Chapter Four
The call came in the middle of the night—two days after Cat met Lindsey Martin and Dylan Walker.
She’d been in the middle of a dream where she was drowning and couldn’t seem to kick to the surface.
Fighting her way out of the twisted sheets, she sat up gasping for breath to find the phone ringing.
Her heart still pumping hard, she struggled to breathe.
As she put her hand on her stomach, she looked around the small upstairs apartment over the Fortune Creek Sheriff’s Office, trying to assure herself that she was safe—and so was her baby.
It had just been a bad dream.
Except that it had felt so real.
Snatching up her phone, the dream slipped back into her unconscious ether-land.
“Acting Sheriff Catherine Jameson,”
she said, her voice sounding as shaky as she felt.
Maybe the nightmare hadn’t gone completely away.
“There’s a body on the side of the road a mile out of town,”
a male voice told her.
“Looks like a young woman.
Thought you’d want to know.”
She took down the rancher’s name, the mile marker on the road where he’d pulled over, told him she’d be right there and called the coroner.
Twenty minutes later, dressed and armed, Cat stood on the side of the road.
Coroner JP Brown was already down in the ditch hunkered over the body.
He’d beaten her to the scene after her urgent call since he lived closer and probably dressed faster, Cat thought.
He was already taking photos when she arrived.
Since he seemed to know what he was doing, she let him continue.
She’d been trying not to step on anyone’s toes after taking the temporary job.
She’d been warned about JP Brown.
Helen wasn’t the only one who wanted Sheriff Brandt Parker back and Cat long gone.
It was as if she wore a sign around her neck: Just Out of the Academy.
Add Pregnant and it was no wonder some just assumed she wasn’t up to the job.
The worst part? It was true.
She was green, and this was her first baby and her first law enforcement job at the ripe old age of thirty-two.
Wasn’t that why she’d gotten this gig? Nothing ever happened in Fortune Creek, Montana, right? Even she should be able to handle filling in for the sheriff for a few months before she was to give birth.
The bite of the wind warned that the weather had changed.
In this part of Montana that could mean anything, even snow any month of the year.
But it was late fall so all bets were off when the first snow would hit.
Often once flakes did hit the ground, they remained until April, and sometimes May.
From where she stood, Cat could tell the body in the ditch was slim and female.
“Think she was hit by a vehicle?”
Cat asked, hugging herself against the cold.
The woman was curled up almost protectively, her back to the road, most of her head covered by the hoodie she wore.
Coroner JP Brown looked up from where he was crouched down by the body and shook his head.
“Shot.
Looks like a .38 to the heart.
Three times at close range.”
He yelled up to his van, telling a young assistant huddled in the passenger seat to get the body bag and cart ready.
“Mind if I take a look first?”
Cat said.
JP Brown was a large older man who’d grown up in Montana, collected guns and spent his free time killing things.
He fished year around, hunted during the seasons and did taxidermy in between being called out as coroner.
He’d been married a couple of times and then had stayed single saying he hadn’t found a woman who could put up with him.
That he had little patience with most people, law enforcement even less, was well known around the state.
That he especially had no patience with green acting sheriffs was the first thing Cat had been warned about.
Flashlight in hand, she stepped off the side of the road and dropped down into the steep ditch, sliding partway down to where the body had come to rest.
From the lack of blood in the grass as she slid, Cat guessed the woman hadn’t been killed here. “Dumped?”
JP didn’t bother to answer.
She moved carefully around the body.
“Why three shots to the heart?”
she asked and got only a grunt from the coroner.
Seemed like overkill to Cat, but apparently, he wasn’t interested in discussing it.
From what she could see in the beam of her flashlight, the woman was slim, wearing sweats, a hooded sweatshirt, no shoes.
The bottoms of her bare feet were clean.
She’d definitely been killed somewhere else and dropped here.
“Find an ID?”
she asked.
“Nope.”
“Why dump her so close to town and right beside the road?”
This was Montana.
There were miles and miles of places to hide a body where it might never be found.
“It almost seems as if the killer wanted her to be found.
Or wasn’t able to carry her far.”
No response.
Cat hunkered down to move the hoodie back.
A lock of long brunette hair fell across the woman’s cheek.
Cat felt a jolt of recognition.
“I know her.
