Free Strange Country by Deborah Coates Page B

with them.
    “What was that?” Boyd asked. No one answered.
    Ole frowned at him, something resembling concern on his face. “What was what?” he asked.
    Cross, intent on the bones, stepped past both of them and crouched in the same spot Boyd had been a few seconds earlier. Gerson had stepped back, against the stone wall, one hand on her chest. She looked at Boyd, looked back at the bones. She drew in a visible breath, reached into her bag, and retrieved a notepad and pen.
    “We need an evidence team,” she said. “I’m sure your people are good.…”
    But they’re not trained for this, Boyd thought. Or, they were trained for bones and bodies and even for small objects buried in dirt. But they weren’t trained for things that appeared to be clumps of dirt but reflected light instead; they weren’t trained for bright flashes of light everyone didn’t see. Neither was he.
    “Already called,” Ole said. “But I wanted to make sure you saw this. What the hell?” he said, to himself mostly, Boyd thought. “What the hell went on here?”
    “They need to pay attention to those stones beside the body,” Boyd said.
    Ole frowned. “What stones?”
    Boyd ducked his head to move past Cross, who looked up at him and then grudgingly rose and stepped around the bones to the darker side of the cellar.
    Boyd crouched again and pointed. “Right there. What are those? At a glance they look like dirt clods, but they’re not and there’s something—” He stopped, not sure what to say about them. Ole had never said anything about any of the things that happened in Taylor County last fall—not about Martin Weber or his blood magic, not about Travis Hollowell, the reaper, who had killed Boyd’s wife and, at the end, almost killed Boyd. He had never said anything about Uku-Weber and the destruction there, at least nothing beyond—yeah, hell of a gas leak. Nothing. About any of it. So what was Boyd going to say now? That he’d seen a flash of light, heard thunder while Ole and, he was pretty sure Cross, had seen and heard nothing?
    He glanced toward Gerson. He wasn’t sure about Gerson.
    “Something in particular about them?” Ole asked. He appeared to be studying the bones, not looking at Boyd or even—at least on the surface—trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.
    “I don’t know,” Boyd admitted, because he really didn’t.
    “We’ll bag ’em with the rest,” Ole said.
    “No,” Gerson said.
    “They could be evidence,” Boyd said.
    “I’m sure they will be,” Gerson said evenly. “I’ll take charge of them.”
    “What?” Cross moved back into the light. “No. This is a murder investigation. We agreed. There’s a procedure.”
    “We’ve had this discussion before,” Gerson said coolly. “Some things are outside the scope of regular procedures. I saw something a few minutes ago—a flash of light—as, I expect, did Deputy Davies here.” She indicated Boyd with a brief nod. “You didn’t see it. The sheriff didn’t see it. I can’t ignore that.”
    Cross made a sound like a snarl crossed with a groan, pushed past Boyd and Ole, and went back up the stairs. Near the top, he said without turning back, “I have nothing to do with it. I’ll be upstairs.”
    “Becky knows a little something about this sort of thing,” Ole said to Boyd after Cross was gone.
    “Becky?”
    “Special Agent Gerson.”
    Gerson smiled for the first time. “Not much,” she said. “You hear things from other investigators or at a conference. Something happens on an investigation. You look into it. And sometimes, if you’re open-minded, you learn something new. Ole’s told me about the things that have happened here. He says you’ve been involved.”
    Boyd looked at Ole. He looked at the skeleton, at the small objects—he’d call them stones until he knew differently—nearly buried in the hard-packed earth of the cellar, tried to understand how this had suddenly become part of an actual