See, once we dug the body out, it looked as though Lane’d been shot—right up in the face. Had to wait for the Chief M.E. over in Salt Lake to sign off on that as a cause of death, but it seemed pretty likely. Problem being, we didn’t find no gun or rifle or nothing and we’d turned a good half acre inside out with metal detectors and probes. Could be that some hunter or hiker found a weapon but didn’t notice the body and walked off with it. Or, if it was coated with blood, a scavenger could have dragged it off. Still, reason said if’n he’d shot himself, Lane’s gun should have been within a few feet of his body. The other ways I’d seen folks kill themselves; well, no rope around his neck, no knives, no nothing. Only thing I could think of, a least up in the mountains, was if he took pills up with him and OD’d. That’s usually how gals took themselves out, but I’d have to wait for the O.M.E. to run tox screens and tell me
yea
or
nay
on that.
Then there was the problem I eked out of the file: Lane weren’t blue when he went missing. Least not so’s anyone had noticed. And even if family and friends don’t note that down mood at the time, when a boy goes missing most folks start putting the little odd comments, sulky fits and other out of character behavior together in their minds. Nobody, least that we’d interviewed, made that connection.
I heaved up a hard breath and pushed the open file a little away. “Like I said, I needed to know for certain it’s him before I head over and notify the family.” Tried to rub my eyes to get ‘em to quit aching. Been deciphering handwritten notes and typed summaries for what felt like hours. “That’d be a shock if first I said it’s your boy and then came back a day later and had to backtrack.”
“Wow.” Kabe rocked back in the chair. “You have to do that?”
I gave him another shrug. “Someone has to, might as well be me.” That was one of the jobs that came with the territory.
“That’s gotta suck.” He hissed it out.
I agreed. “It ain’t ever a barrel of laughs.”
“So,” Kabe used my technique of redirecting the conversation when he weren’t comfortable with the subject, “the body’s from a missing kid?”
“Little older than kid, nineteen.” Lane’d pretty much crossed into that fuzzy territory of old enough to know better but young enough to make stupid mistakes. Unless those mistakes rated rather big, the law generally don’t pay much mind to you at that point. “Honestly, at his age normally not anyone we’d consider much of a missing person. You’re nineteen, you can just get up one day and decide you want to take off.” And usually we didn’t take extensive reports in such situations. The family or friends had to have some indication that the missing adult was, for whatever reason, at risk—advanced age, mental issues, critical medications or the like. “Only here, Lane went missing one day and a good friend Chris Harris, eighteen, went missing the next. That starts looking a little suspicious.” Suspicious enough that the department went through a round of interviews and tracked down a few leads. “Plus that was the weekend after Thanksgiving where we got hit with that huge snowstorm and so that might mean something happened to the boys.” When nothing turned up, both files got relegated to the
ain’t much we can do
drawer.
“Wow.” Kabe moved some photos around the desk with his fingers. “That’s creepy.” Then he paused and went back to one of a dark haired boy with knife blade features and deep brown eyes. “Which one is this?”
“That’d be Chris.” By this time I’d memorized the features of the Lane and Chris as well as their circle of friends. “The other missing boy.”
Kabe considered the photo for a bit longer. “I’d do him.” He added one of his wicked grins.
I snapped back. “He’s all of eighteen.” Sometimes Kabe’s line between appropriate and not wandered into gray areas.
He hit me with, “And I’m all of how old?”
Now there was a thicket I didn’t want to walk through. Kabe was pretty much closer to the age of the missing boy than he was to me. Still, he’d never, not since I met him, come off as a kid. A little wild sometimes. Could get his
bitch on
, as he said it, when something irritated him. And if he forced me to listen to any more of that dance-pop stuff he downloaded, I might shoot myself. But he was no kid. I think a lot of it had to do with his two years behind bars. Sobered him up, matured him, in ways other bucks his age just never had to think on.
Since I really didn’t want to talk about that whole issue, I changed the subject. “What are you doing ‘round the station?”
“I thought I’d come over and see if you wanted to get dinner with me.”
“Weren’t you working today?”
“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes like I was stupid or something. “Started at seven, did my six hours and got off like three hours ago.”
I started doing the math in my head, and it weren’t quite adding up. “What time is it?”
