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“That’s great, can you hold for one minute, Sheriff?” Jo muted the call and turned to ex-navy seal and one of the best crime scene investigators she’d ever known, Agent Ty Carter. “We have a case. Explosion, multiple victims, out of Louan. That’s north of Black Rock Falls, in a little place called Aspen Grove. What’s our ETA?”
“I refueled yesterday and she’s ready to go.” Ty ran his hand through his shaggy blond hair, dropped his cowboy boots to the floor, and smiled around a toothpick. “How long will it take for you to be ready? I’ll need time for a preflight check and packing our gear.” He gave her a slow smile and indicated to a Doberman with a coat like silk, ears pricked and waiting for orders. “The bomb squad is always ready.”
Exasperated by his casual approach to everything, Jo sighed and met his amused green gaze with as much tolerance as possible. “I have a bag packed. I can leave in ten minutes. I just need to call home and inform Clara I’ll be away for a couple of days. I’ll call Jaime after school.” She jotted down the info again and handed it to Bobby Kalo, the FBI’s computer whizz kid. “I want everything you can find on this man and if he lives at the property. If he rents it, I want to know the name of the tenant.”
“You got it.” Kalo went to work.
“Okay, we’re set.” Carter closed his computer. He stood and stretched his lean body before ambling over to a locker. “ETA eleven hundred hours.”
Jo unmuted the phone. “Thank you for holding, Sheriff.” She glanced at the clock. “We’ll be there by eleven.”
“Thank you kindly, ma’am. The ME wants to speak to you.” There was a rustling as the phone changed hands.
“Hi, Jo, it’s Shane.”
The image of Shane Wolfe, a six-three blond-haired man built like a Viking marauder, drifted into Jo’s mind. In his early forties, Shane worked as the ME for most of the local counties around Black Rock Falls, Montana. He was a good friend, who’d raised his three girls after nursing his late wife through her battle with cancer. Not only a great ME, Shane was also an IT specialist and spent most of his time assisting Sheriff Jenna Alton and Deputy Dave Kane with murder cases at his base in Black Rock Falls. “Hi Shane, what have we got?”
“I thought maybe a gas explosion but I’m not sure. It smells like C-4 and we need a bomb squad to clear the area before we remove the bodies. I don’t have time to wait for someone from Helena. I called out the fire chief from Black Rock Falls and he’s standing by to examine the area once it’s cleared for explosives.” Wolfe paused a beat. “It’s a homicide. I can see the remains of zip-ties on one of the victims. Can you handle the case?”
“That’s what we’re here for, our field office is available to all who need us.” Jo pushed to her feet and headed for her locker. “We’ll be there by eleven. Kalo is doing a background check on the property owner. We’re leaving now.”
“Okay, catch you later.” Wolfe disconnected.
After making a call to Clara, her daughter Jaime’s nanny, Jo picked up her duffle and headed out the door. She took the elevator to the roof and handed Carter her bag. He’d packed everything they needed in the chopper, including their crime scene kits, Kevlar vests, extra weapons, and a forty-pound bag of dog food. His dog, Zorro—their bomb squad—sat on a back seat in his harness. “Is that everything we need?”
“Yeah, I can refuel in Black Rock Falls.” Carter moved his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other and pulled down the rim of his Stetson. “We’ll be able to go by and see Jenna and Kane, maybe grab a meal when we’re done?”
Jo smiled. “That would be nice. Let’s hope we get this case wrapped up fast. I have no idea what experience the Louan sheriff has in arson cases. We might end up completing the entire investigation alone.” She slid on her sunglasses. “At least we’re coming into summer. I’m over freezing my butt off in the mountains.”
Three
Although the sobering fact of visiting another crime scene was ever constant in Jo’s mind, as Carter lifted the bird high into the air and they headed on their journey, her heart leapt at the sight of Montana’s wild and magnificent west. The mountains, standing proud against a clear blue sky, shimmered in the sunshine like a fortress. The vast and lush forests, pristine waterfalls and lakes mixed with the endless color palate and subtle textures of the lowlands. As they flew high above the towns and ranches spreading out across glorious vistas, she wondered how man had dared to taint this beauty with murder.
