Home Deadly Home

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “Jesus. I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I’m so sorry. I need to call Dawson, let him know—”

  “I’m on another line with him right now.”

  “Tell him I’ll call.”

  He was gone, so she picked up the other phone. “Did you hear that?”

  “No.”

  “It was Grant. He apologized for not answering his phone, and said he’d call you right away.”

  That peculiar sound had to be a whoosh of air, a relieved exhalation. “Thank God.”

  So she hadn’t been the only one praying.

  “Gotta go,” he said – more warning that he was done talking to her than Grant had given her.

  Helen magically produced a box of tissues and placed it on the desk right in front of Cassie, who was embarrassed to have to seize a handful.

  *****

  Far exceeding the speed limit, Grant drove with lights and siren. The few vehicles on this little-traveled road passed in a blur. He also made and took one call after another as he raced down the road. Dawson first, then Chief Seward, then his contact with the Oregon State Patrol. After that, he fielded reports as the three agencies located one law enforcement officer after another.

  Damn, he wanted to see Cassie first. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the stark fear in her voice when she begged, Please call me. Please. Reassuring her and himself had to wait, however. He was pulling into the headquarters parking lot when he learned that all state patrol officers who might have any reason to be in this county had been found.

  In his office, Dawson had the phone to his ear. Seeing Grant, he held up a hand in a wait gesture as he said, “Thank you, ma’am. You’ll let us know the minute you hear from him?” Pause. “Uh huh. Thank you.”

  Grant pulled up a chair and sat.

  When Dawson set down his phone, tension showed on his more usually imperturbable face. “Eddie Aguilar checked in a couple of minutes ago.”

  Grant nodded acknowledgement, then said, “Seward’s men tracked down his sergeant on the patrol side, Hatcher. Can’t remember the first name. You’re making notes?”

  “Yeah.” The detective picked up a pen to draw a line through a name, after which he pushed the notepad across the desk to Grant, who received it gratefully. He’d been trying to hold the numbers in his head.

  Four of the twelve FHPD officers were still unaccounted for. Three sheriff’s deputies.

  Grant stared at those names, trying to make himself concentrate on his men. “Fischer and Kitson were off today. What about Youngren?”

  “Supposed to be sick.”

  The grim set of Dawson’s jaw echoed Grant’s feelings. If it turned out Deputy Youngren had called in sick so he could hit the slopes at Mt. Bachelor, he’d chosen the wrong day to skip out on his job. His reliability was already questionable. This would be the last straw.

  Don’t jump to conclusions.

  His phone rang. Seward again.

  “Found Officer Hill. He was playing a pickup basketball game at the Boys and Girls Club.”

  “We’re both down to three missing, then.”

  The chief clicked off. No need for hellos and goodbyes.

  “What if this fucker is playing us?” Dawson said.

  “No cop is dead?”

  “Maybe nobody died.”

  “He’s capable of getting a laugh at our expense,” Grant conceded. Capable? Grant felt sure the killer had been laughing for ten days straight as he and Jed – and the Oregon State Patrol Investigative Support Unit – had failed to turn up even a scrap of evidence to give them a direction to turn. Grinding his teeth probably didn’t achieve anything but ensure he’d need crowns on his molars sooner.

  The detective had taken back his notebook. Even looking at it upside down, Grant saw one name standing out as if it were written in neon lights.

  Chad Norman.

  Cassie had infected him with her theory – or was it a fear? Chad was the one and only man on that list who’d gone to school with Grant. Same year, in fact. Who’d been on the damn football team. Grant hadn’t much liked him then, and had only seen him to nod to once or twice since he came back to town. From what Grant had heard, Chad had done a year or two at a community college, then gone to the police academy and been hired immediately by the city.

  If one of the six cops left on that list had actually been murdered…

  “Son of a bitch,” Grant muttered. It was too soon to theorize. His job was to find his own missing deputies. Norman was Seward’s problem…unless his body was located outside the city limits.

  It will be. The certainty shook him.

  Lurching back to his feet, Grant said, “If you’re okay manning the phone, I’m going to the newspaper office to listen to that recording, then I’ll join the search. Tell me how I can help.” Jed had handled this from the beginning. Grant felt no need to take over.

  Jed scribbled the address for Ben Fischer’s girlfriend, who lived on a ranch close to the Crook County border. “Nobody is answering the phone,” he said.

  Of course they weren’t.

  “Kitson’s wife says they had a fight last night and he walked out. She didn’t know why we’re looking for him, but she was crying and begging us to tell him she said she’s sorry.”

  “That’s a big help. Did she mention any friends he might have gone to?” Ned Kitson, pushing sixty and overweight. “Family?”

  “He has a brother.”

  And so it went. Grant left with half a dozen places to check for his missing deputies. Cassie first, though.

  When she saw him walk in the front door of the newspaper office, she shot to her feet as if she wanted to run to him. With a giant lump in his throat, he had a hell of a time looking away. If she’d been alone, he would have gone to her and hauled her into his arms. As it was…

  He tore his gaze away and nodded at Helen Ames, who gaped at him as if he’d materialized from the dead. “That’ll teach me not to answer my phone.”

