“No.” Britta shot a quick glance at the corpse again. “That was the first thing I determined when I found him.”
His face wasn’t familiar to Truman either, but death had distorted the features. He doubted the man’s face was usually that bloated or the eyes that sunken.
“I’ll have you and Zara carefully move away from the scene. Watch where you step and let me know if you see anything unusual. I’m going to call the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.” He gave her a side-eye. “Which you could have done.”
She shrugged, a pulse still beating rapidly in her neck.
She’s pulling herself together.
Truman dialed. Britta did things her own way. After calling in the location and requesting a detective, Truman studied the dead man more thoroughly. He stepped in a careful circle around the body and crouched on the far side, peering closer at his head. There was crusted blood visible in the hair against the dirt. He wanted to turn the head and see if it was hiding a deadly injury, but he knew better.
A blow to the side of the head? Gunshot?
He didn’t see any exit wounds.
The medical examiner would answer the question.
He glanced at the rising sun. A distinct rotting odor already filled the area. The sun and heat would make it worse.
How long has he been dead?
He was pretty certain this level of bloating took at least a day or two. He glanced back at Britta and Zara, who had moved ten feet away. “Did you and Zara walk your property yesterday?”
Britta gave a short nod, her eyes focused on the mountains to the west.
If the body had been here yesterday, Zara would have led her master to the spot.
Someone moved him to this location. Why?
He watched Britta out of the corner of his eye. Her past was violent, but that wasn’t her fault. Some people attracted trouble. Almost as if they put out an invisible lure. He knew no one wanted peace and solitude more than Britta, but turbulence seemed to follow her.
Is this man part of her past?
Truman watched Britta as the Deschutes County vehicles started to arrive. She shifted from foot to foot and constantly rubbed her forearms. Zara pressed her body against her owner’s knee, her dark doggy eyes full of sympathy.
“I’m outta here.” Britta gave Zara a command, and the two of them turned toward her home.
“They’ll want to interview you,” Truman said to her retreating back.
“You can tell them what I said,” she answered without turning around or breaking stride.
“They need to hear it from you.”
“You know where to find me.”
“They need to find you, not me,” Truman muttered, knowing she’d said the last line as a request that he be present during any discussions with a county detective. He watched as a crime scene van and an unmarked Ford Explorer pulled in behind the other vehicles. Detective Evan Bolton stepped out of the SUV and lifted a hand in greeting to Truman.
Good.
He trusted Bolton and knew from experience he was a solid investigator. Mercy called him the Angel of Death because he always turned up when someone was dead.
It’s his job.
He saw Bolton glance at Britta’s retreating figure as he strode up to Truman. Bolton was a few years younger than he, but his bleak gaze suggested he’d been a cop for fifty years. Truman wondered if anything ever rattled him. The two men shook hands.
“That my witness?” Bolton asked.
“Yes. Her house is farther up the driveway. She’s had enough of the scene and needs some time to regroup.”
“Understandable.” Bolton took a long look at the man on the ground, his face unreadable after a flash of anger in his eyes. Truman felt an accord with the detective. The stark scene was making him angrier by the moment. Bolton glanced back at his crime scene crew as they continued to unload their equipment. “When was he found?”
“Britta found him about two hours ago and—”
“Called you?” The question was clear on Bolton’s face.
“She tried to reach Mercy, and when she couldn’t, she called me.” Truman paused. “Britta has trust issues, but Mercy is on her safe list—and I guess I am by association.”
“I know the story of her family’s murder,” Bolton answered. “She went through hell as a kid. And then again last spring.” He raised a brow at Truman. “She a reliable witness?”
“Absolutely.” Truman had no doubt. Britta was a straight shooter. She just didn’t like people. “Her dog went berserk around three this morning and then led Britta directly here when they came out for a walk five hours later.”
“This man has been dead more than five hours.”
“Clearly. But Britta and her dog walk or run on the property every day. Her dog would have dragged her here if the body had been present yesterday.”
