Bertram's Blog

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery continue! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 34: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Sheriff Bryan turned off the highway onto Tehachapi Road and wound through Rubicon Ranch. Melanie gazed out the Navigator’s window at the beautiful houses. Although the buildings were typical California housing development architecture—stucco with tile roofs—many of the dwellings were custom-built, so none of the houses looked exactly like any other. Spanish, Moorish, and Mediterranean styles dominated, but Cape Cod designs, Greek revival porticos, and ranch-style houses were also prevalent.

It seemed strange, Melanie thought, that the lovely facades hid such horror—death, murder, dismemberment.

“When I took this job,” the sheriff said, “I figured Rubicon Ranch would be the least of my troubles. It seemed such a quiet place.” He shot a glance at her. “You find that funny?”

It had been so long since Melanie had smiled that it took a moment for her to realize her lips had quirked up in acknowledgment of their synchronized thoughts.

“Not funny, no. It’s just that the area does seem quiet and innocent, as if nothing bad could happen here. And from what I can tell, nothing bad happened until I came. First Alexander was killed, then Riley, then her father and her kidnappers, and now Morris. I know it’s foolish, but I can’t help feeling as if it’s all my fault.”

“Is it?” Bryan asked without a trace of friendliness.

“Note to self,” Melanie muttered. “Never confide in a cop.”

“What about if the cop confides in you? All hell is breaking loose in Rubicon Ranch, and I’d like to tell you what’s going on if that’s okay.”

“Ah, back to the nice cop. It’s amazing how you can do the good cop/bad cop routine all by yourself.”

“Bad cop?” He flashed a smile that could only be called a leer, but then he seemed to think better of it, and straightened his mouth into its normally stern lines. “Have you met Eyana Saleh? Egypt Hayes?”

“Haven’t met either of them.”

“It’s the same person. Petit woman, mixed heritage, new to Rubicon Ranch.”

“Oh! I’ve seen her. She’s always wandering around taking photos of the neighborhood. She’s beautiful and has such lovely skin. Eyana Saleh? That’s her name? It fits her. What has she done?”

“Right at the moment she’s in the hospital. Been beaten pretty bad. She’s not saying much, but one of her assistants found her and described the man she saw running from the house, and the description fits Jake Sinclair.”

“Have you arrested him yet?”

“He’s not going anywhere. He’s in the hospital too, just down the hall from Eyana. His arm was chewed almost to the bone.”

Melanie gaped at the sheriff. “Eyana ate him?”

“A coyote did, or so he says. Apparently, after he beat up Eyana, he ran off to the desert. That’s where the medivac helicopter picked him up. He’s not saying anything, either, though maybe when he finds out how unpleasant those rabies shots are, he’ll come clean. The doctor says it’s definitely a canine bite though he guesses it’s a domesticated creature. The only dog in the area that I know of that’s big enough to do so much damage so quickly is the bull mastiff Tara Windsor owns, but she’s keeping mum, too.”

“Tara Windsor is in Cabo with her pool boy.”

“What? How do you know?”

“My agent. She’s a celebrity hound.”

Sheriff Bryan tapped a long, well-shaped finger on the steering wheel. “So, a woman comes to town looking like Tara, telling everyone her name is Leia Menendez, wink, wink, leading everyone to believe that she’s the actress but is really Leia? Whoa. If Tara could act that good, she’d be a shoo-in for an Oscar. Playing Lizzy Borden, maybe. An axe was found in the Sinclair house under Jake’s bed. We think Leia put it there, but our witness is a bit unreliable since she was having hysterics at the time.”

“And here I thought the life of a cop was boring,” Melanie said. “All routine and paperwork.”

“Not boring enough. The witness is Nancy Garcetti, a real estate agent. She found Morris’s head in the Peterson house and went flying down the street, screaming all the way. She says while she waited for my deputies to arrive, she saw Tara Windsor sneaking around the side of the Sinclair’s house, and Tara was carrying something that looked like an axe. We can’t find any other witnesses, and Tara or Leia or whatever her name is, isn’t admitting anything.”

“Is it the axe that killed Morris?”

Bryan shook his head. “The ME says not. He says it’s animal blood, thin blood, like from a roast. Then, as if this isn’t enough of a circus, we have electric boy. Ward Preminger.”

“I know who you mean,” Melanie said. “He’s also new to the neighborhood. Seems to crackle with static electricity. Has a fixation with the Morris house.”

The sheriff turned onto Delano Road. “As near as we can figure it, Ward blamed Morris for his condition, though apparently his brain got rewired when he was zapped by lightning while trapped in a tornado. He—” The chirping of a cell phone interrupted him. Bryan pulled the device out of a sheath on his belt and held it up to his ear. “Yes,” he said. “Yes . . . Okay . . . Sure . . . Thanks . . . Be right there.”

He sheathed his phone. “I have to go. We got the preliminary autopsy reports.” He made a quick u-turn and pulled up in front of Melanie’s rented house.

Melanie climbed out of the vehicle and stood on the curb until the Navigator sped out of sight, then she trudged to her front door, unlocked it, and entered the silent house.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel. The first chapter will be posted on Monday, June 11, and one chapter will be posted every Monday after that.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery continue! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 33: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Morris. Melanie shuddered, remembering her encounter with the famous author and his request for photos of necropieces. Well, now the evil old man was just a bunch of dead body parts himself.

The sheriff seemed to be focused on his driving, but a bird-like tilt of his head gave her the impression he was trying to hear her thoughts. Well, whatever other abilities Seth Bryan might have, she doubted he was clairvoyant. He never seemed to understand her or her point of view.

“I don’t know anything about Morris,” Melanie said. “And I’m not sure there’s much to know. Of all the people I’ve encountered in Rubicon Ranch, he seems the least opaque.”

The sheriff made a small noise that could have been a choke of laughter or a grunt of derision, but other than that, he remained silent.

“I mean, he is a despicable human being,” Melanie continued, “and whoever killed him should probably be given a medal for something . . . saving the earth, perhaps. But Morris doesn’t really hide what he is. He might have feigned Alzheimer’s, but that was simply because he felt like it. All that matters to him are his wants, and since he has the money to indulge himself in his evil fantasies, there is nothing to stop him.”

“Nothing?” Sheriff Bryan said quietly.

“Was nothing to stop him.” Melanie stole a look at the sheriff. Did her simple error in syntax make her seem guilty to him? She had no idea how his mind worked, and his eyes hidden behind those silly mirrored sunglasses gave her no clue.