She came into my office two days ago.”
She moved the flashlight down the woman’s body and felt suddenly sick to her stomach as she let out a gasp.
“Where’s her baby? She was very pregnant, looked as if she might give birth at any moment.”
Cat looked up at the coroner.
“Where’s the baby?”
“You’re sure there was a baby?” he asked.
Cat had already questioned that herself, especially since the woman hadn’t stuck around after making her accusation.
What if the whole thing had been a scam? “I’m not sure,”
she admitted.
“She certainly looked pregnant.
But she did claim that someone wanted to kill her and her baby and now she’s dead—and the baby’s missing.”
“If there was a baby,”
JP said.
“Better get her to the morgue and find out.”
Had it all been a ruse? But to what end? She almost hoped it was true because she couldn’t bear the thought that there was a baby out there missing or maybe dead.
The woman had definitely acted pregnant.
Cat had bought it—until the woman took off saying she’d changed her mind.
She couldn’t believe that she’d fallen for Lindsey Martin’s story—if that was even really her name—and that she’d made it all up.
Now Cat doubted everything the woman had told her.
Back in her office after a preliminary search of the highway near where the body was found, Cat opened the temporary file she’d started on the woman.
She put everything she’d learned into a computer file.
There wasn’t much to add so far.
She was waiting for a call from JP, needing to know whether or not the woman had been pregnant.
In the meantime, Cat went online to find there were dozens of Lindsey Martins, but none of them were the woman who’d come crying into the Fortune Creek Sheriff’s Office.
No social media.
Also, no record of a Lindsey Martin her age living in the Denver area.
Either that or she’d lived off the grid, no television, no internet, no electricity, no water, no sewage, no taxes, no driver’s license, no purchase of anything that left a paper trail.
How was that even possible? Because that Lindsey Martin had never existed.
The woman had lied about everything except, she reminded herself, someone wanting to kill her.
Once they had her prints, maybe they would find out who she was—let alone if she’d been pregnant.
And if true, who might have killed her.
She kept thinking about how frightened the woman had been that Dylan Walker was going to kill her and her baby.
So why hadn’t she stayed at the hotel so Cat could have tried to keep her safe? Where had she gone after she left Fortune Creek? Out to Walker’s ranch again?
Her phone rang.
“Acting Sheriff Catherine Jameson,”
she said quickly.
“She’d recently given birth,”
JP said without preamble.
So, there was a baby! “It was a live birth.”
Cat had been warned not to ask JP a lot of questions.
Not that it stopped her.
“How can you tell that?”
“She breastfed the baby before she was killed.”
“You can tell that?”
Cat felt physically ill at the thought of the missing baby.
She’d been hoping that the woman had been a scam artist, that there hadn’t been a baby.
Now she had a dead woman and a missing baby.
Had the killer taken it? Dumped the infant along the road miles before dumping the mother’s body? Was the baby even still alive?
Her hand went to her own baby bump as she rose quickly from her desk, phone still in hand.
“We need to organize a search party along the road and—”
“Already did it at first light,”
JP said.
“Covered all the miles from Eureka to Fortune Creek. No baby.”
“Thank you,”
Cat said, even though she wished he’d let her know about the search.
Clearly, he didn’t think she was capable of helping.
Admittedly, she felt she hadn’t handled things well so far.
The woman was dead, her baby missing.
But short of locking Lindsey Martin in a cell, she didn’t know how she could have protected her.
She’d thought she would be safe at the hotel across the street, but the woman had bolted on her.
“You’re sure her name was Lindsey Martin?” JP asked.
“That’s what she told me,”
Cat said, hating that the woman’s purse was missing.
There would have been a driver’s license in it.
“Wait,”
the coroner said.
“She showed you her identification when she came in to file a complaint, right?”
“No.”
Novice.
She could hear the coroner echoing her sentiments.
“She hesitated about filing a written complaint so I told her we could do it after I verified her story.
I talked to the man in question, planning to talk to her again but she’d taken off.”
He grunted.
She couldn’t argue that.
Why hadn’t she asked for identification? Because she tended to take people at face value.
“I do have the threatening note she said she received.
Her fingerprints will be on it.
I’m waiting to hear back from DCI’s crime lab.
They’ll be trying to get prints off the note.”
