Her eyes bounced to Dani, who seemed concerned about the situation, but surprisingly not hysterical at the fact that her husband was sitting with a dead body. Carly had a moment’s reflection that Kit had some interesting friends.
Dani smiled. “My husband was a Navy SEAL and also a detective with Portland Vice for several years. While finding a body on a hike, especially here in Windsor, isn’t exactly what he would have expected from his morning, he’s not going to fall apart—and he also won’t contaminate your scene.” She added the last part with a small emphasis.
Carly felt a flush of embarrassment because contamination of her crime scene was exactly what she’d been worried about, and it hadn’t been very charitable of her to be thinking that way. As a human being, she should have been at least a little concerned about Ty Fuller and his state of mind. Internally, she sighed.
“Thank you,” she said to Dani before turning her gaze to Drew, who was watching her with a look of patience that, to her mind, bordered on condescension. “Can you give us a rough idea of where the body is? The medical examiner will be coming along soon, as will the state police, and we’ll need to give them a location.”
“We followed that path there,” Drew said. He was still standing behind Dani in the open doorway, but he pointed to a trail that led east, away from Kit’s driveway. “I didn’t have my GPS so I can’t give you a specific location, but we found her not far from a dirt road about twenty to twenty-five minutes up that trail.”
Carly turned to Marcus. “Churchkill Road, do you think?”
Marcus’s eyes went to the path. After a moment, he nodded. “Probably. Lancaster Road is the main road that goes back into those hills, but Churchkill Road forks off and follows the ridge when Lancaster turns east. I’m pretty sure the fork happens before where I think that trail comes out,” he said.
“Were there any distinguishing landmarks on the road that you can remember?” Carly asked Drew.
He seemed to give the question some consideration before answering. “There weren’t any houses nearby, but when I made my way to the road, there was a bend not far to the north of the trail, and from there I could see a farm down in the valley. It had a large yellowish house and two big brown barns,” he offered.
“The Kirby place,” Carly confirmed. The Kirby family had been providing local beef to the Hudson Valley for generations; their farm was well known.
Marcus nodded. “Churchkill Road it is.”
“Why don’t you take the SUV and wait down where County 17 meets Lancaster Road?” Carly asked Marcus. “When the State Patrol and Vivi get there, you can lead them up Lancaster to Churchkill. By then, I should have reached the site and will be able to give an exact location,” she directed.
Marcus nodded and she handed him the keys. “Is it just this trail here I should take, Mr. Carmichael, or did you turn off it at any point?” she asked with a gesture to the path that clearly started between two trees but was quickly engulfed in forest and greenery so was not visible beyond ten feet or so.
“Call me Drew,” he repeated. “And I’ll show you the way. As for you,” he said, stepping through the doorway and turning to Dani. “You need to go lie down and put your feet up. Ty will have my head if he finds out you’ve been running around while he’s been gone.”
“I wouldn’t mind seeing that,” Dani retorted with a grin.
Drew let out a long-suffering sigh. “Dani,” he said.
Dani let out her own sigh. “Fine, Dad,” she said with obvious sarcasm. Then she turned to Carly, “It was nice to meet you, Deputy Chief Drummond, Officer Brown. I wish it had been under better circumstances.”
Carly nodded, somewhat intrigued by the interchange between these two guests of Kit’s. Their age difference didn’t appear to be more than a few years, but Carly hadn’t missed the paternal tone of concern in Drew’s voice when he’d issued his order to Dani. The obvious and easy affection between the two surprised her since she’d only ever seen him as cool and efficient.
Brushing that thought away, Carly stepped back to let Drew pass by, then she and Marcus followed him onto the driveway as Dani shut the door behind them. Her partner veered off to the SUV, but she and Drew continued toward the woods. Carly paused as Marcus backed out, then lifted a hand as he pulled out of the driveway. He answered with a small wave of his own before turning around the side of the house and out of sight. Leaving her alone with Drew in the silence of the crisp fall morning.
She let out a deep breath and it fogged before her, obscuring her view for a moment, before clearing. The afternoons would warm up, but fall, with its cool night and morning temperatures, had settled in like a familiar blanket over the Hudson Valley. The weather changes had turned the trees the colors of fire; the hills were lit with reds, yellows, and brilliant oranges. It was a beautiful day to find a body.
“Shall we?” Drew gestured toward the trail.
Carly nodded and preceded him into the woods without a word. They walked for several minutes in a silence punctuated by the sounds of their feet landing on the dry ground and the occasional call of a bird or rustle of an autumn breeze through the dying leaves. As they walked, Carly turned her thoughts to what she might find up the trail.
Crime in Windsor, with a few exceptions, was primarily made up of thefts or an occasional assault. Carly always felt like the low crime rate was a sign of a good community—she believed most people who lived in and around Windsor loved it and were committed to keeping it safe and beautiful. And as someone who appreciated where she lived and worked, she felt the same.
She harbored no illusions about the Hudson Valley; Carly was well aware of the naïveté of her perspective, but she held onto it nonetheless. To believe otherwise would feel like a betrayal to a place and community that had come to mean so much to her in the years since she’d moved there. And it was for these more personal reasons, rather than for any professional one, that she hoped what she’d find on that trail was simply the result of a tragic accident.