She glanced at Carter. He was in full professional mode and handled the chopper with skill. His appearance and happy-go-lucky manner fooled many people and lured criminals into a false sense of security. One thing she could say about Carter is he’d never be called one of the boys. He preferred to be alone, just a man with his dog. He’d sure fooled her but underneath his facade, was a complicated man who hid his emotions. Trained as a deadly force with abilities too many to comprehend, he had a way of looking at things from every angle at the same time. He drove her crazy sometimes, but she had to admit, she admired him.
“You okay?” Carter frowned at her. “Worried about leaving Jaime?”
Jo shook her head. “I’m fine, just admiring the view and Jaime is used to me being away on cases. Now she’s settled in to life in Snakeskin Gully, she is a happy little girl. It’s a great place to raise kids.”
“There’s no substitute to small-town values and close friendships that last a lifetime.” He turned his concentration back to flying the chopper. “The community sure helped me when I went off the grid.
” He chuckled. “They acted like they were leaving me alone, but the mailman would sound his horn until he saw me heading to the gate to collect my mail. I’d find care packages from the local church, my prescription filled by the pharmacy, food for Zorro. I was being left alone to recover but I was really never alone.”
This was the first time Carter had discussed the PTSD he’d suffered after leading a mission resulting in the death of three children. He’d chosen two years of isolation, unable to cope with the flashbacks. Jo understood the condition well, the triggers that plunged a person back into a recurring nightmare would always be lurking in their subconscious. She kept her gaze ahead. Confiding in her about his condition was a breakthrough. He’d grown to trust her. “Do you figure your handler arranged to make sure you had supplies?”
“The meds and dog food would have come from him for sure but the local minister often came by to visit.” Carter cleared his throat. “I was rude and intimidating back then but he kept on coming back. The man is a saint. He never gave me the ‘it’s God’s will,’ crap. We spoke about baseball mainly and he helped me turn my cabin into a home. He ended the chaos with simple logic and friendship. I owe him bigtime.” He lifted his chin scanning ahead. “I see flares, we’re close to the coordinates. We made it ahead of time.”
They set down in a field of wheatgrass surrounded by trees, the wind from the chopper giving the impression they were landing in a turbulent green sea. When the door slid open the smell of fire filled the air in a choking stench. All fires had their own signature. A housefire carried the smell of burning wood and textiles, the sharp toxic aftertaste of molten plastic fumes and worst of all, the stench of burning hair and flesh. Jo reached into her pocket for a mask as a blast of ash-filled air hit her face, her senses picking up the awful devastation awaiting them. Moments later, a sheriff’s cruiser sped out to meet them. Jo climbed from the chopper and shook the man’s hand and introduced Carter. “Nice to meet you. Walk us through the crime scene.”
“I’ll leave that to the ME. He’s pulled rank on us, ma’am. Keeping us right away outside the tape. He said he doesn’t want anyone tripping a wire. I hope you clear the area soon. The smell is getting so bad my deputies are getting sick to their stomachs.”
“Maybe it’s time to get real men to take their place.” Carter peered at the sheriff over his sunglasses. “How did Wolfe determine it was homicide if he didn’t examine the victims?”
“The explosion blew out the front of the house. The townsfolk said they seen an orange mushroom. There’s no gas here, so the firefighters turned off the power and doused the flames. They kept their distance in case it blew again. There wasn’t too much they could do. It was well ablaze when they arrived.” The sheriff helped load equipment and their bags into the trunk of his cruiser. “The ME used binoculars to view the scene and then told me to call you. He’s been on scene since we called him. He’ll be glad to see you.”
“We’ll need a list of witnesses and names of the people who called it in.” Carter frowned. “Who was first responder?”
“That would be me.” The sheriff tipped back his hat to look up at Carter. “I called the fire department and the ME and we’ve been on scene since.”
