by Mary Burton
CHAPTER ONE
Forty miles east of Missoula, Montana
Wednesday, August 18
7:15 a.m.
When Sergeant Bryce McCabe of the Montana Highway Patrol received the call from the local sheriff in Deer Lodge County, he was at his ranch, stringing barbed wire along a hundred-yard stretch of pastureland. He hoped to be stocking cattle by next spring, but days off had been rare in the last few months, so progress was slow. The cattle might have to wait another year or two.
He cradled the phone between his head and shoulder and tugged off his work gloves. “Bryce McCabe.”
“Bryce, this is Sheriff Harry Wexler.” Anxiety sharpened the lawman’s voice. “I need your help with a case.”
Bryce dug his bandanna from his rear pocket and rubbed the sweat from the back of his neck. “What do you have, Sheriff?”
“Homicide. And as much as I’d like to tell you about it, seeing is believing.” Wexler was a steady-as-he-goes kind of lawman, and for him to request assistance meant trouble.
“Is it like the last one?” Bryce asked.
“Seems so.”
Bryce shoved the bandanna back in his pocket. “I’ll be there in about an hour. Text the directions.”
“Will do. Thanks, Bryce.”
Bryce climbed into his ’86 Ford ranch pickup and drove the dirt-packed road to the homestead he and his brother, Dylan, now shared.
The two-story house was constructed of hand-hewn logs resting on a stone foundation and sealed with chinking wedged between seams joined by notched corners. A weather-rusted red tin roof arrowed to a sharp peak to keep hefty winter snows off load-bearing beams. The eastward-facing front porch was shaded by a ten-foot overhang and outfitted with two handmade rockers made of lodgepole pine.
The house had been left to Bryce and Dylan by their late stepfather, Pops Jones, a former rodeo rider. Their mother had spent most of her life dragging her boys from job to job and town to town until she had hooked up with Pops. No one gave the union much hope, but as it turned out, Pops had been a real ray of sunshine for twelve-year-old Bryce and ten-year-old Dylan. And when their mother passed, the three had remained together on the rodeo circuit, wintering here at the cabin, until Bryce turned eighteen and joined the marines. Dylan remained with Pops two more years and then followed his brother into the service.
Coordinated holidays were rare, but both brothers had made it to the ranch three Christmases ago and enjoyed the last holiday the old man would see on this earth. There had been a good bit of barbecuing, bourbon drinking, cigar smoking, and more than a few jokes about the lady friends Pops had juggled.
The house was not fancy by any stretch, but it was built solid, set on fifty acres of decent land teeming with good memories.
As he got out of his truck, three old German shepherds came around the side of the house. The tall gray one that looked more wolf than dog was Chase. He was eight. The black one beside him was Max, seven years old, and the smallest, Conan, was six. They were retired military service dogs with handlers who were either dead or unable to care for them.
When an IED explosion killed his marine canine in January, Dylan had opted not to re-up. Shortly after he had separated from the marines, while he was preparing to return to Montana, his commander approached him about Chase. Dylan had accepted responsibility for the dog without a second thought, and together they had moved back to the ranch. Word spread that Dylan had the space and fortitude to take military dogs, and Max and Conan had arrived by March.
Each animal eyed Bryce warily, and he was careful to keep his body language relaxed. The trio was acquainted with him, but each had been chosen by the military because aggression came naturally. Best not to tempt their natural propensities or training.
“How’s it going, guys?” Bryce asked smoothly. He paused at the top step and let each sniff his hand. “See, we’re all still friends, right?”
When Bryce had been in Afghanistan a dozen years ago, a soldier in his platoon had found a puppy in one of the villages. Scrawny and tied to a stake in the ground, the pup had barked when he had seen Bryce and his men come into the village. His sergeant, a bear of a man, had pulled out a switchblade and cut the rope. One of the village elders had started yelling, and Bryce had offered him several MREs for the dog. A deal had been struck, and the mongrel, dubbed Buddy, was along for the ride.
