Her Grave Secrets (Rogue River Novella Book 3) (8 page)

“Before we get the adult events started, we’re gonna give the kids a chance to have some fun. You all ready to see some greased pigs?”
Cheers sounded, and Stevie noticed the growing crowd of small kids below the announcer’s stand. She spotted James’s five-year-old son in the group, pointing at the nearby pen of pigs. He seemed too young to be in the crowd, but country kids knew their way around farm animals from a very young age.

“I’m sure people will start calling you again for bids,” Zane said to Alex, his attention split between the drunk man and the squealing pigs. “Things have been slow. I doubt there’s much work right now.”

“No, there’s always work for what I do. That O’Rourke bitch has blacklisted me in this town, and I don’t know why. My work is good, and I didn’t sleep with her daughter like everyone else has.”

Zane bit his cheek, and Stevie raised a brow at him. “Me neither,” he told her.

“I might have to move,” Alex continued sullenly. “Maybe out to the valley or up to Portland. Don’t want to move.” He leaned heavily on the fence.

“Open the gate!”

Shiny pigs rushed the arena and the kids swarmed, diving onto the backs of the slick animals and sliding off into the dirt. Stevie kept an eye on her nephew as excitement lit up his face. He lunged for a pig, did a face-plant in the dirt, and was up on his feet tearing after another before Stevie could catch her breath.

“Boss, we’ve got a situation.”

Stevie and Zane turned. Carter stood behind them, his face pale and his hand resting on the weapon holstered at his hip.

“What happened?” Stevie asked, adrenaline boosting her heart rate.

Carter glanced at Alex, who was blatantly listening. “Let’s go somewhere else.” He shifted his weight from one boot to the other. His eyes wide, he constantly scanned their surroundings, nervous energy burning out of his pores. Stevie and Zane exchanged a look.

“Let’s go,” said Zane. “Have a good evening,” he said to Alex. “Stay away from any more beer, okay?”

Alex snorted at him and turned his attention back to the arena and pigs.

They walked with Carter for twenty feet until he stopped, turned to them, and whispered with a cracking voice, “We’ve got a murder. JD Hearne’s been shot. Two bullets in the back of the skull.”

JD’s death was fresh. The blood on the ground hadn’t fully dried.

The body was on its chest in the dirt, its face turned to the side, giving Zane a view of the bloody back of the head. The hair was long and Zane recognized the clothes he’d seen JD wearing at the Dairy Queen earlier that day.

Christ. We just saw him.

Guilt rocked through him for his earlier judgment of the young man.

Zane pressed his lips together and glanced at Stevie, who viewed JD’s body with a blank expression. She’d asked Carter on the way over if JD’s brother Eric had been contacted, and Carter said that the Rogue County sheriff had sent someone to notify him in person. Zane wondered if she’d wanted to do it. She and Eric had a history; maybe she felt she should be the one to break the news of his brother’s death. But she’d kept silent. Leaving Zane to wonder way too much about their previous relationship.

JD Hearne had been found on the edge of the rest area between Solitude and the coast. To call it a rest area was a stretch. There wasn’t any free coffee or bathrooms or semi parking. It was a wide graveled area on the side of the two-lane highway, with a spigot that was labeled “fresh water for drinking” and a metal garbage can overflowing with garbage. Zane noted that the only vehicles present were from the Rogue County Sheriff’s Office. The body had been found by two teens who’d stopped for a bathroom break . . . even though there were no bathrooms. Zane stepped carefully through the woods as he followed Carter and Stevie to the scene. Because it wasn’t an official rest stop, people simply stepped out of view of the passing traffic to relieve themselves.

The teens had nearly tripped over the body in a small clearing fifty feet from the road. The rest area was far outside Solitude’s city limits, falling under Rogue County’s jurisdiction. Rogue County had set up lighting for the scene and had a small team of investigators crawling through the brush and photographing the corpse. Seth was already at the scene and greeted the three Solitude cops as they arrived.

“You think this is part of the recent drug deaths?” Zane asked Seth.

