“No, not really,” he said, “but one can always hope.” He tossed her a grin, catching up with her, and opened up what looked like a big storeroom door off the kitchen. As soon as he did, he backed away, coughing and hacking, holding his sleeve over his nose. She came up behind him, gasped in shock, and he quickly turned her away and moved the dogs out of the way and slammed the door shut.
“What the hell was that?” she asked.
He already had his phone in his hand. “A dead body,” he said.
She stared at him in horror. “But who?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t want you to see that. I’m calling the police now.”
“The police. Great,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Is Detective Ansel Lowery still around?”
“I think so,” she said. “He’ll love this.” She laughed. “He bailed us out of so much trouble,” she said, as Caleb made his way through several phone calls to get to Lowery.
When he identified himself, Lowery said, “Oh, my God. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m in El Paso, staying at Laysha’s house,” he said, “but I’ve been looking for a K9 on behalf of the War Dog Department,” he added. “We came to the last-known residence, and we were doing a quick check because it’s empty. Apparently the adoptive couple moved into town,” he said. “Buuut …” He paused for a long moment.
Detective Ansel Lowery asked on the other end, “But what?”
“We found a body here.”
“Seriously?” he exploded. “Do you guys ever do anything but get into trouble? You’ve been in town what? Five minutes and you’ve already found a corpse?”
“It’s not our fault,” he said. “And remember. When we got into trouble years ago, it was years ago.”
“Funny how the years just fall away,” Lowery said with a note of humor. “I’m sending out a team and the coroner.”
“Good.”
“Male, female, or did you not look?”
“The dead body is inside a closed room, and the smell’s pretty ripe. I didn’t get a good look. However, by the decomp, I would say the person died at least several days ago.”
“Well, we’ve had a lot of warm weather here,” he said. “Give me the address again, so I can confirm the ownership. And who did you say was living there before?”
Caleb filled in the detective on all the details, as much as he could, and said, “Laysha’s sitting on the back deck. We’ve got her dogs here with us.”
“Well, stay where you are,” he said. “I’m about thirty minutes away.”
“Will do.” Caleb hung up and quickly called Badger and updated him.
“Seriously?” Badger said. “A dead body in the empty house?”
“Yeah. I had to pass over as much of the information as I had to the cops, but they’re on their way now.”
“Oh, they’ll be looking for all kinds of information at this point,” Badger said. “Give them anything you can of course,” he added. “We need to solve this, and let’s not have it derail our search for the dog.”
“I guess the question is, could it be connected?”
“No way to know for sure yet, but we have to assume that there must be some connection just because it’s the same property.”
“Sure, but it’s been a long time since the dog was here.”
“Yes, it has, at least as far as we know, and the couple supposedly moved out shortly afterward. What we don’t have is necessarily the truth on any of this.”
“Good point,” Caleb said. “I hear the sirens. I’ll talk to you with an update later.” And he hung up. As he turned, Laysha stood there, pointing at the front. “I know. The cops are here,” he said. “Let’s go talk to them.”
He noted that she had leashed all three dogs, and, as they walked out to the front, two cops stood there, discussing what was going on, and then a third vehicle pulled in. Out of that one stepped Ansel Lowery. Caleb walked over and shook his hand.
The detective smiled. “Well, it’s good to see you two. Nice to know that all’s well in your corner of the world, but, jeez, it’d be nice if you didn’t keep calling me for the wrong reasons.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve called you,” Laysha protested. “And this is a particularly ugly reason for calling you,” she admitted. “The decomp’s like seriously bad.”
Chapter 4
Laysha stayed outside and watched while the cops went inside with Caleb. He seemed to fully adapt to the presence of a dead body. And maybe that was his military experience, but, for her, that smell was shocking and then to see—which she didn’t even really see anything—just a crumpled pile of clothing and something like … looked almost yellow and green and putrid. She sighed when Caleb finally came out.
He walked toward her, wrapped her in his arms, and said, “Sorry you had to see that.”
“I don’t even know what I did see,” she said, “but it was pretty nasty.”
“Yep. Anything like that is,” he said with a nod.
“I gather you’ve seen things like that before?”
“I have,” he said, “not that it ever gets any easier.”
“I can’t imagine,” she said.
“No, it’s definitely not preferable.”
At that, she turned to see Detective Ansel coming toward them.
“So you want to tell me what’s your side of the story?”
She sighed and quickly gave him the version of what happened as she knew it.
“Well, it certainly matches up with his. Unfortunately I don’t have anything here to go on, but we’ll have to run down who it is and how they got here,” he said. “We’ve got your contact information, so we’ll be in touch.”
Caleb said, “I still need to look for the dog.”
“Well, I don’t want you back in the house,” he said, “and we haven’t searched the grounds yet.”
“Do you mind, while we still have an hour of daylight, if we take a walk around the property?”
He frowned.
Caleb rushed to say, “If we see anything, obviously we’ll let you know.”
“Right,” he said. “Fine, go take a look.” He stopped, then added, “Actually, why
