Page 30 of Colton in the Wild
“We’ll likely be seeing him,” dad agreed.
The two men reached them and stopped. Both Spence and his father nodded to the one in the Shelby PD uniform. Bobby Reynolds was familiar to them both; they’d dealt with him on a few occasions back in Shelby. For him to be here now, he must have come in by air, maybe on a state agency bird. The man shoved a hand through his light brown hair and there was what appeared to be genuine concern in his face and voice when he spoke.
“How’s your flygirl?”
“She’s going to be fine,” Spence said firmly.
Reynolds nodded then introduced the man in plain clothes as Detective Sam Barton, from the Alaska State Troopers. Since Alaska had no counties, there was no county sheriff to turn to, and the AST handled…well, almost everything.
“Mr. Colton, Mr. Colton…you’re Eli’s uncle and cousin?” Barton asked.
“Yes,” Dad said.
“He’s a good man,” the investigator said.
“He is,” Ryan confirmed.
Then Barton shifted his attention to Spence, but without, Spence noted, asking Dad to leave them alone. The Colton name again, he guessed.
“Obviously, we’ll need some details about what happened up there,” Barton said. He nodded toward the small park across the street, fairly empty at this early hour, although Spence knew it would fill up later as people rolled out to enjoy the predicted summer weather for the week. Of course, any of the locals could tell you weather predictions for the area were notoriously inaccurate and to be taken with a pound of salt. He remembered the day when it had been sunny in town, windy out on the sound and snowing up in the pass. None of which had been predicted.
They found an empty picnic table in the park and sat down.
“This guy had a rifle?” Barton asked.
“Yeah. High-power, I’d guess.” He grimaced. “Didn’t have time to dig out a spent round for you, but there’s one in the cabin of the plane, somewhere in the back. And I can get you to a tree I think has another one buried deep.”
Barton looked appreciative. “Learned from Eli, have you?”
“And my sister. She’s on the SAR team.”
“Kansas Colton. Stationed locally, right?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Now, about the shooter—”
Spence nodded. “I never saw the guy, but Hetty got a glimpse of him right before he shot her. Probably why he shot her.”
“We’ll need to talk to Ms. Amos, of course—”
“When the doctors say you can,” Spence said firmly.
The two men blinked. Exchanged glances. “Of course,” Reynolds said.
Spence had the feeling they wouldn’t stop short of applying a little pressure to those doctors if they felt they had to. So he’d just be darned sure he was around in case they tried.
“Any idea why he’d come after you? For that matter, which one was he after?”
“None. And he shot at both of us, as it happened. Maybe he just likes taking potshots at people. Or he decided that camp is his. Or that the whole hunting area is, and we trespassed. Or he hid something he didn’t want found…”
His voice trailed off. He knew he had to tell them, and the sooner, the better, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. The two men waited, as if they sensed this would go more smoothly if they didn’t push. He wasn’t a suspect, after all.
“There’s something else…” he began. “We found a body up there. One that’s been there a while.”
The two men went very still. “A body?”
Spence tried to remember the way both Eli and his sister talked about cases, when they did. Tried to give the kind of concise version they always managed.
