Black bears, probably. But he wouldn’t put it past a hungry cougar, either. Predators turned into scavengers quite easily when it was convenient. And that included humans.
Because the woman hadn’t been killed by an animal, even though her body had been mauled after the fact. The sharp—and straight—slice across her throat was far too clean to have been made by teeth or claws. That much was clear even though the horrific gash that nearly separated her head from the rest of her body was showing signs of decay.
It’d been cold. Very cold. Still was. Which was a preserving factor where decomposition was concerned. But off the top of his head, some part of Owen’s brain—the part that wasn’t considering retching—placed her death at a week, maybe up to ten days, ago. His analytical side was already setting a parameter around the scope of the investigation he knew would consume his foreseeable future.
The medical examiner would provide the specifics of how and when, but those details always took a while, and he was going to need to get a jump on this.
This. The scene before him. The one he was still struggling to wrap his whole head around.
His stomach was having a renewed wave of difficulty with it too. Big guys barf. It’s maybe not a stereotypical fact, but true nonetheless.
Owen returned from the far side of a convenient bush a minute later, wiping his mouth with the back of his gloved hand, and resumed his place next to Pete Sills.
Pete’s expression was unreadable, but the characteristic warmth and humor in his blue gaze were long gone. “Gonna move her yet?” he asked.
Owen shook his head. “Can’t,” he croaked, then cleared his throat. “Gotta follow procedure, because she sure as heck didn’t do that to herself.”
“I don’t like seeing her there, in the water.” Pete’s words were clipped, tight, and he shoved his hands into his coat pockets as though to restrain himself from indulging in an irrational, yet charitable, act.
Owen didn’t like seeing the woman in her current condition either, regardless of her setting, but he knew what Pete meant. She was exposed, cold. He, too, was fighting the rushing urge to wrap her in a blanket. Not that she was immodest, really, but he just felt that if she were alive, she’d be embarrassed by her position, by her vulnerability, by her raw need for physical comfort that would now never be met.
oOo
It was a long slog back to the logging road where they’d parked their vehicles, where they would set up a staging area and command post for processing the crime scene. Pete was checking the signal status on his cell phone every few minutes and punching a speed-dial button whenever he thought he might have half a bar.
In that moment, as they trudged silently together up a steep incline, puffing steam clouds into the bitterly cold air, Owen was glad he didn’t have anybody at home who was worrying about the long night ahead of them. About the snow that was quickly filling in their footprints in the gathering dusk. About the gruesome investigation. Nope. Some things were easier solo, and being a deputy sheriff was one of them.
In other circumstances, and perhaps in a different frame of mind, he would’ve envied Pete, who’d managed to put a ring on the only single woman in Sockeye County who was worth settling down for. He was trying to call Meredith so he could forewarn her, since the orphaned boy was currently in her care.
That thought alone swerved Owen’s brown study back into its somber professional trajectory. Because the boy, if he’d been telling the truth about “holding down the fort” for his father seven to ten days ago—and there was no reason to doubt him at this point—most likely could not have avoided also seeing the macabre corpse stranded on the pebbled bank of the stream that tumbled down a little ravine not more than a tenth of a mile from his cabin.
The big question was, what else had Burke seen?
oOo
It felt as though a giant fist had cratered my lung cavity. I spun around with the phone pressed to my ear, checking behind me even though I knew Burke was upstairs with Frankie. Then I tipped a shoulder into one of the support posts that had been doing a great job, for over a century, of keeping the Imogene’s main floor from collapsing into the basement. I hoped it could hold me up as well.
“How sure are you?” I whispered.
“Babe…” Pete’s weary tone was edged with finality.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “Dumb question. What am I supposed to do—or say?”
“Nothing yet. Sheriff Marge has to question Burke again, obviously. Figure out what he saw or didn’t see. For now, though, she wants you to not let on about anything being amiss up at the cabin. Just carry on like normal.”
I made a strangled sound and hugged the support post tighter.