She considered asking him if he knew who killed Morris, but he’d probably use that as an excuse to interrogate her about her neighbors, and she had nothing to say. She didn’t want to tell him about seeing the supposedly decrepit and curmudgeonly old Eloy Franklin laughing and frolicking with his dog as if he were a man half the age he pretended to be. Nor did she want to talk about the new people she’d seen wandering around the neighborhood as if it were a theme park—Murder World, or some such.

And she certainly didn’t want to talk about herself. She wouldn’t like to give the sheriff any hint of her true strength or deadliness, or he might decide to use the knowledge against her.

She stared out the window at the empty desert they were passing and wondered what he would think if she were to tell him about wrestling a boa constrictor in Costa Rica. The pale tan snake with its brown markings had been almost invisible hidden in the undergrowth, and she had tripped over it. Boas were tree-dwellers, so she wasn’t on the lookout for such a creature on the ground. She had since learned to be aware of everything in her surroundings, but back then, she was still unused to seeing danger lurking in innocent places. She figured out later the boa must have been sick or old or weak, otherwise she’d have been squeezed to death before she could unwrap the beast from around her torso. Still, it had taken all her considerable strength to save herself. And Alexander hadn’t lifted a hand to help. He had simply photographed the episode. Not exactly a knight in shining armor.

What would the sheriff have done in that situation? Kill the poor creature in an attempt to rescue the damsel in distress?

A low rumble that Melanie interpreted as a chuckle came from the man beside her. “I can hear your mental wheels spinning,” Bryan said. “Care to share what you’re thinking?”

“What are you, the thought police?” Realizing that perhaps she’d sounded too harsh for what could conceivably have been a guileless query on his part, she softened her tone. “I was just wondering if you were the knight in shining armor type, is all.”

Seth Bryan tapped the badge pinned to his left shirt pocket. “This is all the armor I need.” Then he smiled at her—a real smile that showed dazzling white teeth and a hint of a dimple. “Well, this badge and a bullet-proof vest.”

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel. The first chapter will be posted on Monday, June 11, and one chapter will be posted every Monday after that.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery continue! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 32: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Melanie trudged along the left side of the highway, facing traffic, the blister on her heel burning with every step. The sun had come out, and the road was now dry, but her shoes and socks remained wet from slogging through the flooded gutters back in Rojo Duro.

After Sheriff Bryan dropped his bombshell—Why did you do it, Melanie?—he had been called away, leaving the question hanging in the air. Two hours later, he still hadn’t returned, but a kid who looked as if he were straight out of the police academy brought her coffee. She had demanded the use of a toilet, and the young deputy ushered her to the lavatory. He wasn’t waiting for her when she finished, so she had simply walked out of the sheriff’s department. No one stopped her.

She’d now been walking for hours, but was still far from Rubicon Ranch. Maybe she should have returned to the interrogation room and waited for the sheriff, but if he still wanted her, he knew where to find her—at home in about seven more hours.

“See what you’ve done to me, Alexander,” she murmured, tears stinging her eyes. “Not only have you left me alone with only a ghost to talk to, you’ve turned me into an escaped prisoner.” Wearily, she scrubbed away the tears. She was sick of crying, sick of Alexander being gone, sick of the way her life was turning out. Once she’d felt strong, like a warrior, capable of anything. And now? Just a tired widow, at the mercy of her emotions.

A vehicle veered off the right lane, and pulled up alongside her.

“Get in,” Sheriff Bryan commanded.

Melanie wanted to refuse, but oncoming traffic gave her little opportunity to assess the matter, and besides, her blistered heel was throbbing with pain.

She scurried around the tan Navigator and slipped into the front seat. The sheriff stomped on the accelerator. The vehicle shot back into the right lane, narrowly averting a head-on collision with a white Subaru.

“Are you always so reckless?” Melanie asked.

“Are you always so reckless? What do you think you’re doing, walking along the highway like that?”

“Going home, where I would have been all day if your thugs hadn’t arrested me.”

“You weren’t under arrest. I just needed to talk to you, and I couldn’t get away.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “So I’m not a suspect? Then why did you tell my publisher I was?”

He grinned. “It got you a bigger advance, didn’t it?”

She slumped in the seat as much as she could against the restraints of the seat belt, and folded her arms across her chest.

“You have to admit,” Sheriff Bryan said in a softer tone than any she had yet heard issuing from his mouth, “you need help.”

Melanie sat up straight and glared at him. “Help? Help? Who says I need help? Is that why you arrested me? To help me?”

“Now that’s the Melanie I know and love.” He must have sensed the indignant response she was about to hurl at him, because he added quickly, “It’s just an expression.”

Melanie dropped her head into her hands. Why did this man keep her so off balance? Was it that her grief made her vulnerable and any attention would send her reeling, or was there something more going on? Either way, she had to get a grip on her emotions. Warrior, she reminded herself.

She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Why did I do . . . what?”

As cryptic as her comment sounded, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand her reference to the question he had asked in the interrogation room.

He sighed as he had done then. “Why did you shut me out when I poured out my heart to you? I was more open to you than I’ve ever been to any other woman. You could have at least told me you understood, even if you weren’t interested.”

She stared at him in total non-comprehension, and though he glanced at her, she couldn’t pick up any clues as to what he was thinking. She could only see herself in the mirrors of his sunglasses. And then all at once she understood.

During the investigation into little Riley’s murder, the sheriff had taken her to lunch and told her his story. How he’d been the fair-haired boy. President of his class in high school. Pledged the best fraternity in college. Dated a cheerleader and married her after graduation. Went into law enforcement. Hired on at the Greene City Police Department. Became a detective. Got his masters. Went up through the ranks like a shot. Became the youngest captain in the history of the force. Was on the fast track to becoming Chief of Police when he had an affair with a junior officer on the force.

He’d said that his wife knew about the other woman, that she stayed with him because he was the favorite son of Greene City, but when the affair came to light, he lost his job, his status, and his wife—at least temporarily. He claimed that though he was through with her, she wouldn’t give him a divorce because she still believed that one day he was going to be a major police chief, maybe in LA, and she was waiting to get a piece of that large salary in alimony payments.

What Melanie had taken to be a come-on—his letting her know that even though he was married, he was available—he’d apparently meant as a way of opening up to her. And she had run out on him.

But not because of the supposed come-on. Because of Alexander.

“You lied to me,” she said. “You told me you went to the scene where my husband died and came to the conclusion that it had not been an accident. The cops told me it was a hit and run, that someone had rear-ended the car with such force that Alexander crashed head-on into a concrete abutment, but when I went out the scene right afterwards, I didn’t see anything to indicate that another car was involved, so how could you have seen anything weeks later? It’s possible someone had tampered with the car as Riley said, but the only way to find that out was to investigate the vehicle itself. And you didn’t care enough to check it out.”

