Skin Dancer

by Haines, Carolyn

  He slipped a hand under her elbow for support. “I sure hope they were dead before they were skinned.”

  She glanced at him to see if he was testing her. “Mercy doesn’t appear to be a priority for this killer.” His gray eyes met hers squarely, and with a hint of humor.

  “Helluva first murder case for a rookie.” His fingers tightened slightly on her flesh, just a hint of pressure. “Gordon picked the wrong time for his hip replacement.”

  “I have to start somewhere and believe it or not, I’ve got the most training in the S.O.” She tempered the tone of her reply. Jake had never done anything except support her. “You know Scott’s wife is expecting any day now. She’s had serious complications, and he couldn’t be stuck up here in the woods working a double homicide.” She lifted her chin. “And I asked for this case. I’m a grown–up, Jake, not the skinny, pitiful, abandoned kid from the wrong side of town.”

  “You might have been skinny and abandoned, but you were never pitiful. You always liked a challenge.” Jake gave her arm one final squeeze.

  “Yeah. That’s me.” For nearly as long as she could remember, Jake had been a part of her life. He’d influenced her to go into law enforcement. Long ago, he’d saved her life.

  “Ms. Redmond…I mean Deputy Redmond, the forensic boys are just coming over the ridge.” Wilt pointed down the trail where two techs from Rapid City were headed their way. The men carried big suitcases, and a camera hung from around one’s neck.

  “Thanks.” She walked forward to meet the team and to put some distance between herself and the crime scene. The blood pooled beneath the bodies had enticed a host of flies. The droning noise and the metallic smell were beginning to wear on her.

  “This sure ain’t no job for a lady.” Wilt’s words, meant to be a whisper, carried to her. What she couldn’t hear was Jake’s response.

  A short way down the path, Rachel faced a vista that stole her breath. A mile away, granite rock formations pushed high into a pale blue sky. Evergreens covered the steep slopes, some of the trunks enormous. There were waterfalls and caves and mysteries beyond the ken of mortal men. The Sioux believed that some of the caves were a portal to the underworld. The red men had come from that portal in the Black Hills, and it was here that the Great Spirit gave them the buffalo as a source of meat and shelter and clothes. The Native Americans’ bond with the land was meshed with history and pride and a knowledge that man and the wilderness were irrevocably linked.

  For Rachel, the Black Hills were savagely wild and untamed, a place where humans seldom encroached, and she’d grown to love this land. As a kid, she’d been all about cars and malls and drugs and the party life. She’d changed, though. Now she could hardly remember the frightened young girl who’d been so alone and so angry at the world.

  “Looks like some poachers got caught with an illegal moose and someone took justice into his own hands.” Jake’s voice came from behind her. He was talking to the advancing techs.

  “Could be that,” she told the techs. “Just document everything. The feather on the pole appears to be owl. I want that checked out as soon as possible.”

  “Will do.” The two men moved to the crime scene and got busy.

  In the distance an eagle caught a high draft and floated in a slow circle. The county and state lands, as well as the federal lands of the Sioux reservations, were protected by stringent hunting laws. Many hunters, though, had no respect for borders, laws, or even the rudiments of sportsmanship. It was all about trophy.

  And that, perhaps, was the motive behind these murders. The moose was an exotic and illegal, meaning someone had physically brought it into the area. Hunting season didn’t start until the fall. It looked like the men were poachers, and it was possible that someone finally got tired of it.

  But she didn’t think so. This was more than revenge. The silver ornament, the feather, the brutality. This was planned, what the textbooks called a highly organized killer.

  “Deputy.” The tech nodded at her but looked to Jake for direction.

  She walked back and gave a rundown of the photographs she wanted. She’d worked with Gus once before on a suicide. He knew his business, but it was her job to be sure. “Nothing has been touched, unless it was by the hiker who found the bodies. He called it in and we got here as fast as we could. Wilt and Marston came along to help us get the bodies down to the road for transport back to town.”

