The house was not fancy by any stretch, but it was built solid, set on fifty acres of decent land teeming with good memories.
As he got out of his truck, three old German shepherds came around the side of the house. The tall gray one that looked more wolf than dog was Chase. He was eight. The black one beside him was Max, seven years old, and the smallest, Conan, was six. They were retired military service dogs with handlers who were either dead or unable to care for them.
When an IED explosion killed his marine canine in January, Dylan had opted not to re-up. Shortly after he had separated from the marines, while he was preparing to return to Montana, his commander approached him about Chase. Dylan had accepted responsibility for the dog without a second thought, and together they had moved back to the ranch. Word spread that Dylan had the space and fortitude to take military dogs, and Max and Conan had arrived by March.
Each animal eyed Bryce warily, and he was careful to keep his body language relaxed. The trio was acquainted with him, but each had been chosen by the military because aggression came naturally. Best not to tempt their natural propensities or training.
“How’s it going, guys?” Bryce asked smoothly. He paused at the top step and let each sniff his hand. “See, we’re all still friends, right?”
When Bryce had been in Afghanistan a dozen years ago, a soldier in his platoon had found a puppy in one of the villages. Scrawny and tied to a stake in the ground, the pup had barked when he had seen Bryce and his men come into the village. His sergeant, a bear of a man, had pulled out a switchblade and cut the rope. One of the village elders had started yelling, and Bryce had offered him several MREs for the dog. A deal had been struck, and the mongrel, dubbed Buddy, was along for the ride.
Damn dog had turned out to be an island of sanity for the coming months. Almost none of the men could resist a smile when they spotted Buddy trotting through the camp. When the time had come for the unit to ship stateside, Bryce had created military service canine paperwork for Buddy, who now lived somewhere in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains.
Dylan came around the side of the house with a toolbox in his hand. His nineteen years of service had embedded a deep sense of routine, and he still rose at four, ate his chow three times a day at the kitchen table, and spent the rest of his time working with the dogs or building the new barn, which he intended to have fully heated and insulated by winter.
“You’re back early,” Dylan said.
“Got called in. There’s a homicide,” Bryce said. “Need to take a quick shower and head over to Deer Lodge.”
“Anything I can do?” Dylan asked.
“Not really. If this case is like the one in Helena, it’ll be a long day, so I can’t say when I’ll be back.”
Dylan removed his hat and ran his hand over shorn dark hair. “Two is a pattern.”
“Maybe.”
“Time to call in the FBI?” Dylan’s tone turned suspicious, as it did when outsiders were tossed into the mix.
“Rather not have the feds involved, but I’ll have to see.”
“We got the ranch covered.”
Rusted front-door hinges squeaked as Bryce opened it. “I appreciate that. Nice having the company.”
“By the way,” Dylan said. “When you get back, there might be a new dog living here.”
Bryce paused. “Another one?”
“Her name is Venus. She’s a Malinois and has a reputation as a hard-ass. Unadoptable. A real bitch.”
Bryce shrugged. “The more the merrier.”
“Thanks, bro.”
It took Bryce less than twenty minutes to shower and change into clean jeans, a fresh T-shirt, and worn cowboy boots. He had left his suits at his Helena apartment because he had banked on having a full day or two off. But if he was heading toward the mountains near Anaconda, a suit would be more trouble than it was worth anyway.
In his state-issued, black SUV, he drove west on US 12 for thirty minutes before turning south on I-90 toward Anaconda. Wexler’s directions took him from the interstate to a series of progressively smaller roads. Sixty minutes after leaving the ranch, he spotted flares and a deputy’s car.
Bryce parked behind the marked vehicle, reached in the compartment between the seats, dug out his badge, and looped it around his neck.
The deputy who approached Bryce’s car looked barely out of high school. Efforts to look solemn did not hide his edgy, amped-up energy. “Sergeant Bryce, Sheriff Wexler is waiting for you,” the deputy said. “Follow the dirt road up the side of the mountain.”
“Thanks.”
Bryce angled his vehicle up the barely paved road around tire tracks marked off with yellow crime scene tape. He drove up the hillside, gravel crunching under his tires, and eased toward a sharp turn that brought him to a dead end. The land around him was covered in a swath of blackened scrub grass swooping over the hill like an eagle’s wing.
Bryce parked and reached for his worn black cowboy hat on the passenger seat. Out of his SUV, he settled it on his head and tugged the brim lower toward mirrored sunglasses. The wind carried persistent trails of smoke threaded with the scent of scorched flesh. He opened the back of his vehicle, grabbed a fresh set of latex gloves, and then walked beside the singed grass that had been drier than bone until Monday’s soaking rain.
His gaze swept the hillside’s base toward defined tire tracks. If not for the rain, the marks would have been faint, and obtaining an impression would have been difficult. Had the killer realized he had left this critical piece of evidence behind?
When he approached the ridge, he looked out toward the city, the foothills, and the jagged Anaconda Range beyond. The sun sent a fine trickle of sweat down his back as he strode toward yellow caution tape staked in a large square around the fire’s point of origin, concealed with a blue tarp. If this was like the Helena case, the tarp covered a body, and he was not getting back to fencing anytime soon.
Resettling his hat, he strode toward Sheriff Harry Wexler, who was tall, broad shouldered, and sported a full belly earned in countless hours behind the wheel of a car. Bryce extended his hand. “Sheriff Wexler.”
“Sergeant McCabe.” The older man’s weathered hands still packed a heavy-duty grip. “Caught you on your day off, didn’t I?”
“It happens.” He could not remember the last time he’d really kicked up his heels. Was it that Christmas with Pops and Dylan three years ago?
“I hear you inherited Pops’s ranch,” Sheriff Wexler said.
“That’s right.”
Montana was about 150,000 square miles, but Bryce had been in the field six years, enough time to meet most of the state’s law enforcement officers, and if he was not acquainted personally, there was always someone to tell him what he needed to know. The flip side was his personal business had a way of making the rounds as well, which had not bothered him much until lately.
“Means a commute to Helena, doesn’t it?” Wexler asked.
“Less than an hour. I don’t mind the drive. And I still have several months left on my Helena apartment lease.” A breeze rushed up the hill, and yellow tape rippled. “Who called it in?”
“A mountain biker who rides these trails every evening after work. He was finishing up his run when he smelled the smoke and saw the flames. He called my office as soon as he rode down the mountain and hit cell phone service.”