“Repeat that.”

“You lied to me,” Melanie said.

The sheriff held up a hand. “Not that. Riley.”

“It’s hearsay.”

“This isn’t a court of law. Just tell me.”

“Supposedly, Riley told Moody that she’d seen someone messing with our car.”

“Did she say who?”

“No. Morris accused me of killing Alexander. He said that Riley told Moody she’d seen me messing with our car. When I asked Moody about it, she told me Riley hadn’t mentioned any name, just that she had seen someone. Moody said she didn’t believe that Riley really saw anyone. But she believed it enough to mention it to her father.”

Melanie waited for the sheriff to say, “Aha! So you’re the one who murdered Morris!” But he didn’t say anything. Just rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“And since we’re talking about Alexander,” Melanie said, “You never returned his cameras to me. I want them back.”

The sheriff turned his mirrored stare toward Melanie. “Cameras?”

“Yes. All of his cameras were in the car. Six of them. I want them back.”

“There were no cameras.”

“Where are they? They were in the car when he left that day. I put them there myself.”

“Ms. Gray, no matter what else you might think of me, I am a great law officer. I know my job. There was no indication in the report of any officers seeing cameras in the vehicle. And the report does not state that Alexander was rear-ended. It was a merely a surmise by one of the state troopers, and he had no business telling you that. Riley was right. Someone did tamper with your car. Someone very knowledgeable and very skillful. The brake lines were cut and the steering wheel loosened. I suspected that when I checked out the scene of the accident and found no skid marks. The car simply plowed into the abutment at a high speed.”

“Maybe the flex lines were worn through. That happened to me once.”

“The car was new. We sent the vehicle to a lab down the hill since we don’t have an automotive lab up here in the high desert, and I just got the results, which is why I wanted to talk to you today. All four metal brake lines were cut so precisely that when Alexander slammed on the brakes, he instantly lost hydraulic pressure in both the front and rear brakes at the same time. With today’s vehicles, cutting the brakes like that is almost impossible for a professional to do, and completely impossible for an amateur.

Melanie clutched her stomach, feeling the same sort of visceral grief as when she heard that Alexander was dead. Alexander . . . murdered? By a professional killer? An assassin?

“It’s not possible,” she said aloud.

“Alexander must have traveled a long way after his brakes failed—the closest brake fluid stain I found was about a mile and a half from where Alexander went off the road.”

“But supposedly when he died, he was texting a woman he was having an affair with. How could he have been texting her if his brakes broke more than a mile away from where he crashed? Wouldn’t he have dropped the phone and tried to control the car?”

“Yeah. I’m having a problem with that scenario, too. We need to talk to the woman, but the number Alexander was texting is out of service. It feels to me as if the phone with the texts was a plant to make everyone think exactly what the official report said—that Alexander lost control because he was texting while driving.”

Melanie put her hands on her head, trying to still the roiling thoughts. “I can’t deal with this right now. Take me home. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” the sheriff said in a soothing tone that might have been practiced but still managed to sound sincere.

For just a second Melanie wished he would stop the vehicle, put his arms around her, and hold her. “There’s just so much death. Alexander. Riley. Riley’s father. The Petersons. Morris.”

“That’s the other thing I need to talk to you about,” Sheriff Bryan said in his official voice. “Morris.”

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime serial set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel. A new chapter is posted every Monday.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 25: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Melanie paced her rented house, wandering through the great room to the bedroom, then up the stairs to her loft office to stare out the window. The clouds that had skirted Rubicon Ranch all day yesterday had settled over the town in the early morning hours. The rainstorm had now weakened to a soft drizzle, but floodwaters were swirling out of the desert and down the middle of the street like dirty bath water in search of a drain.

Melanie half expected to see body parts floating by, but it had been forty-eight hours since she had found the ravens breakfasting on the disembodied foot, so perhaps by now all the necropieces had been discovered. Shivering, she turned from the window, trudged down the steps to the great room and then into the bedroom. She’d spent most of the fifteen weeks since Alexander’s death roaming the desert, and she found it almost impossible to relax during this enforced incarceration. If she were any kind of photographer instead of an amateur shutterbug, she’d be out in the desert despite the rain, chronicling the way the runoff was recreating the desert floor, but her tiny camera wouldn’t stand up to the moisture, and then where would she be?

She plodded back through the great room and up the stairs again. Her cell phone rang, and for just a second, her spirits rose. Alexander! He was finally calling to tell her he was coming back. Just as abruptly, the realization that he was dead hit her like a physical blow, and tears spilled down her cheeks. Why couldn’t she remember that he would never come home? His body had been cremated and the ashes stored in a square brass urn sitting atop the dresser until she could take them high up into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and scatter them.

By the time she reached her bedroom where she’d left her cell phone on the nightstand, the phone had stopped ringing. The tiny screen showed the number for her agent, and when the phone rang again, she considered not answering. What could the woman say that hadn’t been said a dozen times before? Melanie already knew her deadline had passed. She already knew she owed the publisher either the book or the return of the advance. She already knew . . . Oh, crap. It would be better to talk to Dottie and get it over with.

“Yes?” she said, hating the hesitancy she heard in her voice.

“Dahling!” Dottie chirped. “I’ve been calling and calling. Have I got good news for you! I’ve been talking to Jack, and he says you can have all the time you need to finish the desert book. He’ll even hire a photographer for you. And he’ll send you five hundred thousand dollars, though I’m sure I can get him up to a million.”

“What does he want from me? A kidney?” Jack Nolan, her publisher, had a reputation for wringing every last bit of creative effort from his authors while paying the least possible advance. He got away with it because, despite his miserly ways, he was scrupulously honest, remitting every penny of the royalties his authors earned.

Dottie chuckled. “So cynical, dahling. It’s perfect, really. You’re there. You know the people and the place. And from what I understand, you live next door to the Sinclairs.”

“No,” Melanie said, without a hint of uncertainty in her tone.

“You don’t live next door to them? My sources—”

“I mean, no. I will not write whatever book Jack wants me to write. I’m going to finish the desert book and then . . .”

“And then what? Knowing Alexander, he probably left you not only broke but also in debt. Someone is going to write the book about Morris Sinclair. It might as well be you.”

“Wait a minute,” Melanie said. “How do you know what’s going on here?”