“Like four.” I’d come up with the same answer, it just hadn’t made sense.
“Oh, great.” I started shoving papers back into the file. “I’m gonna get chewed for overtime.” My shift started around five a.m. That meant I should have clocked out hours ago. “Managed to work through lunch too. Let me go talk to my boss a moment and clock out.”
“Okay. I’ll be outside.” Kabe stood up and shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie jacket. “The whole police station being the county jail kinda creeps me out.” As he walked out he added, “You know?”
“Meet you out there in five,” I called to his back.
Actually, the station weren’t the jail…they were just attached to each other. There’s us deputies,
the magnificent seven
, ‘cause that’s how many of us covered the county, over on one side. State troopers had an outpost over on the opposite side of the building. Most of the rest of the place served the jail—twenty-five corrections officers and one-hundred-fifteen beds. Not all of ‘em, the convicts, were really ours. Utah Department of Corrections contracted out housing of lower risk offenders to counties like Garfield.
I knocked on the door jamb to Sheriff Myron Simple’s office. “Sir,” I eased on in when he looked up. “Sorry to disturb you, I’m heading out and I figured I’d let you know I let time get away from me and I’ve clocked a bit of overtime.”
He gave me a look that said I should have known better. “What were you doing?”
“Getting myself up to speed on the case files for Lane Walker and Chris Harris.” While I shouldn’t have gone over hours unauthorized, I figured Sheriff Simple weren’t going to bust my chops too hard under the circumstances. “Missing Person files.” I added that to jog his memory. I’d turned in my reports earlier about the identification on the body and the files I found we had. “O.M.E. confirmed the body we found up on Mount Dutton was Lane’s and since both boys disappeared about the same time frame and were friends…”
“Okay, that’s fine.” He clicked the pen he’d been writing with closed and stuck it in his pocket. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. The whiny old springs creaked in protest. “What else do we know?”
I took that as a cue to sit on down. “So far the death is looking suspicious.” I filled him in as best I was able. “Official COD hasn’t been called, won’t be for awhile, but there’s visible gunshot trauma to the jaw and skull.” I touched the areas on my chin and under my nose where Trooper Dougherty spotted it. “So unless a healthy teenager had a coronary, fell on a rifle that we ain’t found and shot his face off…” I let the thought hang for a moment. “Best we can figure, it’s possibly a suicide, but smells more like a homicide.” Sometimes when you got a hunch, you had to run with it. Better to be wrong about the death than have some murderer walking around and you not know it. “The examining M.E. needs some more time for a full report, but she told me, unofficially, to start digging.”
The Sheriff looked right pleased. “Looks like you pulled a good case to get back in the saddle with.”
I’d been kinda riding a desk since August, pulling up some of our old cases, running some of the evidence through databases that hadn’t even been imagined back when they’d gone cold. It all equaled part of my punishment for getting involved with Kabe while he was still a person of interest at a suspicious fall I’d been investigating, that and other things. I’d taken a suspension, pay cut and reprimand as well.
Felt right nice to be back in the saddle.
Still, a nineteen year old boy weren’t ever coming home. “I ain’t ever calling some boy’s death
good.
”
“Yeah,” Sheriff Simple nodded, “got to agree with that.” He clapped his hands together and pointed both index fingers square at my chest. “Switching gears here.” His tone actually seemed a might heavier than just a moment ago. “Are you going to be seeing that boy of yours tonight?”
“Kabe.” I couldn’t fathom why he cared about my dating life. “Reckon so, he was just here.” I’m fair certain my tone carried my confusion loud and clear. “He’s outside, now, waiting to go get some grub.”
“Oh.” That one syllable didn’t answer nothing. “Who’s around?”
“The station?” The question he asked both confused and worried me some. Kinda cautious I answered, “You and me. Jail staff’s around and about, but everyone else is out on patrol. Why?”
“Got some business with him.” The Sheriff reached over to a pile of paper in his inbox and grabbed a manila envelope. “Official business.”
“Like what?” I had a sinking feeling about what was in that envelope and that it had a lot to do with the letter I’d gotten a while back.
“Take a wild guess there, Joe.” Then he stood up, using the envelope to point toward the door. “I’ll walk out with you.”
