by Jeff Carson
An instant later, the biker flipped over his handlebars, and rolled to a motionless stop. Rachette sucked in a breath and brought his radio to his lips, and then watched with hawk eyes as a group of bikers on the trail went over to assess the damage. The kid got up from the ground, dusted himself off, and smiled at his friends.
Rachette shook his head and turned around to survey the festival grounds below. Restaurants with tall windows glared in the morning sun. Two ski-lift terminals turned, and people—hikers and morons alike—swung gently on the chairs on their way up.
In between the two lifts, the stage for the first annual Rocky Points Music Festival looked completely set up, but a swarm of men still hammered and screwed boards, rods, and screws into place. Some of the men were high on the rafters, hanging lights, and others were on the ground, pulling cable; others pretended to look busy, and still others just stood around looking like a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Rachette sighed when he saw Patterson, fitting her into the latter group of people he’d been observing. She was talking to a man who had a hammer in his hand, and she had Jack and the man enthralled by a story. She was laughing and talking, and Jack was laughing and talking, and then the guy was laughing and talking.
This new girl was throwing a big wrench in the cogs of the machine that was the Sluice County Sheriff’s Department. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he was just put off by her. She was too … He couldn’t figure out what her problem was quite yet. Too proper? Too comfortable? Too cocky? Too cute?
A cruiser came into view in the far distance off to the right, followed by another, and another. Rachette stepped toward the parking lot. One of them was unmistakably a Vail PD cruiser— a jet-black, shiny new Saab with the Vail PD logo on it. Another was a Ford SUV with the Garfield Sheriff’s Department logo, and the last vehicle was a Chevy SUV from Summit County.
Patterson, despite her distance away, clearly saw the commotion and ran with Jack toward him.
“Finally showing up?” Patterson said breathlessly, meeting him halfway to the parking lot.
Rachette didn’t bother answering the rhetorical, and flawed, question. First of all, they weren’t finally showing up, they were showing up exactly on time. Since they had all been staying at the Edelweiss the night before, and would be for the next two nights, it looked like they’d followed each other here in train-like fashion.
Patterson made a face at Jack that Rachette couldn’t see, but Jack smiled wide and then looked at Rachette.
“I was joking,” Patterson said. “Looks like they’re raring to go, showing up right on time.”
Rachette felt his face warm, and shook his head. He was going to earn all of his measly salary today, babysitting these two. He just hoped these eight men and women were going to be less mentally taxing.
It was eight men, Rachette realized as he watched them all pour out of their vehicles, looking well rested and sharp in their uniforms. They chuckled with one another, donned their hats, and looked around at the bustling activity.
When they saw Rachette approaching, they straightened and walked over.
For a ridiculous amount of time, they stood in a circle and shook hands and introduced one another. Each and every one of them looked at Patterson with varying degrees of too much interest. Her smile was engaging, and all the men seemed to be enthralled by her.
Rachette suddenly wished he’d requested some female officers to counter the imbalance. Patterson’s presence was already distracting.
“And this is Jack,” he said, pulling Jack in front of him. “This is the sheriff’s son.”
Jack gave a quick wave, blushed a little, and then left the circle.
“Don’t go too far,” Rachette said.
Jack pretended not to hear as he stood looking up at the mountain bikers.
Rachette turned back to the men, and caught a tall officer from the Vail PD raking Patterson’s body with his eyes.
“On behalf of Sheriff Wolf,” Rachette said in a hearty tone, “and the whole Sluice County Sheriff’s Department, I thank you for coming to Rocky Points to help us this weekend.”
“Where’s the sheriff?” one of the Garfield deputies asked. “Still dealing with that shooting?”
Rachette looked at the big man. The name stripe said Richter, and Rachette pegged him at least six-four, two hundred thirty pounds, in his early forties. With closely cropped brown hair and a bushy brown mustache, he was clearly a man’s man, and had probably been a force to be reckoned with on the football field back in his day.