Damn dog had turned out to be an island of sanity for the coming months. Almost none of the men could resist a smile when they spotted Buddy trotting through the camp. When the time had come for the unit to ship stateside, Bryce had created military service canine paperwork for Buddy, who now lived somewhere in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains.
Dylan came around the side of the house with a toolbox in his hand. His nineteen years of service had embedded a deep sense of routine, and he still rose at four, ate his chow three times a day at the kitchen table, and spent the rest of his time working with the dogs or building the new barn, which he intended to have fully heated and insulated by winter.
“You’re back early,” Dylan said.
“Got called in. There’s a homicide,” Bryce said. “Need to take a quick shower and head over to Deer Lodge.”
“Anything I can do?” Dylan asked.
“Not really. If this case is like the one in Helena, it’ll be a long day, so I can’t say when I’ll be back.”
Dylan removed his hat and ran his hand over shorn dark hair. “Two is a pattern.”
“Maybe.”
“Time to call in the FBI?” Dylan’s tone turned suspicious, as it did when outsiders were tossed into the mix.
“Rather not have the feds involved, but I’ll have to see.”
“We got the ranch covered.”
Rusted front-door hinges squeaked as Bryce opened it. “I appreciate that. Nice having the company.”
“By the way,” Dylan said. “When you get back, there might be a new dog living here.”
Bryce paused. “Another one?”
“Her name is Venus. She’s a Malinois and has a reputation as a hard-ass. Unadoptable. A real bitch.”
Bryce shrugged. “The more the merrier.”
“Thanks, bro.”
It took Bryce less than twenty minutes to shower and change into clean jeans, a fresh T-shirt, and worn cowboy boots. He had left his suits at his Helena apartment because he had banked on having a full day or two off. But if he was heading toward the mountains near Anaconda, a suit would be more trouble than it was worth anyway.
In his state-issued, black SUV, he drove west on US 12 for thirty minutes before turning south on I-90 toward Anaconda. Wexler’s directions took him from the interstate to a series of progressively smaller roads. Sixty minutes after leaving the ranch, he spotted flares and a deputy’s car.
Bryce parked behind the marked vehicle, reached in the compartment between the seats, dug out his badge, and looped it around his neck.
The deputy who approached Bryce’s car looked barely out of high school. Efforts to look solemn did not hide his edgy, amped-up energy. “Sergeant Bryce, Sheriff Wexler is waiting for you,” the deputy said. “Follow the dirt road up the side of the mountain.”
“Thanks.”
Bryce angled his vehicle up the barely paved road around tire tracks marked off with yellow crime scene tape. He drove up the hillside, gravel crunching under his tires, and eased toward a sharp turn that brought him to a dead end. The land around him was covered in a swath of blackened scrub grass swooping over the hill like an eagle’s wing.
Bryce parked and reached for his worn black cowboy hat on the passenger seat. Out of his SUV, he settled it on his head and tugged the brim lower toward mirrored sunglasses. The wind carried persistent trails of smoke threaded with the scent of scorched flesh. He opened the back of his vehicle, grabbed a fresh set of latex gloves, and then walked beside the singed grass that had been drier than bone until Monday’s soaking rain.
His gaze swept the hillside’s base toward defined ti
re tracks. If not for the rain, the marks would have been faint, and obtaining an impression would have been difficult. Had the killer realized he had left this critical piece of evidence behind?
When he approached the ridge, he looked out toward the city, the foothills, and the jagged Anaconda Range beyond. The sun sent a fine trickle of sweat down his back as he strode toward yellow caution tape staked in a large square around the fire’s point of origin, concealed with a blue tarp. If this was like the Helena case, the tarp covered a body, and he was not getting back to fencing anytime soon.
Resettling his hat, he strode toward Sheriff Harry Wexler, who was tall, broad shouldered, and sported a full belly earned in countless hours behind the wheel of a car. Bryce extended his hand. “Sheriff Wexler.”