Dottie laughed. “The whole world knows. It’s everywhere. On television, Facebook, Twitter. It’s such a delicious story. The author of the infamous ‘Necropieces’ series has himself become a series of necropieces. His fans don’t believe he’s permanently dead. They are holding vigils, waiting for him to come back to life. And his head was found in the house where that little girl died. Riley? Is that her name? The girl that was kidnapped as an infant and then killed by her biological father? How can you not want to write the story of Rubicon Ranch? It’s going to be huge. Humongous.”

“Not interested.”

“Wait! There’s more!” Dottie said. “You gotta love this stuff. One of the suspects in Morris’s murder is Tara Windsor.”

“Who?” Melanie asked.

“You had to be living out in the boonies somewhere not to have heard of Tara. Oh, right—you’ve been out of the country for the past umpteen years. Tara is an actress. She was in that movie with that actor, you know, the one with the gorgeous abs? No, I guess you don’t know. Anyway, it turns out the suspect isn’t Tara at all. Tara is in Cabo with her pool boy. Don’t you just love it?”

Melanie sank down onto the bed, suddenly weary. “No.”

“And then there’s you,” Dottie said slyly.

Melanie sat up straight. “Me? What about me?”

“The cops say you’re a suspect. You knew that, right? Jack says if you killed Morris and tell all the gory details, he’ll up your advance to two million.”

A suspect. Melanie had presumed the Sheriff’s insinuation that he considered her a suspect was his way of manipulating her and keeping her off balance, but if he or someone in the Sheriff’s department had given out her name, then she really had a problem. She heard the echo of herself screaming at Morris, “You leave me alone, Sinclair, or I’ll be shooting your dead body parts.” Could she have been more foolish?

“Do you know a good lawyer?” She gave a small laugh, wanting Dottie to think the question a joke, but fear clutched at her belly with clammy fingers. Maybe she’d have to write Morris’s story in order to pay for a defense attorney.

“You might not be a celebrity on a par with Morris or Tara,” Dottie said, “but you and Alexander have quite a following. Since there’s been mention of your involvement in Alexander’s death—”

“Who told you I was involved in Alexander’s death?” Melanie demanded.

“Just a guess.” Dottie voice sounded smug, as if she’d caught Melanie out in a secret. But there was no secret when it came to Alexander’s death. Just shoddy police work. “So many important deaths in such a small place make for a good story,” Dottie added.

“All the deaths are unrelated,” Melanie pointed out.

“Perhaps, but it’s more likely they are connected somehow. After all, Morris had autopsy photos of that little girl, and Alexander took some photos of necropieces for Morris.”

“You knew about that?”

“Alexander accidentally included a couple of the pictures when he sent Jack a batch of desert photos.”

Melanie sighed. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe Alexander’s death had something to do with Morris and the evil that this place seems to bring out in people.”

“So can I tell Jack you’ll write the book if he gives you an advance of a million dollars?”

“No. But you can tell him I’ll consider it.”

“Good girl. I’ll see what I can do about finding you a lawyer.”

Melanie set the phone on the nightstand, and put her head in her hands. Oh, Alexander. Look what you’ve done to me. She took a few deep breaths, determined not to cry, but when the tears spilled over anyway, she jumped to her feet, ran up the stairs, and plopped in front of the computer. Immersing herself in research always helped take her mind off herself, and she needed to know more about Morris before she could give Dottie her decision.

Typing “Morris Sinclair” into her search engine resulted in over two hundred million hits. Morris’s website. Book and movie sites. Thousands of fan sites and cult groups. Blogs. Articles. She narrowed her search to “Morris Sinclair biography” and managed to piece together the story of a highly narcissistic and anti-social man in his late sixties who had started out as a normal kid, turned into a troubled and rebellious teenager, and grew into a sadistic beast during his tour of duty in Vietnam.

After Vietnam, Morris married a woman he’d only known for a few weeks. He worked as a roughneck on an oilrig and wrote tales of terror on the side. When the stories were published, they found an immediate readership. He quit work to write fulltime.

Morris and his wife had three children, two boys and a girl. His wife committed suicide while the children were very young. Or perhaps Morris had killed her? That made more sense to Melanie—what mother would kill herself and leave her children to be raised by the devil incarnate?

Although the thought of a million dollars and the freedom it could buy tempted her, Melanie did not want to spend the next few months of her life immersed in the evil that was Morris. She was all set to call her agent and turn down the deal, when the doorbell rang.

She opened the door to find Lieutenant Frio and Deputy Midget standing on her doorstep, their faces set as if in stone.

“Ms. Gray,” Lieutenant Frio said, “we’d like for you to come with us. Sheriff Bryan wants to talk to you.”

Melanie held out her hands, wrists together, but Deputy Midget shook his head. “Sheriff Bryan says not to cuff you unless you give us trouble.”

“Can I get my coat?”

Lieutenant Frio threw Melanie a stern look. “You’re not going to try anything?”

“No.” Melanie darted into the bedroom, grabbed a trench coat from the closet and tucked her phone in the pocket.

Sandwiched between the two law officers, Melanie marched out to the tan Navigator parked at the curb in front of her house. Deputy Midget opened the back door of the vehicle, put a hand on her head to guide her through the opening as if she were a common criminal, then lowered himself into the front passenger seat. The right side of the Navigator sank, and the tires seemed to scream out for relief.

Lieutenant Frio peeled away from the curb. The tires sent up huge plumes of floodwaters that broke over the vehicle, and made it seem as if they were driving through a car wash.

Melanie stared out the window, though she couldn’t see anything but the backwash of water. If she strained her ears, she felt sure she could hear Alexander’s ghostly laughter. During all their years of living in countries with no civil liberties, they had never had a single problem with the authorities, and yet now, not even four months after his death, she found herself at odds with the law.

Maybe this arrest was just another of the sheriff’s games? She had never known what he wanted from her, though when they met after she’d found Riley’s body, he had focused his attention on her, and made her feel . . . seen. No one but Alexander had ever looked at her that closely, and even Alexander had stopped paying attention to her years before. Or maybe what had seemed like manipulation—the sheriff concentrating his attention on her and then ignoring her—had all been in her head, a widow’s cry to be noticed.

Once they hit the dry road of the highway, the thirty miles to Rojo Duro seemed to slip past in an instant. Deputy Midget ushered Melanie to a small room with two chairs and a metal table bolted to the floor, and left her alone.

A mirror on one wall had to be a one-way window, but Melanie put a finger against the glass to be sure. Finger touching finger without any space told her the truth—anyone could be watching her from the other side, and she would never know. She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue in a childish show of temper. Instead, she sat tall in a chair, hands folded on the table, and tried not to think of where she was. Tried not to think of her pathetic life. Tried not to think of her uncertain future.