“Yes, he is, Deputy Richter,” Rachette said. “I didn’t see you at the hospital yesterday morning.”
“That’s because I wasn’t there,” said Richter. “We had a lot of things to take care of because we were coming here.”
“Yes,” Rachette said, eyeing the tall man, wondering how he was supposed to read that last statement.
Richter’s neutral expression let nothing on.
Patterson cleared her throat. “We realize you’re all leaving pressing situations at home,” she said, “and taking time away from your families isn’t any fun, either. But, like Deputy Rachette said, we really appreciate it. Hopefully we can accommodate you gentlemen adequately, and, well, hopefully we can all have a fun time working with one another in the process.”
Richter and the other seven men broke into a smile and nodded at one another, as if the first lady herself had just bestowed compliments on all of them.
Patterson looked up at Rachette with raised eyebrows, and Rachette forced himself to smile and nod. “We’ll be helping with general security today, and a little bit of setup, and then tomorrow the first acts will be coming on at around sundown. Patterson, why don’t you lead everyone to the area in front of the stage, and we’ll continue our orientation. I’ll be right there.” The men scattered and began following Patterson, and Jack turned and joined them. “Deputy Richter,” Rachette called, “could I talk to you a moment?”
“Yes?” Richter turned around and looked down at Rachette.
“I just wanted to know how the investigation was going,” Rachette said. “I was kind of wishing I was involved in that investigation as well. That’s my sheriff that was shot the other night, after all.”
Richter nodded.
“So? Any news?”
“I don’t know,” Richter said. “You'll have to ask your sheriff. I’ve probably heard just what you have. I think they got a bullet casing, and some soil samples, but when I talked to the station this morning on the phone, they said they weren’t getting any hits on AFIS or CODIS.”
Rachette frowned. “Shit.”
Richter looked over Rachette’s head, like he was itching to leave.
Rachette nodded and waved him by. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up in a few minutes.”
Watching the big man leave, Rachette pulled out his phone and dialed Wolf.
“Hello?” Wolf’s voice was choppy.
“Hey, it’s me. How’s it going?”
There was a pause a second too long.
“Do you hear—” Rachette said.
“Hey, not bad,” Wolf said. “Listen, I’m glad you called. I need to talk to Patterson.”
Rachette rolled his eyes and looked at the group walking away. Richter had jogged to catch up and was talking to Jack.
“She’s not here, I’ll go get her.”
“No,” Wolf said, “don't worry about it. Just have her call me as soon as possible.”
“Okay, will do.”
“Later,” Wolf said, and the phone went silent.
“Hello?”
Rachette checked the screen of his phone and saw that the call had been disconnected. He shook his head and shoved it in his pocket, then trudged after the group of men, and one very annoying woman.
Chapter 28
Wolf and Luke drove west on I-70 for forty minutes, along the meandering Colorado River, and then headed south on Highway 50, along the portion of Colorado known as the Western Slope of
the Rocky Mountains, or simply, the Western Slope.
Long, sweeping valley floors rose to flat-topped plateaus as far as the eye could see, or as far as the shape of the earth allowed if one had perfect eyesight on a clear day. Today, however, the clouds had rolled in and ahead of Luke’s Tahoe showers dumped out of the clouds like shower heads spraying white plumes against the landscape.
Wind buffeted the vehicle side to side, and the vastness of the land outside, along with the elements, made Wolf wonder how those early settlers, after just trudging their way through the unforgiving Rockies, had ever looked beyond and decided to keep going.
As they approached Delta the dry landscape became greener, if not only because of human intervention. Fields of various crops lined both sides of the highway, with apple and peach orchards interspersed.
Delta, and the rest of the Western Slope, was known for growing produce. Orchards, and even wine vineyards, thrived in this portion of the country, and that’s apparently exactly what had brought Wade Jeffries’s family here however long ago, because they were approaching a house that was on a small hill, smack dab in the middle of an orchard of peach trees.
