Sign Off (Caught Dead In Wyoming, Book 1)

Chapter Sixteen

Mike was right. There were spots in these mountains you could hide a body until some future explorer came across the dust and bones and wondered at an ancient civilization that left individuals to die so alone.

Diana and Mike knew where I meant when I said Aunt Gee told me a road crew laying gravel to fill winter washouts found Redus off Three-Day Pass Road. We drove past the Burrell Roads trailer, then north on the more western of the roads to O'Hara Hill. About a half mile past the entrance to Tom Burrell's ranch, Diana turned the van west on a gravel road that ran shortly through rising pastures then started climbing between walls of pine green.

"Anybody else at the station know?" Diana asked as she steered expertly through a switchback.

"No. The scanner was turned off."

"Fine," Mike mumbled.

Right again.

After finding Mike in an editing booth, and telling him to snag Diana and meet me in the van, I'd checked the police scanner in its door-less closet outside Thurston Fine's office. The scanner was off, and a rumble of snores came from beyond Fine's office door.

For forty seconds, I debated notifying someone that Redus' body had been found. Then I decided to let sleeping Fines lie.

When we arrived, the bitten away shoulder where a work crew member had fallen earlier today was raw and ragged. The man saved himself by holding on to a tree branch, while dirt and gravel landed below with a distinctly metallic ring. After rescuing their coworker, two men clambered down and found Redus' Ford truck lying on its side, with him inside, very dead.

Nobody would have spotted the green truck from the road unless they stopped on the banked curve and looked directly down. Not an exercise I would have considered conducive to health.

Still, that's what about ten men were doing-toes to the raw edge and peering down, down, down-when Diana parked the van behind a line of construction trucks, a sheriff's department four-wheel and two private vehicles.

"So much for preserving the crime scene," I muttered as we reached the outskirts of the group.

"Good thing for us, isn't it?" said a white-haired man to my left. "I'm Needham Bender, editor of the Independence."

I shook his hand. I liked his sharp gray eyes. I liked his easy smile. I liked the three pens in his checked shirt's breast pocket. And I liked his newspaper. "Nice to meet you. I read the Independence every Tuesday and Friday. I'm-"

"Oh, I know you," he interrupted. "Kinda surprised to see you here, though. Thought Fine'd bust a gut before he let you cover a story like this."

"Let's just say I caught him napping." The deep lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled deeper. Chalk up another member in the Thurston non-fan club. "How come the Independence sent its editor and publisher-" I was showing off a bit, proving I read the masthead, "-out on this story?"

"I'm an old fire horse. Cagen's got the assignment, but you couldn't keep me away. Heard it on the scanner. You might want to grab those guys-" He tipped his head toward three men in dusty orange coveralls. "-they found him."

Mike and Diana nodded and headed toward the three men.

"That was very generous of you," I told Bender.

He laughed. "No need for suspicion. You'll be on the air several times over before the next edition of the Independence is out, so we're not really competitors. But you can't do more than skim the surface-and that makes folks all the readier to read all about it."