“Agreed.” Bolton pulled gloves out of his pocket as his crew approached. One of them had already taken several photos of the surrounding area. “Get initial shots of the body so I can move him a bit.” The tech nodded and proceeded to take another dozen shots.
“Let’s take a look.” Bolton jerked his head for Truman to join him.
The two men moved closer to the body, checking where they placed their feet.
“I assume no ID?” Bolton asked.
“Didn’t see any in the immediate area. Could be underneath him, I guess.”
“Lividity is on his back. Not his side,” Bolton pointed out.
In other words, he had lain on his back for several hours after he died, creating a purple mottled pattern where the blood had settled. Not curled up on his side as in his current position.
He had definitely been moved.
“Help me move him onto his back.”
Truman held his breath, and they gently rolled him backward, crushing more of the hay and exposing the right side of the victim’s head. His hair was a matted, dry mess of blood. His head and arms flopped.
“Rigor is gone,” mumbled Truman.
Rigor mortis typically came and went within thirty-six to forty-eight hours. He’d been right that the victim had been dead for longer.
Bolton got closer to the crusted mass of bloody hair. He carefully touched and prodded at the skull. “I think we’ve got a gunshot wound under this mess. No exit wound?”
“I don’t see one.” Depending on their size and the distance from which the gun had been fired, bullets could bounce around inside the skull, making scrambled brains instead of creating an exit. “Examiner coming?”
“Yes, I talked to Dr. Lockhart. She said she’d be out as soon as possible.” Bolton sighed. “I’ll start checking for missing persons of his description. Would you guess he’s somewhere in his forties or fifties?”
“Hard to tell.” His face had deep wrinkles around the mouth, and the partially gray hair was the main clue to his age.
“Fingernails are short and grimy. Hands dirty. He knew physical work,” Bolton suggested.
“Or he worked with plants or vehicles.”
Bolton lifted a shoulder in agreement. They were getting ahead of themselves.
“Hopefully the medical examiner will find some distinguishing marks—scars or previously broken bones to help me search.” Bolton made a notation in his notebook.
“I imagine he’s been reported missing,” Truman said.
“You’d be surprised.” Bolton’s writing hand froze, and he shot a sharp look back to the body.
Truman tensed. “What?”
Bolton stared at the man for a few more seconds. “Is this the same?” he asked under his breath. He continued to study him from feet to face for a long moment.
Truman waited, knowing better than to interrupt an investigator in midthought.
“We found a John Doe a month ago,” Bolton said slowly. “He was naked and dumped in La Pine. Decomp was a lot further along because the temperatures had been so high.” He frowned. “He was in his early thirties. This subject feels olde
r to me.”
Truman’s skin crawled. “Cause of death?”
“Gunshot wound to the head, but there was an exit.”
“You said John Doe. You haven’t identified him?”
Bolton looked grim. “Not yet.”
“Do you see any other similarities to this one besides male, naked, shot in the head, and dumped?”
“Not yet. But that’s a lot in common. The other one wasn’t dumped in a country field. He was left close to a residence. The owners had been out of town for a few weeks, otherwise we would have found him sooner and possibly identified him.”
“The owners were cleared?”
“Yes, they were shocked to find the body on their property when they returned from a cruise to Alaska. Older couple in their late seventies. Good thing neither of them had a heart condition.” Bolton’s brown gaze met Truman’s. “I’ll know more after I run some searches and get the autopsy report.”
Truman squatted and studied the tall hay of the field at eye level. “Look in that direction.” He pointed. “I didn’t walk that way, and I’m pretty sure Britta came from the direction of her driveway. Something broke the grass in a faint path to the main road.”
Bolton crouched. “Could have been an animal attracted to the scent.”
“But left the body alone? No bite marks. No claw marks.”
Bolton put away his notebook. “Let’s take a look.” Another crime scene tech arrived, and Bolton gestured at the tech who had shot the earlier photos. “Hogan, come with us. Get some images of this trail.”
