“He’s a bloodhound, yes.” She glanced up at him. “Bear is excellent at tracking perps, but he’s also been cross-trained to find cadavers.”
Icy fingers of dread danced down his spine. “You think there’s a dead person buried beneath the rocks?”
“I’m afraid so.” Autumn looked almost apologetic. “You can see why it’s best if you head back to your ranch. I can swing by in the morning to return your coat.”
“I don’t care about the coat.” He stared past her at the area where Bear had alerted. “A dead body.”
Before he could say anything more, the sound of police sirens split the air. In the distance, he could see faint red-and-blue lights indicating the Canyon Creek police were responding to Autumn’s call.
Now he understood why she’d wanted the crime scene techs to get there as soon as possible. And for him to stay back from the area.
He glanced back at the rocky burial site. Clearly gravel and other debris had been used to cover up the body. It occurred to him that the ground must have been frozen solid, making it impossible to dig a grave with a shovel. With the recent uncharacteristic warm weather, most of the snow had melted.
Winters could be long, cold and hard in Colorado. So how long had the body been there? Eight months? The exact time frame his half sister had been missing?
The last time Jenny had been seen was in late August, and back then, the ground wouldn’t have been frozen. He firmly believed someone else had been buried beneath the rocks. Not his sister.
Yet he couldn’t move, couldn’t so much as take one step to put distance between himself and the mound of rocks.
“Please, Jordan. You really need to head home,” Autumn repeated. “There’s nothing more for you to do here.”
“I’m not leaving.” The words were flat and hard. “Not until I know who is buried there.”
“There’s no reason to suspect…” Her voice trailed off as the sirens grew louder. Seconds later, two squad cars were parked behind his truck.
And four officers jogged toward them.
In deference to the crime scene, Jordan stayed back, giving the officers and Autumn room to work. She was explaining about following an intruder who broke into her home, something he hadn’t realized had preceded the chasing event, when her K-9 Bear had gotten distracted by the pile of rocks.
“Did you ask the crime scene techs to respond?” Autumn asked.
“Yeah, they’re on the way.” The younger officer could have been a rookie by the way he stared apprehensively at the mound of rocks. “I don’t smell anything unusual.”
“I don’t, either, but bloodhounds can identify up to two hundred million different olfactory scents. They’re also known to stay on a specific scent, tracking it for miles.” Autumn bent to stroke her dog’s fur. “Bear here is better than most. Trust me, he alerted here for a reason.”
The officers glanced at each other and shrugged. Then they stepped back as a white panel van drove up to the scene.
Jordan tensed. This was it. The moment of truth. He had to admit the likelihood of Jenny being found here was a million to one.
Yet finding any dead body was cause for concern. Especially buried in so obvious a manner to keep the dead person from behind found.
If not for the intruder breaking into Autumn’s home and leading them on a merry chase to this remote parcel of land, they wouldn’t be standing there now.
Jordan found himself glancing up at the starry sky, as if seeking answers. His father had turned into a believer after he’d been diagnosed with brain cancer. His father’s sins of getting his mistress pregnant, resulting in Jenny’s birth, hadn’t seemed to matter. His dad had claimed God had forgiven his sins and had asked Jordan to do the same.
Jordan had tried, for his father’s sake. He’d attempted to welcome Jenny into the family, but she hadn’t been receptive. Things had remained awkward between them.
Still, he had offered for her to live with him at the ranch, to raise her baby there in a stable environment.
But Jenny had claimed she didn’t want to be stuck on the ranch so far outside of town. That she liked working at the Dollar Store and sharing the small apartment with Sasha. And then she’d gone missing, which had made him wonder if she really had picked up and moved to Denver with some new guy.
“Set up the spotlights here and here,” someone said. “We’ll need to dig cautiously at first so we don’t destroy any key evidence.”
Jordan’s gut clenched at the image of a shovel blade penetrating a dead body. He wanted to step forward, to offer to help dig, but something held him back.
Autumn stayed to the side as well, watching as the crime scene techs removed the top layer of rocks by hand. The minutes seemed to drag on forever, but it was only ten minutes or so when he heard someone say, “I have something here.”
He craned his neck but couldn’t see what they’d found. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