The house was a newer looking one-story building. There was a bright coat of navy-blue paint on the house, and it looked like the back yard was still in the middle of being landscaped. A small earthmover sat idle in the back yard, and a pile of bricks near the rear door of the house were stacked near a new brick patio that was half-finished.
“Nice place,” Luke said. It was the first thing either of them had said in over forty-five minutes.
“This is the house Jeffries grew up in?” Wolf asked.
“Yep. The file says he was born in town, raised right here. Father was killed in some sort of agricultural accident eleven years ago. And Jeffries went into the army shortly thereafter.”
“Is this their orchard?” Wolf asked.
“Yeah, it is.”
“And who took care of the family business when he was off disarming bombs in the Middle East?”
“Good question,” Luke said. “I guess it had to have been his sister and mother. Julie and Wanda Jeffries. Julie’s the sister.”
Wolf nodded and eyed the house as they drove up the final stretch of the dirt driveway. “It looks like the orchard is doing well. This house looks completely renovated, and then some.”
Luke nodded. “Yeah.”
They parked in the driveway next to a Nissan X-Terra that had a temporary plate taped in the rear window.
“New truck,” Wolf said as they got out.
The air was cool and shifty, and the breeze carried a few droplets of moisture from the shapeless clouds that blanketed the sky.
Wolf zipped up his hooded sweatshirt, wishing he’d pulled his jacket out of his SUV before they’d left the field-office parking lot.
The windows were covered with heavy drapes that hung still—no one peeking outside to see what uninvited guests just pulled into the driveway. The house was quiet, and so was the surrounding land, with nobody in sight in the orchard below.
The garage door was open to their right, revealing a riding lawnmower inside, and an old Toyota Land Cruiser taking up the bulk of the space.
Something caught Wolf’s attention, and he pulled up his sweatshirt and drew his gun.
“What?” Luke stepped next to him with her gun drawn, following his gaze into the garage.
“Look at that door.”
The door in the garage to the interior of the house was open a crack, and it looked to have been forced because the doorknob was hanging by a screw. Wolf looked closer and saw that the knob was mangled and had a hole through it. The door itself was splintered.
Wolf and Luke crouched and aimed their guns ahead as they entered the garage. Wolf aimed with his right hand, letting his now throbbing left arm hang limp by his side.
Luke stopped and backed herself against the rear of the Land Cruiser, and Wolf continued past her.
“Hey,” she hissed.
Wolf toed open the door and aimed his pistol inside. A dim hallway stretched for a few feet, ending at an equally dim kitchen, where a stainless-steel refrigerator sat humming on a tile floor.
Wolf waved his injured arm for Luke to follow him, ignoring the punch of pain in his bicep, and stalked inside. The smell was pungent, and it was unmistakable that they were going to see some kind of grisly death in the next few steps, probably to the right, judging by the blood-spatter pattern on the refrigerator and the brightening light in that direction, suggesting that the space opened up.
Wolf flipped a switch on the wall. The hallway lit up, and the spattering on the refrigerator brightened to a dark maroon. He stepped soundlessly, keeping his pistol aimed, and watched a puddle of dried blood come into view on the black-and-white tiled floor. And then he saw a head of gray hair, and the motionless body of a woman in a pink nightgown.
“Careful,” Luke whispered behind him.
Wolf was being careful, but knew they had most likely missed the window of danger. No one shot a woman in a kitchen, stuck around long enough for the smell to kick in, and hung around to really breathe it in and invite further trouble.
Luke darted into the next room gun-first, and Wolf followed behind her. There was only darkness for an instant, and then Luke clicked on a wall switch, bathing a family room in yellow light. She swept her gun across the space and then strode fast across thick carpet, her feet swishing with every step, to a narrow hallway beyond. Wolf followed right on her heels, gun at the ready.
