Page 3 of Lawless Ride

“I feel like I should be there,” said Harlan.

All the same age, but Harlan is a lot more mature than either one of the girls. Time in Juvie will do that.

“You can’t be there this morning. We have a call out. Finish your coffee. We have a dead body in a house fire a few blocks from here.”

“A fire?” Harlan slurped down what was left of his coffee and put his mug in the sink. “Did a house burn down during the night?”

“Don’t know. Let’s go see.”

Masters’ Residence. Coyote Creek.

Firemen were scattered around the premises—inside and out—when I got there with Harlan and Ted and the dogs. The fire was out, and it hadn’t burned the bungalow to the ground. Not even close. The smoke in the air was the worst thing. An overcast day with no wind and the smoke was lingering.

Turned out to be a kitchen fire and I wouldn’t have been called except for the guy who was dead in his bed. I guessed that the homeowner was into about his second day of decomp, judging by the smell and the swarms of flies.

The smell of smoke in the house was no match for the putrid smell the decaying corpse in the bedroom was giving off.

Doctor Olson arrived shortly after we did, and he confirmed that Tory Masters had been dead for a good few days. Itdefinitely wasn’t him who’d left the stove on and burned his kitchen black.

Harlan gagged at the pungent reek of death, and I sent him outside to wait with the dogs.

“Cause of death, Doc?”

“Impossible to tell here, Travis. There’s far too much decomp. Give me a couple of days, but with the fire indicating that there was someone else in the house since the victim died, I’m ruling the death as suspicious. No other choice. You can get started on your investigation.”

“Okay, thanks. This already has a weird feel to it. If the guy had been dead for a couple of days, why would somebody be ignoring the corpse and cooking breakfast? How could they eat when the house smelled like it does?”

Doctor Olsen smiled. “Whoever left the stove on wasn’t a rational thinker. That’s about all I can say.”

“Yep, not rational.” I mulled it over. “Drunk, on drugs or just plain nuts.” I went outside and talked to the firemen. They’d be local guys and probably knew the victim.

“Any of you guys know if Tory Masters had a wife?

Ted spoke up and said, “Yeah, he’s got a wife, Travis. Josie. She ain’t bad looking, but skinny. Bit of a wild one. Heard she might’ve rolled up a number now and again.”

“Anything harder?”

Ted shrugged. He knew but he wasn’t telling me in front of the firemen. I got it.

“Let’s try to locate the wife and do the notification. At the same time, we’ll find out if she left the fuckin stove on purposely to burn up her husband’s corpse.”

“If she did,” said Ted, “she left way too soon and did a shit job of it.”

“People are stupid, Ted,” I said. “As soon as you come at it from that angle, you’ll solve a lot more cases.”

“I learn so much from you, Travis.” He smirked.

“Shut up. Go back to the station and get Molly to help you with a list of friends and relatives for Tory and Josie Masters. Find out who they hung out with and then start running them down, one by one. Josie went somewhere and we have to find her.”

“What’s she driving?” asked Harlan.

“That’s a helpful question.” I winked at him and looked up Josie Masters in the DMV. “Here she is. Dark red Subaru, seven years old.” I wrote the number down, then called and put a BOLO out on the plate.

“Think she had a boyfriend?” asked Harlan.

“Yeah, one of the top three reasons to knock somebody off. Love. Money. Revenge.”

“Or a combo,” said Harlan.

---