Short Rides (Rough Riders 14.5)

Jesus. Now they’d have try to preserve the crime scene and prevent four grieving parents from ripping each other apart.

After Cam called in an immediate request for assistance, he hustled over to help the sheriff, who was dodging blows from Jim Swensen as he tried to stop Jim from attacking Bob Wingate.

Screaming and obscenities echoed to Cam’s left as Teresa rained down her frustration on Sharon. She punctuated each harsh word with a hard shove, until Sharon lost her footing on the ice and fell on her butt. Then Teresa pounced on her.

Before Cam could separate the hair-pulling pair, Sharon flipped Teresa on her back and pummeled her in the face, knocking her out cold.

Heartsick for these families, but forced to do his job, Cam gently pried Sharon away from Teresa. Then he corralled Bob as the sheriff slapped a pair of handcuffs on Jim. Cam had no choice but to handcuff Bob, too.

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t tune out the venom Bob spewed at him. At the sheriff. At Jim. When Jim shrieked back, sounding more like a wounded animal than a man, Cam wished he had gags. And earplugs. And a different goddamn job.

Sheriff Shortbull shoved Jim into the back of his patrol car and Cam put Bob in his car. Then they went to deal with the mothers.

Teresa had come around. She blinked, as if waking up from a bad dream. When she saw Sharon, Teresa ignored the blood dripping down the front of her coat and charged her.

Cam and the sheriff ended up cuffing both women and placing them in the cars with their respective husbands.

Before Cam closed the door, Bob’s accusation rang out loud and clear. “Why didn’t you help him?”

Cam froze. “Excuse me?”

“My boy. Jeff. He came back from war… broken. Not on the outside like you.” Bob’s pain-filled eyes dropped to Cam’s left leg. “But on the inside. That’s worse. You knew him. You should’ve tried… You should’ve reached out to him.”

Cam had no response for that. He just quietly shut the door.

Thirty minutes later, Angela’s sister showed up and whisked her parents away, promising to keep them under lock and key. Immediately following their departure, Jeff’s brother, Cliff, appeared to take custody of Bob and Sharon.

Deputy Rick parked at the end of the road, keeping other curious onlookers at bay. Finally, at two o’clock, the DCI vans arrived.

The sheriff walked the techs through the scene and left the house as quickly as possible.

Neither he nor Cam said anything in the four hours the DCI took to catalogue the scene, bag the victims and tag the evidence.

As near as the DCI experts could figure, the bodies had expired within an hour of each other. No sign that anyone else had been in the house with them. It looked as if Jeff Wingate had pulled out his .22 and emptied all fifteen clips into Angela, right in their bedroom.

Then Jeff had walked through her blood, leaving bloody footprints from the bedroom to the garage, and picked up the—

“Sheriff? Deputy? We’re finished.”

Cam and Sheriff Shortbull faced the crime scene tech, a petite blonde, early twenties, with a waxy complexion and haunted eyes. She reminded Cam of his daughter Liesl. He couldn’t imagine his sweet daughter seeing something this horrific. Would the young lady speak to her parents about the atrocities she saw in her job?

Who do you speak to about the atrocities you’ve seen?

No one.

“Do you need anything else from us?” the sheriff asked.

“No. My boss will be out to wrap up. I just…” She glanced back at the house and shivered. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Glad to know we’re not the only ones,” the sheriff said.

Cam wasn’t surprised the sheriff tried to put the young woman at ease, but the normally congenial man couldn’t even muster a smile.

After another brief conversation, the vans pulled away. No sirens. No flashing lights. No hurry.

Darkness had fallen. Cam wasn’t a believer in ghosts. But if any apparitions or memory echoes were to appear, it’d be on a night like this. Pitch black. No moon. Wisps of snow clouds scuttled across the dark sky with wraithlike fingers.

They’d opted not to drape the house—or the access to it—in crime scene tape. Locals knew where Jeff and Angela lived. They’d drive by out of morbid curiosity and disbelief.

News crews from Cheyenne, Casper and Denver would figure out the location—no need to make it easy on them. Guaranteed this case would become newsworthy. Local couple found in a murder/suicide on Valentine’s Day. He just hoped some of the details would be kept private.

Details like Jeff’s military service? Which you hadn’t known about?

He tuned out Bob Wingate’s accusation and checked his phone. Six messages from Domini. His wife’s escalating concern drove home the point that he couldn’t face his family in his present dark mood.

Their brood—six kids adopted over the course of the last three years, ranging in age from two to nine—was loud, messy, fierce, loving, joyful and determined. Going home to the family chaos that defined his life was his favorite part of the day. He knew the scene that would greet him. His youngest son, Markus, would be in meltdown mode before supper. His youngest daughter, Sasha, would be watching Dora the Explorer for the umpteenth time. The twins, Dimitri and Oxsana would be fighting over the dog. Anton and Liesl would be talking about their classrooms’ Valentine’s Day parties after finishing chores.

Cam closed his eyes. Had it only been last night he’d sat at the kitchen table with his oldest son and daughter supervising Valentine preparations? Anton finished his Transformers cards in less than twenty minutes, while Liesl had painstakingly written out every classmate’s name in red marker. And she’d added a pink squiggle of glitter glue to each paper heart she’d created. By the time Liesl had finished her valentines, she’d been covered in red marker, glue and glitter. She claimed her tongue hurt from licking envelopes, and he’d slipped her an ice cream bar to soothe the sting.

His wife had smiled at them indulgently as she’d directed the twins’ placement of candy hearts atop the pink and white frosted cupcakes.

Such innocence didn’t need to be tainted by the black cloud surrounding him. Cam texted Domini not to wait up.

Back in Sundance, he parked his patrol car behind the sheriff’s office. Both he and the sheriff wrote their reports while the horror was still fresh in their minds. Then they headed to the Golden Boot bar and attempted to dull those too-sharp edges of shock.