Burning Ridge Read online

  Bit by bit, they uncovered the victim’s remains. As they worked their way downward, continuing to trench below the level of the victim’s back, Mattie moved forward to get a better view while Cole stayed where he was.

  Gradually, it became apparent that the body had been placed directly in the dirt at the bottom of a pit. Whoever had tried to burn this victim had neglected to line the pit first with wood. Could the attempt to burn the victim have been an afterthought, or the work of somebody not used to the outdoors? Out here in the open, one could never burn a body completely without building a pyre of sorts and establishing a wicking effect from below. Even then, the temperature would likely never reach the intensity needed to burn away bone.

  Stella must have been thinking along the same lines. “It looks like there’s no wood under the body. Is that right?” she asked Lawson.

  “That’s right. The backside of the remains should be relatively intact. I can already see evidence of clothing that’s spared. Denim pants, a light blue shirt. Dentition should be somewhat preserved. The tongue actually protects the teeth.”

  Mattie glanced at the blackened tongue that bulged from the victim’s mouth and then looked away. It was hard to imagine how anyone could damage another person in this way.

  Once they uncovered the body, Lawson turned to one of his teammates. “Let’s go ahead and get the board in place.”

  They positioned a stretcher directly beside the burned corpse and spread open a body bag on it.

  “We’ll need to roll the remains,” Lawson said.

  With deft movements that demonstrated a great deal of experience, they positioned the body on its side at the edge of the stretcher.

  Lawson was squatting behind the corpse. “There’s a tattoo here at the base of the neck. It says ‘Tamara and Elliott Forever’ inside a heart. Looks like we might have a first name now. Elliott. At least the tattoo is clear enough for identification purposes on a missing persons database.”

  An oily wave of darkness washed through Mattie. Tamara and Elliott. She felt herself sway as the implications of those words hit her.

  Cole stepped up beside her and took hold of her forearm. “Are you okay?”

  She shook her head slightly as her eyes zeroed in on the body’s damaged face. She’d been unable to let her gaze linger there before, but now she tried to distinguish its features.

  Willie?

  Stella approached. “What is it, Mattie?”

  While Mattie locked eyes with Stella, Robo edged in closer, his warmth a comfort against her leg. “My brother has been missing since Wednesday. His girlfriend is Tamara and her son is Elliott.”

  Stella’s eyes widened and then went to the corpse. Bile rose in Mattie’s throat, and she turned away, lurching back toward the stream. Robo stayed beside her while Cole followed. She made it across the stream and into some bushes before heaving.

  “Here, Robo,” she heard Cole say as he held back her dog. Then she felt his warm hand on her shoulder, offering some sense of stability in a world turned upside down.

  THIRTEEN

  Battling a quiver deep in her gut, Mattie sat on a log beside the campfire and sipped from her water supply. Stella hunkered down in front of her, staring at her with eyes that probed her depths, while Cole stood a few feet away, worry lines etched on his face.

  Stella spoke, her voice quiet but intense. “Tell me what you know about your brother.”

  “Very little. He lives in Hollywood and works as a car mechanic.” Poor Willie. She wished she knew him better.

  “Fits with the boots.”

  Steel-toed work boots. “I suppose so.”

  “What’s his full name?”

  Mattie focused to retrieve Willie’s middle name from memories stored when she was only six years old. “William James Cobb, if I remember right.”

  “What’s his history?”

  “Well … I only know recent.”

  “Recent might be what counts.”

  Mattie hated to divulge some of what she knew, but it was important and possibly relevant information. “He spent some time in a drug rehab center within the last year. Met a woman who worked there named Tamara and when he got out, he moved in with her and her son Elliott. He was trying to stay clean and hold down a job that he told me he liked.”

  “It would be a huge coincidence if this was someone else with that tattoo, Mattie. You know that, don’t you?”

  Mattie nodded agreement, glancing at Cole. He tilted his head to the side with an expression that signaled his dismay, his eyes filled with sympathy. It made her own tears well, so she quickly looked away.

  “Why do you think he’s turned up here outside of Timber Creek?” Stella asked.

  “Wouldn’t have happened of his own free will. He said he never wanted to come back to Timber Creek. Too many bad memories.”

  This time, it was Stella who glanced at Cole. “Do you mind if Mattie and I speak privately for a few minutes, Dr. Walker?”

  “Of course not.” Cole looked at Mattie before turning to leave. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be over with the horses.”

  Stella knew almost as much about Mattie’s past as she did—the childhood abuse at the hands of her father, Willie’s regret that he couldn’t protect his little sister from their father’s advances, and their mother’s abandonment. Now Mattie could see the detective’s mind churning to find connections. “Could your past relate to his homicide?”

  Mattie shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t see how.”

  “But he’s here, Mattie. He’s not back in Hollywood where he belongs.”

  She shifted her mind away from Willie’s damaged face and struggled to focus on finding connections. “Tamara told me this morning that lately he’d been acting different. Secretive. I assumed he’d started using again.”

  “Toxicology tests should be possible with his body being partially preserved. We’ll be able to find that out.”