  “Good lord almighty.” The other tech stopped and simply stared at the scene. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Either someone has a burn on for illegal hunters or these two guys really pissed the hell out of someone.”

  Rachel didn’t say anything. The mutilation of the corpses was a message, but one she didn’t fully understand. Maybe the science guys could give her a few hints as to what direction to pursue.

  # # #

  Frances “Frankie” Jackson swung up into the cab of the dozer and backed it away from the majestic fir tree. She glared at the burly man whose job it was to push the four–lane through the Black Hills. No one on the crew was particularly glad to see her as boss, and the truth was, she didn’t care. If a road had to go through this place of wonder and beauty, she’d make sure it did the least amount of damage possible. That was the job Belker Construction had hired her to do—to build the highway while preserving the wilderness.

  She parked the dozer and jumped to the ground. “Ben, this is a historic tree. See the marker.” She pointed to the woodcut emblem. “We don’t need protesters out here halting our progress. You’re twenty yards off course. If you can’t follow the engineer’s outline, you’d better tell me now.”

  Several men stopped working to glance at her long legs encased in skintight jeans and the knee–high cowboy boots she favored. She was lean as a whippet, and she kept her body honed with kick–boxing and Pilates. Once she’d been a chubby pre–teen, drowning her stuttering sorrows and inadequacies in boats of gravy and bowls of ice cream. Lida Jane’s finishing school had skimmed off the pounds and given her a whole new view of herself and a new menu of options for achieving her goals. Of course, if Lida Jane or any of the Montgomery, Alabama, ladies she’d grown up around knew her ambitions, they’d be horrified. Ladies didn’t run road crews, and that was just the tip of the iceberg in her lack of conformity.

  “Look, I don’t care how much it pisses you off, we can’t take down that tree.”

  “It’s a tree. There are a billion more right over there.” Ben swung his hand toward the forest. “The original route went right through there. It’s the easiest and fastest—”

  “And the road was changed to preserve that specific tree. Accept it or leave now.” Frankie caught a glimpse of movement in the dark protection of the firs. The Black Hills were so–called because, from a distance, the thick perfection of the trees made the hills look ebony. She saw the vague outline of a tall man at the edge of the woods. Before she could say or do anything, he was gone. She turned her attention back to the crew.

  “This tree isn’t going anywhere. I’m headed into town, and when I come back, if there’s so much as a scratch on it, I’ll see that every one of you is fired. When I find out who damaged the tree, and I will find out, he’ll serve time in a federal prison.” She looked around the circle of men who’d fallen silent. At times they hated her, but that was just part of her job.

  She walked off, feeling the daggers of resentment digging into her spine. She hadn’t come home to South Dakota to make friends.

  The project foreman fell into step beside her, talking as they walked. “Hank Welford never showed up for work today. That’s the third time in two weeks. I’m going to cut him loose.”

  She nodded.

  “If he comes in tomorrow, I’ll tell him he’s fired.”

  “Yep. He’s not reliable. Probably holed up drunk somewhere.”

  “Or else on one of his illegal hunting trips. That bastard has every game warden in the state looking for him. Makes it hard on the rest of us who
are real sportsmen.” He shook his head in disgust.

  The dry taste of dust from the road work made Frankie wish for a Diet Coke. “Hank’s been living his life to his own tune for at least thirty years. I doubt he’s going to change. When you fire him, he’ll be furious. Watch out because he has a gun in his truck—I caught him shooting at crows last week during a break. He may try something stupid. Then he’ll get over it and hire on someplace else until he gets fired again.” She looked back at the men who were still standing around, talking among themselves. “Put them back to work. I’m going into town to pick up the specs the engineers faxed over.”

  She climbed into her pickup truck and drove close to the forest. Whoever had been there was gone. If she were the kind of woman to be scared, the idea of someone hiding in the woods and watching might creep her out. But there was always a logical explanation.

