Her Grave Secrets (Rogue River #3)(19)

“Is Peter here?” Stevie asked.

“Somewhere with his friends,” Alex slurred. “My friends are avoiding me. Jerks.”

“Maybe because you’re drinking too much,” said Zane.

Angry eyes looked at Zane, but Stevie noticed Alex had enough wits about him not to insult the police chief.

“Before we get the adult events started, we’re gonna give the kids a chance to have some fun. You all ready to see some greased pigs?” Cheers sounded, and Stevie noticed the growing crowd of small kids below the announcer’s stand. She spotted James’s five-year-old son in the group, pointing at the nearby pen of pigs. He seemed too young to be in the crowd, but country kids knew their way around farm animals from a very young age.

“I’m sure people will start calling you again for bids,” Zane said to Alex, his attention split between the drunk man and the squealing pigs. “Things have been slow. I doubt there’s much work right now.”

“No, there’s always work for what I do. That O’Rourke bitch has blacklisted me in this town, and I don’t know why. My work is good, and I didn’t sleep with her daughter like everyone else has.”

Zane bit his cheek, and Stevie raised a brow at him. “Me neither,” he told her.

“I might have to move,” Alex continued sullenly. “Maybe out to the valley or up to Portland. Don’t want to move.” He leaned heavily on the fence.

“Open the gate!”

Shiny pigs rushed the arena and the kids swarmed, diving onto the backs of the slick animals and sliding off into the dirt. Stevie kept an eye on her nephew as excitement lit up his face. He lunged for a pig, did a face-plant in the dirt, and was up on his feet tearing after another before Stevie could catch her breath.

“Boss, we’ve got a situation.”

Stevie and Zane turned. Carter stood behind them, his face pale and his hand resting on the weapon holstered at his hip.

“What happened?” Stevie asked, adrenaline boosting her heart rate.

Carter glanced at Alex, who was blatantly listening. “Let’s go somewhere else.” He shifted his weight from one boot to the other. His eyes wide, he constantly scanned their surroundings, nervous energy burning out of his pores. Stevie and Zane exchanged a look.

“Let’s go,” said Zane. “Have a good evening,” he said to Alex. “Stay away from any more beer, okay?”

Alex snorted at him and turned his attention back to the arena and pigs.

They walked with Carter for twenty feet until he stopped, turned to them, and whispered with a cracking voice, “We’ve got a murder. JD Hearne’s been shot. Two bullets in the back of the skull.”





CHAPTER NINE





JD’s death was fresh. The blood on the ground hadn’t fully dried.

The body was on its chest in the dirt, its face turned to the side, giving Zane a view of the bloody back of the head. The hair was long and Zane recognized the clothes he’d seen JD wearing at the Dairy Queen earlier that day.

Christ. We just saw him.

Guilt rocked through him for his earlier judgment of the young man.

Zane pressed his lips together and glanced at Stevie, who viewed JD’s body with a blank expression. She’d asked Carter on the way over if JD’s brother Eric had been contacted, and Carter said that the Rogue County sheriff had sent someone to notify him in person. Zane wondered if she’d wanted to do it. She and Eric had a history; maybe she felt she should be the one to break the news of his brother’s death. But she’d kept silent. Leaving Zane to wonder way too much about their previous relationship.

JD Hearne had been found on the edge of the rest area between Solitude and the coast. To call it a rest area was a stretch. There wasn’t any free coffee or bathrooms or semi parking. It was a wide graveled area on the side of the two-lane highway, with a spigot that was labeled “fresh water for drinking” and a metal garbage can overflowing with garbage. Zane noted that the only vehicles present were from the Rogue County Sheriff’s Office. The body had been found by two teens who’d stopped for a bathroom break . . . even though there were no bathrooms. Zane stepped carefully through the woods as he followed Carter and Stevie to the scene. Because it wasn’t an official rest stop, people simply stepped out of view of the passing traffic to relieve themselves.

The teens had nearly tripped over the body in a small clearing fifty feet from the road. The rest area was far outside Solitude’s city limits, falling under Rogue County’s jurisdiction. Rogue County had set up lighting for the scene and had a small team of investigators crawling through the brush and photographing the corpse. Seth was already at the scene and greeted the three Solitude cops as they arrived.

“You think this is part of the recent drug deaths?” Zane asked Seth.

“Definitely. We found a piece of C-22 between here and the road. You’ve seen it before, right? Little red strip of tissue paper soaked with the chemical in a plastic sleeve. Someone must have dropped it.”

“Maybe it was left by someone at a different time,” Stevie said. “We don’t know how long it was there.”

“True,” Seth agreed. But it wasn’t mashed into the dirt; it was on the leaf of a bush and fell off as one of our team walked by. I think it was recently dropped.”