Calder Pride (Calder Saga 5)

“Yeah, but you’re thinking there’s more to it than what I’m saying, but I’m telling you there isn’t,” Emmett insisted on a defensive note. “And I’d bet it’s the same for Calder, but you’ll have to ask him that.”

“I plan on it,” Logan said with a nod. “First, though, I need to use your phone and get Berton out here. We’ll need to bag up that tarp and send it off to the lab for analysis to see whether this is cow blood. I’ll want that cable checked for any hair follicles and the truck dusted for prints. The boldness of this whole thing makes me believe they wore gloves, but there’s always the chance they slipped up somewhere. We’ll need to compare the tread pattern on these tires with the photo of the ones I found at the Triple C, too.”

“Are you going to arrest them?” Hope blossomed in his weathered face.

“Not unless we can lift a matching print,” Logan told him. “Without that, it’s your shed, your truck and your canvas tarp. Which reminds me, Emmett, do you own a rifle?”

“A rifle? Sure, I got a Winchester thirty-thirty to home. I haven’t used it in years, though. You don’t think—” He got a stricken look. “Oh my God, what if they used my rifle?”

“As soon as I get Berton over here, we’ll go by your place and see if it’s still there.” He wasn’t ready to eliminate Emmett. He had learned long ago not to be quick about closing doors.

As if sensing that, Emmett fell silent and followed him outside, then turned to close the door and slip the padlock back in place. Watching him, Logan smiled wryly. “If I were you, Emmett, I’d get a padlock that works. I’d hate to have someone ‘borrow’ your truck again.”

“I’ll be doing that.” Sincerity was heavy in his voice.

Leaving the shed area, Logan struck out for the store to make his call to Berton. Emmett plodded along after him. As they rounded the building, Lath was just pulling away from the store. He stopped and poked his head out the driver’s side window, a broad, taunting grin on his face.

“I wondered where you’d taken off to. Never guessed you were having a big powwow behind the store, Echohawk.” Laughing, he pulled his head back inside the cab, gunned the motor, honked, and took off, the tires squealing as he turned onto the highway.

“It’s him, I tell you,” Emmett said in low anger. “He knows just what we found back there, and he’s laughing, knowing we can’t prove a thing.”

Logan could believe that about Lath. Problem was, acts of petty revenge just didn’t strike him as Lath’s style. He had always pegged him as a man without scruples, motivated mainly by greed. He didn’t see where Anderson profited from killing a bunch of cattle and torching some gas pumps.

SEVENTEEN

After Logan made the phone call to his deputy Berton Rouch, he drove Emmett to his home. The Winchester was in the closet. Judging by the dirty barrel, it hadn’t been fired—or cleaned—in years. Besides a shotgun he kept at the store and a handgun he had in the drawer of his nightstand, Emmett insisted he had no other guns.

Logan drove a very relieved Emmett back to the combination grocery store and gas station, arriving a few minutes after Berton Rouch, a round, beetle-browed man, completely devoid of humor, pulled in. Together, Logan and Berton bagged the canvas tarp for later shipment to the lab, unrolled a five-foot section of cable, lopped it off with a hacksaw, bagged it as well, then photographed the tires for comparisons and collected the floor mats inside the truck cab to have them checked for blood. When it came time to dust for prints, Logan left the job to Berton. The man was infuriatingly slow but always thorough.

Leaving the airless shed, Logan walked back to the store and conferred briefly with the fire marshal. Beyond confirming the cause was arson and the gasoline from the pumps themselves had likely been the accelerant, Frank Truedell could offer little else. After promising to fax Logan a copy of his report, he climbed in his car and left.

Logan paused beside the barricades. The acrid smell o

f smoke was keen and strong tainting the clean air that drifted off the prairie. With a small lift of his head, he swung his glance to the restaurant parking lot, his thoughts coming back to the things Fedderson had said about Calder and the Andersons. His glance touched the pickup that carried the Triple C brand on its doors, its presence confirming the Calders were inside, Cat included. But there was no avoiding that.

His bronze features took on a remote cast as he struck out toward the restaurant. A dozen yards from the building, Logan heard the grating creak of metal rubbing against metal and noticed the slow back-and-forth sway of the chains suspending a wooden swing from the restaurant’s porch roof. Drawing closer, he saw the boy sitting on the swing, one hand loosely holding a supporting chain. It was Calder’s grandson.

Unbidden, O’Rourke’s suggestion came back to him that he should take a closer look at the boy. There was a lean kinking of muscle along his jaw as Logan rejected that idea out of hand. The boy was a Calder; there was nothing more he needed to know about him.

Head down, he made for the steps, intent only on going inside and asking his questions of Chase Calder. His boot touched the first tread and a young voice reached out to him, adultlike in its greeting.

“Evening, Sheriff.” There was a child’s hope for recognition in the look young Quint Calder gave him.

Logan hesitated, but it wasn’t in him to show the boy the rough side of his temper. Stifling his irritation, he nodded. “Evening, Quint.”

There was a little leap of pleasure in the boy’s eyes that Logan had remembered his name. It was a small thing, Logan knew, but it gave the boy a sense of importance. And his reaction to it gentled something inside Logan and gave a softening warmth to the line of his mouth.

“Out here getting some air, are you?” Logan paused on the top step and glanced over his shoulder to see the view the boy had.

“My mom said I could come out here as long as I stayed on the porch.”

Logan turned back. “That’s good advice. There’s a lot of traffic at this time of day. It might be hard for someone in a truck to see a boy your size.”

“Yeah.” Quint shifted sideways in the swing, scooting ahead a bit and letting one coltish leg dangle. “Did ya find who shot our cattle?”

“Not yet. I was just going inside to talk to your grandfather about it. I guess your dad’s still out with the roundup,” Logan said and sensed an immediate withdrawing of the boy.

“I don’t got a dad.” Something flickered across the gray surfaces of his eyes, dulling the shine of them.