Echoes (3 page)

Frowning, Smith began to pick his way through the mud. Hector almost smiled at the attempt to save his shiny new cowboy boots from the muck, but he knew better than to get caught smirking at the sheriff. Then a dank and pungent odor caught in the breeze and obliterated his trace of amusement. Whatever they found on the other side of that tractor wouldn't be a laughing matter.

On the sheriff's heels, Hector made his way across the yard and rounded the overturned tractor. He was looking down and didn't see Smith stop until he plowed into his back, nearly knocking him on top of Frank Weston's body, face up on the ground.

Frank was dead, trapped from the waist down by the heavy machinery which had apparently toppled on him. Worse, what was left of Frank was as badly burned as the smoldering, hissing tractor. The steering wheel, the knobs on the dash, the gear shift handle and the tires had all melted in what must have been an inferno.

"God," Hector said falling back a step. To his shame, he felt his stomach pitch and roll. He stumbled a few steps away, praying that he wouldn't disgrace himself further by losing his lunch. Sweat made his gun slippery. He put it back in the holster, fighting not to breathe in the stench of burnt flesh, rubber and death.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and forced himself to speak calmly in the hope that the sheriff hadn't noticed his reaction. "Looks like the gas tank ignited," he said. "Must have flipped when it blew."

"I don't think so," Smith said as he studied the tractor. "It's a rollover."

He pointed to the chain hitched at the back of the tractor and the tree stump a few feet away. The front end of the tractor faced the stump, lying over the chain attached to the drawbar in the back. "He hitched it too high and when the stump didn't give, it flipped. It rolled over on him."

Hector nodded, wondering how a city boy like Smith knew about rollovers. Hector should have recognized it himself. He'd known a kid in school whose brother had killed himself the same way fifteen years ago. New tractors came with roll over protection. This tractor was too old for that.

Smith squatted down close to the crisped husk that had once been Frank Weston. Hector took a few more steps in the opposite direction, trying to look at anything and everything but the body. The tractor's gas cap had been blown off and it lay in the mud of the corral. Hector carefully made his way to it.

Although dirty and covered in soot, the embossed letters across the surface were legible. diesel. He looked from the cap to Frank and back.

"We better call out to Piney River. Tell them to send a wagon and get this cleaned up," Smith said, standing.

The stench of death was so overpowering that Hector didn't think he could take it much longer. But he couldn't stop looking at the fuel cap on the ground. "That tractor ran on diesel," he said.

"So?"

"Well it's just that it shouldn't have exploded. I mean, diesel's not like gasoline. It's more stable. It usually doesn't just blow up."

"Tell
him
that," Smith said, pointing at Frank Weston.

Wishing he'd kept his trap shut, Hector nodded and started back to the cruiser to make the call. He was careful about giving the scene a wide berth. Smith, however, squatted right beside Frank Weston's remains. He didn't look the least bit nauseated by the sight or smell. Obviously this wasn't his first dead body.

Once Hector cleared the area, he breathed deep, but the scent lingered in the air and there was no escaping it. At the cruiser, he radioed the Piney River SO to send assistance and notify the coroner. Mountain Bend didn't even have its own morgue. They relied on their neighbor for those services. After he signed off, he popped a piece of chewing gum in his mouth and bracing himself, took his Polaroid camera back to the corral.

The tractor had trapped Frank from the waist down and he was twisted and mangled. From what Hector could see, the part of him beneath the heavy machine hadn't been burned. Hector took several pictures of his arms and the steering wheel. It looked as if they had somehow become entwined in the spokes of the wheel and now they were skewed at unnatural angles. He thought about pointing it out, and then decided to keep it to himself. The coroner was on his way. If there was something strange about the position of the body, he would see it too.

