Backblast by Candace Irving (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

Some hunter manage to shoot himself in the foot again?" If so, they were a couple days ahead of last year's schedule.

And a massive stack of paperwork behind given the beer-fueled witness interviews that were bound to follow.

"Wish it was that simple. We got a body. Could be gunshot. Could be somethin' else. Either way, I'm willing to bet my pension it weren't accidental."

Foreboding locked in, along with the realization that she wouldn't be dining with Grant or anyone else that morning. "Why's that?"

"'Cause I'm standin' over the corpse. Or what's left of it. Cain't say for sure. What we got's in at least fifteen pieces."

Shit. She'd prefer a gut-wrenching, tear-stained breakup every morning of the week over this. "Where are you?"

"Off Taylor Hill Road. Halfway up Old Man Miller's drive. You cain't miss us."

"I'm leaving now."

Kate stowed her phone in her back pocket and headed for her desk in the den to retrieve an extra micro data card for her smartphone in case she needed it. She gave Ruger's ears a goodbye tweak and left the dog door unlatched on her way to the garage. Deer season or not, there was no telling when she'd be back to let Ruger out.

Kate climbed into her black Durango, donning the blue Braxton PD ball cap she'd left on the dash as the automatic door opener kicked in. Grant was standing in the drive by the time she eased the SUV out onto the pea gravel.

Kate lowered the passenger window as the garage door settled into place.

Grant took one look at her face and frowned. "Breakfast is off, isn't it?"

"Sorry. Lou called first. Got a case."

"Dinner?"

She shrugged. "If this is as bad as I think, I'll be grabbing that on the run too."

"I can stop by to check on Ruger."

Kate shook her head. "He'll be fine. I'll call you as soon as I can."

Grant looked as convinced of that as she felt, but he nodded and she was off.

It took Kate a frustrating twenty minutes to weave her way through the maze of wooded and winding back roads—some paved and some not—before she reached the entrance to Miller's drive. The rotting two-bedroom shack at the far end of the narrow gravel lane had been abandoned since Jakob Miller died of a heart attack in the checkout line of the town's sole hardware store the day Kate graduated high school.

Despite her father's wishes, she'd blown off the old man's funeral. At the time, she'd been too intent on signing the papers that would secure her enlistment in the Army—and her subsequent escape from this dead end of a tobacco-spitting town.

Her dad had been livid. But then, so had she. Not only had he, once again, tried to dissuade her from following in his footsteps by becoming an Army detective, he'd actually admitted to her face that he just didn't think she could hack it.

The fight that followed had been ugly. Her departure the following month, even uglier.

Kate shoved the memories into the recesses of her heart as she spotted the trio of police cruisers where Lou had promised. She tucked her Durango behind his sheriff's sedan. Her boss' silver hair and terse frown met her as she climbed out.

"You made it in record time. Thanks, Kato."

Yeah, well, she might've violated a posted speed limit or two along the way, but who was counting? "What've we got?"

"Fifteen jumbo—as in yard-waste sized—brown paper bags, the tops all folded over and stapled. The first two were torn open by Scooter Ball. He and his son were headed to their deer stand when they spotted the sacks. Scooter decided to poke his nose in—and lost his breakfast for the effort. He was still heavin' on and off when he roused me outta bed. He and his son are at the station, scratchin' out a formal statement." Lou dipped shaking fingers into his ever-present tin of chewing tobacco as he finished. The size of the wad her boss shoved in his mouth attested to just how rattled he was.

Kate studied the overgrown thatch of trees crowding both sides of the gravel lane to give him time to collect himself. If the killer was still out there watching for his own warped gratification, he'd be long gone by the time she retrieved Ruger and his super sniffer. "You mentioned pieces on the phone—as in, an arm in one bag, a foot in another?"

Lou spat a stream of blackened spittle into the trees. "Based on the hand and forearm I saw, looks that way. Both parts look to be from a man. No idea if they're from the same one. I just verified Scooter's account, then backed off to call you. But here's the really weird part: the pieces were sliced up and shrink-wrapped like they was on display in the goddamned refrigerated meat counter at the local market. Not sure what that means, but I do know enough to know the twisted son-of-a-fuck that done it falls into your bailiwick, not mine."

Given the mass graves she'd processed in Iraq, not to mention the single kills she'd picked her way through before and after, Lou was probably right. Burglary and drug-related crimes were a dime a dozen in Braxton's neck of the woods. Premeditated murder, not so much. There'd been a grand total of two in the previous decade. Given that Lou had leaned on her dad to solve both, she had a feeling he'd be looking to saddle her with the lead on this.

"So, ready to take a look? I just got off the horn with the state police. Have a couple more calls to make, includin' one to the governor's office to give 'em a heads up, just in case. I'll join you when I'm done."

Kate shot her frazzled boss a sympathetic smile, then stepped around his stocky girth to head for the makeshift crime scene barrier created by her two fellow deputies and the cruisers they'd angled across the lane.

"Morning, Owen; Seth."

"Back at ya, Kato. Figured Lou