Nine minutes later, Sheriff Bryan entered the room and locked the door behind him. He perched one hip on the table, and stared at her, no friendliness in his eyes.

After a long moment, he heaved a sigh and said, “Why did you do it, Melanie?”

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel. The first chapter will be posted on Monday, June 11, and one chapter will be posted every Monday after that.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 17: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Melanie stood at the window of her upstairs office, waiting for the photos of Eloy’s dog to finish printing.

Waiting. Always waiting.

Still waiting for Alexander to come home or call, though he had been dead for more than three months. Still waiting for the sheriff to investigate her husband’s accident—if in fact it had been an accident that killed Alexander. Still waiting for her grief to end and her life to begin.

The printer chugged as if deliberating over each line of data. Finally, it spit out the last photo of the puppy. Melanie shook her head at the amateurish product. She’d used high-grade photo copy paper, and the image was a good one, but the picture didn’t have the hard finish of a professionally developed photo.

This was the first place they’d lived where Alexander hadn’t set up a darkroom. She wouldn’t have known how to use the equipment even if she had it, but the absence of the chemical smells underlined the absence of her husband. They were only going to stay in this rental property a short while, just long enough to do the job and move on, and setting up a darkroom wouldn’t be worth the trouble, or so Alexander had claimed. He’d never said where their next job would take them, but he’d seemed anxious about the assignment. And now it didn’t matter. He was dead and she was . . . waiting.

Melanie fanned out the printed photos. Four eight-by-eleven pictures of the puppy, each a different pose, each charming. She printed a fifth page with smaller versions of the images, gathered up the papers, stuffed them in a large Manila envelope, and headed outside.

The cloudless sky was pale blue, and though not particularly hot, the air felt oppressive and humid. The small effort of walking the few steps to Delano Road made Melanie’s skin feel sticky. Normally she would have taken this as a sign that a storm would soon be passing through, but nothing appeared to work normally in Rubicon Ranch.

A curtain in the front window of the Sinclair house twitched. Was someone watching her? Melanie quickened her steps and let out a sigh of relief when she’d passed the house. She hesitated in front of Eloy’s place. The old man’s empty chair stood empty. She’d planned to hand him the photos and slip away before he could get awkwardly avuncular again. So, now what? Wait for him?

Waiting. Always waiting.

Melanie marched to the front door and rang the bell. Silence. Not even a bark or a yip from the puppy. Had something happened to the old man? Maybe he’d meddled in something he shouldn’t have.

In the months she’d lived here, she hadn’t seen Eloy do anything but sit on his front porch and glower at everyone who went by, and the recent change in him seemed suspect. If he’d wanted a dog, a monstrous canine would have better fit his image, but he’d gotten a puppy, for cripe’s sake. And what did he mean when he’d said Morris wouldn’t be bothering her any longer? Why would he make her welfare his concern? Besides, she knew how to take care of herself—Alexander had made sure of that, insisting she take lessons in self-defense and weaponry before they started traveling to dangerous locales. They’d lived in a whole alphabet of perilous countries, from Afghanistan to Zambia, and she’d survived them all.  When they’d moved here to Rubicon Ranch, she’d felt safe for the first time in years, but this quiet community had turned out to be the deadliest place of all.

Melanie pressed the doorbell once more on the off chance the old man and young pup were simply napping, but the chimes still elicited no response. Grateful she didn’t have to talk to the old man, she slipped a corner of the envelope beneath the welcome mat to anchor it. Wondering why that most unwelcoming man had a welcome mat on his porch, Melanie trudged to the street.

Moody half walked, half trotted toward her, a hand raised in greeting. “I need to talk to you.”

Melanie waited for her neighbor. “I need to talk to you, too. A couple of weeks ago Morris told me—”

“That Alexander had been taking photos of necropieces for him? I overheard my father talking to you that day. I’m sorry he upset you. He won’t bother you again.”

Anger surged through Melanie, temporarily displacing the sorrow that weighed on her. “Why does everyone think I need protection? I’ve dealt with worse things than a nasty old man who needed to be exterminated.”

Moody held up her hands, palms out. “Sorry. I didn’t realize protection was an issue with you.”

Melanie gritted her teeth to keep from blurting out a denial. She remembered that Moody had once been a psychologist, and any further discussion would give the woman fodder for more assumptions. She pivoted on one foot, getting ready to walk away, then turned back. Her neighbor might be a psychologist and a Sinclair, but she was the only one who could explain why Morris had accused her of killing Alexander.

“Your father mentioned something else that day. He said Riley told you she’d seen me messing with our car.”

Moody blew out a breath. “The bastard lied. Riley only said she’d seen someone messing with the car. That’s all. Never mentioned a name. I didn’t believe her, though. If you knew Riley, you’d know she loved to cause mischief. Even I found it hard to discern when she was telling the truth.”

“But could she have seen someone messing with the car?”

Moody put a finger to her chin and said slowly, “It’s possible. Generally, Riley’s lies were quite detailed—more like stories—but she made the remark about the car in an offhand manner. Are you thinking someone deliberately caused your husband’s accident?”

“Sheriff Bryan told me the accident looked suspicious, but . . .”

“You don’t trust him.”

Melanie focused on the peak of a distant knoll. Did she trust the sheriff? She lowered her gaze to meet Moody’s. “I think he has . . . agendas.”

Moody nodded. “That’s my take on the sheriff, too. I also think he’s on a quest for redemption, whether he’s aware of it yet or not. I’ll let you know if I recall anything else Riley said about your car or Alexander.”

“Thank you.” Melanie turned and started walking up Delano Street toward the desert.

“Wait. Please?”

Melanie stopped.

Waiting. Always waiting.

“I need to warn you about Jake,” Moody said, a new urgency in her voice.

Melanie spun to face the woman. “Are you trying to protect me again? I can take care of myself.”

“Yes. You said. But Jake . . . Jake’s my brother. He wears a cloak of righteousness, but his heart is as black as the rest of the Sinclairs’.”

Melanie frowned at her neighbor. Moody was a Sinclair, too. Could she be warning Melanie that as Morris’s daughter, Moody also had a black heart? A lifetime with Alexander should have prepared her to deal with the Sinclairs, but she sensed nuances of evil in the family next door that made Alexander’s machinations seem like child’s play.

“You don’t believe me,” Moody said flatly.

“Why are you worried about me all of a sudden?”

“I haven’t seen Jake in years, and he just showed up. Supposedly he’s been in the area for several weeks participating in some sort of revival, and he heard about Morris being missing. So now he’s come to . . .”

