Page 21 of The Killing Plains

“I don’t think so. Look at this.” Avery shifted the cruiser into park and jumped out.

Colly followed. “What is it?”

Avery went to the door and pointed to a small red sign: “Fire door: Alarm will sound if door is opened. Do not block.”

“Maybe the alarm’s disengaged,” Colly said.

Avery reached for the doorknob, but Colly grabbed her arm. “Badidea. We can ask about it later.” She paused. “Get a picture, though.”

Flushed and angry, Avery stamped back to the car. Colly looked around. A CCTV camera hung from the eaves.

She pointed to it when Avery returned. “Did the Rangers download that footage?”

“Why would they? Denny left through the front.”

Avery took pictures of the door, and they got back in the car.

“What now?” The girl’s voice was sulky.

Pout all you want, kid—it’s not my job to coddle you when you do something stupid,Colly thought, glancing at the dashboard clock. She wanted to talk to Denny’s folks, but that promised to be a lengthy interview, and Satchel’s school let out in an hour and a half.

Satchel. Hours had passed since she’d dropped him off, pale and terrified, at the classroom. She’d been so engrossed in the case that she hadn’t stopped to wonder how he was doing. She felt a pang of guilt at the thought.

“Is there time to talk to that mechanic who saw Denny riding towards the ranch?” she asked.

Avery shifted the car into gear and peeled angrily down the alley, kicking up a spray of gravel behind them.

So much for careful driving, Colly thought grimly as they sped through town, heading north.

Chapter 6

In the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War, the town of Crescent Bluff had begun as a minor trading post on a western tributary of the Chisholm Trail, a place for cowboys, driving their vast herds northwards through Texas and the Indian Territories, to stop for supplies and refreshment. A century and a half later, the great cattle drives were gone, and the Chisholm Trail had long ago faded into the grass. But Crescent Bluff remained, and so did the feeder route, though it had dwindled to little more than a farm-to-market road that locals called the Old Ranch Way.

Driving north along it for the second time that day, Colly gazed absently out at the blur of dollar stores, gas stations, and grubby strip malls, and wondered what it would have been like to witness the jostling sea of hide and horn, dust billowing in its wake, as cowhands, heels down in their stirrups, whooped and whistled along the margins of the herd. A romantic image, she mused, but a waste of time to ponder. Life had surely been as brutal and ugly then as now.

She turned away from the window. “Well? Are you going to tell me, or make me guess?”

Startled, Avery jerked the wheel, nearly sideswiping a mailbox. “Tell you what?”

“Your problem with Niall Shaw.”

“What makes you think I have a problem?”

“The look you gave him would’ve curdled milk. Is it about your brother? He mentioned they were friends.”

“Shaw doesn’t have friends. Just admirers.”

Colly waited for more, but Avery was clearly through with the conversation.If you think this passive-aggressive adolescent crap will fly in a big-city department, you’re in for a rude surprise, Colly thought. But she decided not to press the issue, for now.

On the north edge of town, where seedy businesses thinned into open country, they passed a cluttered salvage yard and pulled into a parking lot beneath a sign for “Digby’s Automotive.” The shop was the last building for miles, a squat structure with faded blue awnings and two open repair bays. A volley of ferocious barking broke out at the salvage yard next door as Colly and Avery climbed out of the car. They pushed through the door into a disorderly front office, where a young woman was painting her nails and watching a home-remodeling show on a television mounted to the wall.

“We’re looking for Tom Gunnell,” Colly said.

The woman stared at them without curiosity for a moment, then indicated a side door. “Bay two.”

The garage smelled of motor oil and exhaust—vaguely nostalgic to Colly, who had fond childhood memories of playing with cousins in her uncle’s repair shop.

“Anybody here?” she called.

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