LITMIR.BIZ

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body, that makes him a witness—of the scene, since he wasn’t here for the commission of the crime.” Ryan assumed that his father would have said as much if Brett had seen who had killed the ranch hand. “Was there anyone else here at the time?” he asked, rephrasing his previous question.

      “Like I said, not that I saw,” Big J answered. “I called you the minute I saw Rodgers lying there like that.”

      Ryan pressed his lips together, far from happy about this turn of events—or the predicament it would most likely put him in. What if, for some reason, another one of his siblings was behind this, or at least somehow connected to this?

      It hadn’t been a great week for family relations, he couldn’t help thinking.

      Reaching into his other back pocket, Ryan pulled out his cell phone. As he did so, he waved his father back. “You can’t be here right now.”

      Full, bushy eyebrows drew together over Big J’s patrician nose. “Why not?” the big man demanded, for the moment sounding every bit like his former, larger-than-life self. “This is my bunkhouse, boy.”

      “Nobody’s disputing that, Dad,” Ryan replied. “But right now it’s my crime scene, and until it’s processed, that tops your claim to it.”

      “Possession’s nine-tenths of the law and I’ve got the deed, boy.” Although he was proud of his sons, Big J was not about to be easily usurped. He was the head of the family. “Okay, okay,” Big J said, raising his hands defensively when Ryan looked at him darkly, giving no sign of backing down. “I’ll get on out.”

      John Colton began to do just that when he stopped suddenly to take a closer look at his son’s face, as if he was trying to gauge the gravity of what was transpiring on his property.

      “Should I be calling Preston?” he asked, referring to David Preston, the fifty-year-old lawyer who he kept on retainer to handle any legal matters involving either him or his family.

      “Not yet, Dad. But it wouldn’t hurt to let him know what’s going on,” Ryan told him.

      His father began to say something in response to that, but Ryan raised his hand, stopping him. The phone on the other end of the call he was making had stopped ringing and had been picked up.

      A melodic, albeit preoccupied female voice announced, “Crime lab.”

      Susie.

      Because his father was standing not that far off, despite his instructions to the contrary, Ryan addressed the woman he had called—the woman he had once made love to with abandon—formally.

      “This is Detective Ryan Colton. I need the CSI unit to come out to the Lucky C.”

      The impatient exhale echoed in his ear as he heard Susie say, “Look, I understand how you feel, Colton, but we just don’t have time to run a fourth DNA test on that broken window,” she told him in a voice that declared that there would be no further discussions on the matter.

      “This isn’t about the broken window,” Ryan said sharply, cutting in before she had the opportunity to continue.

      There was a long pause on the other end, as if the forensic expert was debating whether or not she believed him. “Then what?” she finally asked.

      “We’ve got a body at the bunkhouse,” he answered grimly.

      “Do you know who it is?” she asked him.

      Ryan thought he heard rustling on the other end of the line, like she was getting her evidence case together to bring to the crime scene. “Yeah, it’s one of the ranch hands, a relatively new hire named Kurt Rodgers.”

      “Are there signs of a struggle?” Susie asked.

      Ryan turned around to look at the area around the cowboy’s body. The only thing that appeared out of place was Rodgers’s body itself—and the pool of blood beneath it, that went without saying. Nothing else seemed to be disturbed.

      “From all indications, he didn’t see whatever it was coming,” Ryan answered. “Send your people out here.”

      “Right away,” she promised, snapping the locks on her case.

      Ryan thought that was the end of their conversation and was about to terminate the call when he heard Susie’s voice.

      “Ryan?”

      He put the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah?” He saw his father looking at him, as if Big J was trying to ascertain what was going on.

      Her voice softened just a touch as she told him, “I’m sorry.”

      Ryan didn’t have to ask about what. He knew. Susie was telling him that she was sorry he was going through this. It was hard enough investigating a murder, but when the murder took place on his own family’s ranch, that added an extra dimension to the case. A dimension that made it almost too delicate to work on, at least for him.

      “Thanks,” he told her, adding, “Me, too.”

      With that, Ryan ended the call and tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He knew he was going to have to call his boss, Boyd Benson, who was the Tulsa chief of police, and tell him what was going on. The man wouldn’t be happy about this. But then, in all fairness, he had no idea what did make the police chief happy. Benson’s regular expression was a dour one. Ryan couldn’t recall ever seeing the man smile, not even at one of the Christmas parties.

      Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen the man actually attend a Christmas party. The chief was fair and honest, but not exactly a pleasure to get along with.

      Ryan put off calling Benson for a few minutes, giving himself time to nail down exactly what he would tell his boss when he called him. Benson preferred having the maximum amount of information delivered to him using the minimum number of words.

      “‘You, too’ what?” Big J asked the moment he saw his son putting his phone away.

      Caught off guard, Ryan could only eye his father quizzically. “What?”

      “That person you called, the one you told to send that crime scene unit of yours out here, you said ‘me, too’ when he or she said something to you,” Big J said. “I’m just asking what you were talking about.”

      He supposed it would do no harm to fill his father in on something that was innocuous. “The forensic expert said she was sorry you were going through this.” Okay, so he had reworded it, but he thought it might make the situation a bit more palatable for his father if Big J thought the head of the crime lab sympathized. “And just so you understand, it isn’t my crime scene unit. It’s the police department’s crime scene unit.”

      “But you’re part of the police department, aren’t you?” his father pressed doggedly.

      Ryan could see where this was going. Nonetheless, he played along. “You know I am.”

      “Then it’s your crime scene unit,” Big J concluded triumphantly.

      Ryan paused. It wasn’t very hard to read between the lines. “Dad, this isn’t a matter of you and I being on opposite sides of this investigation.”

      Big J became defensive. “Yeah, I know. I was the one who called you and told you to come here in the first place, remember?”

      “Yes, Dad,” Ryan replied, doing his best to remain patient, or at least to sound as if he was being patient. “I remember.” There were times when he wished he’d never left the Marines. He had a feeling that this would soon be one of those times. “I’m going to tape off the crime scene and then talk to Brett,” he told his father, knowing that the man wanted to be kept abreast of everything that was going on.

      Though it was far from standard procedure, he was trying his best to keep Big J informed, hoping that would be enough to keep his father in the background rather than hovering front and center.

      “But this is

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