  “Did the forensic anthropologist estimate when he was killed?”

  “Said it was hard to tell. Three or four days—as early as last Friday.”

  Mattie tried to recall more of her discussion with Tamara. “She said Willie was going out a lot in the evenings, like he was meeting someone.”

  “We need to find out more about that.”

  “I don’t think she knows anything.”

  “I’ll talk to someone at his job site.” Stella stared into the middle distance for a few moments, thinking. “There has to be a link to Timber Creek that surfaced in William’s life recently. When did you talk to him last?”

  “It was the weekend before last. Saturday evening, ten days past. We talked about meeting each other in Vegas.” A lump rose in Mattie’s throat, and she struggled to suppress her tears.

  “Did he mention meeting up with friends or anything that could explain his secretive behavior?”

  “Not a thing. And from what Tamara said, I gathered that the change in his behavior was more recent than that.”

  “Your father is deceased. Could your mother be the reason that William returned to Timber Creek?”

  My mother? The thought of her mother coming to Timber Creek squeezed her heart. “I don’t know. I suppose anything’s possible, but if she’s in the area, I know nothing about it.”

  “Okay. We need to get down where we can make some phone calls. First, we need to talk to Tamara and gather more information, make a positive ID with the tattoo and go from there. Sheriff McCoy and Brody have this site covered. Do you want to go back to the office with me?”

  Part of Mattie wanted to stay with Willie, show him respect by standing guard over his remains. But the larger part of her knew that she needed to be the one to speak with his girlfriend, show him respect by taking care of the one he obviously loved. “I’ll go with you. We’ll call Tamara together.”

  “Sounds good. Let’s see if that man of yours will take us back down the mountain on those horses he’s so fond of.”

  * * *<
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  Mattie drove Stella and Robo back to the station in the K-9 unit, all the while trying to thrust the image of her brother’s charred body out of her mind. They arrived a few minutes before six in the evening, and Rainbow was still on duty at the dispatcher’s desk. She greeted Mattie and Stella with her typical enthusiasm, but backed off right away when she saw the look on their faces. Mattie nodded at her, signaling that they would talk later, and followed Stella into the detective’s private office. After Robo came inside behind her, she closed the door, at the same time pulling her cell phone from her pocket.

  “Here’s Tamara’s number.” She rattled it off as she slumped into a chair beside Stella’s desk. Robo circled once and, heaving a sigh, plopped down at her side. He’d had a long day with more than an enough exercise to tire him out.

  Stella began to dial. “I’ll introduce myself to her first.”

  After concentrating on listening for a few moments, Stella spoke. “Hello, is this Tamara Bennett?” After a pause, Stella continued. “This Detective Stella LoSasso from the Timber Creek County Sheriff’s Department. I’m here with William Cobb’s sister, Deputy Mattie Cobb. Are you able to speak with us for a few minutes?” Another pause. “Just one moment, let me put you on speaker phone.”

  Mattie spoke to let Tamara know she’d joined them on the line. “Hello, Tamara, this is Mattie.”

  Tamara’s voice held a sharp edge of concern. “Mattie, what is it? What’s going on?”

  Stella nodded at Mattie to take the lead.

  “We’re calling to ask you some questions about Willie,” Mattie said. She paused to take a deep breath, trying to loosen the tightness in her chest. “Does he have any tattoos on his back?”

  “He has several. Why? Why are you asking?”

  “How about at the base of his neck?”

  “He has a heart with some ivy leaves entwined on the edges. Inside, it says ‘Tamara and Elliott Forever’.” Tamara’s breath caught. “He said it would show his dedication to his new family.” She had begun to cry, and Mattie hesitated, tears stinging her own eyes.

  Stella jumped in, so that Mattie wouldn’t have to say the next words. “Ms. Bennett, we’ve located a person who has a tattoo that matches that description. He was found in the mountains west of our town here in Colorado, and it’s highly likely that he’s your friend William. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that he was found dead.”

  Now Tamara’s sobbing could be heard plainly, and Mattie squeezed her eyes shut to hold her grief in check. She wished she’d been able to meet this woman who’d shared Willie’s life and had encouraged him to start over. She wished she could be in the same room with her instead of hundreds of miles apart. She wished … well, she wished everything had been different.

  Why did I wait to reconnect with my brother? Now it’s too late.

  Tamara controlled her sobs enough to speak. “I knew it. I’ve had a terrible feeling that something bad happened to him.”

  Stella reached for paper and pen. “We need to find out more about William, and it’s important that we get started with our investigation right away. Do you feel up to answering questions now, or should I give you a few minutes?”

  “How did he die? Where did you find him?” Tamara asked.

  The details were too grisly to share at this point. Mattie tried to reach out across the miles. “We’re trying to find out how he died, Tamara. There’ll be an autopsy very soon. He was found in the mountains west of Timber Creek.”

  “He hated Timber Creek.”

  “I know. Why do you think he was out here?”

  A pause, and then Tamara answered, her voice strained. “He wouldn’t go there. It wasn’t like him to disappear. He never would have left Elliott stranded after school without calling me to cover for him. He must’ve been taken. I thought that from the very beginning.”

