Page 40 of Midnight Ride

We leashed Max and Sarge, and they were crazed to get running through the bush—bouncing around and whining. I locked the truck, and we started walking with the hunter.

“You check the body for ID?”

“No.” He screwed up his face at the thought of it. “None of us touched him. He’s a chewed-up mess. Wait until you see what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah. Can’t wait to see him,” said Virge.

Both dogs were pulling on their leashes—anxious like that for the entire mile from the road to the place the hunters had found the body.

“Here he is, Deputies. Not that far from our camp—maybe a quarter mile—but we had no idea he was lying here like this. Can’t say how long he’s been dead.”

Virge made a face when he saw what was left of the dead guy. Both his arms were gone—ripped right off just above the elbow—and one of his legs was chewed up pretty bad but still semi-attached.

The dogs sniffed around the area—noses to the ground—a lot of animals had been attracted to the body by the smell of decomp—nature’s way of disposing of the dead.

Trying to ignore the stink of the corpse, I took a knee and reached into the pocket of the victim’s jeans feeling for a wallet. Pulled it out, and the leather was damp, but the billfold was still in one piece.

“Who is it?” asked Virge. “Willy Lindstrom, right?”

I pulled the DL out so I could read it better and shook my head at my brother. “Nope. Ain’t him, Virge. I figured it would be, but this is another guy. Chad Palliser.”

“Huh,” said Virgil. “This guy was alive on the video Oscar took a few days ago. Where the hell is Willy?”

“Guess we ain’t found Willy yet, bro.” I called Travis and let him know we were at the scene, and he had already called Doctor Olson and sent him our way.

“Virge, you’ll have to run back out to the road and wait for the Doc.”

“Aw, shit. I’m tired. Why can’t you do it, Harlan?”

“Because now that there’s a crime scene, I have to stay here until the body has been examined and the site has been searched for evidence.”

“Yeah. Good one. That means I have to do the shit work.”

I shrugged and Virge headed for the road. He would complain loud and long to me but never in front of Travis.

The hunters who found the body hung around with me while I waited. Fairly subdued after their discovery, we sat on fallen logs and smoked. Finding a body in that condition could be pretty unsettling. Finding any dead body was bad enough.

Motel 15. Shelby Interchange.

Daddy sent me after Alison Oliver, and I tracked her and her brother-in-law to an old motel out on the interstate just north of the Highway Two intersection.

I hung back while they went into the office and got a room. They parked in front of room eleven, went inside and didn’t come out.

Parked down the road so they wouldn’t see me, I called the sheriff’s cell. “Daddy, I trailed Mrs. Oliver, and she lied about going back to Idaho.”

“Where is she, Tam?”

“Trevor and her are shacked up in that old motel north of the I-15/Route 2 intersection.”

“Huh. Figured she was lying. You don’t have to stay there. See if you can get a tag on their vehicle like I showed you.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

“Get that done and come back to the station. We’ll set Billy up when you get here, and he can monitor their movements.”

“Copy that.”

Coyote Creek Needs and Feeds.

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