“I know, Babe,” Pete said. “I know.” He was breathing heavily into the phone.
So I turned my attention to his condition. “How are you?”
“Fine,” he replied curtly. Of course he wasn’t going to complain about the logistically—not to mention emotionally and physically—challenging task ahead of the entire search-turned-recovery team. Or about what he’d found on the stream bank.
I also knew this call was one of the rare few that would be possible to receive from the team during the long coming night, so I had to make the most of it for my dear friends’ sakes as well. “Is Henry okay? And Herb? I can tell Frankie and Harriet, right? They’ll be worrying otherwise.”
“Yeah, babe, you can take care of everybody on your end, but Sheriff Marge wants it kept quiet.” There was a rough cough, and then he added, “Just stay safe for me, will you? I love you…”
As I recognized the hashy clicking sound of the call being dropped, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d failed Burke before I’d even met him. I knew Pete hadn’t told me everything about what he’d encountered up there on Gifford Mountain—and he might not ever fill in those gaps for me, protective husband that he was. But with what little I did know, I couldn’t fathom how a child could deal with that sort of scenario.
oOo
I don’t know how I held it together. The one thing I had going for me was that Burke didn’t know me well. So the odd hitches in my voice and my scattered, spastic attention lapses perhaps weren’t as obvious to him as they were to me. It was surreal, trying to observe my own behavior from inside my head and wrangle it into some semblance of normalcy—whatever that is. I hadn’t really had to strain to meet such an objective before, and the concentration it required exhausted me.
Tuppence spent the night sprawled on Burke’s bed again, and as far as I could tell, he didn’t have a repeat of the waking nightmare. I don’t think I actually slept, however, listening for any squeak or murmur that might leak under his bedroom door. Mostly what I heard into the wee hours—in the regular cadence of a contented slumber—were Tuppence’s snores. But if Burke could tolerate her obnoxious nocturnal emissions—and at such close range—then so could I, from the distance of the hallway.
The one thing that remained unfailingly constant was Burke’s appetite. He chowed through oatmeal with maple syrup and pecans, scrambled eggs, sausages, hash browns with diced onions and red peppers, grape juice, and hot cocoa. When he asked, around a mouthful, where Pete was—my husband’s second morning’s absence from the breakfast table apparently being noteworthy to his young mind—I replied that Pete was working.
Which I had no doubt about. Working unflinchingly through the long, cold night, preserving a crime scene and likely serving as a pack mule for all the equipment that had to be shuttled in and then shuttled back out again.
As a matter of course, Pete was gone a lot, for his regular job. From Burke’s novice perspective, there was no reason this particular morning should feel any different from those to come—if he chose to stay with us—no matter how knotted into hard lumps my stomach was. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as I barely sipped my coffee and washed dishes, even though I knew Burke had been abandoned once before by a respected male figure in his life. No reason for him to see thin
gs differently now. I was grateful the boy’s ravenous state made packaging up any leftover breakfast food unnecessary.
Rupert had rejoined the land of the only-slightly-sniffly living and greeted us in the Imogene’s parking lot as we all disembarked from our vehicles. We scuffed through the thin layer of snow that had dusted the pavement overnight, and he caught my eye above Burke’s head, giving me a short, agreeable nod. I’d texted him the bare-bones facts of Burke’s constantly evolving situation the previous evening.
“How’s the new exhibit coming along?” Rupert asked.
I nodded my appreciation to him. Nothing like a good curatorial task to redirect my frazzled thoughts. “It’s requiring extensive sifting,” I replied. “As far as I can tell, Sheriff Marge dumped about a hundred and twenty years’ worth of county law enforcement history on us. Not everything is worth fleshing out for a full display.”
Fleshing maybe wasn’t the best word, considering the picture I had in my mind of the scene on Gifford Mountain, and I winced slightly. Pete had been exceedingly careful with his brief description on the phone, but my imagination is noted for its unbridled exuberance.
