Perdido County: Someone's Daughter

She might have knocked, but Wolfe didn’t hear it. He stumbled out of a doorway with a dazed expression on his face. He held a black semi-automatic pistol down at his side. Blood stained his shirt. Finally the voice penetrated, bringing Wolfe back to the present.

“Olivia has a dead body out on Highway 90,” Judy said. “She’s on line one.”

Owen looked up at her blankly. Judy was in her fifties, a tall, slim woman with the direct manner common to West Texans that sometimes made outsiders feel uneasy. She leaned against the door frame with her arms crossed.

“Olivia, a dead body, line one,” she said.

Owen looked at the blinking light on his desk phone then up at Judy. He nodded and picked up the phone.

“Hey, Owen, you will not believe this shit,” Deputy Olivia Alvarez said. “We’ve got a dead girl on the side of the highway and there is money blowing around out here like leaves.”

Owen pushed the hat further up on his head and studied the little lighted button on the phone. “Anybody we know?” he said.

“Nope, she doesn’t look familiar,” Alvarez said. “No purse, no wallet, no identification.”

“Where are you?”

“East side of the highway at the rest stop.”

“All right, hang on,” Owen said. “I’ll be out there in fifteen minutes.”