• • •
They’d just pulled their boat to the side of the river and were heading toward the sound of the shouting, when Jim Waller, driving a John Deere Gator on what was little more than two ruts in the brush, found them. His face was grim, his lips compressed.
He didn’t bother climbing off the idling utility vehicle but shouted, “Dan Cain’s been shot. He’
s dead. For the love of Christ, some dumb ass shot him in the back.”
“You call the cops?” Virgil asked as he and Johnson slogged through the reeds, mud, and bitter brush to Waller’s vehicle.
“Yeah, but they’ll be half an hour.” Waller said. “We told them you were here, they want you to go up and take a look at the body.”
• • •
There was nothing to see.
No crime scene.
Virgil’s gaze swept up and down the river as he stood over the body and listened to a barely coherent Lang who had been fishing with Cain, the men in separate boats.
“I don’t know what happened. I mean, he was trailing me down the river about a hundred yards or so.” He was sweating and breathing hard, though it wasn’t from the temperature. Exertion and adrenaline had turned his face beet red. Fear rounded his eyes and he kept swiping at his forehead, wiping away the sweat.
The man was freaked.
As was Johnson.
He wasn’t good with dead bodies, and at the first chance he took off along the road, heading back to the spot where the car was parked.
Virgil listened as Lang explained in short bursts, his gaze traveling from the body to Virgil, along the river’s edge and back to the body.
He had looked Cain over, the shot had gone through his back, exited his chest, probably caught him right through the heart. Good shot, Virgil thought, if Cain really was the intended victim. If the whole thing was an accident, then both Cain and the shooter were damned unlucky. But if it were an accident, why hadn’t the shooter showed himself? Run for help?
A kid? Or just a coward?
Or a cold-stone killer?
Cain had been trailing Lang down the water by a hundred yards. Lang had gone around a bend in the river when he heard the shot. He’d gone on, but when Cain hadn’t reappeared around the bend, Lang, now worried, went looking for his friend and found him out of the boat, in the river, already dead, aground on some shallow rocks.
Lang said he’d dragged Cain’s body to the riverbank and pulled it up on shore. He believed Cain was dead, but wasn’t sure, and he’d run to get help.
“I found Jim, here,” he said, pointed at the owner of the ranch who was standing near his Gator, taking in the entire scene. “And we called 911.”
“That’s good.” He paused. “You own a gun?”
“A rifle?” Lang asked.
“Any gun?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t keep one in the car.”
“No, and Dan didn’t either. Neither one of us hunt and I don’t believe in that self-protection crap. Too many people get killed with their own weapons.” His gaze strayed to the body again. “Oh, Jesus, who would do this? Why? God, it must’ve been an accident, right? Some asshole with a rifle.”
“That’s what we’ll have to find out,” Virgil said. “Now, everyone step back onto the road. Clear this area.”
He could do nothing but keep people away from the body, keep them out of the woods along the river, where the shooter might have been.
And wait for the local cops.