EVAN MCNAMARA

Chapter 1

Ever since we shot half of the Mineral County sheriff’s department, my deputy and I have been a little short-handed.

It was Indian Summer in Belmont, which meant it was still cold as frozen Hell, only without all the snow. Pancho climbed out of the low country, and we emerged on Wason Plateau. Multiple creeks traced these foothills of the La Garita Range. Englemann and blue spruce lined the draws and towered over us. I turned up the collar of my sheepskin coat to the coldest part of the day and the incessant wind that introduced it. Pancho’s breath came out in milky clouds, and frost covered the hairs around his muzzle.

I let my horse forage for tender shoots of alpine grass while I glassed the ridge. Once the terrain broke from the wooded canyons below, it sloped gently upward, all the way to the Continental Divide. I felt stupid, moving about in the early light on a brown horse with hunters about. I had wrapped a band of blaze orange around the crown of my cowboy hat, as if that would help.

Sergeant Richter had always said only fools hunted for sport. Actually, he said any fool who hunts some dumb animal from long range with a rifle ought to find out what it feels like to be in the crosshairs himself.

Sergeant Richter would kick my ass if he knew I was shirking. I didn’t see it that way, but I was running the ragged line between on-duty and off-duty. I ignored the disapproval of my old team leader and clicked Pancho up the trail.

A gunshot popped from the ridge, then was swallowed by the valley. The back of my neck burned, as if the scar tissue remembered the last time I stood at the wrong end of a scope. The ridge stood empty and quiet in the morning frost. A line of juniper and short spruce lay on the opposite side of a circular field. If I hunted this ridge, that’s where I’d put my stand.

I thought about my big brown horse, standing in the open, looking a lot like an elk. I waved my arms and hoped the rising sun would catch the blaze orange on my hat. Silence from the ridge. Trees obscured the hunter within. I nudged Pancho, and we trotted up the slope, right for the source of the gunfire. I decided to confront my early-morning shooter.

The spruce grove on the ridge made a nice spot for an elk stand. The hunter could see down both sides of the ridge and ambush elk or mule deer as they emerged from the low ground, just as he had ambushed me. I stopped at the edge of the trees and dismounted.

“Hey!” I shouted into the thick evergreen, “This is Sheriff Tatum. You just shot at me. Come on out of there.”

No response. I felt like I was talking to nothing but rocks and trees. I left Pancho happily foraging and stepped into the grove.

Thick pine boughs closed around me. I left the wind outside. The meager orange light turned gray, and silence pressed my ears. Pale dun pine straw muffled my approach.

Thomas Harding Pitcher lay face down in a bed of pine needles at the base of an ancient Englemann spruce. I knew it was Councilman Pitcher from his red wool hunter’s coat and the antique binoculars on a leather cord around his neck. Against the big trunk of the spruce rested his rifle, a brushed-stainless Remington with a black fiber stock. It had a big Nikon Titanium scope mounted on the top rail—a rich man’s gun. Pitcher was a very rich man, probably the wealthiest man in Mineral County.

Not anymore.

I gently pushed his cap away to check his pulse, but pulled back when I saw the blackened hole in his head and the pool of blood soaking into the pine straw.

Turns out I was doing my job after all. Now I was standing in the middle of a crime scene.

Leaving my feet where they were, I pulled the radio off my belt. I took a few deep breaths, pressed the key, and spoke into the handset.

“Jenny, this is Sheriff Tatum. You in, yet?”

“Yes, Sir. What can I do for you, Sir?” Jenny Lange had been with the department about a year. We had to hire a new dispatcher when I shot the last one.

“Stop calling me ‘Sir,’” I said, “We got a problem up here on Wason Plateau. Looks like it might be a hunting accident.”

“Somebody get shot?”

“Roger.”

Silence from the other end.

“Can you get a hold of Jerry?” I asked. More silence. “Jenny, you still there?”

“I’ll see if I can get a hold of Jerry, Sir,” she finally came back, “What do you want me to tell him?”

