by Amy Cross
But the forest is perfect. Absolutely perfect.
***
“There she is!” he calls out, as his flashlight's beam swings wildly through the forest ahead of us. “See her? Down by that oak!”
Clambering through another patch of waist-high snow, I can barely keep hold of my own flashlight, nevertheless follow the darting, constantly moving beam of his. Still, as I struggle through the snow and try to get my breath back, I do spot something about twenty meters further down the incline. Moonlight is reflecting against metal, casting a faintly blue glow across the whole scene, but there's an upturned car wedged against a tree. Enough snow has fallen since it careered down here that the vehicle itself is almost buried.
“Don't go that way!” Buddy yells suddenly.
I stop and look down at him.
“The snow there isn't gonna support your weight,” he continues. “Trust me, there's a drop and you'll go straight through it and end up with a wet bum. Follow my path, go around.”
“I'm sure it's fine,” I mutter, taking another step forward. “I just -”
Suddenly my right foot crashes down through the snow, and I let out a startled gasp as I fall against the exposed root of a tree. Sure enough, just like Buddy promised, I feel cold water starting to soak through the seat of my pants.
“Told you,” Buddy mutters, sounding amused. “I know this forest like the back of my hand, Molly. If I tell you not to go a certain way, you'd best follow my advice.”
“Sure,” I mutter, hauling myself out of the hole and clambering over a snowbank so that I can join the trail of his prints.
“You'll learn,” he continues.
“That's what I'm here for,” I point out, taking care to more-or-less follow his exact path. Finally, just as I get to the bottom of the incline, I step over a small snowy bump.
“Watch out for the ice!”
“What ice?”
Before I can even get those words out, my right foot slips on a big old patch, upending me and sending me clattering down. I let out another gasp, and as soon as I've landed I hold my breath for a moment, checking to make sure nothing's broken.
“Are you alright?” Buddy asks finally.
“Sure,” I groan, grabbing my dropped flashlight and then getting to my feet. “I'm fine.”
“It takes a while to learn the ways of the forest,” he continues. “Don't sweat it, though. For a city girl, you're not doing half bad.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, wiping snow off my ass. I already feel like a complete fool. I mean, I screwed up twice in the space of about ninety seconds, all while simply trying to climb down a shallow incline. It's not like I was doing anything particularly challenging. I guess I just need to learn to listen to Buddy's every word. After all, he's been doing this job for a hell of a long time, and I've been doing it for about forty minutes.
Ahead, Buddy stops and focuses his flashlight on the car's side, waiting while I catch up.
“You okay there, Pup?” he asks me as I finally reach him.
I always thought I was pretty fit and healthy, but wading down from the highway and struggling through half a mile of snow has left me gasping for air.
“Molly?” he continues. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” I gasp, forcing myself to stand up straight even though I feel like collapsing. “Sir, I'm good to go.”
“It's your first night,” he reminds me. “There's no shame in -”
“Let's take a look,” I continue, pushing onward despite the burning pain in my legs. The last thing I want is to appear weak, so I force my way through the snow until I reach the rear of the upturned car, and then I reach out, placing a gloved hand against the fender and stopping once more to catch my breath.
My lungs are screaming.
I'm dying here.
Since when did I get so unfit?
“Well,” Buddy continues, as he comes over to join me. How is a forty-year-old man fitter than a twenty-nine-year-old woman? I should be ashamed. “Looks like Harry Jointmellow was right when he called it in. I thought he'd been on the moonshine again, but he swore he'd spotted a car down here and now here we are. I guess I owe the old coot a drink, on account of his good eyesight. The man's like a hawk!”
“How long do you think it's been here?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips in an attempt to look composed.
“Well,” he mutters, “how long do you think it's been here? You're the rookie on her first shift. Whaddya reckon?”
“There's a lot of snow on it,” I point out, wiping a gloved hand along the fender and pushing a patch of snow away. “Given how the weather's been, this much snow could've built up in a week or two.”
“And?”
“There was that particularly bad night last Tuesday,” I add. “Remember when it came down so hard, it was like the whole world was turning white?”
“And?”
I turn to him, and it's clear from the smile on his face that he's testing me.
“And,” I continue, turning and looking back the way we came, “I don't see much damage caused by a car coming off the road and crashing down here.”
That's true enough. I can see the lights of our patrol car high up on the side of the highway, and a couple of smashed trees that are already half-covered by snow, but the scene isn't exactly one of outright carnage. I watch the forest for a moment, hoping against hope that I'll spot something I can mention to Buddy, something that'll make me feel clever, and then I turn to him again. He's watching me carefully, and I can't shake the feeling that I've missed something.
“And?” he says finally.
I turn back to the car.
“And it's on its roof,” I point out. “I guess it rolled.”
“And?”
“And that means it was going at speed when it left the road?”
“Inconclusive. What else?”
