The Girl in the Woods

by Gregg Olsen

  All hell broke loose. Carrie started to scream and her voice was joined by a cacophony. It was a domino that included every kid in the group. Even bully Cooper screamed out in disgust and horror. Angie Bowden yanked out her ear buds as if she was pulling the ripcord on a parachute.

  No one had ever seen anything as awful as that.

  Later, the kids in Ms. Hatfield’s class would tell their friends that it was the best field trip ever.

  CHAPTER 3

  Birdy Waterman parked her red Prius on Olalla Valley Road behind a row of marked and unmarked Kitsap County sheriff’s vehicles. She pulled on her badly wrinkled raincoat, also red, from the passenger seat and called over to Deputy Gary Wilkins, who stood next to the main trailhead. At twenty-six, he was a young deputy and this kind of thing, a dead thing, was still new to him. He was a block of a man, with square shoulders and muscular thighs. He nodded in her direction and his gray eyes flashed recognition and anxiety at the same time.

  “Your turn?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  Birdy shut the car door. It was her turn. The county had a PR nightmare on its hands the previous year when a coroner’s assistant screwed up a homicide case. In an embarrassing and ultimately futile attempt to save himself, he put the blame on the sheriff’s detectives and their evidence-gathering process. It was a colossal error that hadn’t yet healed over when the coroner and the sheriff decided a “working together” rotation was the solution to all of their problems.

  People in both offices could still recall the subject line of the email:

  There’s no “I” in “Team.”

  It was an eye-roller of the greatest magnitude.

  Because of that memo, and the weeks of touchy-feely training that ensued, Birdy was standing in the muddy parking strip while the nephew she barely knew was probably burning down her house, making that sad frozen pizza she’d offered as his best bet for a hot meal. She almost never visited crime scenes, but she was in the rotation when Ms. Hatfield called 911.

  “How’s the family?” Birdy asked Gary, slipping on her coat as a seam in the sky tore just enough to send down another trickle of Pacific Northwest springtime weather. She picked her way across the little ridge that separated the forest entrance from Banner Road, a nine-mile thrill ride of a two-lane blacktop that hopped up and over the hills of the southernmost edge of the county. She wore street shoes instead of boots, because distracted by her nephew’s sudden appearance on her doorstep, she hadn’t considered she’d be traipsing through the woods until she was halfway there.

  Banner Forest. Stupid me, she thought.

  “Good. I mean, not really,” Gary said. “Abby got a stubborn cold, which means I’m next,” he went on, referring to his two-year-old. Birdy liked Gary and right then she especially liked that he didn’t ask for advice on how to help his daughter get over her cold. She was a doctor, of course. She’d had the same training as any MD, but her patients had little need for a calm bedside manner.

  They were always dead.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “No one has really said anything to me. Other than, you know, the kids apparently found part of a dead body down the trail. They were pretty freaked out.”

  “I imagine they would be,” Birdy said. She indicated the row of sheriff department cars.

  “Kendall here?”

  Gary tipped his head toward the dark, tree-shrouded funnel-like opening of the trail that led deep into Banner Forest.

  “Yup,” he said. “They’re all down there by—and you’ll love this—Croaking Frog.”

  Birdy arched a brow and looked down the pathway.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The name of the trail,” he said. Gary had found something amusing in the worst of circumstances. He’d make a very good deputy.

  “Croaking Frog?” she repeated, though she was pretty sure she heard him correctly.

  “Welcome to South Kitsap County,” he said. “You’ll find Kendall and the others about a hundred yards down that way.”

  Birdy followed his fingertip toward the rutted trail into the woods.

  Kendall Stark was a homicide detective Birdy liked working with more than the investigators in her unit in the sheriff’s office. That wasn’t to say that Birdy thought others in the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Department were any less competent at what they did. They were skilled investigators, no doubt about that. It wasn’t because Kendall was the only woman either. If that had been the reason, Birdy would never say so anyway. Saying so would surely invite more sensitivity training.

