“Well, I wanted to be a cop—that’s all I ever wanted to be, besides a wife and mother—and do right by the people I was hired to serve and protect. So I came on home to the Creek, and here I mean to stay.”
“You were a SEAL, Melba. A woman. Isn’t being a deputy sheriff kind of anticlimactic after that?”
Melba had laughed her smoky, torch singer’s laugh. “Anticlimactic?” she’d mocked. “Isn’t it just like a man to think of everything in terms of climaxes?” She’d paused then to enjoy her own joke for a while. “I have two growing girls to care for, Eli. And getting that right is challenge enough for me.”
“Over here,” Melba said, snapping Eli back to the present moment and the lonely expanse of hard ground behind the motel.
He followed her lead, though it was unnecessary because a gang of forensics people crowded around the body.
The victim was—had been—a young woman, probably in her early twenties. She wasn’t wearing a coat, but her outfit—jeans, a long-sleeved blue T-shirt and a pair of knockoff Uggs—was intact.
A small, tidy bullet hole told the tale: she’d been shot in the throat. Her dyed blond hair spilled around her face, congealed blood nearly obliterating the color.
Eli’s stomach rolled, and he swallowed hard.
Looking at this girl, a stranger, he felt sick, not just with revulsion, but with sorrow. Sorrow for all she’d miss out on, dead at such a young age, and beneath that dark emotion lay an even darker one—a cold, quiet rage.
“We’re catching this case,” Melba informed Eli briskly. “Outside the city limits and all that. The Staters are just sharing their resources.”
Eli knew all that without being told, but he didn’t point that out. Melba was thorough, and she liked to make sure all the boxes were checked.
He stepped closer to the body and crouched, careful not to touch anything. The coroner and the state’s people were finishing up, moving away.
He studied her.
She looked vaguely familiar, somehow, and yet he couldn’t place her.
“Any ID?” he asked Melba.
“Nope,” Melba replied.
“Who found her? When?”
“Cord Hollister,” came the answer. “He and Russ Schafer came out here early this morning. Said they were thinking this thaw might hold long enough for them to get the bulldozers in. Clear some space. Maybe even dig a few foundations. They were walking around and Russ literally stumbled across this poor girl.”
Eli stood, shut his eyes for a moment, imagining the shock of that discovery. Russ, the son of two alcoholics, and Shallie Hollister’s foster brother, had been working hard over the last several months to get his act together.
Russ had never been a criminal, really, just a very depressed asshole with awkward social skills. A loner by choice.
As a kid, he’d been a bully—Eli had had a run-in or two with the guy himself—but these days, he was a decent enough dude. Or so it seemed.
Russ appeared to be trying, anyway, partnering with Cord, refurbishing that old motel, striving to make something of his life, which was a hell of a lot more than Eli could have said for, say, Freddie Lansing, or that worthless father of his.
“Anybody have a guess who she was?”
“Talk to Russ,” Melba said, a little sadly.
“Oh, believe me,” Eli replied. “I will.”
Melba caught his arm as he moved away. “Eli?”
“What?”
“Don’t jump to any conclusions, okay? Yeah, Russ found the body, and that makes him a person of interest, but he was out here with Cord. A community leader, known for his integrity, and one of your best friends.”
Eli didn’t answer, though he acknowledged Melba’s words with a crisp nod. He figured she was thinking Russ wouldn’t have brought such a credible witness as Cord along if he’d killed the girl and then staged a discovery.
His reasoning varied slightly from that of his sharp deputy. Murder a girl, pretend to find her, bring along a man everyone in the county, if not the whole state, knew and respected. Be shocked and horrified.
Russ was standing near Cord’s truck, and Cord was beside him, one hand resting on the man’s broad shoulder. After years of obesity, Russ had begun working out, eating right. He was no Adonis, but he wasn’t overweight anymore, either.
Just solid.
“Who’s the girl?” Eli asked, without preamble, when he reached Russ and Cord.
Cord looked irritated, but he didn’t speak.
“She—I don’t know for sure—” Russ stumbled. His eyes were red and his nose was running, and he wiped it unceremoniously on the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “She looks a lot like—like my sister, Bethanne.”
Bethanne Schafer, Eli knew, had run away from home years ago. As far as he knew, no one had seen or heard from her since.
“A relative?” Eli pressed, though not so abruptly this time.
“Bethanne’s daughter, maybe,” Russ said, snuffling again. Looking understandably miserable. “Kinda reminds me of when Carly showed up, looking so much like Reba—”
“We’re going to need a cheek swab, Russ,” Eli said. “Stop by the coroner’s office as soon as you can manage it.”
Russ merely nodded. “Can I go home now?” He watched as the paramedics loaded the body into the back of the ambulance, zipped into a bag. “I feel sick.”
“Yeah,” Eli replied. “You can go home.”
Russ ambled off toward the motel.
Eli and Cord stood in silence for a long time, watching each other.
“Sometimes you really piss me off,” Cord said, at long last.
Eli grinned, but it was reflexive, entirely lacking humor. “Is that supposed to be news? I’ve pissed you off plenty of times, and I’ll do it plenty of times in the future.” He stopped. Sighed. “I’m just doing my job, Cord. You know that. Russ found the body, and there might be a family connection. That means I have to check him out.”
Cord looked mildly chagrined. “I know. But I was here, Eli. I saw Russ’s reaction. He screamed like a little girl, and then he threw up in the bushes.”
“Where were you at the time?”
Cord put a hand to his chest in mock cooperation. “When Russ barfed? Or when he found the body?” He didn’t wait for an answer, and he remained in smart-ass mode. “Well, Sheriff, I was on the other side of the lot, making sure I had my story straight. Hiding evidence. When I’m not training horses, loving my smart, beautiful wife or grounding my impetuous daughter for sneaking out to meet your nephew in the middle of the night, I like to plan my next murder.”