A roar erupted behind him. He dove to the ground as ice and snow on the duplex roof avalanched onto the porch, shattering the wooden rail.
Rath stayed pinned to the ground, just able to make out the vague shape of Preacher at the window, peering out. Then, Preacher was gone.
Rath remained motionless, his tailbone splintering with pain where it had struck the rock.
The front door opened. Preacher stepped out onto the porch, looked into the trees where Rath hid just twenty feet away. He held an object in his hand, which Rath could not make out, and looked down at the snow and ice and the broken rail.
He looked out at the woods, toward where Rath’s tree stand had been, though there was no way to see that far with the closing fog. Then he went back inside, shut the door, and was gone again.
Rath lay still for a good half hour before he stood and shut the birdhouse’s lid.
The camera lens and eye, trained on the porch, were all but invisible unless someone looked directly at the hole from a couple feet away. It was a risk Rath had to take.
He triple-checked the camera and retreated up to the ridge. He climbed back up into the tree stand and sat where he dedicated himself to wait until night fell.
27
Test hadn’t seen the girl’s body at first.
Because the body wasn’t on the ground.
The body was in the trees.
More precisely, hanging from a tree, its back to Test.
“Calm them down,” Test barked at Jorgensen, though it was not an ME’s place to tend to witnesses, and Test had not meant to bark. Professional command should be calming.
The body hung by its neck from a rope slung over a stout oak tree branch.
The rope stretched taut over the branch, its other end tied around a tree trunk. Except, it wasn’t a rope tied around the body’s neck. The last few feet of the rope was some sort of metal cord encased in plastic, in the fashion of a coiled bike lock cable.
Had the woman or girl been alive when the boy and father discovered her? Had she awakened and followed through with a suicide?
Test could see only the back of the body from where it hanged suspended perhaps three feet off the ground, above a stump on which the girl must have stood. Her dark coat lay unzipped, and the boot that had been on the ground in the photo was back on the girl’s foot.
Test dug her camera from her backpack and shot photos of the scene, the body, the disappearing tracks. The boy and the father had stepped closer to the body than the photo had suggested. Their tracks were all around the body.
The wind kicked up. The body twisted to face Test, as if to say: Let’s get beyond this humiliation so we can find who did this to me.
“Fuck,” Test whispered.
The girl’s hands were tied in front of her.
She’d not hanged herself. Someone had hanged her.
Test scrutinized the soggy ground.
The tracks beneath the body were likely not the father’s or son’s. And, Test saw now, faint drag marks in the wet leaves and remaining snow. No blood.
Someone had slipped the cord around the victim’s neck and hauled on the rope to lift the body off the ground.
Someone powerful. Dragging and lifting dead weight by a rope demanded strength.
The victim’s face was still not visible to Test, its head hanging limp, chin to chest, as if the corpse were staring down at its feet musing on how silly it was to find itself levitating.
Is she Dana Clark or Rachel Rath? Test wondered.
She peered more closely.
The coat was a black barn jacket. Not a pea coat. What had looked like platinum hair was the lining of the hat, torn. It was not Rachel Rath. Thank God.
Not that Test wanted it to be Dana Clark, either. She did not want it to be anyone. Did not want to be out here on this grizzly afternoon looking at a dead body found by a father and son whose tradition was ruined. Yet part of her wanted it to be Dana Clark. Because if it were not Dana, then Dana remained missing, presumably dead. Which meant there were now, very likely, two dead female victims.
Test took out her radio and tried dispatch. “I’ve got a one-eighty-seven in the woods off Pisgah Wilderness Road. A two-forty-four.” She gave the coordinates. “Are those state police any closer?”
“Ten-twenty-three while I ten-five.”
Behind Test, Jorgensen spoke to the father and son. “OK, OK,” Jorgensen said and huffed over to Test.
The dispatcher returned, voice staticky. “ETA now a good hour. Officer encountered a flooded road and closed bridge, needed to detour.”
“Ten-four.”
Jorgensen stared at the scene. His breathing clattered like an old diesel engine.
Test paid him no mind. Nor he her. Both absorbed the site. First impressions were vital.
“He came back,” Test said, finally. “While the boy and father fled, he finished what he’d started. In what? The last hour? He’s probably still out here.” She looked around, at the fog, and knelt at the clearest of the killer’s tracks, made in the mud more than in snow. She brought a Shake-N-Cast bag from her backpack and squeezed its internal water bladder, shook it to mix the water with the dental stone powder, poured the slurry into the lousy track. She ignored the cold, stiff ache in her fingers, a mild discomfort to what this victim had suffered.
She knelt and looked up into the face of the victim.
Not Dana Clark’s face.
A girl’s face.
A girl like so many others.
Like no other.
“Why put her boot back on?” Test said.
28
Test took photos. Break this case, she thought, and the promotion to senior detective is yours. She stifled the thought. Chastised her disrespect toward the victim for entertaining the notion, natural as it might be. Murder was not a career move.