  And yet, if she’d been completely honest with herself, the forensic pathologist did believe that Detective Stark had an ability to empathize with a victim’s family to a greater degree than some of her male counterparts. It wasn’t solely her gender—there were plenty of women in law enforcement who were so cerebral, so clinical, that emotions were sealed behind a fortress of their own making. Birdy had trained with several at the University of Washington who were all about CSI and crisp white lab coats and heels that thundered when they walked down corridors—an obnoxious drumbeat announcing their impending arrival.

  Kendall was different from those women, Birdy thought, because she was a mother. And a good one. In Birdy’s world, a good mother—and God knew she learned that little fact the hard way—had the ability to understand the loss and suffering of others and the hurt that becomes a festering wound. Those were the cases in which a child was murdered, the darkest, saddest, of any that came across either woman’s desk. The obvious truth about any homicide was that no matter the victim’s age, he or she had a mother.

  Kendall was where she needed to be—at the scene or with witnesses. Birdy needed to be in the lab.

  Or at home with her nephew.

  Cross training, she thought, was so irritating.

  She glanced at a trail map on a sheltered kiosk behind Gary, but it looked like a crudely executed rendering of a sack full of snakes. The forest was crisscrossed by a series of hiking and horseback-riding trails that had lately been taken over by dirt bikers. Several trails—including Tunnel Vision—featured earthen ramps that sent bikers soaring into the air. When the forest was saved from development, the vision of the committee that had fought for it had been to see it used as a nature preserve, a hiking and horseback-riding trail.

  Not a speedway for dirt bikes.

  Birdy wondered how a dismembered foot had turned up in Banner Forest. Birdy knew that cougars had been spotted there, as well as the notorious case in which a black bear mauled a man when his dogs frightened the mother bear’s cubs.

  There were two lessons there. Never let a dog off its leash. And never, ever anger a mother bear.

  Birdy followed the muddy trail to the intersection of Tunnel Vision and Croaking Frog. The ground was damp from the rain, but so compacted by the dirt bikes that it wasn’t as gooey as it might have been. Tire treads laced the pathway.

  As Birdy passed a NO HUNTING sign nailed to an old growth cedar stump, another possibility ran through her head.

  Maybe a hunter accidentally shot a child? Thought a small figure in the woods was a deer? Deer were thick in that part of the county. Even with NO HUNTING signs posted all over the place, there were plenty of rule breakers—especially midweek when fewer people frequented the woods.

  As she drew closer to Croaking Frog, she recognized the voices of the techs and Detective Stark.

  Kendall looked up. Her short blond hair had grown out some and softened the angular features of her face. The spikiness was gone and the look flattered her. Even her deep blue eyes benefited from the change. “I wondered if it was your turn to be a team player,” she said.

  Birdy glanced past the detective.

  A tech was hunched among the sword ferns.

  “There’s no I in Team,” Birdy said, recalling the obnoxious training they’d all been forced to attend to ensure that mistakes would never happen again.

  “You make an Ass out of
U and Me when you assume something,” Kendall said with a sigh. “Thank goodness the ass that got us all into this mess got fired.”

  Birdy was grateful for that too. “No kidding,” she said. “What have we got here?”

  “Not much,” Kendall said.

  “No visible sign of cause?” she asked.

  It wasn’t Kendall’s job to determine what happened to any victim, of course. But that didn’t stop most detectives in most jurisdictions all over the country from announcing what they were “pretty sure” had occurred.

  Kendall shook her head. “No, not that. What I mean is not much of anything.” She pointed downward. “All we’ve got is a foot.”

  Birdy wedged herself into the mossy space next to a human foot painted with a writhing mass of maggots.

  “I’m not eating dinner tonight,” Kendall said.