  “What do you mean by taken?” Stella asked.

  “Taken against his will.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because he turned his back on some old friends from a rough crowd. You know, when he got out of rehab.”

  Stella gazed at Mattie for a few beats, a furrow between her eyebrows. She began writing on her pad. “Were any of these people from Timber Creek?”

  “I don’t think so. But I don’t know really.”

  Stella showed Mattie what she’d written: How do rough crowd in California and body here in Timber Creek connect???

  Mattie shrugged. “Tamara, can you give us the names of any of these people?”

  Tamara heaved a breath, apparently pausing to think. “I know some street names. Ziggy the Fish, Shark, Popeye. Maybe the police here could help identify the gang these guys are in.”

  Stella was nodding while she recorded the names. “I think so, too. Do you have a case number on William’s missing person report?”

  “I have it,” Mattie said. “That and the detective’s name who was assigned to the case.”

  Stella acknowledged Mattie with a nod and moved on with another question for Tamara. “Where did William work?”

  When she answered, Stella recorded the name and phone number of the business.

  Mattie couldn’t shake the thought that Willie’s killer must have connected with him sometime in the past ten days. Everything had been fine when they talked—it had to be something since then. “You told me this morning that Willie’s behavior changed recently. Can you pinpoint when that happened?”

  Tamara sniffled. “I guess I first noticed it a week ago Sunday night. That was the night he made an excuse to leave home instead of watching movies with me and Elliott.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he had to go into work. I said, ‘On a Sunday night?’ And he said that they had a back load of work to do on Monday, and the boss wanted to get an early start.”

  “Did you call to check to see if he was actually there?”

  “That’s part of the whole rehab thing, see? I don’t check up on him, at least not yet. If I want to be able to trust him, I have to act like I trust him until he shows me I can’t.”

  Sounded a bit convoluted, but Mattie thought she understood the concept. “What happened after Sunday night?”

  “Nothing on Monday, although he seemed more nervous than usual. But on Tuesday, he said he was going to have dinner with a friend. I asked him who the friend was, and he said it was an old friend of the family’s.”

  Mattie’s radar lit up. “Was this friend from Timber Creek?”

  “I didn’t get that. When I asked for details, William shut me down. That’s what I meant by secretive. He wouldn’t even look at me. Just said he had to go out and meet this guy, and that he might be out late. I was asleep when he got home, and it looked like he spent the rest of the night on the couch.”

  Mattie wondered if her mother was the one who’d shown up in Willie’s life. “Did he say he was meeting a man or a woman?”

  “A man. But who knows?”

  “Did you talk about it Wednesday morning?”

  “It was a rush. I’d stayed up late, so I was tired and overslept, and William looked really stressed out. I had to get Elliott ready and take him to school. I thought we’d talk about it that night. But then …” Tamara’s voice broke and dissolved into sobs.

  Mattie finished Tamara’s thought for her. “Then he disappeared.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mattie felt herself choke up again. With a glance, she threw the lead back to Stella.

  “Other than his old street gang, can you think of anyone else who might have harmed William?” Stella asked.

  “Not anyone in our lives now.”

  That’s the problem, Mattie thought. This has to be connected to Timber Creek.

  “I want to see him,” Tamara said. “If I come out there, can I see him?”

  Mattie flinched and didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you have someone near you who can stay with you this evening?” Stella asked.

  �
��My sister. I’ll call her.”

  Stella avoided a direct answer. “Let me find out some details about the time of the autopsy and call you back later.”

  Mattie knew that Stella wanted Tamara to have a support person in place before sharing the grim details of William’s condition.

  Stella provided her own contact information and finished up the call. After disconnecting, she leaned back in her chair and stared at Mattie. “What are you thinking?”

  Mattie gave her head a slight shake, trying to jiggle her thoughts into some kind of order. “We’ve got to find the connection between California and Timber Creek. I’m wondering if our mother showed up or something, but that doesn’t make any sense. And this person that he met with last Sunday? It couldn’t have been a friend of the family. Our family didn’t have any friends.”

  “I think he said that to avoid the truth, whatever it is.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll call his place of employment and see if the detective out there can help us work the local angle. Then I’ll check back with Tamara and make sure her sister’s with her. I need to let her know why it’s not a good idea for her to rush out here to view his remains.” Stella studied Mattie with a critical eye. “Why don’t you finish up here and go home and get some sleep? You look about done in.”

  “I need to help you with these leads, or at least make that next call to Tamara.”

  “You’ve done all that you need to for today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Go home and get some rest while you can.”

  Stella was picking up the phone while Mattie woke up Robo and led him out of the office, closing the door quietly behind them.

  Turning, she spied Rainbow striding across the lobby, a frown of concern etched on her face. “What happened, Mattie?” she asked as she approached.

  Mattie knew she couldn’t avoid telling her friend about the latest development in this case. Noticing that they were the only ones in the lobby, Mattie swallowed the lump in her throat and told her that they’d discovered the identity of their latest victim—her own brother.