The Maverick / Magnate's Make-Believe Mistress

“That’s a real change, I know,” Alice said. “I work out of San Antonio. Not the quietest place in the world, especially on weekends.”

Kilraven had walked right over the police tape and came up near the body.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Alice exclaimed. “Kilraven…!”

“Look,” he said, his keen silver eyes on the grass just under the dead man’s right hand, which was clenched and depressed into the mud. “There’s something white.”

Alice followed his gaze. She didn’t even see it at first. She’d moved so that it was in shadow. But when she shifted, the sunlight caught it. Paper. A tiny sliver of paper, just peeping out from under the dead man’s thumb. She reached down with her gloved hand and brushed away the grass. There was a deep indentation in the soft, mushy soil, next to his hand; maybe a footprint. “I need my camera before I move it,” she said, holding out her hand. The deputy retrieved the big digital camera from its bag and handed it to Alice, who documented the find and recorded it on a graph of the crime scene. Then, returning the camera, she slid a pencil gently under the hand, moving it until she was able to see the paper. She reached into her kit for a pair of tweezers and tugged it carefully from his grasp.

“It’s a tiny, folded piece of paper,” she said, frowning. “And thank God it hasn’t rained.”

“Amen,” Kilraven agreed, peering at the paper in her hand.

“Good eyes,” she added with a grin.

He grinned back. “Lakota blood.” He chuckled. “Tracking is in my genes. My great-great-grandfather was at Little Big Horn.”

“I won’t ask on which side,” she said in a loud whisper.

“No need to be coy. He rode with Crazy Horse’s band.”

“Hey, I read about that,” the deputy said. “Custer’s guys were routed, they say.”

“One of the Cheyenne people said later that a white officer was killed down at the river in the first charge,” he said. “He said the officer was carried up to the last stand by his men, and after that the soldiers seemed to lose heart and didn’t fight so hard. They found Custer’s brother, Tom, and a couple of ranking officers from other units, including Custer’s brother-in-law, with Custer. It could indicate that the chain of command changed several times. Makes sense, if you think about it. If there was a charge, Custer would have led it. Several historians think that Custer’s unit made it into the river before the Cheyenne came flying into it after them. If Custer was killed early, he’d have been carried up to the last stand ridge—an enlisted guy, they’d have left there in the river.”

“I never read that Custer got killed early in the fight,” the deputy exclaimed.

“I’ve only ever seen the theory in one book—a warrior was interviewed who was on the Indian side of the fight, and he said he thought Custer was killed in the first charge,” he mused. “The Indians’ side of the story didn’t get much attention until recent years. They said there were no surviving eyewitnesses. Bull! There were several tribes of eyewitnesses. It was just that nobody thought their stories were worth hearing just after the battle. Not the massacre,” he added before the deputy could speak. “Massacres are when you kill unarmed people. Custer’s men all had guns.”

The deputy grinned. “Ever think of teaching history?”

“Teaching’s too dangerous a profession. That’s why I joined the police force instead.” Kilraven chuckled.

“Great news for law enforcement,” Alice said. “You have good eyes.”

“You’d have seen it for yourself, Jones, eventually,” he replied. “You’re the best.”

“Wow! Did you hear that? Take notes,” Alice told the deputy. “The next time I get yelled at for not doing my job right, I’m quoting Kilraven.”

“Would it help?” he asked.

She laughed. “They’re still scared of you up in San Antonio,” she said. “One of the old patrolmen, Jacobs, turns white when they mention your name. I understand the two of you had a little dustup?”

“I threw him into a fruit display at the local supermarket. Messy business. Did you know that blackberries leave purple stains on skin?” he added conversationally.

“I’m a forensic specialist,” Alice reminded him. “Can I ask why you threw him into a fruit display?”

“We were working a robbery and he started making these remarks about fruit with one of the gay officers standing right beside me. The officer in question couldn’t do anything without getting in trouble.” He grinned. “Amazing, how attitudes change with a little gentle adjustment.”

“Hey, Kilraven, what are you doing walking around on the crime scene?” Cash Grier called from the sidelines.