“Definitely. We found a piece of C-22 between here and the road. You’ve seen it before, right? Little red strip of tissue paper soaked with the chemical in a plastic sleeve. Someone must have dropped it.”

“Maybe it was left by someone at a different time,” Stevie said. “We don’t know how long it was there.”

“True,” Seth agreed. But it wasn’t mashed into the dirt; it was on the leaf of a bush and fell off as one of our team walked by. I think it was recently dropped.”

Stevie nodded, and Zane wondered if she was searching for a way to soften the blow for JD’s brother. Or was she just being a good cop and not accepting everything at face value?

“Did you already tow his vehicle?” Zane asked.

“There wasn’t one,” said Seth grimly. “I doubt he came on foot. And he definitely wasn’t alone; he’s been executed. The prints in the dirt indicate he was on his knees and shot in the head. Someone was not happy with him at all. After the autopsy we’ll see if he had bacon in his system. He could have been dealing or using. I don’t know yet.”

Stevie opened her mouth and closed it.

“Shells?” Zane asked.

“No. Picked up,” Seth replied. “We’ve got some pretty good footprints. You can see where the shooter planted his feet when he shot JD from the back. If we find a suspect, we’ll try to match the shoes. The database for matching shoe prints to manufacturers is fantastic. We’ll pour some molds of the imprints, and in a few days we’ll know exactly what our guy was wearing, but to my eyes they look like some heavy work boots, definitely not a tennis shoe.”

“Anything else left behind?” asked Stevie.

“There’s so much trash back here, we’re not sure what belongs to our scene.” Seth gestured to the area. “Don’t know why people can’t use the garbage can. There’s only two reasons to walk back here: to take a piss or do something illegal.”

“There’s one other thing they do back here,” said Stevie, pointing at a used condom in the dirt.

Zane groaned, but gestured at one of the forensics team to snag it for evidence.

The three of them turned as voices sounded from the direction of the road, and the brush vibrated as people approached. Eric Hearne appeared with two Rogue County officers. “JD?” he asked in a shaky voice, looking at Stevie.

She stepped in front of him and put a gentle hand on his chest, stopping him from moving any closer to the body twenty feet behind her. “Yes, it’s JD. Don’t get any closer until they finish collecting evidence, okay?”

Eric looked over her shoulder. “Oh, God.” His shoulders shook. “He was shot? Who did this?” His voice rose and cracked. “Have you figured out who did it? I was just with him a few hours ago!”

Stevie stepped closer, putting a hand on his face and guiding his gaze to hers. “We don’t know yet, Eric. We’ll find the person who did it. Very soon, I promise. Is there anyone you can think of who was angry with your brother?”

He ran a hand through his hair and looked past Stevie again. “I don’t know. I didn’t hang out with JD very much . . . maybe about once a week. He did some odd jobs at the resort, and I know he was job hunting at the coast and talking of moving over there, but I don’t think he had any leads.” He looked at Stevie with wet eyes. “Oh, God,” he repeated. “Why? I don’t understand!” He covered his eyes, and Stevie pulled him into an embrace.

Zane looked away.

Seth caught his eye and lifted one shoulder.
What can you do?

Zane wasn’t going to be an ass and tell Eric to keep his distance or insist Stevie shut down her caring side. He could deal with it.

“What kind of vehicle does JD drive?” Zane asked Eric. “No vehicle was left here.”

Eric raised his head, wiping at his eyes. “Ford Ranger. An older one. And I can get you a key to get into his apartment if you need to go through it. Obviously someone drove him out here . . . or else they took his truck.”

“Makes sense,” agreed Zane. “Now we’ll figure out who.”

Stevie watched Eric leave with the officers, his shoulders in a deep slump. Her heart broke for him. He hadn’t been particularly close to his younger brother, but they were the only siblings in the family. Realizing she hadn’t seen Bruce in nearly a week, she made a mental note to have coffee with her younger brother.
You never know when you’ll lose someone.

She wasn’t going to repeat the mistake she’d made with her father.