  The local Sioux resented the intrusion of the road through their sacred land, and it was likely that someone had come to make sure the huge fir tree—a magnificent creation with a circumference of over 100 feet–was left undisturbed. The tree had once provided shade for the council meetings of the Sioux leaders. Now the knot–heads on the road project had the idea that if they ignored certain things, they wouldn’t be challenged. They were wrong.

  She gunned the motor and spun out, bringing a smile to the men’s faces. It took so little to redirect a guy’s focus. Put a woman in a truck spinning a bit of gravel and every thought in a man’s head dropped right down to his crotch. Amazing.

  Aiming the truck toward the county seat of Bisonville, she notched the needle over eighty and let her thoughts drift. The road project was moving forward, slowly. Things were on track. To that end, she had a dinner party planned to honor some of the state politicians and civic leaders. Although trained as a civil engineer, Frankie knew that it was her ability to build bridges between diverse groups that had gotten her the high six–figure salary she earned. She made all sides on the gnarly issue of the new road feel that they’d won some points. And she did it with style. Lida Jane’s training, while irksome at the time, had proven invaluable.

  She was just outside Bisonville when she decided to check the radio. A male DJ’s voice came over the airwaves.

  “…mutilated bodies were found high in the Black Hills this morning by a hiker. Criss County Sheriff’s deputies and state game wardens responded and the bodies have been recovered, but no identification has been made.

  “Deputy Rachel Redmond refused to comment on the condition of the bodies or the possible motive behind the brutal slaying, but eyewitnesses at the bizarre scene report that the decapitated and skinned bodies, believed to be two hunters, were found beside a dead moose.

  “We’ll update the story at the top of the hour. Right now, we’re back to Toby Keith and ‘It’s a Little Too Late.’”

  Frankie turned the radio off and slowed the pickup. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and punched in Jake Ortiz’s number. “Hey, Jake, it’s Frankie. When you get a minute, give me a call. I’m a little worried about my crew out there. I just want to get some details on that double homicide so I can decide whether to send them home or keep them working. Thanks.”

  She held the phone a moment before pressing down hard on the accelerator and sending the eight–cylinder truck up to eighty. She had work to do.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The clack of pool balls breaking drowned the soft play of the radio in Bud’s Bar. Rachel looked over her shoulder to the heavyset man. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, and his beer dripped condensation on the edge of the table.

  “You got stripes,” he told the man he played with as he bent, took aim, and shot the cue stick forward. The report was solid and confident. The yellow one–ball zipped into the back corner pocket. He walked around the table and took his next successful shot.

  Rachel wasn’t as interested in the game as she was in the man. He was nearly six feet tall, in his forties or fifties, strong but gone to pot.

  Physically, he was much like one of the dead men. How had someone with that physique been taken down without obvious signs of a struggle? Of course, if the killer had a gun, it was possible both men had been forced into co–operation—or shot in the head. She had no way to tell, since the heads were still missing and the preliminary forensics had revealed only that the two men had lost vast quantities of blood. Whether from the skinning or decapitation, the state pathologist wasn’t ready to say. One body had been mutilated worse than the other.

  She sipped her Diet Coke and drummed her fingers softly on the varnished wood bar. Bud’s was a historical locale, dating back to the Indian wars and the cattle drives that brought the colorful characters of the Old West through the small town. In all likelihood, the bar hadn’t had a good cleaning since Custer took his last stand. But it was quiet, for a bar, and not nearly as smoke–filled in the early evening as it would be later that night.

  Someone cranked the jukebox up, and she smiled at the first strains of “Okie from Muskogee.” Merle Haggard was still a star in Bisonville, but few of his fans would recognize that the beat of this classic country song was a cha–cha. Rachel remembered a full, royal blue skirt twirling as her mom’s bare feet, toe nails painted bright red, moved forward and back in a cha–cha across the faded linoleum of their kitchen. Junie Redmond had loved to dance, even through chores.