“Don’t fuss at him,” Alice called back. “He just spotted a crucial piece of evidence. You should give him an award!”

There were catcalls from all the officers present.

“I should get an award!” he muttered as he went to join his boss. “I never take days off or vacations!”

“That’s because you don’t have a social life, Kilraven,” one of the officers joked.

Alice stood up, staring at the local law enforcement uniforms surrounding the crime scene tape. She recognized at least two cars from other jurisdictions. There was even a federal car out there! It wasn’t unusual in a sleepy county like Jacobs for all officers who weren’t busy to congregate around an event like this. It wasn’t every day that you found a murder victim in your area. But a federal car for a local murder?

As she watched, Garon Grier and Jon Blackhawk of the San Antonio district FBI office climbed out of the BuCar—the FBI’s term for a bureau car—and walked over the tape to join Alice.

“What have you found?” Grier asked.

She pursed her lips, glancing from the assistant director of the regional FBI office, Grier, to Special Agent Jon Blackhawk. What a contrast! Grier was blond and Blackhawk had long, jet-black hair tied in a ponytail. They were both tall and well-built without being flashy about it. Garon Grier, like his brother Cash, was married. Jon Blackhawk was unattached and available. Alice wished she was his type. He was every bit as good-looking as his half brother Kilraven.

“I found some bits and pieces of evidence, with the deputy’s help. Your brother,” she told Jon, “found this.” She held up the piece of paper in an evidence bag. “Don’t touch,” she cautioned as both men peered in. “I’m not unfolding it until I can get it into my lab. I won’t risk losing any trace evidence out here.”

Blackhawk pulled out a pad and started taking notes. “Where was it?” he asked.

“Gripped in the dead man’s fingers, out of sight. Why are you here?” she asked. “This is a local matter.”

Blackhawk was cautious. “Not entirely,” he said.

Kilraven joined them. He and Blackhawk exchanged uneasy glances.

“Okay. Something’s going on that I can’t be told about. It’s okay.” She held up a hand. “I’m used to being a mushroom. Kept in the dark and fed with…”

“Never mind,” Garon told her. He softened it with a smile. “We’ve had a tip. Nothing substantial. Just something that interests us about this case.”

“And you can’t tell me what the tip was?”

“We found a car in the river, farther down,” Cash said quietly. “San Antonio plates.”

“Maybe his?” Alice indicated the body.

“Maybe. We’re running the plates now,” Cash said.

“So, do you think he came down here on his own, or did somebody bring him in a trunk?” Alice mused.

The men chuckled. “You’re good, Alice,” Garon murmured.

“Of course I am!” she agreed. “Could you,” she called to the female deputy, “get me some plaster of Paris out of my van, in the back? This may be a footprint where we found the piece of paper! Thanks.”

She went back to work with a vengeance while two sets of brothers looked on with intent interest.

Chapter Two

Alice fell into her bed at the local Jacobsville motel after a satisfying soak in the luxurious whirlpool bathtub. Amazing, she thought, to find such a high-ticket item in a motel in a small Texas town. She was told that film crews from Hollywood frequently chose Jacobs County as a location and that the owner of the motel wanted to keep them happy. It was certainly great news for Alice.

She’d never been so tired. The crime scene, they found, extended for a quarter of a mile down the river. The victim had fought for his life. There were scuff marks and blood trails all over the place. So much for her theory that he’d traveled to Jacobsville in the trunk of the car they’d found.

The question was, why had somebody brought a man down to Jacobsville to kill him? It made no sense.

She closed her eyes, trying to put herself in the shoes of the murderer. People usually killed for a handful of reasons. They killed deliberately out of jealousy, anger or greed. Sometimes they killed accidentally. Often, it was an impulse that led to a death, or a series of acts that pushed a person over the edge. All too often, it was drugs or alcohol that robbed someone of impulse control, and that led inexorably to murder.

Few people went into an argument or a fight intending to kill someone. But it wasn’t as if you could take it back even seconds after a human life expired. There were thousands of young people in prison who would have given anything to relive a single incident where they’d made a bad choice. Families suffered for those choices, along with their children. So often, it was easy to overlook the fact that even murderers had families, often decent, law-abiding families that agonized over what their loved one had done and paid the price along with them.