Test took photos of the knot where the rope was tied to the tree. Forensics would determine how common, or rare, the rope was. And its knot. It appeared to be a rope like any found in a million hardware stores across America. What was not common was the sheathed metal cord squeezed around the girl’s neck. It had a latch of some sort, a swivel. It fed through its own loop.
With each raindrop, evidence eroded, the tracks now mere ghostly impressions in the leaves.
Test walked over to address the boy and his father, the son’s back pressed against his father’s hip as the father wrapped his arms around him.
“How you doing?” Test looked the boy in the eye.
“I want to go home,” the boy said.
“I understand. What did you see here the first time?” Test asked the father.
“What you saw in the photo. The body, on the ground.”
“You didn’t touch it?”
“No. I thought she was dead.”
“Why?”
“The way she was. And she didn’t answer when we spoke to her.”
“Why’d you take a picture of her?”
“So you’d believe us, not think we were crackpots.”
“And you saw no one else?”
“No.”
“How much snow has melted since you were here?”
“A lot.”
“Did you notice anything about the tracks around her, that there were another person’s tracks besides her own?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“We were in shock. And I tried to keep him”—he nodded at his son—“from getting closer than we were when we spotted her.” He gazed at the hanged girl.
“You saw nothing? Heard nothing?” Test said.
“No.”
Test squatted before the boy. “Did you see anyone or anything weird, besides the girl, I mean?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Try to keep warm. I’ll get hold of dispatch and see if I can get the state police to bring food and something warm to drink. But you need to stay put to speak to them.”
Test walked to Jorgensen.
�
�Why hang a dead girl?” Test said.
“Maybe she wasn’t dead.”
“If she’d been alive, there’d be evidence of a struggle where he dragged her.”
“She might have been unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated,” Jorgensen said. “I’ll find out either way during the autopsy.”
“His plan was to hang her. Dead or alive. He was interrupted but came back to hang her. Why?”
“As a message. To study his work? Ritual. I don’t know. I’m not insane.”
“If he’d wanted her to be a message, he’d have left her someplace visible, not dragged her into the woods. That’s hard work done to seek privacy. And he didn’t just happen to have a rope on him, or whatever the hell that thing is around her neck. He didn’t get the idea on the fly to”—she was going to say “string her up” but the words were callous—“to do that. His tracks have all but melted, but by the impression, he stood here a long time pondering her. He saw the boy and the father, ran up there.” Test pointed up at the knoll. “Watched them.” A thought struck her.
“What?” Jorgensen said.
“If the perp thinks they saw him”—she glanced at the boy and the father—“they could be in danger.”
“If he thought that, he’d have done something then.”
“Not if he saw the father’s rifle and he wasn’t armed.”
“Why risk getting caught to come back to hang her?”
“Arrogance,” she said. “Foolishness. Ritual. Not to mention simple meanness.”
29
Rachel felt the eyes of a dozen locals on her as she entered the gun shop. When she matched each man’s stare, they returned to trading quips as they handled pistols and aimed deer rifles at the ceiling, tested the rifles’ actions. Shelves between narrow aisles were crammed with gun and hunting supplies. From hundreds of crowded pegs hung game calls, gloves, hats, and gadgetry of every sort. One wall of shelves stood jammed with boxes of ammunition stacked like bricks.
Rachel used to love going into shops like this with her father in August and September when he started to prepare for deer season. This year, he wouldn’t have time to rifle hunt.
A man at the end of the counter examined a handgun that lay in pieces on a white cloth. He peered up at Rachel over the glasses perched on the end his nose and said: “One moment, miss.”
Rachel glanced out the shop window. She hoped to God Felix did not happen by and see her in the shop, or on the street. She was supposed to be studying with a girlfriend at the Lovin’ Cup.
The shop owner came down to Rachel’s end of the counter.
“What can I help you with?” His left eye was smaller than his right. Rachel wondered if it were made of glass.
“I’d like to buy a handgun.”
“What kind were you thinking?”
“I’m not certain.”
“A lot depends on the purpose. Is it for recreational use, plinking cans and the like, serious target shooting, hunting, bodily or home protection, or—”
“Defense,” she said. Perhaps offense, she thought.
The shop grew quieter.
“I hope it never comes to that,” Rachel said. “But—”
“I understand. Do you have experience with a handgun?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Training?”
“Just from my father. He was a state cop a long time ago, so—”
“Excellent. We offer classes, in the back firing range. If you feel rusty. You really got to be trained to use a handgun under threat. If a weapon is used for defense, then you will be using it under stress, which is not the same type of training for just shooting cans off a fence post. You need training for the circumstances, how to maintain calm, control your weapon under duress, use it for its intended purpose. Not have it taken from and used against you, God forbid.”
Rachel felt her nerves jangling, her confidence ebbing.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” the shopkeeper said. “But if you’re not trained good and get yourself in a bad spot and pull a gun or even try to pull a gun, you can end up hurt.”