“Sergeant McCabe.” The older man’s weathered hands still packed a heavy-duty grip. “Caught you on your day off, didn’t I?”
“It happens.” He could not remember the last time he’d really kicked up his heels. Was it that Christmas with Pops and Dylan three years ago?
“I hear you inherited Pops’s ranch,” Sheriff Wexler said.
“That’s right.”
Montana was about 150,000 square miles, but Bryce had been in the field six years, enough time to meet most of the state’s law enforcement officers, and if he was not acquainted personally, there was always someone to tell him what he needed to know. The flip side was his personal business had a way of making the rounds as well, which had not bothered him much until lately.
“Means a commute to Helena, doesn’t it?” Wexler asked.
“Less than an hour. I don’t mind the drive. And I still have several months left on my Helena apartment lease.” A breeze rushed up the hill, and yellow tape rippled. “Who called it in?”
“A mountain biker who rides these trails every evening after work. He was finishing up his run when he smelled the smoke and saw the flames. He called my office as soon as he rode down the mountain and hit cell phone service.”
“What time was that?”
“About ten p.m.”
“Did he see anyone up here?” Bryce asked.
“Said sometimes he sees kids or tourists on the ridge taking pictures. Selfies, you know. But he didn’t see anyone last night. I have his name if you want to interview him.”
“Thanks.” Bryce stared toward the fire’s epicenter and braced. “I best have a look.”
“I ain’t seen a body like that before, but I heard about the other in Helena. Jesus H. Christ.”
With a nod, Bryce worked his hands into the gloves. “Have any of your deputies been walking around up here?”
“No, sir,” Sheriff Wexler said. “The responding deputy was focused first on the fire. We’ve had rain, but it’s still dry. When the deputy saw the body, he suspected this case was connected to the other one, roped off the scene, and backed away. I’m afraid in the dark he trampled the tire tracks and the area around the body pretty good. He also had to wait for the body to cool before he could cover it.”
“And the mountain biker? Did he come up here?”
“Said he didn’t get near the scene. Just called in the fire.”
Cases like this could be made or broken by a first responder. The scene could be altered and valuable evidence destroyed by untrained ignorance or police personnel struggling to secure the scene. In the latter case, there was no blame to hand out.
Bryce moved toward the blue tarp and, with the sheriff’s help, removed it. Carefully, he crouched for a better look. The charred corpse lay on its back, its head pointed toward the valley and the distant mountains. The now-heavy smoky scent of burned hair, flesh, and bone swirled in the breeze. The blackened, marbled remains had withered appendages with snubbed fingers and toes consumed in the flames. The featureless face had a gaping jaw frozen in a ghoulish, toothy laugh.
Sheriff Wexler’s voice rattled with unprocessed emotions. “Don’t know what kind of person does this. I’ve seen bad things in my years, but this might be the worst.”
“Always amazes me what humans do to one another.” Bryce searched for clothing or jewelry. There was none.
Sheriff Wexler pulled off his hat and rubbed his forehead with his sleeve. “The medical examiner’s office is sending up a death investigator. She should be here any minute.”
Bryce rose, favoring his right knee, which he’d twisted on an Afghanistan march a decade ago. He took a moment to let the joint settle before he moved around the corpse to view what remained of the face. If he had not known what to look for, he might have missed the facial mutilation below the char.
“Did he do this to the other one?” the sheriff asked as he popped a mint in his mouth.
The other one had been found near Helena in mid-July. The medical examiner in Missoula had determined the victim had been female, Caucasian, and in her late twenties to early thirties. She had been stabbed multiple times, and her body had been stripped clean of clothing and jewelry; however, there were no signs of sexual assault. The killer had also removed the skin from the victim’s face before dousing the body with gasoline and setting the remains on fire. The inferno had done an expert job of destroying forensic evidence and the victim’s identity. DNA had been extracted from back molars and submitted for testing, but so far the victim had not been identified.
Gravel rattled under Bryce’s boot as he flexed his knee. “It looks pretty damn similar.”