Interested despite herself, Melanie said, “So now he’s come to—what?”

Moody shrugged, a strange look on her face. Fear, maybe? She glanced toward her house, then fixed an intense gaze on Melanie. “He knows about you. Knows you found the foot yesterday. Don’t believe a word he says. And whatever you do, don’t get yourself in a situation where you are alone with him.”

Melanie watched her neighbor hurry back to Morris’s house. As Moody walked up the driveway, the door opened, and a man walked out.

Melanie gave a start. Morris! Couldn’t be. This man looked younger than the writer. Must be Jake, the son.

Jake glared at Moody, then turned his head toward Melanie. He seemed to study her, the Sinclair dead-fish stare frozen on his face.

And then he smiled.

Melanie fled to the desert. She inhaled the humid, creosote-scented air, trying to remove the stench of the Sinclairs from her nostrils, but no cleansing breath could remove the memory of that evil leer.

Forget the Sinclairs. Focus.

Melanie took a swig of water from her canteen, screwed the cap back on, and reached in her pocket for her little digital camera. Thinking of the last photos she took, the photos of Eloy’s dog, she wondered if her photos would be better if she had professional equipment. She made a mental note to ask the sheriff about her husband’s cameras—Alexander had taken them when he left on that fatal car trip, and they hadn’t been returned to her.

Melanie shot a few photos at random—a jogger in red shorts, a wadded fast food wrapper that looked like a yellow rose nestled in the scrub, a frisky puppy running circles around an old man. Captain and Eloy. Seeing Eloy in the desert again made her shoulders itch. Too much strangeness. Too much change.

She picked her way up the steep rock-strewn track to the top of the knoll, past the place where she’d found Riley’s body stuffed in a television console, past the place where she’d found the foot. She stopped to snap a few shots of the vast desert wilderness spread out before her, a sight that never failed to bring her comfort.

Distant shouts rising above the whine of idling motors caught her attention. She cut to the left until she glimpsed the altercation. Two people, one in red racing gear and one in silver, were standing by a canoe, balancing motor bikes with one hand while gesturing with the other.

“No!” bellowed the red-garbed racer. He hopped on his red bike and sped toward Melanie.

The silver racer got on his bike and chased after his companion. “Someone got chainsaw massacred. We have to call the cops and tell them we found a part of a body.”

“No,” yelled the red racer again. “We can’t. My mom will kill me. I’m supposed to be home looking after my little sister.”

They hurtled past Melanie, still shouting. She took pictures of the two boys, then of the canoe. She’d often seen the abandoned canoe in her treks, but until today, the boat had always been turned upside down. Apparently the boys had found something hidden beneath the canoe. A necropiece.

Could she take a chance that the boys hadn’t seen her, and so pass on calling the sheriff? She hadn’t found the body part, but she felt sure the sheriff would use her presence as an excuse to lay the blame at her feet. She sighed and pulled her phone out of a pocket. Even if the boys didn’t say anything, the sheriff would eventually find out she had been in the vicinity of more death. Not notifying him would seem more suspicious than making the call.

She talked to the dispatcher, explained the situation, described the boys and gave directions on how to find the canoe from Tehachapi Road.

“Wait right there,” the dispatcher said. “Someone will arrive as soon as possible.”

Melanie shoved the phone in her pocket, and shifted from foot to foot.

Waiting. Always waiting.

To hell with that. If the sheriff wanted her, he knew where to find her.

Melanie turned away from the canoe and tramped across the desert expanse, heading toward the storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 9: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Melanie locked the front door of the house and turned around to face the day. It was clear and warm with a platinum sun shining in an azure sky. She felt her spirits rise. With such lovely weather, things couldn’t be as bad as they seemed. She marched down the driveway, and her spirits plummeted as fast as they had risen. The sheriff’s tan Navigator, like a brooding predator, loomed in the driveway of the Sinclair house next door.

Melanie had tried to forget Sheriff Seth Bryan and the conflicted feelings he had aroused in her, but apparently she hadn’t succeeded. She could feel the emotions rushing back to fill the emptiness inside her. She still couldn’t tell if she’d felt more drawn to him or more repelled by him. With any luck, she’d never have to explore those feelings. As soon as he finished his business and left the area, she could forget him again.

She heard the sound of his voice, though not his words, and for a moment she considered dashing back into the house to avoid any encounter with him, but then she realized the truth. The sheriff had no interest in her. It had been almost three months since she’d last seen him, and in all that time, he had made no effort to contact her.

She lifted her chin. She didn’t need him or any man. They were all worthless creatures who had no regard for anyone but themselves.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to see what he was up to.

She took a few steps forward so she could see the front door of the Sinclair house. The sheriff looked the same as he always had. Jeans and a white shirt with a badge on the shoulder clothed his lean, flat-bellied body, and a navy blue ball cap with a yellow “Sheriff” embroidered on it covered most of his dark brown hair. And he still wore those ridiculous mirrored sunglasses.

The sheriff and Moody seemed to be standing closer together than politeness dictated. Could something be going on between the two of them? Movement in the passenger seat of the Navigator caught her attention. Deputy Midget. If the sheriff intended anything shady, surely he wouldn’t bring a deputy along to witness his behavior? Then this must be an official visit.

Moody looked okay — happy, even. It had been very quiet the last week or so without “The Sounds of Silence” blaring at all hours, and she’d probably been enjoying herself in Morris’s absence.

The sheriff starting walking toward his vehicle. Melanie squatted to retie a shoelace, hoping he wouldn’t catch sight of her. She might have the courage not to seek refuge in the house, but she had nothing to say to him.

When she heard the sheriff’s Navigator slowly moving down the street, she squelched a pang of disappointment. As annoying as his attentions were, at least they had reminded her she was alive. She’d been living with the dead — or rather memories of the dead—for way too long.

She arose with only the slight aid of one hand to push her erect, and angled her steps to the right of her driveway, intending to head up Delano Road to the desert. She paused, took two steps to the left.

The Daily Indecision is how she’d come to think of this inability to act. “Sounds like a newspaper,” she said aloud. “They’d print both sides of every story since the editor would be unable to decide which view to stand behind. Or maybe the paper would be blank because they’d never be able to decide which stories were newsworthy. And since when do you talk to yourself?”

Since Alexander died. She often wandered in the desert, trying to understand her husband’s death and her grief, and she’d gotten in the habit of talking aloud to him, hoping he could help make sense of her chaotic thoughts. He never responded. But then, he’d seldom replied even before he died.

