to get within ten feet, but now it had cooled some and a terrible odor drifted around him.
The air had turned putrid with a smell so bad that once you smelled it, you never forgot. It drifted into your mouth and seemed to decay there, leaving a taste almost as bad as the smell.
Dice was a few feet behind him and froze in midstep. He tugged his bandanna up over his nose. “Double damn,” he whispered. “There ain’t but one thing that smells like that.”
It was a smell like no other in the world. So terrible Blade felt his throat close up trying to keep the odor from his lungs. He’d encountered it in the army a few times and at several burn sites.
Human flesh burning. The odor of burned hair. Blood boiling to the point that it gives off a heavy, acrid odor so thick you swear you can taste it all the way to your gut.
The sheriff was several feet behind, busy writing notes. He looked up suddenly and Blade knew Brigman recognized the odor.
Reid Collins bumped into the sheriff, then yelled, “Damn! What is that smell?”
No one answered him. Brigman stepped forward and knelt in the pile of ashes spilling out of what had been the barn.
He brushed away ashes with his pencil and a hand rolled out of the rubble, its flesh burned away, its boney fingers stretching out as if for help. A gust of wind circled ashes exposing more bone.
Blade clicked a picture. The skeletal hand was curled up, with bits of charred muscle still attached to the bone.
Brigman stood. “Looks like he must have been trapped.”
“The smoke probably got to him before he could fight his way out the back.” Blade hated the smell, but he did his job. He clicked shots.
“No!” Reid yelled. “No! This isn’t happening. Maybe it’s an animal or an old skeleton buried in the barn years ago. Someone did not die in this fire last night.” The owner seemed to think yelling would make his words true.
Brigman shook his head. “Look closer, Reid. Someone did die. Looks like the fire caught him just before he reached the back door.” He noticed a padlock on burned wood that could have been the rear door to the barn. “Maybe he ran for the back door and found it locked. He was trapped by the fire.”
Reid glanced over the sheriff’s shoulder, gagged, and stumbled backward.
Blade and the sheriff moved in closer, trying to see something, anything, that might give them a clue.
“We’re dealing with a crime scene now,” Blade whispered.
“Shut the ranch down.” The sheriff’s voice bore no hesitation.
They both knew what had to be done. Blade offered, “I’ll help stand guard until the state troopers get here, Sheriff. We don’t want anyone trying to cover this up.”
Both men walked toward the sheriff’s car. “I’ll call it in.” Dan’s voice hinted at how tired he was already, and his day wasn’t close to over. “We may have a murder here. Unless he was the one setting the fires and got caught in the last one.”
“Not likely. I want to go back to the other site with equipment as soon as it cools. This was the only lock on any door that I saw,” Blade said. “He might have been sleeping it off in the barn, or maybe riding the land and spotted the arsonist setting the fire.”
Blade turned to Dice. “What do you think? How many cowhands were out riding last night?”
“Half a dozen, maybe more, but all the hands knew this barn had locks on it, front and back. Collins put them on six months ago. I figured it was to keep drifters out, but he said it was because as soon as the hay was gone he planned to store cars in there.”
“Did he store cars?”
Dice shook his head. “Not that I ever saw, but he did keep this one barn locked.”
Blade pushed. “You didn’t think that was strange?”
Dice grinned. “I’m a cowboy. I’m not paid to think beyond cow level.”
He pointed with his thumb. “We got a new problem.”
“What’s that?” Brigman said as he opened his car door and tugged out his radio.
Dice pointed back in the direction he’d come. “Boss man fainted.”
All three looked back at Reid lying spread-eagle in the mud halfway between the rubble of the barn and the cars.
“What do I do, Sheriff?” Dice tugged off his hat and started worrying the brim. “Officially, I don’t work for him since the night of the fire, and if he ain’t breathing I’m sure not giving him mouth-to-mouth with all that throw-up on his face.”
Brigman looked like a man who had his hands full. “Check to see if he’s breathing. If he is, leave him. He looks like he could use some sun.”
When Dice walked off, Brigman moved to the trunk of his car and pulled out a box. “You got a weapon, Hamilton?”
“I do. I carry a Glock 17 and my badge in my saddlebags. They’re in the back seat of your cruiser.”
“Then strap on a weapon.” He pulled another badge from the box. “I’m also deputizing you.” The sheriff glanced at his watch. “I don’t know what we’re facing but as of 1:45 p.m., I want you working for the county. We’ll finish up here and by four I’ll have men coming in to question. I’m going to need your help.”
Blade slipped the badge in his pocket and reached for his saddlebags. “This mean I’m getting paid?”
“Nope, but if you don’t want the job my next recruit is Dice.”
They both looked back at Dice slowly walking around Reid Collins like the ranch owner was a half-dead snake.
Blade knew he was cornered. “I’ll take the job.”
LAUREN SAT IN her tiny office in what everyone called the strip mall. Three ten-by-twelve offices with small loft apartments above and a parking lot out front for eight cars. She’d opened a site for online news called ChatAroundCrossroads after she moved back from Dallas. She planned to sell ads on her webpage for income in the morning and work on her writing in the afternoon.
Only, everyone read the news, but no one bought ads, so she was forced to take editing jobs to pay the bills. Still, broke in her hometown among friends and family was better than being broke in Dallas alone.
Lauren had always thought her real money would come from writing. Short stories, poems, articles. After all, every English teacher she had in college told her she could write.
But they hadn’t told her what to write.
So far everything she tried only dribbled in small change. But last month she’d had a new idea. Dakota Davis, in the office next door, had told her scary tales about her neighbor’s place and she’d pitched the idea to Texas Monthly. They said they’d consider it.
Lauren didn’t believe any of the stories, but that might be something people would read. A feud over cattle. A gunfight over love. And a ghost who walked the land by Indigo Lake.
From there she could write other stories. Ransom Canyon was full of legends and stories.
She stared out the glass door, thinking she’d managed to get nowhere with her writing career in her five years since college, so she might as well try this road. There was good money in magazine writing if she could just make herself write. At the rate she was going she’d die of old age with her obituary only half-written.
But if she wrote about legends and curses people passed down, she might build a name for herself. She could do a series of shorts and eventually put them together in a book.