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Every time she moved in her desk chair, her rump ached and she was reminded of Santana and how animal their union had been. Their lovemaking had always been that way—playful and utterly primal. And yet, before, during, or even after, she hadn’t uttered a word about the pregnancy.
With an effort, she focused on the autopsy of a man in his late forties, who may or may not have been the victim of a homicide. Derrick “Deeter” Clemson had died of wounds he’d received after a fall off a cliff. The question was whether he’d made a mistake and his death was accidental, if he’d leaped intentionally down nearly one hundred feet of timberland, or if he’d been helped in the fall by his bride of six months. The autopsy report didn’t give any clear answers, and she was slightly distracted by the noise filtering through her doorway, that of Blackwater on the telephone in Grayson’s office.
She hadn’t shut her door yet and could hear Blackwater. Undoubtedly at his desk down the hall, he was having a one-sided phone conversation with someone it sounded like he was trying to impress. Either someone higher in the department or a reporter, she guessed. Maybe even that cockroach Manny Douglas, of the Mountain Reporter or, worse yet, Nia Del Ray from KMJC in Missoula.
Blackwater was making noises as if he were about to hang up, so she rolled her desk chair to close her door. She didn’t need him poking his head in again and giving her another gung ho speech.
Her hand had just come off the knob when the door was flung open and Selena Alvarez burst in, her expression grim, her jaw set. “Let’s roll,” she said without preamble. “Looks like we’ve got a DB at the O’Halleran ranch.”
“Dead body?” Pescoli rolled her chair back to her desk, got to her feet, and reached for her jacket and sidearm. “Who?”
?
??Jane Doe.”
“What happened?” Sliding her arms through her jacket’s sleeves, she was on Alvarez’s heels as they walked crisply down the hall toward the doors leading to the parking lot. Blackwater, whose door was ajar, looked up as they passed, but was already punching out numbers on his phone for his next call.
“No one knows. Trace O’Halleran and his kid were checking the fence line and found her dead in a deep spot of the creek that runs through their property.”
“What is it with that place?” Pescoli asked, digging in her jacket pocket for her keys. “Don’t those people ever get a break?” She was thinking of the last shootout that had occurred on the ranch where O’Halleran and the local GP in town, Kacey Lambert, had been targets of one of the many madmen who seemed to have discovered their part of Montana. Once a sleepy little town set in the Bitterroots, Grizzly Falls seemed to attract psychos like magnets.
“I guess lightning really does strike twice,” Alvarez said as they walked through the back door.
A gust of wind hit Pescoli full in the face. Ducking her head against the weather, she touched the remote for her keyless lock and her Jeep beeped from the spot in the parking lot where she’d parked it not an hour earlier. By the time Pescoli had settled behind the steering wheel, Alvarez was buckled in and already on the phone, talking to the deputy who’d first taken the call and was on the scene. Pescoli fired the engine, snapped on the heater and backed out of the parking spot as the police band crackled. She hit the wipers and lights, then nosed her Jeep into the sludge of traffic that seemed crippled by the storm.
Lights flashing, she eased around slower vehicles, then pushed the speed limit. She was used to the storms and worsening driving conditions in winter and had little patience for those who weren’t.
As a van from a local church pulled over to let her pass, she hit the gas and sped through the outskirts of town, her Jeep whipping along a road that skimmed the edge of Boxer Bluff, which offered a view of the Grizzly River and the falls for which the town had been named.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Alvarez click off her phone, letting the edge rest against her chin for a second as if she were lost in thought. “Anything?”
“A crime scene unit is on the way, might beat us there. O’Halleran’s kid Eli was out riding the fence line with his father, as I said. They weren’t side by side and the boy saw the victim first. His horse spooked or something and he took off. O’Halleran was riding to the spot where the commotion occurred, spied the woman, and pulled her from the stream, tried to revive her, but she was dead, the body nearly frozen.”
“ID?”
“None. But she was dressed. Only mark on her is a missing ring finger. Left hand.”
“What? Missing? You mean, like a birth defect? Or?”
“Severed. Recently.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like she was just out walking, fell and hit her head, and drowned.”
Pescoli glared through the windshield where her wipers were doing battle with snow that had been falling for hours. “I’m amazed O’Halleran and his kid were out in this.”
“Ranchers. Just about as crazy as cops, I guess.”
Pescoli harrumphed. “They can’t let the weather beat them, either.” She turned onto the county road that cut through snowy fields where drifts piled against the fences and icicles hung from the few mailboxes that guarded long lanes leading to farmhouses surrounded by barns and outbuildings.
The O’Halleran place was no different. The big, square two-story farmhouse set upon a small rise far off the road was barely visible through the falling snow. A county-issued Jeep with its lights flashing was parked near the garage.
As Pescoli slowed at the end of the drive, they were met by a deputy for the department. Pete Watershed was tall and good-looking, something he’d never quite forgotten. She didn’t like him much. That whole lady-killer attitude rankled her, and his jokes, sometimes with a misogynist twist or teetering on bigotry, put her off. Not that she was a prude, but she could do without the slightly sexual remarks. Watershed tended to push it. If he weren’t a good cop, dedicated and all business when on duty, she would have been in his face more than she already was.
“What have we got?” she asked, the wind rushing in when she rolled down the window.
“DB found in the creek out back,” he said, pointing to the area behind the house. “You can drive down there. Just follow the tracks. I’ll come with.” Leaving his partner in the other vehicle, he climbed into the back seat and pointed out the makeshift road. “This is the lane O’Halleran uses for his tractor and hay baler and other equipment,” Watershed explained.