Alice rolled over, restlessly. Her job haunted her from time to time. Along with the coroner, and the investigating officers, she was the last voice of the deceased. She spoke for them, by gathering enough evidence to bring the killer to trial. It was a holy grail. She took her duties seriously. But she also had to live with the results of the murderer’s lack of control. It was never pleasant to see a dead body. Some were in far worse conditions than others. She carried those memories as certainly as the family of the deceased carried them.

Early on, she’d learned that she couldn’t let herself become emotionally involved with the victims. If she started crying, she’d never stop, and she wouldn’t be effective in her line of work.

She found a happy medium in being the life of the party at crime scenes. It diverted her from the misery of her surroundings and, on occasion, helped the crime scene detectives cope as well. One reporter, a rookie, had given her a hard time because of her attitude. She’d invited him to her office for a close-up look at the world of a real forensic investigator.

The reporter had arrived expecting the corpse, always tastefully displayed, to be situated in the tidy, high-tech surroundings that television crime shows had accustomed him to seeing.

Instead, Alice pulled the sheet from a drowning victim who’d been in the water three days.

She never saw the reporter again. Local cops who recounted the story, always with choked-back laughter, told her that he’d turned in his camera the same day and voiced an ambition to go into real estate.

Just as well, she thought. The real thing was pretty unpleasant. Television didn’t give you the true picture, because there was no such thing as smell-o-vision. She could recall times when she’d gone through a whole jar of Vicks Salve trying to work on a drowning victim like the one she’d shown the critical member of the Fourth Estate.

She rolled over again. She couldn’t get her mind to shut down long enough to allow for sleep. She was reviewing the meager facts she’d uncovered at the crime scene, trying to make some sort of sense out of it. Why would somebody drive a murder victim out of the city to kill him? Maybe because he didn’t know he was going to become a murder victim. Maybe he got in the car voluntarily.

Good point, she thought. But it didn’t explain the crime. Heat of passion wouldn’t cover this one. It was too deliberate. The perp meant to hide evidence. And he had.

She sighed. She wished she’d become a detective instead of a forensic specialist. It must be more fun solving crimes than being knee-deep in bodies. And prospective dates wouldn’t look at you from a safe distance with that expression of utter distaste, like that gardener in the hardware store this afternoon.

What had Grier called him, Fowler? Harley Fowler, that was it. Not a bad-looking man. He had a familiar face. Alice wondered why. She was sure she’d never seen him before today. She was sure she’d remember somebody that disagreeable.

Maybe he resembled somebody she knew. That was possible. Fowler. Fowler. No. It didn’t ring any bells. She’d have to let her mind brood on it for a couple of days. Sometimes that’s all it took to solve such puzzles—background working of the subconscious. She chuckled to herself. Background workings, she thought, will save me yet.

After hours of almost-sleep, she got up, dressed and went back to the crime scene. It was quiet, now, without the presence of almost every uniformed officer in the county. The body was lying in the local funeral home, waiting for transport to the medical examiner’s office in San Antonio. Alice had driven her evidence up to San Antonio, to the crime lab, and turned it over to the trace evidence people, specifically Longfellow.

She’d entrusted Longfellow with the precious piece of paper which might yield dramatic evidence, once unfolded. There had clearly been writing on it. The dead man had grasped it tight in his hand while he was being killed, and had managed to conceal it from his killer. It must have something on it that he was desperate to preserve. Amazing. She wanted to know what it was. Tomorrow, she promised herself, their best trace evidence specialist, Longfellow, would have that paper turned every which way but loose in her lab, and she’d find answers for Alice. She was one of the best CSI people Alice had ever worked with. When Alice drove right back down to Jacobsville, she knew she’d have answers from the lab soon.

Restless, she looked around at the lonely landscape, bare in winter. The local police were canvassing the surrounding area for anyone who’d seen something unusual in the past few days, or who’d noticed an out-of-town car around the river.

