Chapter 3 #2
I pulled my phone from the console, seeing nothing on the screen. He’d been doing paperwork today, not out on patrol, so where was he going? Something had happened. Why hadn’t anyone called me?
Instead of taking the left that would lead me to the station, I turned right, following Allen down Main. When he hit the edge of town, he punched the gas and shot down the road.
My heart hammered as I hurried to keep pace, driving with one hand while dialing into the station with the other.
“Quincy Police Department,” Officer Smith answered.
“Hi, it’s Winslow.”
He grunted.
“I’m following Allen out of town. Can you tell me where he’s going?”
“There was a call from out of town. Emergency in the mountains.”
“Okay.” I waited for more of an explanation. He didn’t give me one. “What emergency?”
“Someone found a body at the base of Indigo Ridge.”
I gasped. “W-what? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Slipped my mind.”
Asshole. “Officer Smith, you and I will be having a conversation when I return to the station.”
With that, I ended the call, tossing my phone aside so I could concentrate on catching Allen.
His brake lights glowed as he slowed for a turnoff. There was no road sign or marker, but I followed his trail of dust down the gravel road, the mountains growing closer with every minute. One cliff stood out from the rest, its vertical face daunting as it towered above the trees and meadows below.
Three trucks were clustered together in the grass ahead, parked on the other side of the fence. Allen slowed when he approached, easing the cruiser toward the ditch.
I parked behind him, snagging my phone and shoving it in a pocket. Then I rifled through my purse for a small notepad and pen before climbing out.
“Chief.” Allen stood on the side of the road, waiting for me to join him.
“What’s going on?” Officer Smith’s short explanation had been lacking at best.
“One of the ranch hands for the Edens stumbled across a body this morning.”
“This is the Eden ranch?”
It was a stupid question. When I followed Allen’s gaze to the men standing beside the trucks, I spotted Griffin instantly.
His legs were planted wide as he stood beside that familiar black truck. His hands were fisted at his hips. The words go away might as well have been etched on the brim of his faded black hat.
I steeled my spine. “Lead the way, Allen.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He set off through the tall grass, walking to the four-row barbed-wire fence past the ditch. With one hand pulling up the second wire and a booted foot pressing down the third, he opened a gap for me to duck and slide through.
I took his place, holding the wires for him, then it was my turn to lead, walking toward Griffin.
“Winslow.” His voice was flat. Unreadable.
“Griffin.” My voice sounded much the same. I had a job to do. “Can you show us the body?”
He nodded for us to follow him past the line of trucks.
A younger man was sitting against the tire of the last pickup in the row. Beside him crouched another man, older, with a handlebar mustache and a tan cowboy hat.
The kid on the ground looked pale. Tear tracks stained his cheeks. He must have been the one to find the body. I’d seen enough faces like his to know who was the first on the scene.
“Conor found the girl,” Griffin said, keeping his voice low as we walked toward the corner of the fence. Beyond it, rocks clustered at the base of the cliff.
“I’ll have to question him later.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “He works for us. I sent him out here to fix fence.”
“What time was that?”
“Around ten. We worked in the barn first thing this morning for a couple of hours.”
“Did he touch the body?”
“Probably.” He sighed, then led the way over the fence.
The posts were wooden here, the wires too tight to stretch, so I planted a boot on the bottom brace and swung my legs over. Then I set off toward the cliff, walking slowly to take it all in.
A trail of broken grass had been made, probably from Conor and Griffin. Otherwise, the area seemed untouched.
Griffin and Allen stayed close behind as I set the pace to the rocks, moving as methodically up their steep face as I had through the flat meadow. We climbed until I reached a landing spot.
And a broken body.
I flipped off the switch in my mind that panicked at the blood. I shut down the emotions that came with a gruesome death. I swallowed hard—I did my job—and surveyed the scene.
The body was of a young woman, facedown. A few errant strands of blond hair blew in the breeze. Death blackened the area beneath her smashed skin and bones.
Most of the blood had dried and hardened in sticky pools and trickles from where it had flowed. She wore a white dress, the skirt mostly unharmed where it brushed her ankles. The bodice would never be clean again.
Her arms were splayed to the sides. One leg was bent at an unnatural angle. Only a few patches of smooth, graying skin remained on her calves. Otherwise, bone protruded from the surface of her limbs.
“Another one,” Allen whispered.
I looked over my shoulder. “Another what?”
He pointed to the ridge above us.
There was a trail cut into the rock about halfway between us and the cliff’s pinnacle. I hadn’t noticed it on the drive. The path disappeared around a bend, probably where it descended down the hillside, but the end was directly above us.
Had this girl been pushed? Had she jumped?
“What am I looking at, Allen?”
“Suicide,” he explained.
Damn. “Why do you say that?”
Allen and Griffin shared a look.
“What? What am I missing?”
“You’re new here.” Griffin spoke the word new with such scorn it was like he’d taken those three letters and thrown them in my face. “This isn’t the first body found at the base of Indigo Ridge.”
“How many others have there been before?”
“Two.”
Two. This made three. Holy. Shit. What the hell was going on? What had I just walked into?
“We’ve had a string of suicides in the past ten years.”
I blinked. “A string of suicides.”
“Seven total.”
“Seven?” My jaw nearly dropped. “That’s almost one a year.”
Allen’s shoulders slumped. “It’s been like this domino effect. One kid does it. Another decides to do it too.”
I pointed to the ridge. “And this is where they come?”
“Not always,” Griffin said.
