Mac yawned as he rolled out of bed and focused blurry eyes on his alarm clock. Eight o’clock in the morning, and he could still use several hours of sleep. He’d had only three hours of restless sack time. It seemed he had the most trouble falling asleep when he needed it the most. Though analyzing the cases often complicated his sleep, it was the way Dana had acted on the ride home that had troubled him the most.
Was she jealous of his relationship with Kristen? Or maybe she was stewing over some guy. Mac thought back to a recent date that had turned into a fiasco. Maybe the guy was bothering her again. If the opportunity arose, he’d ask her about it. Of course, she could have been reacting to Nate’s assumption that they were an item. He’d teased her about being hurt, but her reaction had affected him more than he cared to admit.
Lucy, Mac’s golden retriever, ambled into the room, looking for some affection. The dog’s thick tail thumped the wall as Mac rubbed her head and ears. “I’ll be back later for a walk, old girl, I promise. I have to work again today, but the overtime is nice. We like the overtime, don’t we?” Mac smiled at the dog, who seemed to understand what he was saying.
Mac showered, put on a pair of gray slacks and navy blue blazer, and grabbed a tie for the road. He wouldn’t need it for the autopsy, but he might need it for the follow-up and death notification. Mac locked Lucy in her kennel and left a message for his neighbor, Carl, to pick her up, which was standard practice with his schedule. His widowed neighbor and Lucy both enjoyed each other’s company, a little too much sometimes. Mac couldn’t help feeling a little jealous when Lucy seemed to enjoy seeing Carl as much as or more than she liked seeing him.
They’d managed to get the autopsy scheduled for eleven that morning. Thoughts of the morgue reminded him of Kristen’s unexpected trip to Florida and put him in a sour mood. He really wanted her to perform the autopsy. Besides her being the best, he liked working with her. He liked her banter and her sense of humor and her cooking and the way she kissed him.
Mac groaned. He had to stop thinking about Kristen. From the way she sounded the other day, their relationship, like much of Oregon, had gone up in smoke.
He left his Vancouver apartment and drove south to Portland, crossing the wide, ambling Columbia River that served as a boundary between Oregon and Washington. Many of the troopers assigned to work in Mac’s office lived on the Washington side to avoid paying Oregon’s property taxes. Mac lived there to be close to his grandmother, who resided in a retirement community not far away from his home. On the way, he stopped at a Starbucks for a coffee to go. He almost got one for Dana but decided against it. After the way she’d treated him on the way home from Warm Springs, he opted not to. On top of that, she had refused his offer to pick her up this morning.
Mac punched the gate code and drove into the back lot, parking his Crown Vic next to Dana’s Pontiac. He walked through the patrol side of the building, greeting a few of the uniformed troopers on his way to the back room where the plain-clothes detectives worked. The door to the detectives’ office was already open. Apparently, he and Dana were not the only ones pulling overtime today. Weekends were generally days off for the detectives, but it looked like the entire crew had come in. The narcotics guys had served a warrant the previous day and had to act quickly on their arrests if they wanted to move up the drug-dealing food chain to the supplier.
Philly and Russ, the other pair of detectives assigned to the Violent Offender Unit with Mac and Dana, were working a murder investigation out of Clackamas County. They were pulling together a search warrant affidavit on an outlaw biker clubhouse, which would require the department SWAT team to assist them. The murder suspect, a dope dealer accused of killing a junkie, was in custody and looking to make a deal by ratting out some buddies at the clubhouse. He claimed to have witnessed a large weapons cache at the clubhouse, along with a substantial supply of crystal meth.
“You look lovely this morning.” Philly met Mac in the doorway. “How come Dana beat you to work, and she doesn’t look like she slept in her car?” He took a sip of coffee from his dingy yellow cup.
“How come you look like a train wreck every day?” Mac countered. He took the last sip out of his own coffee before throwing the empty container into the garbage.
“Well, I never.” Philly shrugged and walked back into his office, where Russ was typing an affidavit for a search warrant application. Philly loved a good insult exchange, but thankfully, he knew when not to press a tired detective who’d only had one cup of coffee. He’d withdrawn for now, but Mac had no doubt that he’d find time to exchange barbs later.
“Morning, Dana.” Mac poked his head into her new office before going to his cubicle. Once there, he powered up his computer and began checking phone messages.
Dana came in and set a paper sack and a cup of coffee on Mac’s desk.
“What’s this?” Mac asked.
“Coffee and a scone, the fattening pumpkin one you like with all the icing. Sorry about last night—or this morning, actually. I wasn’t mad at you; things just came out wrong.”
“No problem. I’d forgotten all about it,” Mac fibbed. “Thanks for the coffee, though.” Mac felt guilty. He wished he’d taken the high road and purchased his partner a treat too.