Alice paced the riverbank, a lonely figure in a neat white sweatshirt with blue jeans, staring out across the ripples of the water while her sneakers tried to sink into the damp sand. It was cooler today, in the fifties, about normal for a December day in south Texas.

Sometimes she could think better when she was alone at the crime scene. Today wasn’t one of those days. She was acutely aware of her aloneness. It was worse now, after the death of her father a month ago. He was her last living relative. He’d been a banker back in Tennessee, where she’d taken courses in forensics. The family was from Floresville, just down the road from San Antonio. But her parents had moved away to Tennessee when she was in her last year of high school, and that had been a wrench. Alice had a crush on a boy in her class, but the move killed any hope of a relationship. She really had been a late bloomer, preferring to hang out in the biology lab rather than think about dating. Amoeba under the microscope were so much more interesting.

Alice had left home soon after her mother’s death, the year she started college. Her mother had been a live wire, a happy and well-adjusted woman who could do almost anything around the house, especially cook. She despaired of Alice, her only child, who watched endless reruns of the old TV show Quincy, about a medical examiner, along with archaic Perry Mason episodes. Long before it was popular, Alice had dreamed of being a crime scene technician.

She’d been an ace at biology in high school. Her science teachers had encouraged her, delighting in her bright enthusiasm. One of them had recommended her to a colleague at the University of Texas campus in San Antonio, who’d steered her into a science major and helped her find local scholarships to supplement the small amount her father could afford for her. It had been an uphill climb to get that degree, and to add to it with courses from far-flung universities when time and money permitted; one being courses in forensic anthropology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In between, she’d slogged away with other techs at one crime scene after another, gaining experience.

Once, in her haste to finish gathering evidence, due to a rare prospective date, she’d slipped up and mislabeled blood evidence. That had cost the prosecution staff a conviction. It had been a sobering experience for Alice, especially when the suspect went out and killed a young boy before being rearrested. Alice felt responsible for that boy’s death. She never forgot how haste had put the nails in his coffin, and she never slipped up again. She gained a reputation for being precise and meticulous in evidence-gathering. And she never went home early again. Alice was almost always the last person to leave the lab, or the crime scene, at the end of the day.

A revved-up engine caught her attention. She turned as a carload of young boys pulled up beside her white van at the river’s edge.

“Lookie there, a lonely lady!” one of them called. “Ain’t she purty?”

“Shore is! Hey, pretty thing, you like younger men? We can make you happy!”

“You bet!” Another one laughed.

“Hey, lady, you feel like a party?!” another one catcalled.

Alice glared. “No, I don’t feel like a party. Take a hike!” She turned back to her contemplation of the river, hoping they’d give up and leave.

“Aww, that ain’t no way to treat prospective boyfriends!” one yelled back. “Come on up here and lie down, lady. We want to talk to you!”

More raucous laughter echoed out of the car.

So much for patience. She was in no mood for teenagers acting out. She pulled out the pad and pen she always carried in her back pocket and walked up the bank and around to the back of their car. She wrote down the license plate number without being obvious about it. She’d call in a harassment call and let local law enforcement help her out. But even as she thought about it, she hesitated. There had to be a better way to handle this bunch of loonies without involving the law. She was overreacting. They were just teenagers, after all. Inspiration struck as she reemerged at the driver’s side of the car.

She ruffled her hair and moved closer to the tow-headed young driver. She leaned down. “I like your tires,” she drawled with a wide grin. “They’re real nice. And wide. And they have treads. I like treads.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “You like treads?”

He stared at her. The silly expression went into eclipse. “Treads?” His voice sounded squeaky. He tried again. “Tire…treads?”

“Yeah. Tire treads.” She stuck her tongue in and out and grinned again. “I reeaaally like tire treads.”

He was trying to pretend that he wasn’t talking to a lunatic. “Uh. You do. Really.”

She was enjoying herself now. The other boys seemed even more confused than the driver did. They were all staring at her. Nobody was laughing.

She frowned. “No, you don’t like treads. You’re just humoring me. Okay. If you don’t like treads, you might like what I got in the truck,” she said, lowering her voice. She jerked her head toward the van.

He cleared his throat. “I might like what you got in the truck,” he parroted.