“I’ll take her prints and send them to you,” JP said.
After she disconnected, she thought that maybe Ash over at the hotel had asked for the woman’s ID.
She quickly called.
“Sorry, she paid cash.
When I told her I’d need a credit card for incidentals, she told me she had one in her other purse in her suitcase and would bring it down later.
Maybe that’s why she split because there wasn’t another purse—let alone a credit card in the name she’d given you.”
Yep, that was pretty much what Cat was thinking.
She thanked him and got off the call so she could start contacting hospitals, motels and hotels to see if a baby had been born there last night.
The hospital would have required more information from her than Cat had gotten.
She had no idea where Lindsey Martin had gone, let alone where she might have given birth.
Maybe she knew someone in the area and felt safer staying with them, although that hadn’t seemed the case.
Or she gave birth in the motel in Eureka where she’d been staying. That was the problem, Cat had no idea. But she had to do something to find that baby.
“I’m going to alert the newspapers and radio stations in the two closest towns, Eureka and Libby, as well as the radio and TV stations around the state about the missing baby,”
Cat told JP when he called.
“Every crackpot in the state will be calling you, but if that’s what you think is best.”
His tone made it clear he didn’t think it was best, but Cat was determined.
“The sooner we find the baby, the better.”
JP cleared his voice.
“If you’re going to do it, maybe you should let them know that the missing baby was a boy.”
“A boy?”
She didn’t ask how he knew, just assumed he did.
“Glad you agree with my plan,”
she said.
She waited, expecting him to tell her she’d better turn the whole case over to DCI.
“I guess I don’t have to tell you that this is my first murder.”
“Nope.
What was the story she told you, anyway?”
“Said the father of her baby threatened her and the baby.
I spoke with the alleged bio-father.
He swore he’d never heard of her and that he hadn’t gotten her pregnant—and could prove it if he had to.”
“Well, he has to now.
Get a warrant now.
Call Judge Nicholas Grand.”
“Thanks.”
She really was grateful, feeling that she probably was in over her head and suspecting Helen and JP knew it.
And yet neither had said she should call in help. Yet.
“What about the car she was driving?”
JP asked.
“Did you happen to get the license plate number?”
“No.”
Another rookie mistake.
The car was missing.
What if the baby was inside? “She told me she drove up from Denver.”
“Probably did drive.
Flying would be risky so far into her pregnancy,” JP said.
“I’ll see if there’s a car registered to her.”
Cat said.
“If her name really was Lindsey Martin.
Otherwise, I’ll check flights and car rental agencies.”
“Get some of the deputies out of Eureka and Libby to help,” he said.
“Also, might want to know that she was about three weeks overdue.
It’s a wonder she didn’t give birth in your office the day she came in to see you.
Maybe that’s why she left the Fortune Creek Hotel.”
“To get help from someone?”
He grunted in reply.
“Which means she didn’t get pregnant at the gala…”
she said more to herself than the coroner.
“Hopefully her prints will confirm who she is,”
JP said.
“Sending them to you now.”
Cat knew it wouldn’t help unless the woman’s prints were in the system.
She had her fingers crossed as she made the calls to the police chiefs in the two closest cities and got the word out about the missing baby.
She just hoped that one of her inquiries would give her the information she needed before she went to the judge for a warrant to search Dylan Walker’s ranch for any sign of the crime or the baby.
She wasn’t looking forward to questioning him again—if he was still on the ranch.
To her surprise, the prints she sent to the IFAIS data-base got a match at once.
They belonged to a woman named Athena Grant, an import-export manager who had worked for several large companies abroad.
After a quick check, Cat found that she was nowhere on social media—just like Dylan Walker.
She also had no home address or phone number listed in the Denver area.
When Cat dug a little deeper, she found that Athena had only returned to the states three months ago—about the time Dylan Walker moved to his ranch.
She called JP back with the news, asked him to send a photograph of Athena, then contacted the judge for a warrant.
Before walking out the door, she made copies of Athena Grant’s passport photo and those from JP of the deceased woman lying on his morgue table.
Then she called her friend Traver Lee, who she’d known since he roomed with her cousin in college.
He now worked for the tabloid.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that Athena’s death tied in somehow to the DC bombing and Dylan Walker and his dead wife.