He hurried over to examine them, his pulse pounding. No...that was a human femur. And a finger.
Human bones.
And judging from the decomp, they had been there too long to belong to one of the two teenagers who’d gone missing.
The radio at his belt buzzed and crackled, and he hit the button to connect.
“We found the boys,” Jaxon said. “A little dehydrated, but they’re fine.”
Dugan removed his Stetson and wiped sweat from his forehead. “Good. But I need the coroner over here at Cobra Creek.”
“What?”
“I found bones,” Dugan said. “Looks like they’ve been here a couple of years.”
A foreboding washed over Dugan. Two years ago, a man named Ron Lewis had supposedly died in a car crash near here. Sage Freeport’s son had been with him at the time.
The man’s body and her son’s had never been found.
Could these bones belong to Ron Lewis, the man who’d taken her son?
* * *
SAGE SET A PLACE at the breakfast bar for Benji, then slid a pancake onto the plate and doused it with powdered sugar, just the way her son liked it. His chocolate milk came next.
The tabletop Christmas tree she kept year-round still held the tiny ornaments Benji had made and hung on it. And the present she’d had for him the year he’d gone missing still sat wrapped, waiting for his small hands to tear it open.
It was a glove and ball, something Benji had asked Santa for that year.
Would the glove still fit when she finally found him and he came home?
Two of her guests, a couple named Dannon, who’d come to Cobra Creek to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, gave her pitying looks, but she ignored them.
She knew people thought she was crazy. Mrs. Krandall, the owner of the diner in town, had even warned her that perpetuating the fantasy that her son was still alive by keeping a place set for him was dangerous for her and downright creepy.
She also suggested that it would hurt Sage’s business.
A business Sage needed to pay the bills—and to keep her sanity.
But she couldn’t accept that her son was dead.
Not without answers as to why Ron had taken Benji from the house and where they’d been headed.
Not without definite proof that he wasn’t alive out there somewhere, needing her.
Of course, Benji’s hat and bear had been found at the scene, but his bones had never been recovered.
Sheriff Gandt theorized that Lewis and Benji probably had been injured and tried to escape the fire by going into the creek. But storms created a strong current that night, and their bodies must have washed downstream, then into the river where they’d never be found.
She should never have trusted Ron with her son. It was her fault he was gone....
She refused to believe that he wouldn’t be back. She had to cling to hope.
Without it, the guilt would eat her alive.
* * *
DUGAN GRITTED HIS TEETH as Sheriff Gandt studied the bones.
“Could have been a stranger wandering through,” Gandt said. “Miles of wilderness out here. I’ll check the databases for wanted men. Criminals have been known to hide out here off the grid.”
The medical examiner, Dr. Liam Longmire, narrowed his eyes as he examined the body they unearthed when they’d swept the debris from the bones. Most of the skeleton was intact. Of course, the bones had decayed and been mauled by animals, but there were enough that they’d be able to identify him. That is, if they had medical records to compare to.
“What about Ron Lewis?” Dugan asked. “It could be him.”
Sheriff Gandt adjusted the waistband of his uniform pants and chewed on a blade of grass, his silence surprising. The man usually had an answer for everything.
Dr. Longmire looked up at Dugan, then Gandt. “I can’t say who he is yet, but this man didn’t die from a fire or from the elements.”
“What was the cause of death?” Dugan asked.
Longmire pointed to the rib cage and thoracic cavity. “See the markings of a bullet? It shattered one of his ribs. I can tell more when I get him on the table, but judging from the angle, it appears the bullet probably pierced his heart.”
Dugan glanced at Gandt, who made a harrumph sound.
“Guess you’ve got a murder to investigate, Sheriff,” Dugan said.
Gandt met his gaze with stone-cold, gray eyes, then glanced at the M.E. “How long has he been dead?”
“My guess is a couple of years.” Dr. Longmire paused. “That’d be about the time that Lewis man ran off with Sage Freeport’s kid.”
Gandt nodded, his mouth still working that blade of grass. But his grim expression told Dugan this body was more of a nuisance than a case he wanted to work.
“I’ll request Lewis’s dental records,” Dr. Longmire said. “If they match, we’ll know who our victim is.”
Gandt started to walk away, but Dugan cleared his throat. “Sheriff, aren’t you going to get a crime unit to comb the area and look for evidence?”
“Don’t see no reason for that,” Gandt muttered. “If the man’s been dead two years, probably ain’t nothin’ to find. Besides, the flood last week would have washed away any evidence.” He gestured to the south. “That said, Lewis’s car was found farther downstream. If his body got in the water, it would have floated further downstream, not up here.”
“Not if his body was dumped in a different place from where he died.”
“You’re grasping at straws.” Gandt directed his comment to the M.E. “ID him and then we’ll go from there.”
The sheriff could be right. The victim could have been a drifter. Or a man from another town. Hell, he could have been one of the two prisoners who’d escaped jail a couple years back, ones who’d never been caught.
But the sheriff should at least be looking for evidence near where the body was found.
Gandt strode toward his squad car, and Dugan used his phone to take photographs of the bones. Dr. Longmire offered a commentary on other injuries he noted the body had sustained, and Dugan made a note of them.
Then Longmire directed the medics to load the body into the van to transport to the morgue, making sure they were careful to keep the skeleton intact and preserve any forensic evidence on the bones.
Dugan combed the area, scrutinizing the grass and embankment near where the bones had washed up. He also searched the brush for clues. He plucked a small scrap of fabric from a briar and found a metal button in the mud a few feet from the place where he’d first discovered the bones. He bagged the items for the lab to analyze, then conducted another sweep of the property, spanning out a half mile in both directions.
Unfortunately, Gandt was right. With time, weather and the animals foraging in the wilderness, he couldn’t pinpoint if the body had gone into the river here or some other point.
Frustrated, he finally packed up and headed back to town.
But a bad feeling tightened his gut. Gandt had closed the case involving Sage Freeport’s missing son and Lewis too quickly for his taste.
How would he handle this one?
BY LATE AFTERNOON, news of the bones found at Cobra Creek reached Sage through the grapevine in the small Texas town. She was gathering