Luke stopped at a T-junction in the hall and looked at Wolf. She pointed to the right and disappeared to the left.
Wolf took the right, and walked down the dark hall toward two closed doors. The one on the right had a faint sliver of natural light shining beneath it. The one on the left was pitch black.
He twisted the knob on the right and flung open the door, ready to fire. It was a small bedroom with a queen-sized bed, an open closet, and an open door to a bathroom.
He swept the room, checking the closet, under the bed, and the bathroom, then peeked out. The quick-moving shadow of Luke crossed into another room down the hall.
He reached for the next door and opened it. He couldn’t see a thing in the pitch-blackness, but a stench punched him in the nose, even worse than the smell they’d encountered in the kitchen.
“Oh,” Wolf said involuntarily, calming his gag reflex through sheer willpower.
Wolf raked the back of his hand across the wall inside the door, sliding it across sticky patches until he found the light switch. He flipped it on and saw an unmistakably dead person tied to a chair.
The first thing that Wolf noticed was the hair. The head was slumped forward, exposing the top of the person’s head. The hair was cut in a boyish style; matted with blood, with only a wisp of the true-color blonde showing through.
Wolf studied the rest of the corpse, and saw it was a woman in her twenties. Two exposed breasts, grayish-white with dark black nipples, protruded from underneath strands of blood-soaked rope. The rest of the body was naked, covered in downward streams of dried blood.
“Clear!” Luke said from somewhere behind him.
“In here!” Wolf responded.
Luke ran down the hall and flew into the room with gun raised.
“Jesus.” She stopped on a dime and turned around with a hand over her mouth. “Jesus.”
Wolf bent down and looked up at the face. It was heavily damaged and disfigured, the nose and jaw unnaturally bent.
“Julie Jeffries,” Wolf said. “Looks beaten to death.”
“No shit. Oh God.”
Wolf went to the window and pulled open the heavy drape. It squeaked open, letting in a few photons of natural light. The sound of rain pattered on the window in a steady rhythm. Wolf noticed blood on the glass underneath the drapes. It looked like someone had closed it up after the deed was done.
“Good God.” Luke studied the corpse. “What the hell?”
The room look
ed to have been used by the Jeffrieses as a home office. A desk stood against the north wall, and there were two file cabinets tucked in the corner. The woman was tied to a wooden swivel chair, and it was in the center of the room, directly underneath the overhead light on the ceiling.
Wolf walked around the rear of the corpse and studied the knots on her hands. They were crude. Double knots, tripled, then quadrupled on themselves.
“It looks like she was being interrogated,” Wolf said.
Luke nodded. “Yeah.”
Dollops of blood, mixed with skin and hair, had stuck to a wooden desk behind the corpse. A framed picture stood on the corner of the desktop. Underneath the blood-streaked glass was a picture of two teenaged children smiling on a much sunnier day in the past. The kids both had the same eyes and the same facial bone structure. Boy and girl, and the boy Wolf recognized as Wade Jeffries, minus the neck tattoo and burned ear.
“Why kill them?” Wolf asked aloud. “And who?”
“The other EOD guys?” Luke asked.
“But why? They’re all supposedly in hiding with Wade.”
“Shit.” Luke pulled out her phone and dialed a number.
Wolf watched her as she stared at the ceiling with impatience, her phone pressed to her ear.
“Hawes. This is Luke. I need you to go to 392 Dahlia Lane, in Glenwood. You know it?” She listened for a second. “Right. Just west of Main. I need you to check on the occupant of the house, and call me the second you confirm that the woman is okay. What? No, now. And call me the second you find out.”
She hung up and looked at Wolf.
“You think Bernadette Richter is next?” Wolf asked.
“Let’s hope not.”
Wolf’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out. It was a phone number he didn’t recognize. Probably Patterson, giving him that call he was waiting for. He forwarded it to voice mail. It was hardly the time.