Zane put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”

She gave him a weak smile. “Just thinking I need to see Bruce.”

“He’s not involved with JD, is he? They’re about the same age.”

Stevie blanched. “Lord, no. As far as I know they don’t run with the same crowd. I simply realized I hadn’t talked to him for a while. Seeing a family get shattered like this makes me want to pull mine close.”

Zane nodded and looked back toward the body and investigators. “I can understand that.”

“Do you see why I wanted you to reach out to your father?” she whispered. It was an inappropriate time to ask, but she couldn’t hold back the question.

He met her gaze. “I do. And I see why you feel the way you do. Does it help that I’m thinking about it now? I could go for weeks without a single thought about my father, but now he’s crossed my mind several times a day since you said something.”

Her heart warmed. “That’s the first step. No pressure.”

“The barbecue is tomorrow,” he pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. There’s no deadline for you to meet. And my mother will happily throw a barbecue whenever he comes to town. It might be better with just family instead of half the town.”

“I don’t know what’s going on in this town,” Zane said quietly, watching the investigators with JD’s body. “It seems like everything has gone to hell since I took over. What happened to our peaceful Solitude?”

“It started before you took over. Ever since my father died the balance has been out of whack, and we’re scrambling to bring everything back into line,” Stevie said slowly, thinking of the deaths. “The whole town is struggling. There’s the heat, the murders, and the drugs.”

“I think it all started with the drugs,” said Zane. “Someone plunged a poison into Solitude, and people are being killed by it. How many more have to die before we get it under control?”

“Hopefully none,” said Stevie.

“Damn right,” said Seth, joining their conversation. “I’m glad you were here when Eric got here, Stevie.”

“Me too,” she said.

“We need to find the manufacturer,” said Zane.

“I’m not stopping until we do,” answered Seth. “I just had a call about an arrest we made at the coast a few hours ago. He’s admitted to dealing, and I’m planning to talk to him in the morning. You want to be there?”

Zane looked at Stevie.

“We’ll both be there,” she answered.

Stevie sipped her cup of Starbucks, surprised by the burnt taste of the coffee. She’d drunk it daily while she lived in LA, but in Solitude the only coffee to go was at the deli or Dairy Queen, neither of which she found worth her money. She brewed her own with Starbucks beans from the grocery store, but apparently the fresh stuff in the shop was stronger. “Have I become a coffee wimp?” she muttered into her cup.

Zane smiled. “That’s why I went for the light roast. When you don’t drink it every day, it slaps you in the face.”

“It’s a pleasurable slap. Smells so freaking good. I wish Solitude was big enough to support a good coffee place like this city does.”

They’d driven into Hannon, the Rogue County seat, to meet Seth’s drug arrest from the night before. Stevie had barely left Solitude for the past two months. A mental jolt at the sight of the multiple traffic lights and tons of cars made her wonder what else she’d not missed since leaving LA.
Pollution, crowds, McMansions, overpriced fashion.

Now she listened and watched via camera as Seth interviewed the arrestee in the Rogue County Sheriff’s Office. Ronnie Sinclair looked like any other unemployed twenty-year-old from Southern Oregon. Ball cap over greasy hair, ratty shorts, and tennis shoes. This was the summer wardrobe. During the winter the shorts were exchanged for jeans. He slouched in the chair as Seth talked with him.

“What made him admit to dealing?” Zane asked. “Isn’t that the first lesson dealers are taught? Never admit? The punishment is much steeper for dealing versus personal use.”

“I don’t know,” said Stevie. “Maybe they offered him some sort of deal? They’re starting to get desperate to find the source. Seth said he turned down a lawyer. I don’t know why he did that either.”

“We may be giving him too much credit,” said Zane. “He doesn’t appear to be the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Stevie agreed. So far the interview had been a bunch of cussing and name-calling on Ronnie’s part. But he wasn’t mad at the cops. He was mad at another dealer and wanted him to pay. He kept asking Seth if he could take a smoke break, but Seth put him off, causing the young man to squirm more and more in his seat.