I step around him and reach up to the rear of the car, which is sticking up high into the snow-filled air. It takes a moment before I'm able to wipe away the snow from the license plate, and I have to chip some chunks of ice from the edges.
“New York plates,” I point out.
“And what can we do with those?”
I turn to him. “We can run them. Find out who owns this thing.”
He nods. “Elementary, my dear Molly.”
Relieved that he seems pleased with my progress so far, I start making my way back around to the side of the car.
“Molly,” he continues, “aren't you forgetting something?”
I turn to him. “I am?”
“If you wanna run the plates when you get back to the office,” he continues, “you're gonna need to make a note of them.”
“Right!”
Slipping my notebook from my pocket, I fumble for a pen and then try to write the license number down. The gloves make it difficult, and after a moment I realize that Buddy is smiling as he watches me.
“What?” I ask, pausing halfway through jotting the number in my book.
“Nothing.”
“I'm doing something wrong.”
“Are you?”
“You're staring at me.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.” I pause, trying to work out what's happening here. I'm definitely doing something wrong, I can tell from the way he's looking at me, but I don't have a clue what.
“Are you done writing that down?” he asks. “We oughta take a look inside this thing.”
I finish writing the license information in my pad, struggling a little with my thick gloves, but finally I'm done and I slide the pad back into my pocket.
“Do you wanna do the honors?” he continues.
“What honors?”
“Taking a look inside.”
“Oh, right.”
I turn and look down at the car's side windows, and suddenly I feel a stir of concern in my chest. The vehicle's roof looks to have been partially crushed by the impact, and the passenger-side window has been shattered. The
door itself, however, is only partway open, and I'm starting to realize that whoever was in this thing when it crashed down the incline, they quite possibly never got out. I knew when I joined the team out here that I might have to see a dead body some day, but now that the day has arrived...
“Do you want me to do it?” Buddy asks. “If you're too green and -”
“No!” I blurt out, stumbling through the snow as I head to the passenger window, while shining my flashlight at the twisted metal frame. “I can do it.”
“Careful there,” he continues. “There's gonna be glass.”
He stays at the rear of the car, watching me as I trample slowly but surely toward the window. The thing is, I know I'd be absolutely fine out here if I was on my own. When I'm just left to get on with a job, I always get it done. I just have this unfortunate habit of over-thinking things when I know I'm being watched. I end up questioning my every move, and doubting myself. Taking a deep breath, I tell myself to just stay focused and keep things simple. In fact, by the time I get to the window, I've almost convinced myself that I'm ready to do this.
I take a deep breath, before crouching down and shining the flashlight into the car.
“Jesus!” I stammer, dropping the flashlight as soon as the beam picks out the edge of a woman's face.
Falling back against the snow, I stare at the car's twisted, deformed window. The flashlight is pointing the wrong way now, so I can't see into the vehicle, but I know what I saw just now. There was a woman, or at least I think it was a woman. It was definitely someone with shoulder-length hair, and I saw her briefly in silhouette. Her mouth was partially open, and she was the right way up, not hanging from her safety belt.
“Jesus,” I whisper again, trying to ignore the fact that my heart is pounding.
“What'd you see?” Buddy asks.
Taking another deep breath, I pick the flashlight up and shine the beam back into the car. Sure enough, there's a woman in the driver's seat, and it's already clear that she's dead. The light picks out her frozen, blueish face, and I notice after a moment that her eyes are closed, almost as if she simply fell asleep. I wait, hoping that she might suddenly move or show some other sign of life, but I can feel my heart pounding in my chest as the flashlight's beam dances delicately across the glassy edges of her frozen features.
“Molly,” Buddy says after a moment. “Is there someone in there?”
“Uh, yes,” I stammer, suddenly remembering that I have to stay professional. “Um, it looks like... I think it's a woman.”
“Anyone else?”
Realizing that I haven't checked the back seat, I shine the flashlight through the next window and see nothing but junk and boxes.
“I don't think so,” I continue, with a flash of relief. “It's kinda hard to tell, but I think it's just the woman. I mean, one human female. Sir.”
“Well, I'm glad she's human,” he replies, wading through the snow and crouching next to me.
He shines his flashlight into the car, and the beam is much steadier as he picks out the side of her face. I guess his hands aren't trembling nearly as much as mine.
“Dear God,” he whispers, before letting out a sigh and making the sign of the cross against his chest.
I do the same, although I'm not quite sure why. After all, I'm not exactly religious.
“Well, that's what I was afraid of,” he continues. “It was pretty clear no-one'd gotten out of this wreck, otherwise we'd have heard about it. Looks like she's been down here more than a few weeks, too. A couple of months at least.”
“How can you tell?” I ask.
“How do you think?”
Although I don't like seeing the woman at all, I force myself to stare at her face. I'm thinking that maybe the light blue color is somehow a giveaway regarding how long she's been here, but I'm no expert on things like that. Still, Buddy is clearly testing me, and that means there must be something I'm missing.
“The magazine,” he says finally.