They followed the tech along the faint path as he snapped photos and they all watched for footprints. As they neared the fence along the country two-lane road, the grass faded away, replaced by firm soil. Obvious boot prints showed where someone had possibly ducked between the two horizontal rails of the fence. The three of them bent to awkwardly step over the lower rail, carefully avoiding the prints. On the other side of the fence, they spotted tire tracks and more footprints and crouched to take a closer look.
Hogan was pleased, a toothy grin on his face. “Excellent tire prints. We can easily cast those. The footprints too.” The ground was soft where the vehicle had pulled to the side of the road and left deep ruts.
“Two sets of boots,” Truman pointed out. “One appears to be a hiking boot and the other a cowboy boot.” The complicated grid of the hiking boot sole offered a sharp contrast to the smooth print of the cowboy boot. “They didn’t even try to hide them.”
“Not very bright or in a big hurry?” Bolton wondered.
“Both?” Truman shrugged.
Bolton straightened and twisted his back, making Truman wince at the staccato cracking sounds from his spine. “I’m ready to talk to Ms. Vale.”
Truman hoped she was ready to talk to Bolton.
FIVE
Mercy glanced at the old clock on the bus station wall for the hundredth time. Her ride was nearly an hour late. Her nerves were on edge, and every possible scenario shot through her mind.
Had Chad Finn’s cover been blown somehow? Had he been tortured and killed?
Would unknown men pick her up, lying that Chad would meet her at the compound? Would she be tortured and killed next?
Flat tire? Wrong date? Wrong time?
She squirmed on the hard seat. The tiny bus station had only two benches for passengers, and they looked like church pews. The wood backs were set at an angle that offered no back support yet also dug painfully into her spine. The nearly deserted room smelled of decades of cigarette smoke and old dust, along with a pine odor of cleaning agents that grew stronger near the bathrooms. Black crud filled every crack in the ancient floor tiles, and old water leaks had stained the yellowed drop ceiling.
Occasionally Mercy heard a tinny voice from a back room where a ticket agent watched TV. The woman had poked her head out when Mercy arrived, waited to see if she needed anything, and then vanished when Mercy took a seat.
A young man wearing faded jeans shared her vigil, sitting silently on the other bench, his gray cowboy hat beside him, his attention on the ragged paperback in his hands. His suitcase was beat-up and from an era before luggage wheels. Back when people had to carry their bags by the single handle.
Her parents still had a few.
She checked the time again and then pulled a cell phone out of her bag. It was a battered off-brand smartphone. Carleen had handed it to her and stated, “They’ll expect you to have a phone, but it will be taken away and searched. We loaded a small history of calls and random texts to ‘friends’ and a bunch of photos.” On the bus ride from Bend, Mercy had studied the phone’s photos, stunned to see her face in places she’d never been and with people she’d never met. Overnight the ATF had created a visual history for her, skillfully replacing the original fake Jessica Polk’s face with Mercy’s face in social media posts and the images on her phone.
She enlarged a photo of herself and Chad, committing her boyfriend’s face to memory.
I won’t mess this up.
She was concerned about the reunion with Chad and prayed he wouldn’t reveal his surprise when he realized Jessica was being played by someone new.
Like replacing a TV actor midseason. Awkward.
Chad Finn had to be good at his job. The ATF wouldn’t have placed him undercover if it didn’t have faith in him. Mercy hoped its faith in her wasn’t misguided.
She dialed Chad’s number, knowing it would appear normal to call him because he was late. A recording told her he was unreachable. She dropped the phone in her bag and accidentally made eye contact with the suitcase man. He’d been watching her. He nodded solemnly and went back to his book.
Is he a spy from the militia?
She slowly exhaled and spun a curl around her finger. I need to chill.
If he was a spy, all he’d seen was an impatient, uncomfortable woman waiting for her ride.
