Читать книгу Second Chance Colton - Marie Ferrarella, Marie Ferrarella - Страница 11

Chapter 4

There was a dead man lying on his back in the center of the bunkhouse floor, a drying pool of blood beneath him, a surprised look frozen on his young face.

Whatever he had expected to find when his father had summoned him, deliberately refraining from giving him any details, it definitely hadn’t been this.

Ryan felt as if he was moving in slow motion as he circled the prone body of the young cowboy with the conspicuous hole in his chest. He was careful not to step into or otherwise disturb the wide pool of blood that had had at least several hours to seep out of the man’s body.

Only after he had completely circumvented the ranch hand’s—Kurt Rodgers’s—earthly remains did Ryan squat down beside him.

Rodgers’s complexion was already beginning to take on a grayish pallor. That, and the condition of the blood on the floor, indicated that the cowboy had been dead for a while.

Even so, Ryan pulled out the handkerchief he had tucked into the back pocket of his jeans and gingerly felt along the cowboy’s throat and neck for any sign of a pulse.

There was none.

He hadn’t really expected one, but there was always that wild, outside chance that the man might have somehow still been clinging to life. Ryan felt he couldn’t rule that possibility out until he’d made absolutely sure.

Ryan caught himself thinking that the victim—a fairly recent hire who had an affinity for horses and had helped Greta and Daniel train the ranch’s horses—looked awfully young.

Just yesterday, Kurt’s whole life had been ahead of him. And now, it wasn’t.

Ryan was aware that his father had crept closer during the cursory exam and now hovered around him, peering over his shoulder. “That’s Kurt Rodgers,” Big J said.

Ryan didn’t bother looking his way. “I know who it is, Dad.”

Big J shrugged in response. “It’s just that lately, unless you’re investigating something going on at the Lucky C, you’re never here.”

Rising, Ryan pocketed his handkerchief. Irritation filled his voice. “I said I know who it is. Sorry,” he apologized the next moment.

He wasn’t annoyed with his father but with this latest, far more serious turn of events. Was this just a random murder or one that involved his family?

“It’s just that checking out a dead body in my family’s bunkhouse isn’t exactly something I ever expected to be doing.” Taking a breath, he looked around the otherwise empty bunkhouse. “Who found him?”

“Brett,” his father answered. At twenty-eight, Brett was the youngest of the Colton brothers. “Near as I can figure, he was coming in from one of his late-night work sessions,” Big J explained. “Boy was all white when he came and got me—I couldn’t sleep and was in the study,” his father added as an afterthought. “Brett looked like he’d seen a ghost or something.”

“Or something,” Ryan repeated, stifling a frustrated sigh. “Was anyone else with him at the time?” Ryan asked.

Big J guessed at what his son was really asking him. “You mean was Hannah with him? If she was, she took off before anyone else saw her. As far as I know, he was alone when he saw Rodgers lying there like that.” He shook his head sadly as he looked down at his murdered employee.

Ryan absently nodded, jotting down key points from his father’s statement. “Where’s Brett now?”

“At the house, most likely trying to steady his nerves.” A vague shrug accompanied his father’s words, as if he wasn’t a hundred percent certain that his youngest son was still where he just said he was. “I gave him my best Kentucky bourbon.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Great, just what I need. An intoxicated witness to question.”

“He’s not a witness,” Big J countered defensively, as if the term was somehow tainted, or would taint anyone it came in contact with. “He’s your brother.”

Ryan didn’t see why that fact should create a discrepancy in the description. “Who was also the first one who found the body, that makes him a witness—of the scene, since he wasn’t here for the commission of the crime.” Ryan assumed that his father would have said as much if Brett had seen who had killed the ranch hand. “Was there anyone else here at the time?” he asked, rephrasing his previous question.

“Like I said, not that I saw,” Big J answered. “I called you the minute I saw Rodgers lying there like that.”

Ryan pressed his lips together, far from happy about this turn of events—or the predicament it would most likely put him in. What if, for some reason, another one of his siblings was behind this, or at least somehow connected to this?

It hadn’t been a great week for family relations, he couldn’t help thinking.

Reaching into his other back pocket, Ryan pulled out his cell phone. As he did so, he waved his father back. “You can’t be here right now.”

Full, bushy eyebrows drew together over Big J’s patrician nose. “Why not?” the big man demanded, for the moment sounding every bit like his former, larger-than-life self. “This is my bunkhouse, boy.”

“Nobody’s disputing that, Dad,” Ryan replied. “But right now it’s my crime scene, and until it’s processed, that tops your claim to it.”

“Possession’s nine-tenths of the law and I’ve got the deed, boy.” Although he was proud of his sons, Big J was not about to be easily usurped. He was the head of the family. “Okay, okay,” Big J said, raising his hands defensively when Ryan looked at him darkly, giving no sign of backing down. “I’ll get on out.”

John Colton began to do just that when he stopped suddenly to take a closer look at his son’s face, as if he was trying to gauge the gravity of what was transpiring on his property.

