw him at the campground running around with a metal detector. Unless she connected him to the location of the murder.

  God, he’d better stay away from her. Far away. But that shell casing was practically burning a hole in his mind.

  If he’d had the guts, he might have killed himself right then. Instead he sat in a cold sweat and faced the fact that he’d probably have to fess up about the shell casing...and God knew what else.

  He’d smoked, hadn’t he? Thank heaven it had rained. He couldn’t have left any DNA behind, could he? Surely that casing wouldn’t still hold enough skin oil to identify him, either by partial print or DNA.

  Surely.

  But he stared blankly as his heart skipped beats, and he didn’t believe it one bit. He’d broken the rule. He’d left enough behind to identify him.

  God help him when the others found out.

  Whatever the risk, he had to go back and make sure he found that casing and picked up any cigarette butts, rain or no rain.

  And try to avoid Blaire Afton.

  But he knew what the guys would tell him. He knew it with leaden certainty. Jeffery Walston might be a common name, but if Blaire Afton could link it to a face, well...

  They’d tell him to kill her. To get rid of her so she couldn’t identify him. Or they’d get rid of him. Squeezing his eyes closed, he faced what would happen if he ran into the ranger. He had to avoid her at all costs while cleaning up the evidence. If she saw him...

  He quivered, thinking about having to kill another person, this time one he knew, however slightly.

  God, he still couldn’t believe the mess he’d gotten into, so innocently. Just playing a game with friends.

  Until he learned the game was no game.

  Terror grew in him like a tangled vine, reaching every cell in his body and mind. He had to go back and remove any evidence. No, he hadn’t been able to go back for the casing while the cops were poring over the site, but they had to be gone by now. So he had to hunt for the casing and remove it if it was still there. Then he needed to go to the observation point and remove anything that remained of his presence there. Then he’d be safe. Even if Karl and Will got mad at him, he’d be safe, and so would they.

  It didn’t help that the kid had screamed and cried until he couldn’t erase the sound from his own head. It chased him, the way fear was chasing him. He was well and truly stuck and he could see only one way out that didn’t involve his dying.

  He needed to calm down, think clear
ly, make sure he knew exactly what to do so he didn’t make things worse. Reaching for a pill bottle in his pocket, he pulled out a small white pill. For anxiety. To find calm.

  He had a lot of thinking to do.

  Chapter Six

  “I’m off the next two days,” Gus said to Blaire two nights later. “I’ve got time to do some poking around if you can manage it.”

  She nodded. As the night thickened around them, the hoot of an owl filled the air. A lonely sound, although that wasn’t why the owl hooted.

  She murmured, “The owl calls my name.”

  “Don’t say that,” Gus said sharply. “I don’t take those things lightly and you shouldn’t, either. We’ve both seen how easily and senselessly death can come.”

  Little light reached them. The moon had shrunk until it was barely a sliver, and clouds kept scudding over it. Still, he thought he saw a hint of wryness in her expression.

  “Superstitious much?” she asked with a lightness that surprised him, mainly because it meant her mood was improving. “I was thinking of the book.”

  “Oh.” He’d reacted too quickly. “Some indigenous peoples consider the owl’s hoot to be a bad omen. I was thinking of that.”

  “That’s okay. And really, any of us who’ve gone where we’ve been probably pick up some superstitions. Heck, my mother even handed me a few when I was a kid. The knock-on-wood kind. And she hated it if anyone spilled salt.”

  He gave a brief laugh. “Yeah, I learned a few of those, too. You got any Irish in the family? My mom was Irish and I think she picked up a tote bag full of stuff like, never leave an umbrella open upside down in the house. More than once I saw her leap up, telling me not to do that.”

  “I never heard that one.”

  “It’s a belief if the umbrella is open upside down it’ll catch troubles for the house and family. There were others, but I left most of them behind.” He paused. “Except this.” Reaching inside his shirt, he pulled out a chain necklace. “My Saint Christopher medal. Apparently, he’s not really a saint after all, but plenty of us still carry him around.”

  “Belief is what matters.” She stood, stretching. “Are you heading back or do you want to use the couch? I think it’s comfortable enough.”

  He rose, too. “That’d be great. Let me see to Scrappy and give Holly a call. And what about you? Can you get some time off tomorrow?”

  “I can take two days whenever I want. Given that we’re deserted right now, nobody really needs to be here. But Dave’s my assistant. He’ll stand in for me. I was thinking of going to town, too. I need some staples and a few fresh bits for my fridge.”

  * * *

  INSIDE, BLAIRE SCANNED her small refrigerator in the back kitchen to see what else she might need to add to the list she’d been building since she last went grocery shopping. She didn’t consume much herself, but she kept extra on hand for Dave, in case he worked late and for when he filled in for her on her days off.

  Come winter she’d have to keep the fridge full to the brim because getting out of the park could sometimes be uncertain. Right now, however, when she was able to take a day or two every week, it wasn’t as big a concern.

  She called Dave on the radio, and he said he’d be glad to fill in for her tomorrow. Good guy, Dave.

  Much as she tried to distract herself, however, her thoughts kept coming back to the murder. And to Gus. She’d learned to trust him over the two years since they’d met. They had a lot in common, of course, but it was more than that. At some point they’d crossed a bridge and for her part she knew she had shared memories with him that she would have found nearly impossible to share with anyone else.

  Now, like her, he wanted to do some investigating up at the campground. Being in the Army had given them a very different mind-set in some ways, and when you looked at the murder as if it were a campaign, a mission, things popped to mind that might not if you thought of it as merely a random crime.