“Just have him meet me where Farmer’s Creek Trail comes up on the ridge.”

I stood still and tried to get my mind straight. I hadn’t spent much time at the last murder scene in Mineral County—I’d been too busy keeping my head down.
Was this a murder at all? It looked more like a suicide or hunting accident—bullet hole in the head, no sign of struggle. Hunting accident seemed the more likely theory, and Councilman Thomas Pitcher wasn’t the type for suicide. Drive others to suicide, maybe.
The sound of an engine broke my puzzled reverie. I stepped lightly around the body and out of the silent copse. Councilman Pitcher and I were about to have some company.

I looked to the western ridge and saw a short man driving an olive drab ATV along the line of trees. ATV’s were forbidden on the Halfmoon Ranch. Dr. Ed risked Orville’s wrath hunting on one. He quickly maneuvered down the slope while standing on the pegs. His old Weatherby 7mm Mag lay crossways on a rack attached to the handlebars.

Dr. Ed parked his vehicle and walked over to me. Frost coated his gray cowboy mustache, but that’s where the cowboy resemblance ended. Dr. Ed was barely five and a half feet tall and thick everywhere. He looked more like a giant dwarf in a Stetson.

“Cold enough for you, Sheriff?”

“Orville’s gonna kill you if he catches you driving that thing up here,” I said.

“Sheriff Tatum, I have been a member of the Gun Club since you were in diapers, so I am entitled. Besides, Orville is hunting in the northwest quadrant today. Isn’t this your week on duty?”

“Yes, Dr. Ed, I am on duty,” I said, “I just happened to be up here patrolling this portion of the county.”
Dr. Ed eyeballed me while he filled his pipe with Captain Black from an elk skin pouch. When blue smoke replaced white vapor, he spoke, “What’s happened? You look like you just found a dead possum in your bed.”

“Councilman Pitcher’s in there.” I nodded to the stand of pine. “He’s dead.”

“Stroke?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, “Not with the hole in his head.”

“Hunting accident?” Ed scanned the ridge to the west. “Is Jerry nearby?”

Now why would he ask that? “I don’t know, Dr. Ed. I just got here.”

“Jesus, not another sniper.”

“Doesn’t look that way. Why don’t you and I go take a look?” Dr. Ed is the county coroner as well as the town doctor.

I led Dr. Ed into the clearing. Pitcher was still there, still dead.

“You check his pulse?” asked Dr. Ed, “Sometimes these old boys just look dead.”

“He’s dead,” I told him, “You just can’t see the bullet wound from this side.”

Dr. Ed stretched the stems of his glasses around his ears and walked around the body. He squatted painfully and examined the big hole in the man’s skull. I got down with him.

“Powder burns,” we said at the same time. Exploding powder from the barrel of the weapon had burned Pitcher’s hair and skin.

“Not a hunting accident,” said Dr. Ed.

“Self-inflicted?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” said Dr. Ed. He looked at the rifle leaning up against the tree. “I can’t imagine he shot himself with that. Did you find another weapon?”

“I haven’t looked, yet.”

“Well, let’s look.”

We did our best not to trample any evidence. Booted feet had flattened much of the tender alpine turf and pine needles around the tree. Pitcher had used this stand for a few days. I found two cartridges on opposite sides of the Englemann spruce. One was a rifle shell, the same caliber as Pitcher’s weapon—Winchester .270. It lay next to the expensive hunting rifle. A small caliber, I thought, for hunting elk. The other shell was a wide, stubby handgun casing, lying to the left of the tree.

“Here’s a .45.” I held up the cold piece of brass, then I set it back down, exactly as I found it. Dumbass.

“That’s what you carry, isn’t it?” asked Dr. Ed.

“That’s correct.” Actually, both Jerry and I carried .45’s. We upgraded from 9mm Berettas last year, trading capacity for stopping power. I wondered if Jerry had his with him.