When had their relationship become all about him? And why hadn’t she noticed the change? She sighed. Probably because she’d spent so much time online doing research for the coffee table books she and Alexander wrote. Well, she wrote. He took the photos. After his death, she discovered he’d somehow squandered the advance for the book about the Mojave Desert they’d contracted for, so now she needed to take the photographs in addition to writing the text. She thought she’d become good at shooting photos, but just this morning she’d received an email from her publisher:

“Some of your photos are usable, but most are uninspired. You take photographs, but the great photographers, like Alexander, make photographs. And when they make photographs, they make love. We feel the empathy between the external and internal events.”

Whatever that meant.

“What it means,” she said aloud, “is that you have work to do.” She took five resolute steps up Delano Road, then stopped. She could see Eloy Franklin hunched on his porch like a land-locked amphibian, watching everything that went on in his vicinity.

After all the turmoil the neighborhood had gone through recently, after all the deaths, she thought that things would have changed, but there Eloy sat, as unapproachable and forbidding as always. She’d smiled at him a couple of times when she passed in front of his house, but he’d never acknowledged her efforts at friendliness by so much as a nod.

Unable to stand the thought of Eloy’s scrutiny, she turned left. The sheriff’s navigator hadn’t gotten far, only a few houses away. The vehicle still moved slowly, as if the sheriff were looking for something. Trying to see the neighborhood through his eyes, Melanie peered down Delano Road. A petit woman held a camera to her face, either taking photographs or hiding behind it. Did Sheriff Bryan think the woman was Melanie? Melanie smiled to herself. Whatever faults the man might have, mistaking one woman for another was not one of them. Melanie had seen the woman several times before; she was shorter, prettier, and younger than Melanie, and had the clear luminous complexion of someone with a mixed race heritage.

Beyond the woman, a skinny man lurched along the side of the road. Melanie had also seen him several times before, and he worried her. Anger seemed to crackle around him, like lightning right before it strikes.

The Navigator’s siren blared, and the vehicle shot down the street and tore around the corner onto Tehachapi Road, heading east.

A dark cloud seemed to lift from the neighborhood, and Melanie’s indecision disappeared. She turned right, past Moody’s house, past the strange no-man’s land that separated the Sinclair land from the Franklin land, past Eloy’s house.

The wilderness beckoned.

*     *     *

Melanie stood at the crest of knoll and surveyed the expanse of desert. Somewhere out there, midst the creosote bushes and cacti, a photograph she could make waited for her — an image so compelling, viewers would immediately sense her empathy with the subject.

But how did one get emotionally connected to something as vast and as alien as the Mojave Desert? Then she remembered Alexander saying he looked for a significant detail. By focusing on a single feature, by making it the heart of the photo, the rest of the scene came into focus.

Crap. I’ll never get the hang of photography. Damn you, Alexander, for putting me through this.

She heard a sound closing in on her from behind, a leisurely whup . . . whup . . . whup. She turned and froze, transfixed by the raven gliding by. It flew so close she could see the brown pupil of its bright black eye and the purple and blue sheen of its feathers. She’d never seen such a huge bird—the body looked bigger than a cat, and its wings spanned at least three feet, maybe four. For a moment, it seemed to hang motionless, then a graceful wing beat stirred the air and propelled it forward.

Melanie fumbled with her camera, almost in tears. She’d had a perfect opportunity to make a photograph, but she’d become so lost in the moment, she’d forgotten all about taking a picture. Alexander wouldn’t have forgotten. His camera had been an extension of his hands, his eyes. He never let anything get between him and an image he wanted to capture. Not even Melanie. Especially not Melanie.

Then she heard it behind her again, the whup . . . whup of wing beats. And this time she held her camera ready. As the second raven passed her, she caught the image. Joy burst inside her.

I did it!

Only then did it strike her as odd that the two ravens had been so focused on their goal that they hadn’t seemed to notice how close they’d been to her.

The first raven had already disappeared, but she watched the second one descend behind a rocky outcrop thirty feet away.

She followed a barely perceptible track through the scrub to where six or seven ravens pecked at what looked to be the carcass of a small animal. A rabbit, maybe. Thinking how wonderfully the image of this raw savagery would contrast with the majesty of the flying raven photo, she crept closer. And gagged.

The ravens weren’t feeding on a rabbit, but something oddly familiar and totally out of place.

*     *     *

Melanie waited for Sheriff Bryan and Deputy Midget to pick their way up the rock-strewn path to the top of the hill. The sun glinted off the sheriff’s mirrored sunglasses, making him appear soulless.

When he drew near, Sheriff Bryan grunted. “I wish you’d stop finding bodies in such out of the way locations.”

“I didn’t find a body. I found . . .” She swept out a hand, showing the track and which direction he should travel.

The sheriff furrowed his brow at her, then followed the track. Deputy Midget trailed after him. Melanie brought up the rear.

Sheriff Bryan stopped by the outcropping. “A boot? You called me here to see crows playing with an old bloody boot? You must really be desperate to talk to me.”

“Desperate?” Melanie stared at him, the heat of anger flushing through her body. “Are you really so self-absorbed that you think I called you here on a pretext? I didn’t call you. I called dispatch and told them exactly what I found. It’s not a pretext, and they’re not crows. They are ravens.”

The sheriff and his deputy exchanged shrugs, then proceeded forward. The ravens squawked, rose as one, and circled above them, as if protecting their treasure.

Sheriff Bryan squatted, then whipped his head around, lips drawn back in a rictus, and faced Melanie. “A foot? That’s what you found, a foot?”

Midget took a step back. “It looks like something out of Morris Sinclair’s books.”

“Necropieces,” Bryan said, turning back to the foot.

“So where’s the body?” Midget asked.

“Maybe there isn’t one. Someone could have been illegally dumping medical waste.” Bryan rose and loomed over Melanie. “What do you know about this?”

She studied him for a moment, wondering what was going on behind those sunglasses. “Are you accusing me of something?”

The sheriff cocked his head like a raven getting ready to peck at its prey. “The person who calls in a report is always suspect.”

Rubicon Ranch is a collaborative and innovative crime series set in the desert community of Rubicon Ranch and is being written online by the authors of Second Wind Publishing. Seven authors, including me, are involved in the current story — Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces.

Residents of Rubicon Ranch are finding body parts scattered all over the desert. Who was the victim and why did someone want him so very dead? Everyone in this upscale housing development is hiding something. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone’s life will be different after they have encountered the Rubicon. Rubicon Ranch, that is.

Although some of the characters were introduced in Rubicon Ranch: Riley’s Story, a previous collaboration, Rubicon Ranch: Necropieces is a stand-alone novel. The first chapter will be posted on Monday, June 11, and one chapter will be posted every Monday after that.

