Free On the Run by Lorena McCourtney Page B

scene would shock even the most experienced of police officers. The flies were still buzzing, and the smell not improving. But I saw no change of expression on either face when I edged up beside them.
    I tried to keep myself as cool and controlled as the two officers. “There’s a note,” I said, pointing to it. “We hadn’t noticed that yet when I talked to their son.”
    Sgt. Dole stepped forward to read the blood-speckled note. He looked at the bodies again and shook his head. “What would make people do something like this? Nothing’s that bad, is it?”
    I assumed the questions were rhetorical, although I agreed with Sgt. Dole’s implication. Nothing warranted this . I remembered my own despair when our son, Colin, died in an overseas ferry accident while he was in the service, his body never recovered. For a time, life had hardly seemed worth living. But I’d had the Lord to lean on, and he’d carried me through, as he always does if we let him. Which the Northcutts, whatever their troubles, apparently had not.
    Sgt. Dole extracted a cell phone from an assortment of police equipment on his belt. He moved toward the fresher air and turned his back to us as he spoke into the phone, but I could still hear most of his end of the conversation.
    “Yeah, the Northcutts, those movie people out here at the old Morris lodge . . . What? Yeah, gun’s right here, a .38 it looks like . . . right. About like that old couple out on Webley Road four, five years ago. Remember them? Except the wife was the one who pulled the trigger that time . . . What? . . . Yeah, cancer or something that one was, I think. At least this time the note’s typed and more readable, with everything spelled right.” Sgt. Dole chuckled, as if some inside joke was involved here.
    The possibility of illness hadn’t occurred to me. Had one of the Northcutts been painfully, perhaps terminally ill?
    Sgt. Dole glanced back at the bodies, apparently in response to another question. “I’d guess two or three days. Though it could be less. It’s warm in here, and you know what that does to a body. Not pretty.”
    Still on the cell phone, he looked at his watch again. “I wanted to get out to talk to that Watson kid who was a friend of Eddie’s. He’s been dodging me for three days. But I guess it’ll have to wait if the ME can’t get here right away.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if frustrated by the delay.
    “They’re contacting the medical examiner,” Sgt. Dole said when he turned back to us. “But he’s out at the rollover site now, so it’s hard to tell how long it’ll take him to get here. Going to be rough on local folks, losing two fine young men so close together.”
    “But this second death was an accident, wasn’t it, not like the murder of the sheriff’s nephew?”
    “An accident just waiting to happen. You can’t believe where some of these kids try to take their four-wheel drives and dirt bikes. Places I wouldn’t tackle with anything but a helicopter. But they think they’re invincible at that age.” Sgt. Dole shook his head. “This kid’s Jeep rolled down an embankment and threw him a good hundred feet. The medical examiner may have to put the poor kid back together before he can autopsy him. But at least we can wrap this one up quick,” he said as he nodded toward the bodies on the sofa.
    “Will the Northcutts’ bodies also be autopsied?”
    “Probably, unless the family has some big objections. Although it doesn’t take an expert and a bunch of lab tests to figure out what happened here. They obviously didn’t die of infected toenails or eating tainted potato salad. Right, Mike?”
    Sgt. Dole’s answer to my question had been pleasant enough, if a bit morbidly facetious, but I detected a smirk and note of hostility when he addressed his partner.
    “I would assume an autopsy would be standard procedure in a situation such as this,” the younger deputy said, his manner stiff.
    “’Cause that’s