“I plan on getting training.”
“What caliber do you have experience with?”
“A twenty-two.”
A man behind her by the wall of ammunition scoffed, then cleared his throat.
“A twenty-two isn’t enough,” the shopkeeper said. “You don’t want to go too big, either. You want to shoot level and not have too much recoil. A thirty-eight.”
“OK.”
“And were you thinking revolver or semiautomatic? How much do you have to spend?
“My father’s gun is a revolver. How much are they?”
“They aren’t any one price. Revolvers are generally cheaper than semis. We have about a dozen revolvers in thirty-eight that range from just over two hundred, up to about six fifty. Ammo runs twenty to thirty bucks a box. You’ll want to get a couple boxes, at least; and the training is two hundred or so for three one-hour courses.”
“Oh.” Rachel did not know what she’d been thinking as far as price and had not factored in the ammunition or the courses. She had three hundred dollars maximum.
“I can throw in a free box or two of ammo, and maybe we can work out something for the course. Payments,” the shopkeeper said. “There are other options too. Stun guns. Tasers.”
“Do they really work?”
“Oh boy,” said a man who gazed through the scope of a rifle.
“They incapacitate,” the shopkeeper said. “And you don’t have to be nearly as accurate. Of course, while they incapacitate, they aren’t lethal. Normally.”
“Normally?”
“If the person on the wrong end has a heart condition, for example, it might prove lethal. But should something go wrong while you’re defending yourself, the assailant getting possession of your handgun or the Taser, you wouldn’t be killed if a Taser was turned on you. And you don’t likely want to kill an assailant. The point of defending yourself isn’t to kill but to dissuade. Perhaps incapacitate long enough to find safety. You don’t intend to kill anyone while defending yourself, do you?”
“Let me look at the revolvers,” Rachel said.
30
In the dark night, through his binoculars, Rath kept his eyes locked on the grim light from Preacher’s window. The light rain had become a downpour.
At 9:47, Preacher’s window fell dark.
Rath remained in the dark for another hour. Then, convinced Preacher was asleep, he trekked back to the Scout. He’d need a few hours’ sleep before he returned at 5:00 a.m. to take up watch again, but knew he would not get it. He’d lie awake until he had to get up and sit beside Ice Pond again.
Back in cell service on the slow drive home in the fog, Rath’s phone buzzed with three voice-mail messages.
The first from Rachel. “Hey. It’s me. Thought I’d call, old school for once. Instead of text. I’m going to sleep soon, but just wanted to let you know I’m OK. No”—she paused—“no incidents today. Felix and I had a good day. And—” Rath heard her click her tongue, as she did when she was mulling what to say next. “I’m sorry. That you had to find my mom like that. I mean. She was your big sister. You grew up with her. I don’t even remember her.” She paused again. “Anyway,” she said, brightening her voice, forcing faux cheer into it, “everything’s A-OK here, I hope it is for you. Good to hear your voice even if it’s recorded. Love ya.”
Rath looked up. The Scout had come to a stop in the middle of Forgotten Gorge Road, the white fog like a wall of snow in the headlights. He’d let his foot off the gas pedal and not paid any attention to his driving during the message. He was lucky he’d not driven into the abyss. How was it one could travel so far without paying attention and not get hurt? He imagined the subconscious took over, an ancient survival technique.
He listened to Rachel’s message three more times.
Checked the other messages.
Chief Barrons had called at 5 p.m.
> “We have a situation. You do, anyway,” he said. “If you can’t make it to the station tonight, come by first thing in the morning. I’m in at eight. Or if you’re up all night as usual, stop by my place before I leave for work. But see me in person. Unless you want me to send an officer out to arrest you.”
Rath hung up. Situation? Arrest?
Rath would have dismissed the last bit as a joke, except Barrons’s voice lacked any levity.
“I don’t have time for this,” Rath muttered, but knew he’d have to make time. Knew he’d have to leave Preacher unwatched, if for a few hours. The next message was Test. She’d left it just an hour earlier at 10:22 p.m.
“We need to talk. We’ve found a body. I’m interviewing the parents in the morning. I hear you’re coming in tomorrow to see Barrons for some reason. I’ll find you.”
Part III
31
Sunday, November 6, 2011
The dead girl’s name was Jamie Ann Drake.
A pair of matching silver VW Passats sat in the driveway of her parents’ home, the driveway paved, a rarity in these parts, most driveways up here in the Kingdom were dirt or crushed stone.
Test stared at the house, dreading what came next. Interviewing the parents of a murdered child exhausted and depressed her like nothing else. There was no delicate approach. She had to sit with a mother and father still so shocked they had yet to begin to grieve, ask them to lay bare intimate secrets, troubled behavior, drug use, or promiscuity. Most families had never had their secrets exposed to an outsider’s scrutiny. Now, all the secrets would be dissected. The questions were cruel by the very act of their being asked.
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