  Birdy had seen worse. There were far more hideous images etched onto the tissue of her brain than a mass of maggots on a dismembered foot. If she’d been asked to make a top five list of the worst things she’d ever seen, it would include the case in which a Silverdale mother held a toddler’s face against the red hot coils of an electric stove, killing her. That haunted her every now and then. Also, a case in which a Bremerton woman poured battery acid over her sleeping husband and seared out his eyes. He survived for four agonizing months in a Seattle burn unit before mercifully succumbing to his devastating injuries.

  But that wasn’t the worst of them all.

  The most revolting case of all was that of a Port Gamble man who killed his wife and literally put strips of her flesh to dry on a clothesline behind one of the historic homes in the darkly charming town at the very northern edge of the county she served as the forensic pathologist. He sold her remains as jerky at a store in nearby Kingston.

  A maggot-infested foot? Piece of cake.

  “I can’t exactly say this is doing much for my appetite,” Birdy said, though it really didn’t bother her that much. Decay was a part of the cycle. It had its purpose. She saw the sense in how all things return to the earth. She knew, for example, that the trees all around them had been fed by the decomposed flesh of animals and human beings.

  She moved closer. Lighting was intermittent. Saucers of illumination spotted the space from breaks in the canopy of cedars that rocketed skyward. She did a quick assessment, while the investigative team pulled back.

  The foot was human.

  Small.

  And although it was hard to say for sure, it appeared that some of the toenails had been painted a lively shade of pink.

  Birdy looked up at Sarah Dorman, one of the crime scene techs who still held anger over the blunder that not only bruised the entire department, but, more crucially, let a killer go free.

  “I’m doing my job, Dr. Waterman.”

  “I know that, Sarah.”

  Sarah, with her long red hair and pale complexion, could never really hide her feelings. She looked back at the foot and scowled.

  “I don’t make mistakes,” she said.

  “Of course not. I’m not here to try to catch you making a mistake, Sarah. I’m here for the training protocol.” Birdy took a short breath. She knew Sarah wasn’t mad at her, but she’d been the first on the scene and no doubt had to put up with some boneheaded comment about the collection of evidence and who was responsible for what.

  “Now, will you brief me on what’s been done? And really, Sarah, can you at least fake a smile? Our work is hard enough.”

  The other deputies stepped back to give them some space—and more than likely to escape the stench. Birdy crouched closer. The wind blew and shifted the canopy. The foot under the fern glistened in the light.

  “Upon my arrival deputies had already secured the scene,” Sarah said. “Because of the wet trail and the likelihood that we’d lose any potential trace—probably lost any when the kids were here anyway—we’ve already photographed and searched the immediate area.”

  “How immediate?” Birdy asked.

  Sarah kept her grim face. “Twenty-five yards.”

  “That’s a big area,” Birdy said with a tone that was more approving than questioning.

  Sarah lightened a little. “Right, but we wanted to go wide because of the weather and the, well, you know, the possibility that there might be other body parts nearby.”

  “Good work. Find anything?” Birdy asked.

  “Not really anything we think is connected to this. But we did pick up a Doublemint gum wrapper, a used condom, and a couple of beer cans.”

  “Somebody used this place for a make-out spot,” Birdy said.

  Sarah shrugged a little knowingly. “Yeah. I mean, I grew up here and well, yeah. Kids, probably.”

  Birdy scanned the trampled scene. “Any footprints collected?”

  “Yes, a few,” Sarah said. “But to be honest, things were pretty trashed by the time we got here. Lots of kids running around screaming and stuff. The teacher did her best to keep everyone away, but I have a feeling that a bunch of them got a good look at the foot.”

  Birdy understood. “I know I would have.”

  Sarah smiled for the first time. It was a genuine smile and not one offered up to soothe the feelings of those angry about the training session.

  “Good work, Sarah,” Birdy said.

  Kendall, who’d been talking to another deputy, joined Birdy. When Birdy stooped down low, the detective followed her lead. Without saying a word, Birdy put on a pair of gloves. The two women held their breath and the forensic pathologist lifted a frond of the fern that had partially covered the ankle. It was too dark to see, so she crouched lower and took a small Maglite from her bag. She turned on the flashlight and sent a beam over the maggots. In response, the mass writhed like the crowd doing the “wave” at a Seahawks game.

