Second Chance Colton

He put the phone back up to his ear. “Yeah?” He saw his father looking at him, as if Big J was trying to ascertain what was going on.

Her voice softened just a touch as she told him, “I’m sorry.”

Ryan didn’t have to ask about what. He knew. Susie was telling him that she was sorry he was going through this. It was hard enough investigating a murder, but when the murder took place on his own family’s ranch, that added an extra dimension to the case. A dimension that made it almost too delicate to work on, at least for him.

“Thanks,” he told her, adding, “Me, too.”

With that, Ryan ended the call and tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He knew he was going to have to call his boss, Boyd Benson, who was the Tulsa chief of police, and tell him what was going on. The man wouldn’t be happy about this. But then, in all fairness, he had no idea what did make the police chief happy. Benson’s regular expression was a dour one. Ryan couldn’t recall ever seeing the man smile, not even at one of the Christmas parties.

Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen the man actually attend a Christmas party. The chief was fair and honest, but not exactly a pleasure to get along with.

Ryan put off calling Benson for a few minutes, giving himself time to nail down exactly what he would tell his boss when he called him. Benson preferred having the maximum amount of information delivered to him using the minimum number of words.

“‘You, too’ what?” Big J asked the moment he saw his son putting his phone away.

Caught off guard, Ryan could only eye his father quizzically. “What?”

“That person you called, the one you told to send that crime scene unit of yours out here, you said ‘me, too’ when he or she said something to you,” Big J said. “I’m just asking what you were talking about.”

He supposed it would do no harm to fill his father in on something that was innocuous. “The forensic expert said she was sorry you were going through this.” Okay, so he had reworded it, but he thought it might make the situation a bit more palatable for his father if Big J thought the head of the crime lab sympathized. “And just so you understand, it isn’t my crime scene unit. It’s the police department’s crime scene unit.”

“But you’re part of the police department, aren’t you?” his father pressed doggedly.

Ryan could see where this was going. Nonetheless, he played along. “You know I am.”

“Then it’s your crime scene unit,” Big J concluded triumphantly.

Ryan paused. It wasn’t very hard to read between the lines. “Dad, this isn’t a matter of you and I being on opposite sides of this investigation.”

Big J became defensive. “Yeah, I know. I was the one who called you and told you to come here in the first place, remember?”

“Yes, Dad,” Ryan replied, doing his best to remain patient, or at least to sound as if he was being patient. “I remember.” There were times when he wished he’d never left the Marines. He had a feeling that this would soon be one of those times. “I’m going to tape off the crime scene and then talk to Brett,” he told his father, knowing that the man wanted to be kept abreast of everything that was going on.

Though it was far from standard procedure, he was trying his best to keep Big J informed, hoping that would be enough to keep his father in the background rather than hovering front and center.

“But this is the bunkhouse,” Big J protested. “You can’t go ‘taping’ it off. I’ve got people sleeping here at night.”

He really felt as if they were butting heads at every turn. And the man wasn’t dumb. He knew better, yet he kept challenging him.

“You’re going to have to make other arrangements for them for the time being, Dad. I’ll try to get this processed as soon as possible, but until that happens, your ranch hands are going to have to sleep somewhere else.”