Good man that he is, Rupert pretended not to notice my queasiness. “So, Burke,” he said jovially, tapping the boy on the shoulder, “fancy a rummage through the Gilded Age?”
I cocked a brow at my boss, and he grinned back at me.
“I seem to recall a few Pinkerton items in my possession,” he clarified. “Could enhance the exhibit,” he added with a nonchalant shrug. But there was a glint in his eye—he was very aware that he was baiting me, dangling such a tantalizing prospect just out of reach.
I nearly laughed aloud, and a tingling sensation flittered through the muscles of my rib cage—producing a surprising lightness that I no longer took for granted after the heavy news of the past several days. Because Rupert’s office—which contains his personal collection that’s separate from the Imogene’s official holdings—is a disaster zone of epic proportions. If I’d thought searching through the basement for the remembered coroner’s kit was a good day’s work, then trying to find a particular item of personal memorabilia in Rupert’s office was about a hundred times more rigorous. And just the thing for a curious boy.
“Pinkerton, huh?” I yawned, feigning bored disinterest, delighted that the small boy beside me was also responding—if quietly—with bright-eyed acuity. Maybe we share a curiosity gene.
Rupert nodded his large bald head and the tweed driving cap perched on top above ears that were reddened with cold. “The one and the same.” As though muttering to himself as he unlocked the museum’s front doors, he added, “The renowned private detective agency that served as a precursor for the FBI. Their agents were brave and sneaky, employing cutting-edge technology for their day. Controversial, too, and the reason some of our laws exist—as a response to abuses of power in the absence of specific regulations at the time.”
And an important epoch in American history. Leave it to Rupert to combine the promise of an alluring treasure hunt with a dose of facts and illustrative consequences. Then again, that professorial combination characterized the entirety of Rupert’s life—he was an inveterate bargain-hunter, flea-market-aficionado, minutiae-preserving relic-scrounger, and cultural-ramification-expounder in his own right.
I was still grinning as I saw the boys off to their adventures on the third floor at the doors of the freight elevator, then wandered into the gift shop where a chapped-cheek Frankie was just unwrapping herself from several woolen layers.
“Oh honey,” were her first words, and she bundled me into a sudden breath-squashing hug. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?” I gasped, my lungs still compressed.
“Well, I don’t know,” she admitted, pulling away and readjusting the embroidered hem of her fitted jacket with fidgeting fingers. “For Burke, I guess. For you not being able to talk to him about…well, about it—yet. For Henry and Pete and the whole search team still up on Gifford Mountain in this storm…” She squinted and turned her worried gaze out the window where the snow had resumed falling, soft and gently ominous.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly, trying to hide my pleased smile. “I’ll gladly serve as a proxy hug-ee until you have Henry back in your arms.”
“Oh!” She reddened, and pressed a hand to her bosom. “That’s not what I was doing—was it? I do miss him. But we’re not…I mean, we’re old—” She pronounced the term with nose-wrinkled chagrin, as though having a long and experienced life was a disease. “And we’re taking it slow and”—she shook her helmet hair, trying, no doubt, to reassert calculated logic’s dominance over blatant, and obvious to everyone but her, infatuation—“well, we’re just friends, enjoying each other’s company from time to time.”
“Uh-huh,” I grunted, now completely unable to suppress a mischievous smirk. The lady doth protest too much. “Tell that to Henry. Want to bet who has the next wedding in Sockeye County?” I suggested, with a knowing wink. “The next one, after tomorrow, that is?”
But Frankie just groaned and snatched her omnipresent clipboard off the counter. “Don’t remind me.”
CHAPTER 11
As it had been many times before, the kitchen at the Imogene Museum ended up being the location of a weighty and gut-wrenching conference. The old mansion had seen her share of woe.
But at least we had bitterly strong coffee and an abundant supply of hot cocoa packets for the participants.