  “Can you tell how long the foot’s been here?” Kendall asked.

  Birdy leaned in—almost close enough to touch it—though she never would have done that.

  “Hard to say if it is third or second molt,” she said. “We’ll have to look at them back at the lab. Since we’re all hovering here, I’m presuming this is all you have for me.”

  “Search under way,” Kendall said.

  “Who found the foot?” Birdy asked.

  “A girl named Tracy Montgomery. She’s a sixth grader in Suzanne Hatfield’s class at Olalla.”

  “Nature walk day,” Birdy said, looking upward as the sun cracked through the sky, once more revealing the blue that reminded her of her father’s faded chambray shirts, his practical uniform for the outdoor work he did in the summers. Birdy grew up on the Makah Reservation at the very tip of Western Washington. Nature was always around her family. The woods were a second home.

  She turned to Kendall. “Did you talk to her?”

  “Yes,” Kendall said. “She says she didn’t get near it. Didn’t touch it. Her teacher confirmed her story.”

  “All right then,” Birdy said. She looked over at the tech. “Sarah, when you collect the evidence I want the top six inches of soil. That sword fern too.”

  “What kind of square footage are we talking about?” Sarah said, knowing full well that the word footage was probably on the edge of inappropriate. She hadn’t meant it; it just came out that way.

  “Four feet all around,” Birdy said, this time with a smile back at Sarah.

  Sarah scrunched her brow and went to work with another tech. They finished taking photographs, carefully bagged the foot, and started on the soil samples. Each scoop of black loamy dirt was tagged with coordinates inside a four-foot grid that had been staked around the decomposing body part.

  Birdy walked along the trail, scouring it for any sign of who might have left the foot—or the body that had been severed from it.

  Kendall called over to her. “You think a bear mauled someone?”

  A piece of pale pink fabric caught Birdy’s eye and she motioned to Sarah to collect it.

  “Don’t know,” she said.

  “
We had that mauling a few years ago,” Kendall said.

  “Right. Read about that.” Birdy set a yellow collection marker by the fabric, a shred of nylon, probably an undergarment. “I don’t think so,” she went on. “I think an animal would have dragged that foot to its den or, even more likely, consumed it on the spot.”

  “If there were any footprints—animal or human—they’ve been obliterated by the rain and Ms. Hatfield’s class,” Kendall said.

  Satisfied there was no role for her right then—and she’d followed the orders to be there—Birdy started down the trail toward her car. “Let me know how the search goes,” she said. “I’m heading back now. I have unexpected company and a foot to examine.”

  “You seem less excited by your company than by the maggot-infested foot,” Kendall said. “Who is it?”

  Birdy turned around and looked at her friend. It was one of those looks that said far more than words. “My sister’s son.”

  Kendall blinked back with surprise. “Your sister’s? That’s interesting. You almost never mention her. In fact, I didn’t really even know you had a sister for the first year you were here.”

  “Don’t get me started.” Birdy sighed. “You don’t have enough time to hear my family story.”

  “Try me sometime,” Kendall said.

  Birdy unbuttoned her raincoat and walked toward the light coming from the roadway. She knew the detective meant it. Kendall was a real friend, but Birdy’s family baggage was of such serious tonnage that she barely could carry it, let alone see a need to drop it on the shoulders of someone she admired.

  CHAPTER 4

  Elan didn’t come to the door to greet his aunt when she arrived at her place on Beach Drive. He stayed planted in front of the TV wearing the lilac bathrobe and a sullen look.

  “If your friends could see you now,” Birdy said, taking off her muddy shoes and making her way to his spot on the sofa.

  “I don’t have any friends,” Elan said in a tone that sounded like he meant it and wasn’t reaching for pity.