She nodded, grinning, widening her eyes until the whites almost gleamed. She leaned forward. “I got bodies in there!” she said in a stage whisper and levered her eyes wide-open. “Real dead bodies! Want to see?”

The driver gaped at her. Then he exclaimed, “Dead…bod…Oh, Good Lord, no!”

He jerked back from her, slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and spun sand like dust as he roared back out onto the asphalt and left a rubber trail behind him.

She shook her head. “Was it something I said?” she asked a nearby bush.

She burst out laughing. She really did need a vacation, she told herself.

Harley Fowler saw the van sitting on the side of the road as he moved a handful of steers from one pasture to another. With the help of Bob, Cy Parks’s veteran cattle dog, he put the little steers into their new area and closed the gate behind him. A carload of boys roared up beside the van and got noisy. They were obviously hassling the crime scene woman. Harley recognized her van.

His pale blue eyes narrowed and began to glitter. He didn’t like a gang of boys trying to intimidate a lone woman. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out his gunbelt, stepping down out of the saddle to strap it on. He tied the horse to a bar of the gate and motioned Bob to stay. Harley strolled off toward the van.

He didn’t think he’d have to use the pistol, of course. The threat of it would be more than enough. But if any of the boys decided to have a go at him, he could put them down with his fists. He’d learned a lot from Eb Scott and the local mercs. He didn’t need a gun to enforce his authority. But if the sight of it made the gang of boys a little more likely to leave without trouble, that was all right, too.

He moved into sight just at the back of Alice’s van. She was leaning over the driver’s side of the car. He couldn’t hear what she said, but he could certainly hear what the boy exclaimed as he roared out onto the highway and took off.

Alice was talking to a bush.

Harley stared at her with confusion.

Alice sensed that she was no longer alone, and she turned. She blinked. “Have you been there long?” she asked hesitantly.

“Just long enough to see the Happy Teenager Gang take a powder,” he replied. “Oh, and to hear you asking a bush about why they left.” His eyes twinkled. “Talk to bushes a lot in your line of work, do you?”

She was studying him curiously, especially the low-slung pistol in its holster. “You on your way to a gunfight and just stopped by to say hello?”

“I was moving steers,” he replied. “I heard the teenagers giving you a hard time and came to see if you needed any help. Obviously not.”

“Were you going to offer to shoot them for me?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Never had to shoot any kids,” he said with emphasis.

“You’ve shot other sorts of people?”

“One or two,” he said pleasantly, but this time he didn’t smile.

She felt chills go down her spine. If her livelihood made him queasy, the way he looked wearing that sidearm made her feel the same way. He wasn’t the easygoing cowboy she’d met in town the day before. He reminded her oddly of Cash Grier, for reasons she couldn’t put into words. There was cold steel in this man. He had the self-confidence of a man who’d been tested under fire. It was unusual, in a modern man. Unless, she considered, he’d been in the military, or some paramilitary unit.

“I don’t shoot women,” he said when she hesitated.

“Good thing,” she replied absently. “I don’t have any bandages.”

He moved closer. She seemed shaken. He scowled. “You okay?”

She shifted uneasily. “I guess so.”

“Mind telling me how you got them to leave so quickly?”

“Oh. That. I just asked if they’d like to see the dead bodies in my van.”

He blinked. He was sure he hadn’t heard her right. “You asked if…?” he prompted.

She sighed. “I guess it was a little over the top. I was going to call Hayes Carson and have him come out and save me, but it seemed a bit much for a little catcalling.”

He didn’t smile. “Let me tell you something. A little catcalling, if they get away with it, can lead to a little harassment, and if they get away with that, it can lead to a little assault, even if drugs or alcohol aren’t involved. Boys need limits, especially at that age. You should have called it in and let Hayes Carson come out here and scare the hell out of them.”

“Well, aren’t you the voice of experience!”

“I should be,” he replied. “When I was sixteen, an older boy hassled a girl in our class repeatedly on campus after school and made fun of me when I objected to it. A few weeks later, after she’d tried and failed to get somebody to do something about him, he assaulted her.”