I stood too. “Alright.” Couldn’t say I was quite comfortable with my boss not telling me direct, but my suspicion pretty much got confirmed by how he said it. Normally, I’d expect him to let me handle it. If it was what I now figured it might be, my Sheriff would be under instructions not to let me touch it. Both of us grabbed our coats—charcoal colored and emblazoned with gold letters declaring
Sheriff
across the back and badges stitched on the front left side.
We walked out and I caught sight of Kabe. Reminded me, all over again, why I fell for that boy. For all the city in his upbringing, Kabe’s attitude, frame and attire melted into one lean, sexy, outdoorsy kinda guy. He leaned against the battered black front-end panel on his otherwise blue Toyota mini-pickup. A red stocking cap stitched with the word
Staff
covered the tips of his ears and his longish hair curled out crazy at the bottom. Although he’d swapped out his snowboarder pants for tight jeans, Kabe’d kept on the oversized hoodie with the resort logo and had one ungloved hand shoved in the front pocket. He swigged a jolt from a can of a so-called energy drink. I kept telling him a handful of NoDoz and a cup of sugar water would give him the same effect for half the price.
As he zipped up his jacket, Sheriff Simple called out, “Hey Kabe, how you doing?”
Kabe pushed away from his truck. “Okay, Sheriff.” He smiled. “How’s life for you?”
“Fair to middl’n.” By that time we’d come up right on next to Kabe. “Hear you got a job up at Brian Head, how you liking it?” Sheriff Simple jammed the manila folder between his arm and side then held out his now free hand.
Untangling himself from his own pocket, Kabe took the shake. “It’s good, except for the tourons who think they’re ready for the Olympics.” Kabe snorted out the derision we all kinda felt for people who took stupid risks without even realizing it. “I’m doing some volunteer hours on the ski rescue patrol too. If I get my full EMT, not just my outdoor medical cert, they may offer me to come back paid next season.”
“He’s getting himself all on straight.” The sheriff may have had to get on me for bending the rules, but it didn’t sour him none toward Kabe. “Doing his courses online, same place I did my EMT…getting better grades than I did though.” I was right proud of him for that. If it weren’t for the felony record, I’da encouraged him to take it farther. It put him out of the running for most non-seasonal full-time gigs.
“Yeah, I’ll have to go do, like, five days of hands-on after I’ve finished all my other classes.” Kabe tossed the day-glow can into the bed of his truck and shoved both hands back in his hoodie pocket. “Probably around the end of ski season.”
“Glad to hear it.” The sheriff kinda huffed around a bit then a grim smile tightened up his face. He held out the envelope. “Look, son, this came across my desk.” When Kabe reached for it, he added, “I’ve been asked to serve it on you.”
Suddenly a little suspicious, Kabe asked, “What is it?” He still took it, but I could tell he thought whatever was in there might bite him.
“It’s an administrative hearing, about Joe.” Sheriff Simple looked over at me and then back at Kabe. “You know—heck, I’ll let him explain it to you, everything about it.” The sheriff clapped his hands together, his way of telling folks he was done with something. “But, I’d treat it like a subpoena from any other court, someone like you don’t want to ignore it.” That equaled about the only time I’d ever heard my boss refer to Kabe’s problems with the law. “Well I’ve done my duty, so have a good dinner, boys.”
After the Sheriff walked on back into the station, Kabe turned to me, stepped up and slammed the envelope up against my chest. “Subpoena?” I think he hit three different octaves spitting out that one word.
I actually backed off a step. Boy was right riled. “Ain’t nothing big.” It weren’t. I knew it weren’t. My sheriff dealt with me and everything that happened. Kabe didn’t need to get his shorts twisted all up. I gave him the bare bones of it. “You know I got chewed out by my boss about stuff that happened this summer. You being a person of interest in that suspicious fall.”
Kabe crossed his hands over his chest, rocked back on one leg and shot me a glare that could peel paint. “I wasn’t a suspect.”
“I know, but I really should have waited until we got that investigation all wrapped up.” I shrugged. That sliced it so close to the bare bones of what the Counsel wanted to discuss that I’d cut into the marrow. Figured if I gave him that, though, he wouldn’t dig deeper and make me think on things. “Then there was that whole thing with me beating the stuffing out of Ramon Piestiwa at that shopping center in Cedar City.”