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Anyway, it was Jason’s own damned fault for insisting on coming when Sam had all but ordered him to stay home.
He found a boulder to sit on safely out of the way of the crime-scene team, while Sam spoke with Special Agent Dreyfus, deputies from the Routt County Sheriff’s Office, and the representative from the Forest Supervisor’s Office.
The ripple that went through the crime-scene investigators at the discovery of that card made Jason think of people who had just realized they were standing in a mine field.
Serial killer.
No one had said the word, but it was what everyone was thinking.
Everyone but Sam.
It took more than a gruesome crime scene and a single tarot card to excite Sam Kennedy.
It was immediately obvious why Charles Reynolds, SAC of the Cheyenne Resident Agency—busy himself chasing bank robbers on the other side of the county—had called on Sam to pinch-hit in this homicide on federal lands. With the exception of the BAU Chief, murder in the national forest was a new one for everyone present.
Something wet hit the tip of Jason’s nose. He stared up at the roiling mess of black and blacker clouds. It looked like Ruby was right about rain before nightfall.
He gazed out across the ancient rock formations. The ever-present wind moaned and whistled eerily around the phallic towers and tumbled piles of red boulders. Ten square miles of granite cliffs and slabs. There was a stark beauty to this landscape. A few scattered trees—winter-bare aspen and Rocky Mountain maples, spiky Ponderosa pine—but mostly it was just fierce rock and empty sky as far as the eye could see. It looked like a setting suitable for the works of Thomas Moran or Charles M. Russell. All that was missing were a few strategically positioned Native Americans in war bonnets.
Better to think in terms of art than what had first occurred to him: great place for a human sacrifice.
The crime-scene technicians were scrambling to gather evidence and do what they could to preserve the site before the sky opened up. Jason huddled down into his coat. That wind slithering around the dramatic rock formations and scrubby trees was sharp as a knife. His ankle was throbbing. He and Sam had already been on site for over two hours, and it did not look like they would be leaving anytime soon.
Across the clearing, the grim process of cutting Khan’s body down began. Dreyfus came over to join Jason.
“You okay?” he asked her. She looked very pale. Of course, they all looked pale in the cold and sinister light bouncing off the blood-hued rocks.
She nodded. After a minute or two, she said, “I can’t believe it didn’t even click that he was that Sam Kennedy until he started asking questions.”
“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Jason agreed.
He had answered absently and was surprised when she gave him a sideways glance and a shaky giggle. “You can say that again.” She sobered at once. “There’s a question of jurisdiction between the Laramie County Sheriff’s and the Routt County Sheriff’s Office.”
“Great.”
“He basically told them to get their shit together or get off his crime scene.”
“Jesus.” Really, Sam? Jason rubbed his bearded jaw to cover what would have been an inappropriate laugh.
“I mean, we can’t do that, right?” Dreyfus sounded uncertain. “Yes, it’s federal land, but we can’t—shouldn’t—”
“No, we can’t,” Jason said. “But he has his own way of doing things.” Do not attempt this at home! “They do need to get their shit together. This kind of interterritorial pissing match is how cases end up falling through the cracks.”
She nodded as though she ran into interterritorial jousting matches all the time—and maybe she did.
“The coroner won’t commit before the autopsy, of course, but she thinks Khan died of strangulation.” Dreyfus swallowed. “She thinks he was garroted.”
Jason nodded silently.
“We don’t have to inform Mrs. Khan—”
r /> “No. That will be someone from one of these two sheriff departments.” He didn’t blame her for not wanting to be part of that. No one enjoyed death duties.
They were silent, watching as the dead man was lowered to a tarp and prepared for transportation. Given the rigidity of the body—barring that ghastly dangling head—Jason surmised death had occurred anywhere from eighteen to twenty-four hours earlier. Sometime late Sunday afternoon or evening.
Dreyfus put a hand to her face. “It’s raining.”
Yes. It was. Temperature and environment might affect the postmortem changes—and sure as hell would make the trip back to the car all the more fun. He probably should have listened to Sam and waited back at Wild Horse Creek, but instinct—or maybe just impulse—had driven him to ride shotgun. It was hard to see how this homicide tied in with his own case—er, Dreyfus’ case—but it obviously did. The coincidence was just too great.
