Page 6 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

Diana was ahead of me as I turned off paved surface onto a gravel road.

I knew this not because I could see her vehicle, but because of the dust rooster tail visible in front of me. Okay, it could have been another driver, but the probabilities were strong that on this road at this time going that speed, it was Diana.

The probability became stronger as the vehicle ahead established more of a lead, making the dust trail barely discernible, despite a turn onto dirt with no gravel. That’s because Diana drives Wyoming dirt tracks like she’s on the Autobahn on a clear day with no traffic.

Evergreens kept both sides of the road company as it climbed. Not enough to require switchbacks, but enough for the engine sound to announce it was doing more than cruising on the flats. Then the road dipped slightly at the same time the trees retreated for a clearing.

A clearing with what at first glance appeared to be an ash pile roughly in the center with an intact outbuilding on the right edge. Yellow police tape nearly encircled the entire area. In a few spots it had torn, with streamers of loose tape calling attention to the gaps.

Diana had parked where the police tape crossed the entry road. Otherwise she would have created a new gap by driving through the tape.

She already had her equipment out and was closing the door.

After I caught up with Diana, I saw an inner circle of police tape around the ash pile.

I ducked the outer tape, then held it up to make it easier for Diana with her equipment pack.

“Elizabeth . . .”

“Hey, if they meant it, they wouldn’t have strung that inner ring of tape.”

That was more persuasive than expected, because she immediately joined me.

We circled to the left as we moved closer across soggy ground. The new angle revealed the outbuilding closest to the ash pile had damage, including a ragged hole near its roof. More interestingly, the ash pile wasn’t all ashes.

A rock fireplace stood about as tall as me, with the remnants of its fallen chimney mixed in with charred poles tumbled into giant pick-up-sticks. They had obscured the rock fireplace’s height.

The rough outline left by the fire indicated there’d been at least one larger room on our side of the fireplace — likely the living area — and a smaller area behind it. Possibly a bedroom and bathroom, if that lump mostly hidden by debris was a toilet.

No telling from this if there’d been a second story. At least not by me. Maybe a fire expert could tell.

A beam angled from the back of the fireplace to the ground and in that relatively protected area, the hearth showed, along with what appeared to be a cast-iron pot.

No way was I getting answers to my questions out of this nothingness.

“Where was the body found?” Diana asked, already busy with her camera.

“Nola reported its feet were near the fireplace — probably that area under the beam that looks more intact and that’s why the boots survived. Then its head toward the room’s center.” I caught part of a frown behind her camera.

“What?”

“Most fires start at the fireplace. Unless it’s a lightning strike. Or, I suppose, an electrical fire. Or if they were cooking with propane or something like that.”

“That’s a lot of unlesses.”

She grunted acknowledgment of my point.

“Let’s go up there,” she said.

I looked around for stairs. There were none. Not even a ladder, which would be a distant second choice.

“Up where?”

Diana ignored my question and strode toward a gap in the outer circle of tape, where either the trees grew oddly taller or the ground rose above where we stood.

She exhibited far more energy than I felt at the prospect of that climb, even though she was carrying a not insignificant camera and equipment bag.

She’d spent years in her young adulthood slinging around bales of hay and otherwise helping her husband with their family ranch.

That was before he died in a ranch accident and she leased out most of the acreage, while going to work at KWMT-TV to support their two kids, while also holding onto the ranch as their legacy.

During that same period, I was winsomely putting microphones in front of people who didn’t want to answer the questions I asked, but sure would love to be on camera for something other than what they were on camera for.

Her training came in handier in these circumstances than mine did.

I put off the climb by pretending walking around the scene outside the inner ring of police tape would tell me something — or anything.

Mostly what it told me was I could still feel heat coming off the pile in irregular spurts. It also told me the debris was quite irregular. Some places burned to ash. Others had charred remnants of structural wood. And now and then a recognizable object despite damage.

Most of the items were close to the hearth. Along with the pot I’d spotted earlier, a trio of fire tools survived, as did the metal legs of what might have been a small table to one side of the chimney.