Sheriff Marge was the first to arrive, toward the middle of the afternoon. She hooked my elbow in her strong grip and pulled me away from my task of arranging centerpieces on all the round tables set up along the periphery of the ballroom—enough to accommodate almost three hundred hungry guests.
“You’ll have to be in there with me,” she said gruffly, “since Burke doesn’t have a parent present. An unbiased advocate who can flag me down if I ask something inappropriate.”
I quickly glanced at her frowning face, startled. “How would you ask anything inappropriate?” My voice squeaked a bit. Sheriff Marge is nothing if not conscientious in her job.
And that was the very reason for her concern. “He’s not just a minor, he’s very young. And I have every reason to expect he’s seen something horrifying. I’m shaken up about it myself.” She pulled off her Stratton hat to swipe her sleeve across her brow. “I have to make sure any evidence I collect—and that includes potential witness testimony—is admissible in court. Questioning a child without an unbiased, adult advocate present isn’t prudent.”
“I’m hardly unbiased,” I murmured, my fists clenched at my sides.
“You’re all he has right now, Meredith. Step up to the plate,” she growled. “It’s more than just room and board you’re offering the kid. It’s shelter, especially emotional shelter. There’ll be more nightmares, I know.” Her voice softened, but those steel-gray eyes never left my face. “I hate it too. But this”—she flapped a thick hand to indicate the situation up on Gifford Mountain—“has to be resolved. I can’t let murderers run amok in my county, not even to spare the boy.”
I flushed with embarrassment. I knew that—of course I did. It was just a massive, monstrous, terrifying responsibility—this caring for a child in all the needful ways. And I had no training, no competency. I was going to screw up royally; I already knew that. It was just a matter of when, and how many countless times. But under the weight of her stern glare, I nodded somberly.
She squeezed my arm in response. She also wasn’t a grandmother for nothing. There truly was no better person to be asking these hard questions than Sheriff Marge. I’d rather be on her team than anywhere else.
I trudged upstairs to retrieve Burke from Rupert’s office. Both of them—even Rupert in his Humpty-Dumpty-esque, less-than-elastic state—were kneeling on the floor with an array of knickknacks and newspaper clippings spread around them. As far as I could tell, no order had been wrought among Rupert’s multitudinous jumbled treasures, but Burke’s eyes
were shining in spite of the shaggy hair he was perpetually brushing out of his line of sight. I hated very much that I had to interrupt the educational scavenger hunt.
“Will you need more assistance later?” I asked Rupert.
He understood my meaning instantly. “Absolutely. I’m afraid we got distracted and have yet to locate the box that might contain the Pinkerton items.” Rupert creaked slowly to standing—which caused his face to turn an alarming shade of fuchsia—and cast a blank glance around his office.
The former guest suite of sitting room, bedroom, and (non-functioning for flood-prevention reasons, the pipes not having been retrofitted since the old girl was built in 1902) bathroom would’ve been spacious and even elegant if it hadn’t been piled—in many places nearly to the crown molding against the high ceiling—with an utter disarray of mismatched storage containers, papers, boxes, scabby pieces of furniture that doubled as shelves, rolled-up rugs and cardboard tubes containing either artwork or blueprints or…I could hardly guess. There were narrow pathways a person could barely edge through to get from one room to another, a hoarder’s paradise.
“It’ll come to you,” I murmured.
Rupert chuckled ruefully. “I’m afraid you know me too well, my dear.” But then a flicker of inspiration crossed his sweaty face. “Ah-ha!” He pointed a stubby finger toward the leaning tower of Pisa behind his desk. “Perhaps in those celluloid cartons.”
I didn’t understand the logic behind that assumption, but I also knew better than to ask. Instead, I offered a wobbly smile to Burke, and tipped my head toward the door.
We left Rupert happily humming to himself while trying to finagle one box out of the stack, much like the game of Jenga, only bigger and with historical artifacts as building blocks. It was a challenge of gravitational physics that I was grateful I didn’t have to watch, only hoping that we wouldn’t have to rescue Rupert from a resulting avalanche.
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