She wasn’t dainty. She didn’t have Hix, Larry or Hal’s power.
But she could help them carry the deadweight of a body out of there, and even if she couldn’t, right then she’d do it if she had to will it to be done.
Yeah, Bets was still mostly a rookie.
But she was a good deputy.
“Larry, front end,” Hix ordered then looked back at Bets, “You take the foot. Lance and me’ll take the sides. Donna, you lead the way and go at a good clip. We got company at the road, I want you pushing them back.” He drew in breath and finished, “Let’s get him out of here.”
They moved. Hix sent looks to Hal and the forensics team then he took his position at Nat Calloway’s left side.
They hefted him up, and by the time they started out from under the tent, Donna was twenty yards down the trail.
They fortunately had no onlookers watching as they got him in the back of Lance’s van (though a number of cars slowed as they drove by).
The coroner didn’t waste time taking off. Donna and Bets didn’t either.
But Larry approached Hix at the side of his Bronco.
“It’s gonna freak her out,” Hix said. “But this is an official visit so we need to hit the department and get a Ram before we go to her house.”
Larry nodded but started, “Hix, I’ve never—”
“I know,” Hix interrupted. “And it’s gonna be one of the most shitty memories you’ll hold on to for the rest of your life. But she needs to know as soon as we can get to her. And we need to give her what she needs to put the worry to bed and start her mourning.”
Hix got closer to Larry and stood in the gently falling rain with his hand on his deputy’s shoulder.
“You go in her house, you are not her friend,” he said quietly. “You’re a sheriff’s deputy. You’re sorry for her loss. You make no promises we’re gonna find who did this. You make no assurances that it’s gonna be all right, because it’s not. Even if we find who did this, for her, it’s never gonna be all right. She’s gonna get on with her life eventually but this will be a black spot in it and that is never gonna change.”
Larry nodded and Hix kept on.
“You can tell her we’re gonna do everything we can to find who did this. And you’re gonna watch her to see if there’s anything we mighta missed yesterday. This is not the time to grill her or ask more questions seein’ as you did a thorough job of that yesterday. We can ask her to get in touch with us immediately if she thinks of something. We’ll make certain she understands she can contact us at any time if she has questions, and we’ll make certain she knows we’ll keep her as up to date as we can on the investigation as it unfolds. Other than that, this is the time to tell her she’s lost her husband, her babies have lost their daddy, we make sure she’s got someone with her and then we leave and get on findin’ the person who ripped that family apart.”
Larry stared him in the eyes before he swallowed and mumbled, “Yeah.”
Hix gave his shoulder a squeeze, let him go and watched as Larry walked to his truck.
He swung up into the Bronco.
They drove to the department and switched out to a Ram.
Then they drove to Faith Calloway’s house.
“Was not wrong about the hands. It was concrete. He went down forward, did it hard, also has abrasions on his knees,” Lance stated, going through the motions of starting to fall, hands lifted in front of him, but not finishing that.
Hix and Larry were standing in the coroner’s examination room with Lance, Nat Calloway’s dead body on a table, all of it covered but his head and his feet, his toe tagged.
It was late evening after a really shitty day.
“Like I said at the scene, neck hit did him in,” Lance continued. “Bullet went through his neck, don’t have that. Got the bullet out of his shoulder. Both wounds came from the same caliber of gun, which I’d hazard to guess was the same gun. Put that bullet in the system, it comes back with a hit, you’ll get the notification.”
When he paused, both Hix and Larry gave him nods, so he kept going.
“No drugs in his system. No alcohol. Last meal was a ham and cheese sandwich and chips.” Hix watched as Lance’s manner changed. “Nothin’ else, boys, ’cept the man had sex sometime the day he died. Got vaginal secretions and sperm on his genitals. He was dumped face down, wet did seep in but not enough to wash that away.”
“He was married, Lance,” Hix told him.
Lance nodded. “Then sorry to say, you gotta ask his wife if they had relations before he took off for work but after he had his morning shower, if that’s when he cleans up.”
Fucking great.
“We’ll do that tomorrow,” he muttered and glanced at Larry.
Larry’s mouth was tight.
“The only other thing I can give you is I reckon you’re right,” Lance declared. “This was done on a stretch of road, maybe, outside guess, a parking lot. Those abrasions and debris I found aren’t from somethin’ like a sidewalk. There’s too much debris, abrasions too rough. Besides that and the two holes in him, man was fit. Healthy. Young. No defensive wounds under his clothes. Nothing that gives indication he was held captive or bound. Nothing under his fingernails but dirt and not a lot of it, but foreman on a ranch is gonna have dirt under his fingernails after a day on the job.”
“So outside of the fact he had sex, had this shitty-ass last meal of a goddamned ham sandwich and got shot on concrete, we got nothin’,” Larry said.
“Sorry, son, but yeah,” Lance muttered. “That’s all we got.”
Larry blew out an audible breath.
Hix turned to him. “First thing tomorrow, want you to take Bets or Donna to Faith Calloway’s house. You’re there because she talked to you first and you’re her point person on this because of that. She needs to know you’re on it, you’re her man, you’re following through, and she can count on you. You give her the minimum you can to update her on our progress. Don’t get bogged down, just assure her she has all of the department’s resources devoted to solving her husband’s murder. But if she blushes tellin’ you she got pregnant at seventeen, want Donna or Bets to ask her about any activities she and her husband got up to before he went off to work the day he died. You with me?”
Larry nodded.
“He didn’t have time to have a quickie in his truck on that stretch of road, Larry,” Hix told him in a lame effort to make what wasn’t going to be easy a little easier. “And no woman dragged his body from where she shot him and then carried him to the dump site. Nat Calloway made love to his wife before he went to work. It won’t be fun she has to share that with a female deputy, but she’s not gonna be gettin’ bad news that her husband cheated on her coming on the heels of her hearing the worst news she’ll probably get in her life that her husband’s dead. What she will get, if she gets to the point she’s thinking rationally at all, is that we’re being thorough.”