“Elizabeth, c’mon up here,” Diana called.

With a put-upon sigh, I followed her, though nowhere near at her pace.

The path played tag with a creek running alongside, tracking the bank for a while, then pulling away, then returning. The creek was mostly narrow, occasionally widening, which often corresponded with rockier areas.

I huffed and puffed as I reached where she’d come to a stop on an inclined path created by those mountain goats you see hanging off the side of cliffs.

She had the camera pointed through a gap in the vegetation and was absorbed with whatever view its lens gave her, giving my lungs time to stand down from fear of explosion.

“Huh.” That was not Diana huffing or puffing. Instead, it was a comment of discovery, which also caused her to put room between her face and the camera’s viewfinder to look down at the burned-out scene she’d been filming.

She looked through the camera again, then repeated pulling back to look at the scene not through the camera.

I was curious enough to ask What? But still too oxygen-deprived.

“Look at this,” she said without making me ask, demonstrating why she’s become one of my closest friends.

Satisfying my curiosity while sparing my lungs. How could you not value a person like that?

I looked through the viewfinder.

“What am I looking at?”

“No hints.”

I clicked my tongue to convey a high level of irkedness, but kept looking.

Burned stuff, burned stuff, burned stuff. What did she—?

Oh.

Maybe . . .

I shifted myself, rather than the camera. That let me view an adjacent area. Then I went back to my original position to look at the original area.

As she had, I straightened to look at the scene not through the camera, then repeated the whole cycle. Original area, additional area, back to original area.

“There’s a pattern,” I said. “Barely visible to the naked eye, but once you spot it through the lens, you can see it faintly.”

“I’m using a filter to cut through the lingering smoke haze.”

I looked back through the lens, then straightened again, this time turning away from the scene to face Diana.

“I said pattern, but it’s nothing regular. It looks more like—” Our eyes locked and I saw her agreement before I spoke the words. “—what might result from splashing accelerant around.”

“Sort of. You’re right it’s irregular away from the fireplace, sort of in the center of what must have been the main room. But check beyond that.”

I gave her a look, using it rather than words, to say Just tell me already. No dice. “What am I looking for?”

“C’mon, Elizabeth. You don’t need hints.”

I breathed out through my nose and applied myself to the viewfinder again.

The tripod allowed me to shift it without destabilizing the camera.

The image moved toward the outside perimeter.

Guessing from the orientation to the entry road, the most likely spot for a front door.

Then I followed the line of debris to the right.

Before I reached the corner — of the debris field and most likely the exterior wall — I straightened and looked at Diana again.

She said only, “Keep looking.”

I did.

All around the rough rectangle of what had once been the home of the Jardoses.

I also checked the area on either side of the fireplace.

Then I straightened again. “More of that pattern we’re taking for accelerant all around the exterior walls.

It’s not where I’d think the interior walls for bedroom and bathroom were.

Only place I spotted it inside is that oversized splash mark about a body length from the fireplace, where the head was,” I finished grimly.

“Agreed. What first caught my attention was around this back wall. Then I followed it all the way around, before crisscrossing the interior. I’d just finished and returned to the area inside when you came up.”

“Why didn’t the firefighters spot this?”

“Like I said, the filter. And I don’t know if it would be as clear from ground level. I’m going to grid the area, make sure I’ve documented it. It’ll take me a while and it’ll be boring. If you want to leave . . .”

“No. I’ll stay. We’ll have to go to Shelton.”

“And Russ.”

I tried not to grimace at her adding the sheriff — Russ Conrad, who happened to be her significant other — to the prospective confab.

“I’ll wait for you down there.”

At least down there had access to the water bottle in my vehicle. Diana, of course, had come prepared, with water bottles in her bag. But I wasn’t going to use up her supply.

It would also give me a chance to look more closely at the scene.

As I descended with only moderate skidding and sliding, I acknowledged I’d been wrong. This scene wasn’t nothingness.

But I was right about it not giving me answers. It had, however, given me additional questions.