With this thought in mind, she took a deep breath, inhaling the comforting scents of fall as they began to climb the slight slope toward the ridge of the hill. It did not escape her notice that, even in hoping for the best, “the best” would still be a dead body.
“Churchkill?” Drew asked from behind her.
Coming seemingly out of nowhere, his words floated abruptly into Carly’s mind and she wondered if she’d missed something he’d said earlier. When she paused and turned toward him to ask, she caught him by surprise. He nearly walked into her, but pulled up abruptly and stopped just short; then he stepped back a few inches to put some space between them.
“Churchkill,” he repeated, presumably at her questioning look. “It’s an unusual name, but I’ve noticed a lot of towns and roads in this area have the word ‘kill’ in them. I know there were a lot of revolutionaries around here back in the 1700s, but they couldn’t have been that bloodthirsty.”
That actually made Carly smile, his certainty in the morals of their founding fathers. She shook her head as she turned around and started walking up the trail again.
“No, they weren’t. Or not any more so than they needed to be, I would imagine. Before the revolution, in the early 1700s, the area was settled heavily by the Dutch.” As she spoke, the trail started a brief but steep ascent. Vain as she was, she tipped her hat to Murphy and his laws and accepted that she was going to be huffing and puffing as she talked. She’d either sound like a phone-sex operator or an out-of-shape cop, and after a fleeting moment’s consideration, she thought it would be significantly more embarrassing to be thought of as the latter.
“And?” he prompted.
“The word ‘kill’ is the equivalent of ‘creek’ in Dutch, or in the Dutch language of the time.” She unzipped her jacket, then tucked an errant curl behind her ear as they continued. Thankfully, she could see the end of the rise ahead, and she knew it would level out after that. “Churchkill Road ends at the Kirby farm now, but back in th
e day, it continued on and into one of the local hamlets. There’s a church there, and at the edge of the church’s property is a creek. It’s a popular swimming and picnicking area today, and it was back then too.”
“And because the road was the road that took people to the church creek, it became Churchkill Road,” he concluded.
“Most likely, yes,” she agreed.
“And you said the church is still there?” he asked as they started down the now-level path.
Carly nodded. “It is. The whole hamlet is still there, but you can’t reach it from this side anymore. There’s a county road, a paved one, that will take you to it now.”
They walked another minute in silence before he surprised her with another question.
“You love this area, don’t you?” he asked.
Again, Carly came to a halt—this time at the personal nature of the question—and turned around. From where they stood, she could see the gentle roll of the hills, green fields cut out of the woods, and trees rioting with color.
She must have paused long enough because, beside her, Drew turned too.
“What’s not to love?” she asked, not bothering to hide the little bit of wistfulness that had crept into her voice. Because to her, there really wasn’t anything not to love about where she lived. The land itself was achingly beautiful; dotted with old farms and new gardens. The fact that she lived in such a striking place—a place that very nearly felt enchanted at times—was something she still had a difficult time absorbing on occasion.
And as if to give voice to that difficulty, a familiar, uncomfortable feeling began creeping into her mind as she stood there taking it all in. At times like these, times when she paused and let herself really see where she lived, really feel it, an old, recognizable panic would set in. Reminding her that while she may feel as though she belonged here now, it was a feeling that had been taken from her before.
Abruptly, she turned and started back up the trail.
“It is lovely,” Drew said, as he followed her along the path.
Carly let out a little breath. “Yes, it is,” she agreed, because that was what he would expect her to say.
She turned her attention back to their more immediate surroundings and several more minutes passed as they continued their walk. At one point, she stumbled over a tree root, and as she became aware of the pull of her uniform across her body, she also became uncomfortably aware of just how poorly police uniforms fit. Of course, a flattering fit wasn’t the point and she knew she shouldn’t even be thinking about it. But having someone so immaculately put together breezing along behind her like he was out and about on the streets of New York wasn’t putting her in the most charitable, or reasonable, of moods.
“Is it much farther?” she asked.
“Just around the bend,” Drew answered with a gesture to their right.
Knowing how close they were to the scene sharpened her focus, making her more alert and aware of her everything around her. Despite her doubts about her personal life and her wardrobe, Carly was confident about her job. It was the one area of her life in which she felt completely and utterly competent, where she knew beyond a doubt that she was capable. The certainty she felt concerning her professional life was like a security web that held the rest of her life together.
“Drew?” a voice called from their right.
“Yes, it’s us,” Drew answered as they rounded the bend.
Carly stopped and took in the scene before acknowledging the other man.
The trail continued on to her right, but her eyes were drawn to the hill that rose sharply in front of her. She knew if she forged ahead, Churchkill Road lay less than five minutes up the rise. But between where she stood and where the road ran, the land was uneven and littered with the leaves of past falls. It was also dotted with enough trees to cast the area into a shadowed darkness, with sunlight managing to filter through the few spaces made by branches that had already shed their leaves.