  “I should hope!”

  Smiling ruefully, he went to Cassie’s desk. She’d plopped back down to wait for him. The close-up view of her looking drained, her eyes puffy, filled him with rage he had no way to vent. Circling to her side, he leaned on the desk near enough to touch, but kept his hands to himself.

  “I suppose you’re here to listen to the recording.”

  “I am, but—” He glanced around, to see that they were the focus of three interested people. He nodded politely at the two men, then said to Cassie, “Why don’t we use the conference room?”

  It was a fancy word for a closet-sized space with a table and chairs.

  “Sure.” She forced a smile and led the way.

  The minute the door shut behind them, he nudged her to one side where they couldn’t be seen through the glass insert. Then he wrapped his arms around her.

  “Damn, I’m sorry I scared you.”

  Her arms squeezed his torso and she pressed her cheek to his chest. “The minute he said that, I was so sure…” she mumbled. “Dumb, huh? If he did know—”

  “That we’d had dinner together?” Kissed. Talked. Comforted each other.

  Her head bobbed. “He’d have made some barbed remark. You know. About how I’d surrendered my integrity for—”

  She didn’t have to finish. He loosened his hold.

  “You don’t feel that way, do you?”

  Cassie lifted her head to meet his eyes. “You mean, do I think you’re trying to seduce me into eagerly serving as your mouthpiece?”

  Even with so much going on inside, he had to grin at her acerbic tone. “Something like that.”

  “That would just make me mad. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m mad.”

  Despite being wound tight, he felt his mouth twitch. “I’ve seen you mad. Do you know you get little flickers of gold in your eyes when you’re annoyed? Even irritated with you, I couldn’t help wondering whether the same thing would happen if I could ever get you in bed.”

  Making a disgusted so
und, she pushed him away. “You did not!”

  The thought had crossed his mind, all right, but this wasn’t the time to argue about it. Instead, he sighed and tipped his head toward her phone. “Let’s hear it.”

  The animation leaving her face, she nodded and did something with her phone. The distorted voice that emerged raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

  “Surprise!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Deputy Fischer showed every sign of having just gotten out of bed. In the late afternoon. And probably not after a nap.

  Grant’s mood further deteriorated.

  The girlfriend lived in one of the county’s smallest towns, this one unincorporated. The barren landscape bound by crumbling columnar basalt rimrocks probably had something to do with the not-so-cheerful name of Tribulation.

  Wearing only jeans that were zipped but not snapped, Fischer had opened the door after Grant knocked, waited, then hammered a second time. He flushed at the sight of his boss.

  “Sheriff?”

  “When we call our deputies on their days off, there’s usually a good reason.”

  Panic appeared on his thin face. “I, ah…”

  Grant waited, his demeanor stony.

  “I’m…sorry? Oh, um, come in.” He opened the door wider. His toes curled on the wood floor and he’d begun to shiver from the influx of icy winter air.

  “I don’t have time. I’ve just wasted forty-five minutes only to verify that you’re alive. Keep your damn phone close. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” If I’m not out working another hideous crime scene. He stepped off the concrete pad and started down the short walkway.

  “Alive?” the deputy queried him.

  Clutching at his temper, Grant turned. “We have reason to believe a local cop has been killed. Chief Seward’s people and Detective Dawson and I are locating our officers.” He didn’t much like the term for what they were doing: the process of elimination.

  “I can come in,” Fischer offered.

  “At this point…no. But we’ll call if we need you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Grant’s phone rang as he was climbing into the SUV. Dawson.

  “Ned Kitson just checked in. Apparently he came home.”

  “I just spoke to Ben Fischer.”

  “So we’re down to Youngren.”

  The ardent skier and fly fisherman. One way or another, chances were excellent that Grant would be short a deputy by tomorrow.

  “You left a message?”

  “Two.”

  “Let’s leave it at that, then.” He’d feel bad about his unbased suspicion if Jeremy Youngren’s body was found in the next day or two, or if it turned out he really was so damn sick he couldn’t crawl to his phone, but really doubted either would be the case. “Any more word from Seward?”

  “No, I was going to ask you—”

  Another call was coming in. “Speak of the devil,” Grant said. “I’ll get back to you,” and answered. “Holcomb.”

  “We’ve rounded up two more of ours,” he said, tension in his voice. “You?”

  Grant had been pleasantly surprised by the way Chief Seward had swung into action. It seemed he wasn’t completely incompetent.

  “The same. I just located one at a girlfriend’s house, and a second deputy called in. The third…has been known to take a sick day to go skiing, or fly fishing in the summer. Only one instance since I took the job, although there were some previously. I told him if there were to be a second, he’d be fired.”

  “I almost wish I could say the same about my one officer who we still haven’t reached. He had the day off, though.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Chad Norman. Grew up locally. You might know him.”

  “I do.” Damn, damn, damn. “What have you done to find him?”

  “Home first, of course. He’s divorced, so there was nobody to ask what plans he had today. We’ve checked with friends. If he’s dating again, no one has a clue who. It’s pretty damn cold out there, but I’ve just been told he boards a horse at a ranch out near Little Creek. I’ve put in a call. No answer. It may not be a very big outfit.”