When she’d stepped off the early-morning bus in Ukiah, she’d smelled snow and spotted a white dusting on the tops of the hills surrounding the area. Winter is coming. The sky was a perfect blue, but the bus had traveled east, into an area of the state where the land did not retain the heat as it did back in Bend. The elevation was slightly higher than home, and the vegetation was an assortment of hearty survivors, plants and trees that could withstand the cold dryness of the winter and the heat of the summer.
Somewhere up in those snow-dusted hills was her destination.
She’d studied the satellite photos of the camp. There were several small buildings and three larger ones scattered around a clearing. Chad had reported that the larger buildings were a mess hall, a supply depot, and the command center. Carleen had rested a finger on another big building that sat in the center of a different clearing near a large carport, several hundred yards from the other structures. “Chad hasn’t been allowed in this building. It’s brand-new. He says it’s been a priority construction project, but no one will talk about it.”
“What could it be?” Mercy had murmured.
“Your guess is as good as ours.” Concern had darkened Carleen’s brown eyes.
The forty-acre camp was bordered on two sides by a river that flowed out of the mountains and on a third side by a deep ravine. The fourth side was fenced, with constant patrols and a gate that was the only way a vehicle could enter the compound.
As Mercy sat on the bus station bench, staring out the window, her mind tried to make sense of the new building, wondering if it was used to store weapons. Stolen weapons.
A white pickup drove into her view and swung into an angled parking space in front of the bus station. Mercy glanced at her companion. He ignored the truck. She sucked in a breath and slung the ugly ATF duffel onto her shoulder, her large slouchy purse on her other arm. Two men in worn clothing got out and eyed the building. The younger removed his sunglasses and pushed up the brim of his camouflage baseball cap. Chad.
She pasted a grin on her face and flung open the door. “Chad!” she yelled as she jogged
down the half dozen steps.
Surprise flickered in his eyes for the briefest second. “Jessica!” He grinned, took two big steps, and caught her in a giant hug, lifting her feet from the ground and spinning her. After setting her down, he slid the bags off her arms, pulled her close, and then his mouth was on hers. Instinctively her arms went around his neck.
Thank God he didn’t hesitate.
His kiss was nothing like Truman’s.
Chad had a short beard, and the odd sensation of the bristly facial hair distracted her from the tongue that had skillfully entered her mouth. After a long moment, he pulled back and held her face in both hands, giving her a warm smile as he examined her. She concentrated on smiling back, dying to wipe her mouth.
“Damn, it’s good to see you.” Then he kissed her again. A hand ran down her back and pressed her hips to him.
She stiffened and then relaxed. He released her mouth but kept her in a tight embrace. Chad was taller than Truman but had the same lanky yet muscular build. His eyes were a vivid green, and the hair visible below his cap was a light brown. He no longer looked like a cell phone salesman. He was all Eastern Oregon rancher. Dust on his boots, sweat marks on his cap, and faint stains on his jeans. He smelled of motor oil and fresh-cut wood. Not horrible scents.
He slung one arm over her shoulder and turned her toward the other man. “Ed, this is Jessica.”
The driver touched the brim of his cap and nodded solemnly. “Ma’am.” Ed looked to be in his late forties and was small and trim. Unlike Chad, he had a close shave, his leathery skin indicating many years of sun exposure.
“Nice to meet you.” Mercy gave him her best smile. She and Carleen had agreed Jessica needed to appear trusting and willing to follow orders. She was to fly under the radar. Gain everyone’s confidence. Be unthreatening and reliable.
Ed climbed back in the truck, his movements quick and precise.
Chad pulled Mercy to him in another passionate hug. “What happened?” he said softly in her ear.
“Shingles,” she whispered back.
He kissed her on the mouth and then picked up her bags. He tossed the duffel in the open bed of the truck and handed her the purse. Mercy climbed into the cab, pretending not to feel awkward as she sat between the two men on the wide bench seat. Chad took her hand, intertwined their fingers, and held it in his lap. Ed focused on the road.
A Merciful Promise Page 4