The sheriff’s radio squawked. The deputy stationed at the roadside below announced the arrival of the medical examiner’s death investigator, Joan Mason. A former Philadelphia cop, Joan had relocated to Montana a year ago and taken the job in the medical examiner’s office shortly after the New Year.
Approaching footsteps had Bryce turning to see the brunette with a lean, athletic build. She wore jeans, weathered boots, and a navy-blue wind slicker that opened to a white T-shirt. She pulled on disposable gloves as she moved with steady steps toward the scene. When she saw the body, her pace faltered a beat before she steeled herself and continued forward.
“Harry.” Joan’s Philadelphia accent drew out the sheriff’s name as she shook hands with him and then Bryce. “Bryce, good to see you. Wish it could be under better circumstances.”
“Unfortunately, it’s rarely a good day when we cross paths,” Bryce said.
Joan was not a sworn officer in Montana, but ten years in the Philadelphia Police Department as a beat cop and then later as a homicide detective had equipped her with keen investigative skills and a no-nonsense urban-street-cop directness that won her praise in Montana’s law enforcement community. “Like the Helena victim.”
“Seems to be,” Bryce said.
As Joan circled slowly around the body, her expression turned grim. She cleared her throat. “Animal. No, I take that back. That isn’t fair to animals.”
She was right. Wilderness predators hunted for food and survival, not for sport.
Silence settled around Joan as she absently pushed up her sleeves, revealing the pink, puckered flesh on her forearm. Arson had been Joan’s specialty back east, and the burn scars were living reminders of the monsters she had tracked.
Bryce remained silent, giving her time to mentally shore up her resolve brick by brick. There were scenes like this that they all needed time to process.
Bryce had needed time to process the first crime scene, which investigators initially had classified as a violent anomaly. The rescue and police crews who had worked the case had been stunned by the way the body had been savaged, and theories floating around included domestic violence, drug cartels, and human trafficking. Investigators hadn’t reached any conclusions, so Bryce had sent the body to Missoula to Joan’s boss, the state’s best medical examiner, Dr. Peter Christopher.
Joan cleared her throat. “I assisted Dr. Christopher when he did the autopsy on the first victim. The doc determined the cause of death was stabbing.”
“There’s a lot of blood on the rock near the overlook and on the ground around it,” Sh
eriff Wexler said.
Joan squatted near the victim’s head and examined the skull. The slow rise and fall of her chest, coupled with unsettling uneasiness, suggested she was replaying her last brutal hunt for the arsonist who had nearly burned her alive.
“It looks like the face was removed in this instance as well.” She pointed to a slight cleft along the hairline. “In my opinion, here’s where the killer cut. Of course, that’ll be for the doc to officially confirm. I assume you want the body sent to him?”
“Yes,” Bryce said.
She rose with enviable ease. “The doc and I have had several discussions about this killer.”
“And?”
“He’s crazy as hell. And the consensus is to call Dr. Ann Bailey. Her background in forensic psychology could be of real use untangling this killer’s mind.”
“She’s back from summer vacation?” Bryce asked.
“And moved back into Missoula and starts teaching at the university in a week,” Joan said.
Dr. Bailey was in her early thirties and a professor at the University of Montana in Missoula. She was well respected in her field and had lectured to Bryce’s police recruits in late May on the topic of abhorrent behavior. If the class she had taught was any indication, this case was right up her alley.
Red and blue lights flashed as the state’s forensic van pulled off the gravel road and lumbered as far as it could before parking. The crew unloaded a tent and tables and established their base of operations.
“The forensic team is here mighty quick,” Sheriff Wexler said. “Takes pull to get them up here pronto.”
Bryce had made one call on the drive over. The fast results attested that this case did not require influence. Any officer who’d seen the file understood a dangerous killer was preying on their state. “Joan, what do you need from me?”
“Nothing either of us can do until I’ve processed the body and the forensic techs do their job,” she said, nodding to the three-person crew. “I need to radio my office and have my appointments canceled. It’s going to be a long day.”
