For his part, Hix hadn’t texted a woman not his wife, one of her friends, Donna, Bets, or one of his daughters in nineteen years. He had things going but he’d felt a reply was needed and he didn’t have any damned clue what to say.
He’d gone with, Good to see your text. Things aren’t going great but call you tomorrow.
She hadn’t replied and Hix suspected this was because she was giving him space to get done what he needed to do.
Greta on his mind, he hit his shower before hitting the sack, because he didn’t jack off in the bed his daughters slept in.
So he did it in the shower, thinking of Greta.
Then he hit his bed, closed his eyes, and it took a while, but finally he found sleep.
While he slept, the rain came.
Really, Really Bad Day
Hixon
WHEN HIS PHONE rang, waking him up, the first thing that hit Hix was that it was raining.
The second thing that hit him was seeing from his alarm clock it wasn’t quite yet six in the morning.
And grabbing his phone from the nightstand, the last thing that hit him was that it was Bets calling.
He felt a compression in his gut, an acrid taste in the back of his throat as he got up on a forearm, took the call and put it to his ear.
“Bets.”
“Hix, I found him.”
Hix pushed up, the covers falling off, and he swung his legs around so he was sitting on the side of his bed, doing all this asking, “Where?”
“Game trail some hunters use. Hix . . . boss . . . shit.” She paused before she hit him with it. “He’s dead.”
Hix closed his eyes for only a beat then he pushed up and started moving. “It’s raining, Bets.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Ran to my car before I called you. Have a tarp in the back. It’s a new one, Hix. I was gonna do some painting, so I bought it this weekend and thank God I did. It was in a packet. It won’t screw with the scene. I took a bunch of pictures best I could in this light and then threw it over him.”
“Good,” he grunted, dragging on some shorts. “Now, we end this call, text me directions to exactly where you are. Then you get on the line and you call Donna. You tell her where you are, you tell her to bring a tent and you tell her to get her ass there fast. Then you get on with Larry. Tell him to bring lights and get his ass there. After that, you get on with Hal and you tell him to get his ass there and do it bringing a shit ton of coffee.”
“Right, boss,” she replied.
Hix kept talking, phone wedged between his ear and shoulder as he did up his jeans. “You get done with that, I want you to get on the line to the forensics boys up in Cherry County. Tell them to come down and do it fast. I’ll call Lance on the way there.”
“Okay, Hix.”
Hix took the phone from his ear long enough to pull on a clean undershirt then he put the phone right back.
“His truck there?” he asked.
“Nope.”
Goddamn it.
Where was that truck?
“You up all night lookin?” he went on.
“Yeah.”
“Good job,” he said. “Now make those calls.”
“You got it, boss.”
“See you soon.”
“Yeah.”
He hung up, tossed his cell on his bed and went to his closet to grab a clean sheriff shirt. He shrugged on his shirt, buttoned it up, tucked it in, wasted precious time transferring his badge from the shirt that was on the floor to the shirt he was wearing. He hit his closet and grabbed his sheriff slicker then went back to his bed. He sat on it, put on his socks and boots, shoved his wallet in his jeans, tagged his cell and the slicker and hauled his ass out through the rain to his Bronco.
Hix stood under the big marquee tent they’d set up over the body and stared down at the man who was now on his back. After Lance, the county coroner, had done his thing and Hal and the forensic boys had taken their pictures, they’d turned Nat Calloway, who’d been on his stomach, to his back.
He’d seen pictures Faith had emailed Larry so he already knew. And what Calloway had, even death and rain didn’t do much to dim it.
Pretty wife. Good-looking husband.
They fit.
Perfect match.
He tore his gaze from the body as Lance approached him.
“Right, Hixon,” he started, cleared his throat and launched in. “Man’s been dead ’round about thirty-six hours, give or take. Got a gunshot wound to the back, right shoulder, another to the back of his neck, which unfortunately went through and through and part of what it went through was his jugular. Bled out fast. Reckon you figured this out already, but that didn’t happen here. This is the dump site. Crime scene is somewhere else and,” he looked to the ceiling of the tent, indicating without words how unlikely what he said next was now going to be before he aimed his eyes back at Hix, “there’ll be a goodly amount of blood.”
Hix nodded.
Lance kept going.
“Gunshot isn’t at close range. My guess, this man was running away from the shooter, and the shooter was either a good shot and was aiming to kill or he got lucky or seriously unlucky, depending on what he wanted to go down. Shoulder hit and a rip in his shirt at his right biceps that looks like a bullet went through it but didn’t hit flesh says it’s the last. No other indications on the body how many shots were fired, but right now it’s lookin’ like at least three.”
Hix nodded again and told Lance something he knew, “Man’s wallet is in his jeans. Money in his wallet. This wasn’t a robbery, unless he desperately wanted a cell phone, which our man has but he doesn’t have on his person.”
This time, Lance nodded. “Nothing to give indication he was tied up or there was a struggle either. No obvious defensive wounds, may be some I find after I cut his clothes from him, but nothing I can see so it doesn’t look like there was a fight. He’s got abrasions on the heels of his palms with dirt and small rocks dug in, probably from falling forward once he was hit. My best guess right now, it’s from goin’ down on concrete. Other than that, don’t know what it is at this point except the obvious, it was a shooting.”
Hix looked back down at Nat Calloway.
“Can’t know more until I get him on my table, but forensic boys are done with the body. Gonna get him into town and get down to gettin’ you some answers right away,” Lance went on.
“Right,” Hix murmured. “Thanks.”
Lance gave him a look, clapped him on the arm and moved to spread out his body bag.
Hix walked to the leader of the two-man forensics team from Cherry County.
“Anything you can give me to go on?” he asked even if he knew the answer.
He got that answer right away when the guy shook his head. “If there was anything, the rain fucked it up. Got no footprints. Got some cigarette butts and litter, but all we got of that’s been out here since maybe 1977. We still bagged it just in case. This being the dump site, minimal blood.” The man’s chest puffed out with his big breath before he concluded, “With this rain, this spot is what this spot was before a body was dumped in it. It’s just a spot on a game trail with a man’s body in it. We got dick for you, Drake. But we’ll keep lookin’.”
“I’m leavin’ Hal with you to help do that,” Hix told him.
The guy tipped up his chin.
“And you need anything, he’s your man,” Hix continued.