Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (types of ebook readers txt) 📕

head a twitch and said, “Let’s do it. I’m a New Yorker, Sheriff. We can eat, sleep, think, work, and become neurotic all at the same time.”

We took his truck. Dehan pushed me into the front passenger seat and climbed in the back, where she immediately folded her arms and closed her eyes. We headed northwest along Sunshine Canyon Drive, through the town and out into the wilderness. As we drove, Sheriff Watson talked, with his slow, assertive, hypnotic rhythm.

“If you asked me,” he said, “which you didn’t, but I’ll tell you anyhow, one of the things that really confused me about this case, and you’ll see what I mean when we get there, is…” He stopped and turned to look at me with a frown, as though I had said something that was somehow incomprehensible. “This Kathleen, I remember her from back when she was a young kid, always used to come here in the summer with her mom and dad. Well, she knew the place. She was familiar with it. Her and her sister and them Olvera boys, and young Greg Carson, they was always goin’ on long treks and riding around on bikes, and Greg’s horses,—adventures they called them back then. My point is, she knew the place.”

He paused and pulled a cheroot from his breast pocket and poked it in his mouth. He took his time lighting it with a green disposable lighter, and when it was burning, carried on talking.

“So, according to her mom, nice lady, genuine Irish, Kath come out here to see her in-laws. No doubt you’ll go and see ’em. She’s of Swedish stock, old school Protestant. His great-grandparents were Mexican, Catholics, but he converted so he could marry her. Takes all sorts, I guess.”

“You were saying about…”

“Anyhow, like I was saying, she was coming here to see her in-laws, for some reason which was best known to herself. Now, Lee County ain’t all that big, as the crow flies. But I often think, if you flattened it out, with all the mountains we have, it might be three or four times the size. You know what I mean? You look at it on a map, and you might think, hell, Lefthand Canyon ain’t that far away. But boy! When you’re done getting there, you’ve covered maybe twenty mile or more! So, what I’m wondering is, how in the hell did she wind up in Lefthand Canyon, if she was goin’ to see the Olveras in Seven Hills?” He stared at me. “It ain’t like she got there, to her in-laws, and then left with somebody. She never even showed up. And still managed to wind up in the canyon. That don’t make much sense to me. But maybe you and your partner will figure it out.”

I nodded. “I had wondered about that. The receptionist at the Wagon Wheel said it’s the kind of place you only go if you have a particular reason…”

“Ned ain’t wrong. And that particular reason, often as not, is something illegal. We found about six bodies there over the years, but we’ll never know how many we didn’t find.”

We drove in silence for a while. The tops of the hills were bathed in sunlight, but the road was in deep shade. After a while I asked him, “What can you tell me about Greg Carson? You said he was part of the gang.”

He chewed on his cheroot for a while, then said, “Good man. Known him all my life. Solid, like his daddy and his granddaddy before him. Tough man. Works hard. I never had no complaint about him. Why d’you ask?”

“Where does he live?”

He turned his head to look at me and raised an eyebrow that said he wasn’t used to people not answering his questions. I waited.

“He’s got a ranch outside Gold Hill. I’ll point it out to you as we go by. You got a reason for asking?”

“Yeah. Isaac thought she might be coming to visit him, and not her in-laws. That make more sense?”

Round about the junction with route 83, the blacktop had been replaced with beaten earth, and for about five minutes we’d been rattling along, leaving a dust trail behind us. Now we crested a hill and began to descend toward a small town that hadn’t changed in the last two hundred years. Every house and store I could see was made of logs. The only things that looked out of place were the cars and trucks that dotted the dirt roads. Sheriff Watson slowed as we approached a junction and pointed to his left.

“See that hill over there? That’s where Greg has his ranch. Pine Ranch. Take the first left up ahead, and you can’t miss it. We’re going down here on the right, Lickskillet Road. It’s pretty steep. It’ll take us down to Lefthand Canyon.”

We bumped down the track for five minutes, descending in a steep zig-zag. Finally we came to the bottom, to a broad, dusty road bordered by steep, heavily wooded hills.

“I notice you didn’t answer my question, Sheriff.”

“Does it make more sense her coming to see Greg than Ingrid and Alfredo?” I nodded and he shrugged. “To be honest, Detective, none of it makes any sense to me.”

Seven

He pulled off the road onto a patch of dirt in the shade of some pines, opened the door and climbed out. I glanced into the back seat and Dehan was watching me. She smiled and we both swung down after the sheriff. He glanced at our shoes and said, “It ain’t an easy climb.”

He pointed up into the forest. You could just make out an overgrown, beaten track.

“Couple of hikers had been camping in the valley other side of this slope. ’Bout five miles that way is Seven Hills, where we just come from.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “Like I said, we