  A curse from the pool table told her the game was over and someone was a poor looser. She picked up a couple of polaroids she’d taken at the crime scene and walked over to the heavyset man who was racking the balls. Like the four previous guys she’d interviewed, this one wasn’t interested in helping a deputy.

  He ignored her until she dropped two photographs on the table beside his hand. “Recognize that tattoo?” she asked.

  The man tried to ignore her, but the photos caught his eye. He picked up the first one, then the second. Rachel had been careful to show only the tattoo of the snake and none of the damage done to the body.

  “What if I do?” he said.

  “You could tell me who the tattoo belongs to and then I’d go away.”

  He snorted, settled the balls and removed the rack. “You can go or stay. Don’t make me no nevermind.”

  “It might if I invite you to the courthouse for a chat.”

  He looked her up and down, letting his contempt show. “That uniform doesn’t mean a damn to me.”

  “I didn’t come here for a pissing match, but I will if I have to.”

  He looked at the photos again. “Never seen ‘em.” He picked up his stick, placed the cue ball and broke in one smooth motion.

  Rachel went back to her barstool. The clientele of the bar, at least the ones she’d talked to, hadn’t been very helpful. Still, someone had to recognize that tattoo. Perhaps she should try over at the beauty shop where the ladies might recognize it.

  The door of the bar swung open and the last golden slant of daylight fell across the wooden floor. Blinded, Rachel could only see the tall silhouette of a slender man. Jake’s boots echoed on the boards. She hadn’t expected to see Jake in Bud’s. He did his drinking in the more upscale bars of Rapid City.

  “Rachel, what are you doing in here this time of day?”

  Jake was forever the big brother. It was an act that was beginning to make her angry. “I wanted a Diet Coke and a quiet place to sit.” She didn’t want to tell him she was working. There were times that Jake made her feel inadequate.

  He surveyed the bar, making it clear he found nothing there that should interest Rachel. There were Diet Cokes available at Lulu’s Café or the U–Tote ‘Em or any of the dozen gas stations. “I just read an article that said carbonated drinks can make a woman’s bones porous.” He stood at her elbow.

  “Jesus, Jake. Breathing might pollute my lungs.” She turned back to the bar so he couldn’t see the aggravation on her face. “You act like I’m addicted to a diet drink. My mother had the drug problem, not me.” The minute she spoke, she knew it was tr
ue. Jake was always vigilant for the first sign of addiction in her. Even to a cola. Heat flushed her face and she had to struggle to control the angry retort that sprang to her mind.

  “Sorry, Rachel. I guess I need to back off.” He signaled the bartender for a beer.

  “That would be a relief.”

  Instead of getting angry, he laughed. “Old habits die hard.” He slipped onto the bar stool beside her. “Remember John Henry James?”

  Rachel couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I had the worst crush on him when I was fourteen. Good thing he never knew I existed.” In a drunken rage John Henry had hit his wife and killed her. His remorse had been great, but remorse didn’t bring life back to the woman he’d killed.

  “Oh, he knew you existed. He used to ride by your mama’s place in that black Camaro. He was like a shark swimming by, just hoping you’d walk out the door.”

  Rachel sat taller on her bench. “How do you know this, Jake?”

  “Because after school I’d drive by your place. I put down some shingles with roofing tacks in them, and when he had three flat tires, I pulled him out of the car and told him if I saw him hanging around you again, I’d bury him under the asphalt.”

  Jake was smiling, but Rachel felt the throb of a vein in her temple. “You had no right to do such a thing.”

  “Maybe not, but he was a predator and a creep.” The bartender put a Bud in front of him and Jake popped the top. “Your father was gone and your mom sure wasn’t paying attention. Somebody had to look out for you, Rachel. You were headed down a long, hard road.”

  She sipped her drink and swallowed her angry responses. Jake was right. “Is John Henry still in the state pen?”

  “Got out about four weeks ago. Folks say he’s living out in the wilderness in some kind of survivalist mode.”