  Grant’s disquiet expanded. “I just left Tribulation. I’m not ten minutes from Little Creek. If you want to give me the address, I can go by there.”

  Chief Seward thanked him and read it off.

  He’d been closer than he realized, because five minutes later he passed through the small community, which consisted of a small store with gas pumps, a church, a café and a second-hand store that hopefully promised “Antiques!”.

  Grant let GPS lead him to the ranch. Not two miles out of town, he spotted a wood sign for Little Creek Stables, Training & Boarding. He turned into the long, gravel lane, noting that the fences were in good shape and some decent horses wearing quilted blankets lifted their heads to watch him pass.

  Two pickup trucks were parked between the house and the stable. He left his department SUV there and entered the stable. “Anyone here?”

  A couple of horses stuck their heads over stall doors.

  “Just a minute!” a woman called back.

  She proved to be small and wiry, her age hard to determine because her skin was so leathery. Her eyebrows rose at the sight of him in uniform. “How can I help you?”

  He introduced himself. “I’m looking for Chad Norman. I understand he boards a horse here.”

  “He does.” She nodded toward the open doors. “That blue pickup is his. He’s out riding now. Tell you the truth...” She hesitated. “I’ve been getting a little worried. I expected him back a couple of hours ago.”

  “Do you know where he intended to go?”

  “Way he set out, I expect he was taking a loop that climbs up atop that ridge—” she gestured toward a tall rimrock wall a mile to the east. “Drops down the other end of it and then follows a curve of the river. Shouldn’t have taken him more than an hour and a half, two hours if he dawdled. With it this cold, I can’t see him wanting a longer ride.”

  When Grant asked for the loan of a horse, she set to saddling a big chestnut gelding while he fetched his heavy parka, gloves and hat from his vehicle. He stuck binoculars in one pocket, a heavy-duty flashlight in another. Having swung his leg over the gelding’s back and gathered the reins, he said, “Another deputy may show up. If you could find a horse for him, too, I’d sure appreciate it.”

  Having given him explicit directions, she didn’t look any less worried when he trotted away. Rimrock, the banks of Desperation Creek until the first real trail turning off to the right that would bring him back to the stables. There were longer rides possible, but in her opinion not likely at this time of year.

  Grant pulled out his phone immediately and told Jed where he was. “Mrs. Brown says she’ll call if Norman returns, but I think we both know what I’ll find.”

  “Sun will be down in less than an hour.”

  He grunted. “I thought about having you follow me, but by the time you got here and mounted, it would be dark. I’ll stay in touch.”

  Twenty minutes later, moving at an easy lope, he approached the nearest end of the ridge rising above a slope of the typical bunchgrass and sagebrush land. The rimrocks made him think of a row of red stone pillars with angular edges set in the ground like the logs forming the wall that had once fully surrounded Fort Halleck. Scattered, twisted junipers had burrowed roots into cracks, helping along the decay of the basalt.

  There wasn’t so much as a sough of wind to break the silence out here. At the top, he momentarily reined in the horse so he could lift his binoculars and scan as far as he could see each way. Movement caught his eye down below. A mile or two away, a herd of pronghorns dashed toward him before veering sharply, racing in a new direction. Had they smelled a coyote, or even a cougar? Once they were on the move, not much could catch them; he’d read that pronghorns could reach a top speed of 60 miles an hour, and could sustain 30-40 mph for many miles. People often mistook them for antelope, both in appearan
ce and because they moved as if they had springs in those delicate legs.

  And damn, he wished he was taking this ride for pleasure. Instead, every time he was able to get on horseback these days, it was to reach a crime scene.

  The shadows lengthening, he tightened his legs to get his mount moving again, settling for a walk to allow the gelding to pick its way among rocks, sage and juniper while Grant scanned for a horse, anything bright yellow…or the crumpled shape of a dead man.

  *****

  Waiting sucked. Cassie was a doer. Reporters went out searching for details, talked to people, investigated. The only sitting they did at a computer was to assemble the pieces of the puzzle, to choose the right words to paint a picture vivid enough for other people to see.

  Stuck in the office today, she was sure she’d develop nervous tics. All she could think about was murder and shattered heads and Grant, out hunting this killer. She couldn’t help, couldn’t follow any trail of her own. Until she knew who today’s victim was, she’d be wasting her time to pursue the high school angle – or any other angle.

  She tried very hard to concentrate on what she could write. One evening this week, she’d attended a talk at the high school on bullying as well as how to spot depressed kids and get them help. It had been aimed primarily at parents, but other community members were welcome. If Cassie had been living around here, she’d have remembered that a local fifteen-year-old girl had committed suicide last year, without her single mother, her teachers, the high school counselor, ever having any idea she was being bullied both at school and online. Too late, it became apparent she hadn’t really had friends. The subject was important. Cassie, of all people, knew how a suicide devastated a family.

  But she didn’t like even thinking the word, suicide. If she’d known that suicide prevention was at the heart of the talk, she’d have assigned someone else to attend.