Covered in leaves and debris and lying about three quarters of the way between the road and where Carly stood was the body of a woman. A body that looked as if it had rolled down the hill and come to an awkward, and final, stop.
She lay mostly on her stomach, but with the pitch of the hill, she’d rolled slightly onto her side, giving Carly a view of her back. The woman was wearing a dark rose-colored lightweight knit sweater that was covered in bits of leaves and small twigs, both of which were also tangled in her long dark brown hair, which fell across her back and the ground behind her.
Though Carly could not see her face, there was no question in her mind that she was looking at the form of a woman. With the discernable dip of her waist and curve of her hip, the woman’s body lay much like Carly’s own did when she reclined on her side. Also, one of the woman’s arms was thrown over her head, leaving a delicate, feminine hand in view. Those details, along with her hair and her petite feet—feet that were bare—left Carly with no doubt that Drew had been right when he’d first referred to the body as “her.”
Moving her focus from the body back to the area around it, Carly scanned the hillside. It wasn’t a bad spot for a body dump, and though Carly would need to wait for Vivi, the medical examiner, to make the official call and then for all the evidence to come in, it was pretty obvious to her that that was exactly what this spot was—a body dump. Whoever the woman was, Carly knew she hadn’t died there, not given what she was—and wasn’t—wearing. Which led Carly to believe that she probably hadn’t died naturally, either. There was something reckless in the way the woman had been left, something that spoke of a careless disregard for human life.
“Carly?”
Turning to look at Drew, she caught a look of concern on his face.
“Yes?” she responded, wary of just what he might be concerned about. There was, of course, the body to be apprehensive about, but it was also possible that he was wondering why Carly was just standing there—apparently doing nothing—and wondering whether or not she had the ability to do the job that needed to be done. It was a lot to read into a single word, but between being a woman in a male-dominated profession, and a younger woman at that, she almost couldn’t blame him. Almost.
“You let out a big sigh, everything okay?” he answered.
She frowned. She hadn’t remembered sighing. Then again, she’d been caught up in cataloging the scene.
“Other than her,” Carly said with a small gesture of her head toward the woman, “everything is fine. I was just thinking that this scene isn’t going to be the easiest to process.”
“No, I doubt it is,” came a response, this time from the man at Drew’s side—presumably Dani Fuller’s husband, Ty.
Carly switched her gaze from Drew to Ty. Both men had moved off to the side, well away from the body and the scene she and her team would need to process. Unlike Drew, with his lanky, sophisticated appearance, Ty Fuller came across as down-to-earth and real to her, or maybe just more like the men she was used to seeing. He was tall, almost as tall as Drew, and built more solidly—exactly what she would expect from a former SEAL—and definitely differently than Drew, whose physique looked more like a swimmer’s than anything else. Ty also had dark hair and dark eyes, and in his jeans, boots, and leather jacket, he could have been any town’s working man.
“You must be Ty Fuller,” she said, walking forward to shake his hand.
“Call me Ty, please,” he said with a nod before casting Drew a quick look.
“Ty, this is Deputy Chief Carly Drummond.” Drew performed the introductions.
“Nice to meet you,” Ty said. “I saw you briefly at the fundraiser, which would have been a more pleasant place to meet, but...” He stopped talking and just shrugged in a gesture of “what can you do?”
“I was there but on duty and got called away about ten minutes after I arrived, but I know Kit was happy you were all able to come. Now, not to be rude or anything, but I need to radio my partner where we are, then I’d like to ask you a few qu
estions. Both of you,” she added.
The two men nodded as she stepped a short distance away to make her call to Marcus. She’d noted her GPS position when they’d arrived and relayed that information to him. She also gave him a quick debrief on the scene and asked him to warn the support vehicles to stay to the center of the road. Churchkill Road was a dead end—whoever had brought that body there had to have turned around somewhere. They’d look for tire impressions at the two spots where the dirt road widened enough to turn a vehicle around between where the body had been dumped and the Kirby farm. But she didn’t want to rule out getting any additional impression matches from the road coming in. It wasn’t likely they’d find a lot, but she’d rather play it safe and preserve as much of the road as possible.
When she turned back, Drew and Ty were both leaning against the trunk of a large fallen tree. Ty had his hands tucked into his jacket pockets and Drew’s arms were crossed. Both were silent and seemed lost in thought.
“I know this isn’t all together new to you,” she said to Ty with another gesture toward the woman behind them. “But it must have come as a surprise this morning. Can you tell me everything that happened, including whether or not you touched anything?”
Carly almost smiled when Ty answered the last part first, as adept as his wife in knowing what was foremost on her mind.
“We came around the bend and saw her. Drew stayed back, but I approached from there,” he said, pointing out the path he’d taken from the trail to the body, “and felt for a pulse. I didn’t move the body in the process as I was able to reach her artery by reaching into the gap created by the arm that’s raised over her head and her neck. When it was clear she wasn’t alive, and she was cold to the touch, I backed out the way I came and have pretty much been standing here ever since.”
Carly glanced back at the body then turned back to the men. “Thank you,” she said, acknowledging their caution. “I’ll let the evidence teams know. And now, can you tell me what happened?”
Frailty of Things Page 32
