Sam was dressed in his usual white T-shirt and jeans. The early morning sun glistened off his bald head.
The knife of anger and grief twisted in her heart. Most people had put the Larsons--Sam and his sisters, Ella and Julie--down all of their lives. Over the years, they’d crawled out of the gutter by co-owning the Longhorn Saloon and now Ella’s Diner. The family had already gone through hell back in July when Ella had been murdered by her daughter’s biological father--none other than the richest man in the county, oil tycoon, Leon Ferguson.
The last thing she wanted was to add to their misery only three months later, but this was her job now. The job she’d always wanted. “Sam. Julie. Let’s go inside.”
Glancing at the body bag, he lowered his brow. “Okay.”
Once they were inside the tiny back office, she took a deep breath. Sam’s ex-wife should be here for this too, but she lived down in Crawford with husband number three, or was it four?
“I think y’all should have a seat for this,” she said as gently as she could.
The fear in his eyes brightened, and sweat beaded on his head as he sagged into the old leather chair behind a spotless desk. “That body out there. It’s Chris, ain’t it?”
Julie stood behind him and rested a hand on his trembling shoulder. Her hazel eyes filled with tears, and she took a ragged puff on the burned down death stick.
Unable to hold herself up any longer, Dawn leaned on the desk with a hip and pulled off her tan uniform Stetson.
Sam’s dark eyes shimmered with unshed tears. Dawn swallowed and averted her gaze to the hat gripped in her hands as she nodded.
Julie let out a wail and hugged her brother from behind burying her face into his beefy neck. Dawn reached out and took the cigarette from her trembling hand, before she dropped the thing, and put it out in an ashtray on the desk.
Sam shook violently as tears rolled down his ruddy cheeks and emotions twisted his mouth into an ugly sneer.
He clenched his sister’s fingers, and with the back of his other hand, wiped his eyes with a wicked swipe across his face. His chest heaved. “Goddamn!”
Dawn stood and fisted her hands by her side. Memories accosted her. Although her baby boy hadn’t been born yet when she’d lost him, the pain was immense. She sniffed back the burn in her sinuses. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“How’d it happen?”
She cleared her throat. Dammit, she didn’t want to tell him the truth. “He was beat, then stabbed.”
Sam shook and grabbed onto the desk as he buried his face in the wood. Julie slid to the floor, covered her face, and sobbed, while Dawn rushed forward and rested her hand on his quaking back.
“Oh, God.” Shaking his head, he sobbed. “I should’ve seen this coming. Especially with everything Ella went through with Annie before the Quinns took her in.”
Kneeling before him, Dawn gave him all the comfort she could offer. She didn’t want to ask him this now, but she had to know. “Sam, was Chris into drugs?”
He closed his eyes and nodded. The sigh escaping him came from his soul. “Yeah. That’s why Peggy’s latest husband kicked him out,” he said, referring to his ex-wife. “But Chris… Chris was a good kid.” He turned his tortured gaze to her. “Find the bastard who did this, Dawn. Or you can kiss your dream of being sheriff goodbye. I think we both know who is selling drugs to these kids. That brother of yours has always been a trouble maker.”
She wouldn’t believe her older brother was the dealer.
He couldn’t be.
* * * *
The next morning, Dawn entered the surgical room off the morgue of Forest County General Hospital. At the stench of formaldehyde, embalming fluid, and disinfectant, the pot of coffee she’d drank that morning soured, and her belly rolled.
Stopping at the foot end of the metal table, she stared down at the autopsied body of Chris Larson. His face had been beaten to nearly unrecognizable, and he had a total of seven stab wounds.
Dr. Andy Warren, the county coroner, wiped his hands on a towel as he stood next to her. “The stab to the chest is what probably killed him. It punctured the heart and left lung.”
“When do you expect to get the toxicology results back?”
He shrugged and tossed the towel onto a bloody, instrument-cluttered tray. “Should have it back in three weeks. But from the damage to his liver and heart, I’d say he’s a crack cocaine user.”
“Thanks, Doc.” The last thing Colton needed was a crack dealer. Whatever happened to the days when the strongest drugs around were moonshine and marijuana?
Those days were lost when the Dallas dealers moved into the country to widen their net, and the Mexican drug cartels pumped more coke over the border. The answer whispered to her from the days she was a vice cop on the Dallas PD.
“Have you contacted the Texas Rangers?”
She swallowed hard. The last thing she wanted was the Rangers involved. Not because she couldn’t use their help, but because of who would likely be sent to assist in the investigation.
“Yeah, I called them and the FBI too.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to get back to the office. I’m meeting with the Ranger in an hour.”
Back at the station, she entered the sheriff’s office. The door still had Zack Cartwright’s name painted in gold on the frosted glass of the window. She couldn’t believe the damned fool had gone and resigned.
He’d been like a brother to her for as long as she could remember. When he first started sniffing around Tracy Quinn Parker again, she thought he was nuts. But maybe Dawn had missed her target on that one. She'd never seen Zack happier than he was now that they're back together and engaged to be married at Thanksgiving.
He’d been an amazing sheriff, but his heart had never been in the job.
Zack Cartwright would forever be a cowboy.
After setting a pot of coffee to brew in the old stained Mr. Coffee, sitting on a short metal file cabinet in the corner, she sat in the fake leather chair behind the utilitarian desk. She ran both hands over her slicked back hair and pulled out the band to shake out the bun at the back of her head. Taking a deep breath, she braided and re-wound the thick, long mess back into a knot and secured it with the black band. Playing with her hair wasn’t going to make any of this go away.
Before she had a chance to mentally prepare herself for the encounter coming with Texas Ranger Wyatt McPherson in less than ten minutes, Charles “Chet” Hendricks roared through the open door like a winter storm. The deputy had been interviewing everyone living on Blackwell and Main Streets near the Longhorn.
She doubted anyone had seen anything since the time of death was estimated to be sometime around four AM, but she might get lucky because it had been a Monday morning. Someone might have been heading out to work that early. “Find out anything?”
She couldn’t miss the smugness of his smile. Chet had never been counted among her friends. He and Talon had been classmates, and Chet had bullied her older brother for years over being the youngest bastard son of the notorious Jock Blackwell, until he’d had enough and pounded the hell out of Chet. The deputy hadn’t made it a secret he didn’t want her as interim sheriff, and threw his hat into the election and campaigned against her.
But his dislike went deeper than Talon’s illegitimacy or her ability to be sheriff.
Chet disliked anyone who didn’t check the Caucasian box on the census form.
Despite this, the town loved its veterans, and Chet