We hope you will enjoy seeing the story develop as we write it. Let the mystery begin! Whodunit? No one knows, not even the writers, and we won’t know until the very end!

Chapter 1: Melanie Gray
by Pat Bertram

Melanie Gray woke with tears on her face. She sat up in the bed she’d shared with her husband Alexander, put her elbows on crossed knees, and cradled her face in her hands. The pain she tried to hide even from herself erupted, filling her chest with such agony she could only breathe in shuddering gasps.

She’d been doing so well, concentrating on shooting the photographs to finish their coffee table book on desert life, photos that Alexander should have taken, would have taken if he hadn’t died. So why the upsurge in grief? Then it came to her—today marked the third month since Alexander’s death.

Three months! Melanie saw the months marching on, one by one, each carefully counted while she grew old alone. She was only forty-three, which meant a lifetime of loneliness ahead of her.

I can’t do this.

But she’d already been doing it—living each shocking day as it came.

First, she’d found out that Alexander had died in a one-car crash under suspicious circumstances — maybe an accident, or maybe something worse, something she couldn’t bear to think about. Then she had discovered that he’d been texting a woman when he died, a woman who claimed to be his mistress. Finally, she learned that somehow he’d managed to spend the considerable advance they’d received for their book, leaving her with a six-month paid lease on this house, barely enough cash for groceries, and a book contract she needed to fulfill. No savings. And no car.

At least the desert was close, so she didn’t need a car to do her job. Rubicon Ranch, the bedroom community where they’d rented the house, bordered on the high desert of inland California, and offered gorgeous vistas, wildlife . . . and death.

“Damn you, Alexander! Why did you have to die? You were the one who was supposed to shoot the photos. I only wrote the words. If you’d paid attention to your driving, you’d still be alive, and I’d never have found that little girl’s body.”

Poor little Riley Peterson. Kidnapped as a baby, dead at age nine without ever knowing that her biological parents had spent her whole life searching for her.

Melanie let her tears fall for a few more minutes, took one more shuddering breath, and hauled herself to her feet. As bleak as her life seemed, as sad and as lonely as she felt, she was still alive. And she had work to do.

As always, she dressed in white — loose cotton pants, billowing long-sleeved top, wide-brimmed straw hat, flowing scarf. She checked her pockets to make sure she had her cell phone, camera, and extra memory card. Then she grabbed a canteen of water, slung the strap over her shoulder like a bandolier, and stepped outside.

A perfect early fall day. Clear blue skies, the deepest blue she’d seen since she’d moved to Rubicon Ranch. A hint of a sweet-scented breeze wafting up Delano Road. Temperatures in the high seventies, though they would probably rise to the mid-eighties by noon.

The grizzled homeowner across the street picked up a newspaper from his driveway, waved it at Melanie, turned, and stood still. Wondering what had caught his attention, Melanie followed his gaze.

A tan bullmastiff towed a pretty woman up the street. The woman’s dark hair, drawn into a ponytail, swished jauntily as she ran to keep up with her exuberant dog. What should have looked like a carefree moment seemed one of desperation to Melanie, as if the woman were running from demons only she could see.

“Funny how art often imitates life, eh?” came a deep voice from behind Melanie.

She jerked her head in the direction of the voice, and gaped at Morris Sinclair, her next-door neighbor, who had managed to sneak up on her without her noticing.

Morris, an international bestselling horror novelist had been a suspect in Riley Peterson’s death. The sheriff had declared the author innocent of the murder but guilty of buying stolen crime scene photos. And guilty of feigning Alzheimer’s. Melanie didn’t know how the sheriff had come to that conclusion. As far as she could see, if Morris had been feigning Alzheimer’s, he must have been trying to hide the truth — that he was insanely evil. Or evilly insane.

“Or maybe, in her case, life is imitating art,” Morris said.

“What are you doing here,” Melanie demanded. “Does Moody know you’re on the loose?” Moody, Morris’s daughter, had spent time in prison for the accidental death of a child. You’d think a man as perverse as Morris would be proud of her for that accomplishment, but he treated his daughter with even less regard than he treated everyone else.

“Am I my daughter’s keeper?” Morris intoned.

Melanie backed away from him. “I’m sorry. I don’t have time for this.”

“I know. You have to go out into the desert to shoot more of your little photos.” He bared his long, old-ivory-colored teeth at her in what might have been meant as a smile but came across as a predatory leer. Pointing a bony finger at her camera, he added, “You know how to use that thing, right?”

Melanie lifted her chin. “I do.”

“I’ll offer you the same arrangement I had with your husband.”

“You had an arrangement with Alexander?”

“Yeah. Alexander. Did you have more than one husband?”

Melanie stared at him in confusion, but when his dark opaque eyes met her gaze, she ducked her head.

“Alexander used to take certain . . . photos for me.” Morris raised his voice. “Photos of body parts.”

“Body parts?” Melanie asked. “You mean like arms and legs? You can find photos of those anywhere.”

“But I need amputated body parts. Dead parts. Lots of blood and gore. Necropieces.”

Melanie recognized the name of Morris’s most famous horror series — Necropieces — but none of his other words made sense. “You’re telling me Alexander took photos of amputated limbs for you?”

“And entrails. And organs. He loved shooting the images. Had a nicely developed sense of the macabre.”

“No,” Melanie said in a normal tone of voice. Then, all at once, the agony of the past few months gathered itself and launched a scream. “Nooooo.”

The word seemed to echo up and down the quiet street. She caught a glimpse of movement on the porch a couple of houses away, and she realized the old man who lived there, Eloy Franklin, had heard her shriek, but she didn’t care. She had enough of insanity and things that didn’t make sense.

“You leave me alone, Sinclair,” she shouted as loud as she could so that Morris would get the message, “or I’ll be shooting your dead body parts.”

“Every one of you bastards wants me dead!” Morris screamed, matching her decibel for decibel. He threw his arms wide as if to address the neighborhood. “Kill me! Kill me! Kill me. Cowards, every one of you! None of you have the guts to do anything but sit in your dark little caves and try to wish me away. Cowards! And you—” He turned to face Melanie. “I dare you. Kill me like you killed Alexander.”

Melanie gasped. “Alexander died in an accident.”

“An accident you created,” Morris said calmly, as if he’d never raised his voice. “Before that little girl died, she told Moody you’d messed with your car.”

“You’re lying.” Melanie’s words barely squeaked through her clenched teeth.

“Ask Moody.” Morris put a finger to his chin and cocked his head to one side. “So, will you take the photos for me? I’ll pay you well.”