Lassoed by BJ Daniels

Author:BJ Daniels [Daniels, BJ]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: suspense
Publisher: Harlequin Intrigue
Published: 2011-06-02T05:00:00+00:00

SHERIFF MCCALL CRAWFORD got the call before breakfast. Luke had left early since he was overseeing the dragging of the river. She had wanted to go with him but got held up with a phone call.

She had just hung up when the phone rang again.

It was her deputy.

“We just found a grave not far from where Aggie Wells’s car was abandoned by the Milk River,” he said. “It’s not our missing vic, though,” he added. “These remains have been here for a lot longer than a few weeks.”

By the time McCall reached the scene, Coroner George Murphy was crouched beside an open hole in the side of the riverbank.

“Looks like whoever killed her dug into the side of the bank, shoved the tarp-wrapped body in, then let the soft dirt slide down and cover her.” He motioned to the bones lying on what was left of an old canvas tarp.

“Her?” McCall asked.

“Definitely a woman. I’d say in her late twenties.”

McCall glanced at the gaping hole in the side of the bank. “How was it again that you found the grave?” She remembered finding her father’s. It had been like opening Pandora’s box and she suspected this grave would be no different.

“Apparently another dirt slide unearthed it—or maybe one of the searchers inadvertently did,” the coroner said. “This morning I happened to spot a bone and a piece of the tarp sticking out.”

“That was handy, wasn’t it?” she said, never comfortable with coincidence. “Or maybe someone wanted us to find it. Any chance of matching dental records?”

“She’s had some dental done,” George said slowly, then met her gaze. “I think you might get luckier with her medical records. She had an abnormal amount of broken bones for a woman her age.”

“Are you suggesting some medical reason for that?” McCall asked.

“Maybe. More than likely this woman was seriously abused in her twenties, I would say.”

“You can tell all that from her skeleton?”

“It’s the type of breaks. Facial, wrists, arms, ribs…” George looked a little green around the gills. He always did when things got ugly. For a man who didn’t like knowing about the evil things humans did to one another, it was amazing the EMT was still willing to act as the county coroner.

“How long would you estimate that the remains have been there?”

George sighed. “Hard to say, but given the amount of decomposition…I’d guess, and remember this is just a guess, twenty-five years. Maybe less, maybe more.” He launched into a speech about all the factors that made a body deteriorate, a speech she’d heard many times before.

“Let’s get her ID’d as quickly as possible,” McCall said and glanced through the trees where she could see Aggie Wells’s vehicle. The wrecker was coming today to take it to the sheriff department’s storage unit as evidence.

They’d been searching for Aggie Wells’s body and now another woman’s had turned up? And still no sign of Aggie.

McCall didn’t like what she was thinking and was surprised when the very person she was thinking about called.

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