When the two returned to the porch, Grant was still sitting on the steps, staring out at the open land, the stables, the trees, as if they could explain the horror behind his house. Hector had expected Grant to come back and see what they were doing for the long time they were photographing, but he hadn't. He didn't know what, if anything, to make of that. His experience was limited, but everything he'd been taught about survivors of trauma showed them to be clingy. They wanted witnesses to their pain. They wanted confirmation that they were alive and grieving.

Not Grant Weston.

"I called you as soon as I got home," Grant said, not looking up. "I was only gone a few hours."

"You found him like that?" Smith asked.

Grant nodded, reaching in his shirt pocket for a roll of Lifesavers. He thumbed one off the roll and put it in his mouth. The action seemed to bring him composure. When he spoke, his voice was steadier. "It must have happened right after I left."

Smith frowned. "Why?"

"The fire was burned out when I got home."

Hector took that down in his notebook.

"You got black stuff all over your face. How'd it get there?" Smith asked.

"I touched him. I thought he was alive."

Hector didn't know how anyone could have made that mistake. He gave Grant the benefit of the doubt, though. It was his father, after all.

"Did you move him?" Smith asked.

"I—I tried, but I couldn't. He's caught." Grant's voice hitched and broke. He took a deep breath and nodded. "He's caught."

"Was anyone else in the house when you got here?"

"No..." Grant trailed off.

"No?" Smith repeated. Hector could hear his own impatience mirrored in the sheriff's tone.

"Tori France should be here. She's been working for us, trying to straighten out our bookkeeping. She was out running errands when I left. I thought she'd be back by now."

Hector glanced up to find Smith staring at Grant, eyes narrowed, forehead creased in a frown.

"Is anything missing from the house? Anything disturbed? Signs of a struggle?"

That question seemed to pierce the fog around Grant's eyes. He looked at Smith. "No. At least nothing I noticed. Why? He had an accident on the tractor. What does that have to do with the house?"

Smith shrugged, leveling a cool look at Grant. "Probably nothing, except there's a dead body in your backyard and possibly a person missing from your house. Or didn't you put that together?"

Chapter Four

Map spread on the seat of her blue rental car, Tess turned down yet another one of the dark, winding roads that littered the California mountainside. She still couldn't believe she'd made it. The race from office to home to airport felt like some impossible blur. Sara had driven ninety to get her there and had a rental car waiting at the other end. Tess didn't know what she'd have done without her help.

Now that she was here, more or less in the middle of nowhere as Craig Weston had phrased it, every mile she put between herself and home came with a deepening disquiet. It felt like she'd been spiraling around pine and granite for days. And it was probably all for nothing. She'd get there, find Tori was back, wondering what all the fuss was about and Tess would be left feeling angry and foolish for all she'd put herself through to get there.

A few miles later her headlights picked out a sign that stated in no uncertain terms—Mountain Bend, Next Right—and then the thick woods along the road opened up. Ahead Tess glimpsed the twinkling lights of a picturesque town sheltered by the rugged mountains surrounding it, vivid in the bright moonlight. Snow still clung to the higher peaks, neon against the purple shadows of the ravines and boulders scattered beneath. Towering pines and aspens cast shivering silhouettes into the night and brushed an explosion of stars in the sky.

Even in dark, the community at the center of the basin looked like something Walt Disney might have fabricated to house dwarves or fairy princesses. Old style street lamps illuminated vacant roads and deserted walkways. Lights glowed from graceful front porches and peeked from behind closed curtains.

She turned down the street where Principal Weston lived and parked, grimacing at her wrinkled slacks and blouse as she stepped from the car. She'd eaten on the road and managed to get ketchup on her sleeve and smear it on her pants before she'd noticed. At least she'd taken her blazer off before starting the drive—it was still crisp even if everything else about her looked as if it had made the drive in the trunk with the spare tire.

She followed the walk to an impressive two-story house with white shutters and pale blue paint. The night air had a bite to it and she shivered in the silent chill. Like most of the other houses, the front porch was wide and inviting. Her footsteps echoed against the wood.

