hand inched toward the car’s radio. Dare she listen to hear if the news was reporting anything about a body found on Prospector’s Way?
No, it was too soon. And if Ricky wasn’t privy to information, neither were other reporters.
Oh, this was hard. She’d prayed for closure, and now that it was almost here all she felt was dread. Dread! She hated to admit it, but there’d always been this tiny germ of hope that Dustin would someday be discovered leading a secret life in some small community in Mexico. Amnesia. It would be amnesia.
Well, it could happen!
She turned onto the two-lane highway and got stuck behind a tractor trailer. The slow-moving vehicle gave her way too much time to think. Why had Eric Santellis returned to Arizona? He’d dropped off the earth after he’d gotten out of prison. Rosa said he’d gone looking for his sister. Ruth wished he’d stayed missing.
Leaving Gila City limits behind, Ruth entered a dirt road that jutted to the left and went a good two, three miles before introducing travelers to a type of one-horse town still alive and well in Arizona. She’d lived here for a few years back during her childhood. She remembered her mother cleaning houses to make a living, her father spending time in bars and in jail, and she remembered sleeping on a brown, smelly couch because there had only been one bedroom in the small house.
Broken Bones had thrived in the late 1800s; now it catered to an iffy tourist crowd and a dedicated modern-day gold prospectors crowd, most of whom stayed year-round.
By checking the dashboard clock, Ruth knew it had taken almost an hour to travel from the Fifth Street Church all the way to the Santellises’ cabin.
It felt like forever.
The small SUV parked in front of the cabin blocked the entryway, and took up more room than necessary. The woman, slight of build and dressed in black, strode confidently to the door. She didn’t knock. She opened the door and stepped in, zeroing in on Eric. The reporter started forward, took one look at both the woman and Eric and settled back to wait.
Small-town justice was an entity in itself. No doubt Officer Ruth Atkins figured any Santellis with a body in his shed would have news about the body she most wanted to find: her husband.
Eric had seen her in court all those months ago. On his behalf, in a halting voice, she outlined the investigation she’d been involved in and how she’d investigated the policeman who actually committed the murder Eric went to prison for. Of all who’d testified on his behalf, she was the only one who did it without a hint of compassion. It seemed that his last name, in her opinion, was enough to warrant a life sentence in Florence Prison. But, she was a cop through and through, as her husband had been, and she would testify truthfully, even if it broke her heart.
He felt guilty just looking at her and wondering which family member was responsible for making her a widow.
She stood, hands on her hips, with a Don’t-you-dare-mess-with-me look in her red-rimmed eyes, and stated, “So, you found a body?”
“I did.”
“Is it my husband?”
This he hadn’t expected. For the last few hours his place had been an open-door invitation to both law enforcement and the medical field. The term female remains had been bantered around so often it sounded like a refrain from a rap song.
“No, the remains are female.”
“I just found out.” This was from the reporter who’d been banned from the shed. Now at least Eric knew who the snitch was.
“It’s a middle-aged woman, probably dead about six months,” Eric said. “Whoever put her in the shed didn’t really try to hide her. She was buried under clothes.”
Ruth seemed to deflate but only for a moment. Then, she raised an eyebrow. Eric knew she was thinking the Santellises would be a bit more thorough, a bit more cruel.
Sheriff Mallery stomped into the room and frowned at Ruth. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard you had a body.”
“Well, great guns, the news has probably made it to the moon by now.” He motioned to Ricky. “You might as well head over there, don’t touch anything and make sure to get the facts right.” Ricky didn’t need a second invitation. Ruth didn’t even wait for one.
Mallery headed outside, leaving Eric alone with the ghosts of his ancestors both present and past. Not the position Eric wanted, so he slowly followed them. They had the shed’s door propped open. August, in Arizona, was bad enough, hot enough. Add the stench of a dead body to the sweltering air and suddenly Siberia looked pretty inviting.
Every few minutes someone would exit and someone else would return. The coroner, annoyed at the chaos, threatened dire consequences should any feet stray too close to his victim and contaminate the area.
Eric leaned against the door frame and watched as Ricky displayed the unique ability of being able to write both in a cramped place and in the dark. Ruth hovered at Ricky’s elbow. “It’s a woman,” she whispered in his ear.
“Duh,” he responded.
Friendship, even in the worst of locales. Eric missed it, wanted it and didn’t dare pursue it out here in the real world. The people he’d befriended in the past had a way of getting hurt—sometimes fatally.
Two deputies were busy moving boxes away from the corpse. Eric stayed on the stairs by the door. He could see everything and everybody. The coroner stood after a moment and said, “We can take a break now. I’ll call dispatch and get the CSI guys out here.”
The cops moving stuff sighed in relief. It was crowded, hot and dark in the shed. Compared to the smell, those were the good qualities. One of the cops put down the basket he’d just picked up. It teetered on the edge and fell to the ground with a thump only made louder by the self-imposed silence of the people in the shed.
At that moment, more than anything, Eric wished he’d remained on the porch, because when the coroner started packing his medical bag and the basket fell over, Eric spotted another hand.
THREE
Ricky, the reporter, got so excited he dropped his pen. The two deputies froze, probably fearful lest they move something and find yet another body. The coroner simply reopened his medical bag and waited for the deputies to snap out of their stupor and clear the way.
Eric watched Ruth. She didn’t make a sound. The heat from the shed seemed to cloy as the players in this no-win game waited to see what would happen next. It reminded Eric of prison, of being in a place he couldn’t breathe, a place with no soul. The smell of death, human sorrow and just plain wrongness, intensified. Although no one acknowledged the feeling, they all recognized it.
Sheriff Mallery finally snapped his fingers and barked at his deputies, “Well, you two just gonna stand there?”
Suddenly Ruth and Ricky were both pushed back as the need to maneuver boxes and clear the area became frenzied. Ricky obviously knew his job. He blended into the shadows. Ruth stumbled forward, her hand stretched out, her mouth a silent “0” of what? Fear? Shock? Disbelief? The deputies got busy and the hand became an arm, a torso, legs, a complete corpse.
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