Peter Decker 2-Book Thriller Collection: Blindman’s Bluff, Hangman

“Set something up with him ASAP, and I want to be there.”

“What’s up with him?”

Decker explained Mace Kaffey’s alleged embezzlement and the charges brought by his brother. “I’m just wondering if Connors took the fall for him.”

“Interesting theory. I’ll give him another call.”

“Good. Last, any word about Rondo Martin from your sources in Ponceville?”

“I haven’t heard back.”

“Push on Martin.” Decker told him about his conversation with Brett Harriman. “I’ll probably wind up sending you to Ponceville, but you need to make all your preparatory calls first.”

“We’re working on information from a blind guy?” Brubeck said.

“He can’t see but he sure as hell can hear. The list of guards who worked for the Kaffeys isn’t public knowledge, and this guy named two guards on the roster. That makes my antennas twitch. And even if the knowledge was public, he used the name José Pinon, not Joe Pine. Marge and Oliver are busy with the dig at the ranch. Take Rondo Martin off their hands, and give Joe Pine to Andrew Messing. The first thing we need is a set of prints.”

“I’ll push the Ponceville sheriff. His name is Tim England, but they call him T.”

“I don’t care what they call him, just call him up and get a set of prints. Have Drew check with Neptune Brady and see if they have a set on Joe Pine. Then run both of them through NCIC once you’ve got the prints.”

“I hear you.”

“You two are still going to need to talk to all of the guards, but let’s go with what we have first. Especially with Rondo Martin, because he was on duty and now he’s missing.”

“Good luck at the ranch. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“Thanks.” Decker hung up the phone and thought about being lucky. This meant that they would dig up something that had an impact on the case—like a dead person. So lucky was probably not the correct word. Maybe what he was hoping for was that maybe the dig wasn’t a total waste of valuable time.

12 (#ulink_cad42ac4-04c6-5866-8e49-453ed4b5a06a)

As the daylight drew to a close, the sun’s rays lengthened and turned the ranchland into a sheet of polished copper. Even peering through shades, Decker had to squint. Men were digging up parched ground, gingerly relocating mounds of pebbled soil. After the first inch, Marge explained, the earth gave way easily, and everyone suspected that there was something down below. She and Oliver had been sifting through the piles of dirt, making sure that nothing significant went unnoticed. So far, the yield was confined to beer bottle caps, soda cans, food wrappers, and cigarette butts.

“They’ve been collected for evidence,” Marge said. “Should we need to, we can have the cigarettes sent for DNA testing to give us an idea about who’s been out here.”

Oliver added, “We found the butts below the dirt, so they didn’t ride the wind to the spot. Someone dug this hole for a purpose.”

“It stinks,” Marge said. “Mostly from horseshit.”

Decker agreed, although the smell was a tad nostalgic, reminding him of his days as a single man owning a ranch. He wouldn’t want to go back, but the recollection was sweet. His nostrils also picked up skunk spray. He looked upward and saw a fleet of crows overhead. They cawed noisily, bothered by the posse below invading their wide-open space. There were also several raptors circling overhead, the up-tilt of their wings suggesting that they were carrion feeders as opposed to hawks that ate fresh kill.

Crows ate carrion as well.

Made him wonder. What did they know that he didn’t?

The sun had dipped below the hills, crowning them in fiery gold. Dusk was starting to cover the remnants of natural illumination. Marge had set up a half-dozen spots powered by beefed-up truck engines. She’d need them soon, as daylight was becoming a fond memory.

With nothing better to do than to watch the buzzards, Decker decided to be useful. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, crouched down, and began winnowing through a dirt pile. Though he needed to focus, his mind began to wander as the monotony of the task set in.

It was Sabbath and he should have been home with Rina, enjoying good food and laughter and company over a bottle of wine. He should have been home with Hannah who was only a year away from college. There was so little time left with her, because his experience dictated that once kids left, they came back different. The love was still there, but the relationship changed irrevocably. They were young adults merging into the fast lane of life.