“Should I be calling Preston?” he asked, referring to David Preston, the fifty-year-old lawyer who he kept on retainer to handle any legal matters involving either him or his family.

“Not yet, Dad. But it wouldn’t hurt to let him know what’s going on,” Ryan told him.

His father began to say something in response to that, but Ryan raised his hand, stopping him. The phone on the other end of the call he was making had stopped ringing and had been picked up.

A melodic, albeit preoccupied female voice announced, “Crime lab.”

Susie.

Because his father was standing not that far off, despite his instructions to the contrary, Ryan addressed the woman he had called—the woman he had once made love to with abandon—formally.

“This is Detective Ryan Colton. I need the CSI unit to come out to the Lucky C.”

The impatient exhale echoed in his ear as he heard Susie say, “Look, I understand how you feel, Colton, but we just don’t have time to run a fourth DNA test on that broken window,” she told him in a voice that declared that there would be no further discussions on the matter.

“This isn’t about the broken window,” Ryan said sharply, cutting in before she had the opportunity to continue.

There was a long pause on the other end, as if the forensic expert was debating whether or not she believed him. “Then what?” she finally asked.

“We’ve got a body at the bunkhouse,” he answered grimly.

“Do you know who it is?” she asked him.

Ryan thought he heard rustling on the other end of the line, like she was getting her evidence case together to bring to the crime scene. “Yeah, it’s one of the ranch hands, a relatively new hire named Kurt Rodgers.”

“Are there signs of a struggle?” Susie asked.

Ryan turned around to look at the area around the cowboy’s body. The only thing that appeared out of place was Rodgers’s body itself—and the pool of blood beneath it, that went without saying. Nothing else seemed to be disturbed.

“From all indications, he didn’t see whatever it was coming,” Ryan answered. “Send your people out here.”

“Right away,” she promised, snapping the locks on her case.

Ryan thought that was the end of their conversation and was about to terminate the call when he heard Susie’s voice.

“Ryan?”

He put the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah?” He saw his father looking at him, as if Big J was trying to ascertain what was going on.

Her voice softened just a touch as she told him, “I’m sorry.”

Ryan didn’t have to ask about what. He knew. Susie was telling him that she was sorry he was going through this. It was hard enough investigating a murder, but when the murder took place on his own family’s ranch, that added an extra dimension to the case. A dimension that made it almost too delicate to work on, at least for him.

“Thanks,” he told her, adding, “Me, too.”

With that, Ryan ended the call and tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He knew he was going to have to call his boss, Boyd Benson, who was the Tulsa chief of police, and tell him what was going on. The man wouldn’t be happy about this. But then, in all fairness, he had no idea what did make the police chief happy. Benson’s regular expression was a dour one. Ryan couldn’t recall ever seeing the man smile, not even at one of the Christmas parties.

Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen the man actually attend a Christmas party. The chief was fair and honest, but not exactly a pleasure to get along with.

Ryan put off calling Benson for a few minutes, giving himself time to nail down exactly what he would tell his boss when he called him. Benson preferred having the maximum amount of information delivered to him using the minimum number of words.

“‘You, too’ what?” Big J asked the moment he saw his son putting his phone away.

Caught off guard, Ryan could only eye his father quizzically. “What?”

“That person you called, the one you told to send that crime scene unit of yours out here, you said ‘me, too’ when he or she said something to you,” Big J said. “I’m just asking what you were talking about.”

He supposed it would do no harm to fill his father in on something that was innocuous. “The forensic expert said she was sorry you were going through this.” Okay, so he had reworded it, but he thought it might make the situation a bit more palatable for his father if Big J thought the head of the crime lab sympathized. “And just so you understand, it isn’t my crime scene unit. It’s the police department’s crime scene unit.”

“But you’re part of the police department, aren’t you?” his father pressed doggedly.

Ryan could see where this was going. Nonetheless, he played along. “You know I am.”

“Then it’s your crime scene unit,” Big J concluded triumphantly.

Ryan paused. It wasn’t very hard to read between the lines. “Dad, this isn’t a matter of you and I being on opposite sides of this investigation.”

Big J became defensive. “Yeah, I know. I was the one who called you and told you to come here in the first place, remember?”

“Yes, Dad,” Ryan replied, doing his best to remain patient, or at least to sound as if he was being patient. “I remember.” There were times when he wished he’d never left the Marines. He had a feeling that this would soon be one of those times. “I’m going to tape off the crime scene and then talk to Brett,” he told his father, knowing that the man wanted to be kept abreast of everything that was going on.

Though it was far from standard procedure, he was trying his best to keep Big J informed, hoping that would be enough to keep his father in the background rather than hovering front and center.

“But this is the bunkhouse,” Big J protested. “You can’t go ‘taping’ it off. I’ve got people sleeping here at night.”

He really felt as if they were butting heads at every turn. And the man wasn’t dumb. He knew better, yet he kept challenging him.

“You’re going to have to make other arrangements for them for the time being, Dad. I’ll try to get this processed as soon as possible, but until that happens, your ranch hands are going to have to sleep somewhere else.”