“Any messages from Nate?” Dana asked.
“No, you?”
“Nothing, so I assume he’s still coming.”
“Yep. He’s married, you know,” Mac teased.
“Yes, I know.” Dana flashed him a smile. “Too bad, though. He’s pretty cute. The good ones are always taken.”
I’m not. Mac ignored the jab or tried to.
“Any word on the fire?” she asked.
“I haven’t heard. I’ll call RDC and see if they have something.”
Mac dialed dispatch to get an update. He spoke with the floor supervisor for less than a minute. He’d expected the fire to do damage, but hearing it firsthand left him feeling disappointed and angry. He hung up with a little more force than necessary. “You want the bad news or the bad news first?”
“Oh, how about the bad news?” Dana leaned against his desk.
“The fire jumped containment lines to the east and crossed the Deschutes River and is burning toward Maupin. Sounds like a U.S.
Forest Service employee was hurt by a falling tree about the time we were on the scene.”
“Oh, no. How bad?”
“They didn’t know for sure, but I’m sure having a tree fall on you would do some serious damage. That’s the first part; ready for the second?”
Dana nodded.
“The fire jumped the White River, and our body dumpsite is ablaze. With the fire burning the earth several inches down from the surface, that land will be sterile for months. On top of that, we’ll probably have fire retardant and who knows what else dumped all over the place. It’s a good thing we processed the scene and took what we did last night.”
“I guess so. I hope we didn’t miss anything.” Dana sipped her iced coffee through a straw in the plastic lid. “We should tell Kevin.”
“I was just going to call him at home and update him.”
“Good. I’ll let you do that while I get back to my paperwork.”
After calling Kevin to brief him on their progress, Mac worked on writing his reports and documenting their actions from the crime-scene evidence processing.
NATHAN ARRIVED AT THEIR OFFICE shortly after ten and was led to the detectives’ office by a uniformed trooper who’d seen him drive into the lot.
“Hey, Nate.” Mac shook his hand.
“Good morning, Mac. Hey, Dana,” Nate said as she emerged from her office.
“Find the place OK?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, I found the place just fine. Good directions once I got into town, although I had to drive into The Dalles and come in on I-84 due to the fire. Highway 26 is closed right now. Did you know the fire ate up the White River campground about three hours ago?”
“We heard.” Mac sighed. “Are you sure it went over the body dumpsite?”
“Positive. I was in contact with the smoke jumpers who flew the area. It’s a half mile from the White River now, so that’s well past our crime scene.”
“I can’t believe we were just there,” Dana said.
“Look on the bright side,” Nate offered. “If that kid’s dog hadn’t unearthed that piece of leather, we might have never found the body.”
“I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” Mac replied. “How’s your family?”
“Doing good. They’re safe and sound in Madras this morning.
They’ll be heading back to the farm later today. The fire is staying well away from us. I keep a pretty clean place, so there wasn’t a lot of fuel for the fire to eat on. I was mainly concerned about the smoke and how it would affect our livestock. We have a new paint colt that’s only a week old, so I didn’t want her getting a lungful of smoke. She’s doing great, though.”
“That’s a relief. You sure you’re OK to be gone today?”
“No problem. The chief said he couldn’t pay overtime, but he’s going to let me trade days and take another day off.”
“No pay? Now that’s dedication.” Dana smiled.
“What can I say?” Nate turned to look at Mac. “If we solve this, you’re still working the place with me.”
“I know, but I’m bringing Dana. She’s my partner, and we stick together, through thick and thin.”
“That would be the thin, partner,” Dana laughed. “And you’re on your own with this one. You shouldn’t write checks you can’t cash.”
“Well, Dana.” Nate chuckled. “If you change your mind, we’d love to have you visit.”
Mac introduced Nate to Philly and Russ before showing him around the station house and giving him a key to the building so he could access the office during the time they were working together.
While Mac briefed Nate, Dana finished logging in the evidence, primarily the soil samples taken from the dumpsite. She kept the leather scrap with the beadwork out for the post, in the event the medical examiner wanted to see the evidence. She also made arrangements with the State Police forensics lab to process the soil evidence for additional trace items that could lead them to their killer. The soils would have to be sifted, with any small items analyzed under the microscope.
“You ready, Dana?” Mac asked when he and Nate returned to the detectives’ office.
“All set, guys. We’re lined up with the crime lab to process our soil. Angela will give us a call when and if she can send some techs out to the office. She made it pretty clear that sifting through the dirt was not a job for CSI unless we located some trace evidence. I guess she figures we could handle the task.”
Mac didn’t especially like the idea of sifting through all that dirt, but they had no choice. “All right, then. Let’s head to the post and see if the M.E. can put an official name to our victim and tell us how she died.”