“Huh?”
“It's the issue of People with the woman from that TV show on the cover,” he continues. “See it over there, among all that other garbage? My wife gets People, every issue, and that one was a couple of weeks ago. I guess there's a chance she was driving around with a back copy, but I doubt it. I reckon that was probably fresh off the newsstands, only a few days old at most.”
“Right,” I mutter, feeling a little humiliated by the fact that I didn't spot something so obvious. “That makes sense.”
“I'm glad you think so.”
He pauses, before leaning forward and reaching his right arm through the shattered window.
“What are you doing?” I ask, shocked that he's disturbing the scene.
“Trying to get a look at her purse, assuming that's what it is.”
Sure enough, there looks to be a purse resting on the car's upturned ceiling, although it appears to be frozen in place. I can't help mentally kicking myself for not spotting it sooner, and I watch as Buddy struggles to pry it away from the ice and snow. Just as I'm about to suggest using some warm water, he manages to pull it loose and lift it out of the car. The whole thing is frozen solid, and it takes a moment before he's able to open it up.
“Did you find her name in there?” I ask.
“Hang on a moment.”
He peels the sections apart. Figuring that maybe I can help him out, I hold my flashlight real close.
“Turn that thing away from me,” he mutters, reaching out and gently pushing the flashlight away.
“Sorry,” I stammer. “I thought you needed to see better. And I thought maybe the heat from the light would -”
“Just slow down there,” he continues, pulling the purse all the way open and then sliding out a card.
I wait, but for a moment he seems focused on reading the details.
“Charlotte Stewart,” he says finally, “of 333 Rosewood Avenue. Thirty-six years old.”
He pauses, before handing the license card to me and then peering back into the car, shining his flashlight at the frozen woman.
“Well, Charlotte Stewart,” he continues after a moment. “How in the name of all that's holy did you end up like this?”
Twenty-Six
Molly Abernathy
“Clearly she left the road right up about where we're parked,” Buddy says a short while later, as he stands over by one of the other pine trees, “and came barreling down this way. There's kind of a path between the trees, if you look at it from the right angle, with just a few to slow her down. And then -”
He turns and looks over toward the mangled wreckage.
“Slam!” he continues. “That big old tree stopped her. I'm guessing her car flipped as the incline shallowed out and she landed hard on her roof. An impact like that would've knocked her out easy, even if she was wearing her belt. And since there's no guardrail up on that part of the highway, just a sign, there wouldn't necessarily have been anything to indicate that a car had gone off. Just some tire marks, maybe, if she had time to brake. But not enough to raise the alarm.”
As he wades through the snow, I shine my flashlight toward the car's back seat. Sure enough, there are a couple of suitcases, along with several boxes. It looks like this Charlotte Stewart woman was taking a lot of stuff with her, maybe even moving house. I bet when we get to the station and start digging into her story, we're gonna find that she was shifting all her stuff cross-country. Then again, my hunches are usually wrong, so I guess I shouldn't mention anything about that just yet. Rather than bothering Buddy with my theories, I should just stay quiet and try to learn from him.
“The big question,” he says as he makes his way around to the other side of the car, “is whether she died on impact, or whether she woke up at all.”
“Shouldn't we call this in now?” I ask, checking my watch and seeing that it's almost midnight. “There's not much we can do here, just the two of us.”
“Radio's not much use in this part of the valley,” he rem
inds me. “We're gonna have to go back to base and fetch the truck with the hook.”
“Okay,” I reply, hoping against hope that this means we can leave. “So what do we do? Just head off now?”
He shines his flashlight into the car again, and I can't help turning away. Truth be told, I've been avoiding looking at the dead woman as much as possible ever since we found her. I mean, I know death's a reality and all that stuff, but it still doesn't mean I want to get up close and personal. The poor woman's dead, we know that, but it's somebody else's job to figure out the details. We just have to winch the car back up toward the road and coordinate with the coroner's office.
“Her leg's crushed,” Buddy says suddenly.
I swallow hard.
“Look,” he continues, and I hear him bumping about as he leans further into the car. “The poor woman's right leg, well her ankle at least, got trapped. There's blood. See?”
“Uh-huh,” I lie.
“Molly, are you gonna look?”
“I saw already.”
“You did?”
I nod. It's a lie, but I really don't feel the need to examine things any further.
“So she was pinned in the vehicle,” he continues. “There's also...”
His voice trails off.
“Molly,” he adds finally, “did you see the knife?”
“Knife?” I reply, feeling a tightening sense of fear in my chest.
“Come around and look at this,” he tells me. “Something's going on here.”
“So she's holding a knife?” I ask, still not wanting to look.
“Molly, are you okay?” he continues. “Is this bothering you?”
Realizing that I have to prove to him that I'm not freaked out, I force myself to turn and look into the car. The frozen woman is still in place. Of course she is, where else would she go? And Buddy is on the other side of her, looking through the driver's-side window.