As she rang the bell and waited, she smoothed at the wrinkles in her pants and tried to adjust the blazer to hide the ketchup stain. After a moment, footsteps sounded and the spotless white door swung back. Tess pasted a smile on her face and looked up to greet Craig Weston. Standing there instead was a very large woman with jet black hair and unearthly violet eyes.

"Hi, I'm Tess Carson."

"Come in, Tess. We've been waiting for you," she said and moved aside. Tess had expected to be met by a bleary-eyed, balding principal. Not only was this woman not that, she looked like she'd just come from a day of beauty at the spa. She wore a silky pantsuit the exact shade of her unusual eyes—Elizabeth Taylor eyes, Tess thought. Her makeup was salon perfect, like her hair and nails. With the exception of the fact that she was a hundred pounds overweight, she might have been a model. Tess felt like a frumpy, smelly bag lady as she entered.

"I'm Lydia Hughes," the woman said in a soft, sweet voice. "Craig asked me to meet you here. I'm afraid he's been called away unexpectedly."

A moment of panic gripped her. "Is Caitlin still here?"

"Oh yes, she's here. Still awake, in fact."
Lydia's smile was warm and understanding. If she'd been wearing sweatpants or a housedress, Tess might have hugged her.

"And my sister?"

"I'm sorry. No word."

No word. Dammit, where was she?

"Craig felt badly that he couldn't be here. He's had a family emergency, I'm afraid. His father was in an accident."

"I'm sorry. I hope everything is alright."

"It doesn't sound good." Lydia inhaled and softly let her breath out. "It's been quite a day all around. First little Caitlin's mother and then Craig's father...."

Tess didn't like her sister being grouped into the family tragedy category like that. It shook her conviction that Tori not showing up today was nothing more than Tori just being Tori.

Lydia led Tess down the hall of Craig Weston's immaculate home, moving with the grace of a woman half her size. The chic silk pantsuit billowed around her, distracting from her broad, fleshy shoulders and the bulk beneath. A whiff of her perfume drifted back at Tess. It smelled light and expensive—unlike the eau de McDonald's-and-Rent-A-Car fragrance that Tess was currently sporting.

"Caitlin, your Aunt Tess is here,"
Lydia said as she stepped into the kitchen.

Tess smiled brightly, hoping Caitlin wouldn't see the worry that she couldn't justify away anymore. Hand poised over a puzzle piece, Caitlin looked up from the kitchen table and regarded Tess solemnly.

She had huge baby blues and a small, elfin face framed comically by two uneven, blonde pigtails. Like Tess, Caitlin bore no resemblance to her mother. Where Tori was dark and exotic, Tess and Caitlin were fair and ordinary. At least Tess was. Caitlin had inherited that imp of mystery from Tori. She wore a "Puppy Love" t-shirt and blue jeans, and she had magic marker smudges on her chin and both hands. Her scuffed sneakers swung anxiously above the floor.

"Hey there, girlfriend. Got a hug for your Aunt Tess?"

Caitlin stared for a moment and Tess felt as if she were looking through the lighthearted tone to the weight that had settled around Tess's heart. Finally, she scooted off the chair and stepped into Tess's open arms. Tess hugged her tightly, trying to reassure the girl by touch. Her hair smelled of strawberries, her skin of fresh air and faintly of Lydia's perfume.

"Do you know where my mom is?" she asked, holding tight to Tess.

"I don't, honey, but I'm sure she'll be home soon." Groaning, Tess lifted Caitlin and settled her on a hip. "You grew a foot since September, do you know that? And good grief, what has your mother been feeding you? Rocks?" Caitlin still looked uncertain, but she managed a grin, revealing two gaps where teeth had once been. "You lost teeth too?"

"And I can read," she added.

Tess staggered over to a chair and sat down with Caitlin on her lap. "I thought I told you to stay little."

Caitlin shook her head, the small grin wavering. She gave Tess another tight hug and then said seriously, "Are you sure Mommy didn't call you?"