I took in the girl’s bare feet. The smocked sundress. Had she been in shorts or jeans, I might have thought this had been a hiking accident.
“Do we know who this is?” I asked.
“Lily Green,” Griffin answered. “Conor thought so, at least. They are about the same age. I think they were friends.”
There was nothing left of the girl’s face. So how had Conor recognized her? Maybe from the blue butterfly tattoo on her wrist.
“Allen, are you good to take photos of the scene?”
“Yes. I was, um . . . I was here for the last one.”
The last one. My stomach rolled. “All right. I’ll call the station and get the medical examiner out here so we can get the body moved. The sooner we can identify her, the sooner we can notify next of kin.”
“You got it, Chief.”
“I’ll need to talk to your employee now,” I told Griffin.
He answered by retreating down the rocks.
My head was spinning as I followed.
Seven suicides in ten years. That was crazy. That was too many. Suicide rates were higher in rural areas than cities, but seven suicides in ten years . . . that was too many.
I knew it happened with young kids. And Allen was right, sometimes it could become this domino effect. We’d had the same thing happen at the high school in Bozeman for a few years. Three kids had attempted suicide, two had died.
The principal and teachers had jumped all over it after the second death, making sure they were watching the kids more closely and providing outlets for other students to report friends who might be at risk.
Seven suicides.
In this tiny community.
How had I not known about this? Why hadn’t Pops told me? Why hadn’t this been brought up during my interviews? I’d asked plenty of questions about past criminal cases. Though maybe they hadn’t considered these crimes. Had these at least been documented?
The questions rolled through my mind as I followed Griffin to the fence and climbed over. Then I put them all away when we joined the other two men at the trucks.
“Conor, this is Winslow Covington.” Griffin crouched beside the young man. “She’s the new chief of police and she’s going to ask you some questions.”
The kid looked up from his spot on the ground, his face etched in sheer heartache and terror.
I bent so he wouldn’t have to stand. “Hi, Conor.”
“Ma’am.” He sniffled and dragged a forearm across his nose.
“Mind if I ask you some questions?”
He shook his head.
The man with the mustache clapped Conor on the shoulder, then stood and walked to the truck’s tailgate, giving us some space.
Griffin stood, but his feet didn’t move. He towered over us as I asked my questions and took my notes.
It was fairly straightforward. Conor had come out to fix the fence per Griffin’s orders.
He’d caught sight of Lily’s dress on the rocks and rushed to the body.
He hadn’t tried to move her but he’d picked up her hand to check for a pulse.
The tattoo, as I’d suspected, had given her identity away.
From there, he’d climbed down and called Griffin.
“Thank you, Conor.” I gave him a sad smile. “I’ll probably have a few follow-up questions for you.”
“Okay.” A tear streaked down his cheek. “We went to high school together. Lily and me. We dated our junior year. Broke up but she was always . . .”
The tears came faster.
Finding a dead body was never easy. Finding someone you loved . . . this would haunt him. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.” His chin quivered. “Wish she had talked to me. Wish I had talked to her.”
“This isn’t your fault.” Griffin’s tall body dropped beside mine. “You head on out with Jim, okay?”
“What about the fencing truck?”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Conor shoved to his feet, his balance unsteady.
Griffin stood and clamped a hand around Conor’s arm, escorting him to where Jim was waiting.
I followed at a distance, watching as Griffin hugged the kid and helped him into the passenger seat of a white truck. The door was marked with an E and underscored with a U-shaped bar beneath—the Eden ranch emblem.
Griffin spoke to Jim for a moment before the older man nodded, then went to the driver’s side.
“Will he stay with Conor?” I asked Griffin as Jim and Conor pulled away, rolling down a two-tire track.
“He will.”
“I need to keep this quiet for a little bit so I can ensure we have the right identity, then notify next of kin.”
“Lily’s mom is a nurse at the nursing home. Allen can get you her information.”
“What if it’s not Lily?”
“It’s her, Winslow. We know our own people.”
As in, I wasn’t one of them. Ouch.
A new trail of dust followed a vehicle down the main gravel road. Hopefully it was the medical examiner.
“This is your property, correct?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is this road ever closed? With a gate at night or something?”
“No.” He shook his head. “The property on the other side of the road used to belong to another ranch, but I bought it two years ago. This is all Eden property now. There’s no reason to gate it off other than to segment pastures for cattle.”
“Do you ever have people drive out here?”
“Not really. It’s private property.” He fisted his hands on his hips. “Why?”
“Have you seen any strange vehicles coming and going this week?”
“This is a huge ranch. It’s impossible to keep track of traffic.” His jaw clenched. “Why are you asking?”
I looked up and down the gravel road. There wasn’t a vehicle in sight that might have belonged to the girl. She’d been barefoot. Where were her shoes?
“I’m simply asking questions.” That’s why I was here.
“That girl jumped to her death. Her mother is probably worried sick about her. How about you stop asking questions and start providing answers?”
“How about I leave the ranching to you? And you leave investigations to me? I’m just doing my job.”
He scoffed. “You want to do your job, go tell Lily’s mother. Anything else is a waste of fucking time.”
Without another word, he stormed away, marching to his truck. He left me standing in a field, watching his taillights disappear.
“That went well,” I muttered. “Shit.”
I tipped my head to the sky.
Maybe this wasn’t how the previous chief would have handled it. Maybe he would have taken one look at that poor girl and known it was suicide. But . . .
“I’m the chief now.” And we’d do things my way.
Whether Griffin Eden liked it or not.