Cindy had been financially independent for years, and since she married she was less in Decker’s consciousness. She was Koby’s responsibility, not his. Decker supposed he’d feel the same way once his other children settled down.

His older stepson, Sammy, was on his way. A sophomore in medical school, he was engaged to one of his classmates, a lovely young girl named Rachel whom he met by happenstance at a busy restaurant. Jacob, the younger stepson, was a neuroscience major at Johns Hopkins with an eye toward graduate school. He was still with his girlfriend, Ilana, the two of them dating steadily for the last two years.

Hannah Rose was the last stop before his barreling locomotive of child rearing came to an abrupt halt. His and Rina’s only biological child together, Hannah and her march to maturity not only represented that inevitable milestone of empty nesting, but signified the years of their cemented marriage. While he looked forward to calling his time his own, he knew he’d miss her terribly and he’d fret every time he got that nuanced phone call that told him that all wasn’t perfect in her life.

Just as the stars began to flicker overhead, Wynona Pratt and her band of searchers came in from the field. She spied Decker and brought him up to date, handing him a map of the areas recently combed.

“We’re going to reconvene tomorrow at nine to go over the last sector. I’ll do the entrances and the exits to the property at that time.” Wynona kicked the ground softly. “If you’re okay with it, I thought I might stick around to see what’s going on.”

“Grab a set of gloves and help us sieve through the dirt.”

As the night darkened, Marge turned on the spots, casting hot white light on the dig. The crew worked steadily for the next hour. As the hole grew deeper, it gave off a hint of odor.

The crows had turned in for the night, but the buzzards still circled.

The stink, faint at first, grew steadily stronger until everyone could easily discern it as the smell of rot. A garbage dump? In areas this rural, the local trash wasn’t picked up on a once-a-week schedule.

Another twenty minutes of digging passed until someone held up his shovel and announced that he had hit something hard. As a flurry of people gathered around the spot, another digger proclaimed he had come upon something as well. From that point on, the work was more carefully crafted, going from shovels to trowels in order not to disturb or mangle what lay beneath the ground. The physical positions had shifted from backbreaking spading to knee-straining squatting as the group systematically began to remove dirt.

The sky had become studded with twinkling lights. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, and a distant owl hooted. Gnarled trees became frozen inky specters.

And still vultures flew overhead, bathing in the artificial lights.

Another hour passed before the ground started yielding its booty. Decker could make out several elongated skulls, large arcing ribs, and multiple femurs.

A reliquary of bones.

From the looks of it, it appeared that they had exhumed a horse grave.

The animals had been in the ground long enough for most of the flesh to deteriorate, although not completely. Decker could discern some musculature, hair, fur, and a couple of melting hooves. Still, the stink was disproportionately strong given the amount of remaining soft tissue. And the stench grew stronger as they began to uncover more material.

Decker allowed them to keep going until the smell became downright toxic. He ordered everyone to stop, step back, and take a few breaths of fresh air. He called over his detectives. “Obviously, we hit a horse grave. It’s not unusual to bury a dead animal out here when you have so much land, but something’s off. There’s too much stink for the amount of remaining flesh. Any ideas?”

Oliver said, “It’s more than one horse.”

“About three horses, looking at all the bones,” Wynona added.

“That’s weird,” Oliver said. “Burying three horses at the same time. What’d they do? Put a couple in cold storage until they had enough to fill the hole?”

“You know what’s really weird?” Marge said. “If you bury a dead horse—just dump it in the ground—when you dig it up, it should look like a skeleton of a horse that you dumped. It should be in roughly the same position as when it was buried. But all these bones are strewn willy-nilly.”

Decker said, “What if the horse skeletons were disturbed by human interference, specifically by somebody wanting to bury something underneath the equine bones?”

Marge said, “Like the bodies of our missing guards?”

Decker said, “Suppose one of the murderers knew about the grave because he saw it originally being dug. What better place to dump the bodies of the missing guards?”