“I don’t see the weapon anywhere,” said Dr. Ed. We looked at each other, then turned to the body.

“Underneath?” I asked.

“Let’s turn him over.”

Thomas Pitcher was a big man, six feet tall and close to two hundred fifty pounds. It took both of us to roll him onto his back. As we rolled him, the acrid odor of urine filled my dry nostrils. A dark patch stained the front of Pitcher’s green wool pants from his crotch to his knees.

“Jesus Christ.” I grimaced from the smell.

“Easy there, big fella,” said Dr. Ed, “Dead people tend to lose control of these things.”

His right arm and a .45 automatic lay tucked under his heavy frame. The Colt was a nickel-plated Series 70 Mark IV—another rich-man’s gun.

I left the handgun and looked at the dead man. The ugly exit wound had exploded out of his right cheekbone, but I refused to let it distract me. I needed to find the subtle markers, to show Dr. Ed that I could analyze a crime scene, too.

His face was gray and drawn, his eyes half-lidded. The tips of his fingers and nose were a frosty blue, and his lips were purple. Cracks and stretch marks radiated from the corners of his mouth, raw and red to the back of his jaw.

“His coat,” I said.

“What about it?”

“It’s buttoned all wrong,” I said. Pitcher had misbuttoned his red wool coat. Carelessness from the only man in Belmont who wore a three-piece suit every day.

“I never expected Thomas Pitcher to kill himself.” I stood. “The man was in such control of his world.”

Dr. Ed stood, too, but did not respond to my inane statement. At the time, I didn’t know it was inane, but I was about to find out.

“Let’s take a step back, Sheriff,” said Dr. Ed, “And talk a bit of field forensics.”

“Okay.”

“Take a look at Pitcher’s rifle, Bill,” said Dr. Ed.

He called me Bill. Class had begun.

“Okay.”

“Where is the bolt action?”

“It’s on the right side,” I said, “So he’s right
handed.”

“Very good. Now look at the councilman’s wound.”

“It’s on the left side.”

“And?” asked Dr. Ed, “Get closer if you need to.”

I squatted back down and examined the position of the gunshot wound. The bullet penetrated behind the ear, right above the little knob in the skull.

“It’s back kind of far,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Dr. Ed, “ Just above the left mastoid process. A difficult spot for a right-handed man to shoot himself, don’t you think? Now examine the marks extending from the sides of his mouth.”

Bits of skin and whiskers had been torn away from Pitcher’s face. Traces of adhesive remained embedded in the skin. Both the damaged skin and two-days’ growth of beard struck an inconsistent chord. The folds of rough skin on his neck indicated decades of over-shaving. Pitcher shaved every day, even while hunting.

“It looks like someone had duct tape over his mouth,” I said.

“Very good,” said Dr. Ed, “Now pull the cuffs of his coat back from his wrists.”

I had to hold Pitcher’s hands to do this. They were ice-cold lumps of dead wood.

“There are ligature marks on his wrists, and his hands are freezing cold.”

“But he’s been dead less than an hour,” said Dr. Ed, “How can this be? His urine is still warm and stinking, not frozen to the ground, yet his extremities show evidence of prolonged exposure to the cold.”

“He’s not wearing gloves,” I said.

“In this weather?” asked Dr. Ed.

I stood and walked over to the big spruce. Rope burns marred the bark on the uphill side.

“Someone tied him up, then shot him in the back of the head,” I said.

“I will take that a step further, Sheriff,” said Dr. Ed, “Someone had him tied up for a long while, in the cold, without his coat, hat, or gloves. This person kept Councilman Pitcher alive, then shot him in the back of the head with that gun, put his clothes back on, and left him here. Notice there is no blood on the coat or hat. I imagine we will find blood spatter on his undershirt. Dead men cannot put their coats back on.”

I kicked myself for missing it, but he was right. The hat and coat were clean. Someone had done a poor job of staging a suicide.

“Dad!” came a shout from beyond the trees.