  She was having trouble with the whole idea of random. Especially since Dave had told her that people were starting to talk about other murders, as well, and that they might be linked somehow.

  Tomorrow she was going to make time to talk to the sheriff. She didn’t know how much he’d tell her, but it was sure worth a try. She needed something, some kind of information to settle her about this ugly incident. She’d never be comfortable with the idea that that man had been murdered, never feel quite easy when she recalled little Jimmy’s fear and sobbing, but she had a need to...

  Well, pigeonhole, she guessed. Although that wasn’t right, either. But even in war you had ways of dealing with matters so you could shove them in a mental rucksack out of the way.

  This murder wasn’t amenable to that because there were too damn many questions. War was itself an answer to a lot of things she’d had to deal with. Yeah, it was random, it was hideous, it was unthinkable. Life in a land of nightmares. But it had a name and a way to look at it.

  Jasper’s murder had nothing to define it except “murder.”

  So she needed a reason of almost any kind. An old enemy. Someone who bore a grudge. His wife’s lover. Damn near anything would do because just murder wasn’t enough for her.

  She was pondering this newly discovered quirk in herself when the door opened and Gus entered, carrying his saddle with tack thrown over his shoulder. “Where can I set this?”

  “Anywhere you want to.”

  For the first time she thought about his horse. “Is Scrappy going to be all right? I mean, I don’t have a covered area for the corral here.”

  “I used some buckets from your lean-to. He’s got food and water. And he’s used to this.” Gus lowered the saddle to the floor near the sidewall where there was some space. “I often go camping when I can get away, and he’s happy to hang around and amuse himself, or just sleep.”

  “Oh.” She felt oddly foolish. “I didn’t know.”

  “Why should you? And, of course, being the nice person you are, you want to know he’s okay.”

  She shook her head a little. “I think I care more about animals than people these days. Sorry, I was lost in thought. I just realized I have a driving need to make pigeonholes.”

  “Pigeonholes?”

  “Yeah.” She turned to go to the back and the kitchen. “Beer?”

  “Thanks.”

  She retrieved two longnecks from the fridge and brought them out front. He accepted one bottle, then sat on the edge of the couch that filled one side of the public office space. Her living room, such as it was.

  “I always liked this sofa,” he remarked. “You lucked out. All I have are some institutional-type chairs.”

  “The last ranger left it. It doesn’t suffer from overuse.” She smiled. “In fact, you’re the only person who uses it regularly.”

  “Yeah, I come visit a lot. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. If I did, I’d have told you a long time ago.”

  He twisted the top off his beer, flipped it into the wastebasket that sat in front of the long business desk that separated the public area from her office and raised it in salute. “Back to pigeonholes.”

  She didn’t answer immediately, but went instead to get the office chair from behind the long bar and bring it around. She sat on it facing him, as she had so many past evenings. “Maybe not pigeonholes,” she said finally, then took a sip of her beer. Icy cold, her throat welcomed it. The air was so dry up here.

  “Then what?”

  “Maybe what I’m trying to say is that I need some context. This murder is so random.”

  “That it is.” He leaned back, crossing his legs loosely at the ankles. “So what do you need to know?”

  At that she had to laugh. “Motive. Identity. All that stuff nobody probably knows yet. Nice as that would be, I realize I won’t be told until the case is closed. But I still need something. Who was the
victim? What did he do? Why was he here with his son and not the rest of his family?”

  “Did he have any enemies?” he added.

  She nodded, feeling rueful. “Context. I guess I don’t want to believe he was chosen randomly by someone with an itch to kill. That makes me crazy.”

  “It’d make anyone crazy. Anyone who cares, that is.” He sighed and tipped his head back as he swallowed some more beer. “I guess we have to wait for our answers.”

  She leaned forward on her chair, cradling her frigid beer in both hands. “I need to deal with this. It’s unreasonable to be uneasy simply because I don’t have all the answers. I had few enough of them in Afghanistan.”

  “It wasn’t answers we had over there. It was one big reason. If any of us had stopped to ask why, we might have had a bigger problem. But the reason was baked in from the moment we arrived. It was a war. This isn’t a war. I don’t blame you for being uneasy. Hell, the whole reason I rode over here tonight was because I couldn’t stop feeling uneasy about you being alone over here. I’d have been over here last night but I know how damn independent you are.”

  “Gus...”

  He held up a hand and she fell silent. “Let me finish. This is no criticism of you, or an expression of doubt in your abilities to look after yourself. No, I was uneasy because we’ve got a big question mark with a gun running around out there and that’s a lot more difficult to protect yourself against than some known.”

  “Known? How so?”

  “How many sandbag walls did you sit behind in Kandahar? How much armor did you wear every time you poked your nose out? Can we turn this cabin into a fortress? Not likely. It’s a whole different situation, and being alone out here isn’t the safest place to be, not until we can be sure the killer has moved on.”

  She nodded slowly, accepting his arguments. And though she could be fiercely independent and resented any implication that she was somehow less capable than a man, fact was, she was touched by his concern for her.

  She stared down at her hands, cradling the beer she had hardly tasted, and remembered her early days here. She’d been on maybe her third or fourth night, feeling a mixture of pride at her recent promotion and a bit of discomfort about whether she was ready for the responsibility. Being alone out here, though, had always felt soothing. Comfortable. A long way away from ugly thoughts, pain and anguish.