The Forgotten Girl (Lynn Rivers Mysteries, Book One)

Chapter 1-1

Special Agent Lynn Rivers was hugging her upper body and shivering so hard her teeth were chattering as she walked through the woods. Leaves, rotted and fresh, squelched, rustled and cracked under the rubber soles of her leather boots. The air was icy-cold, even though bright rays of the sun, glaring through dark blue autumn rain clouds blinded her the whole way here. But that’s not what made her shake.

That was all down to the sickening anxiety roiling and burning in the pit of her stomach. Her hands were clammy as she held her long Pepita grey coat tightly closed, her breathing came in short erratic gasps, and her heart was thumping, pumping blood through her with all the speed and noise of a freight train.

At the end of this trek, she would find a terribly disfigured young woman. But that wasn’t the real reason for her body’s violent fight-or-flight reaction either. For now, she could still pretend that the victim was not the same young woman she watched grow up.

Pretend. That’s all she could do. Because, as her body already seemed to know, her life would be forever changed by what she was about to find at the end of this trek. Once again irrevocably changed.

Just as it had been at the end of those other two treks in the past, through woods just like these. Not just like these, they were the same woods. They even smelled the same—rotting leaves on the ground, fresh ones dying and about to fall, the air crisp carrying just a hint of snow that wouldn’t fall for at least another month. The smell of autumn. The smell of her childhood. The smell of what had always been her favorite time of year.

like theseMemories of those past treks were flooding her mind now. The bright sun blinding her made the leaves above her and all around her glow copper and gold, but she didn’t really see any of it. All she saw was the darkness in her mind.

The first of those two terrible treks had occurred in the faint grey light of a misty autumn dawn. She’d been on her way home, but saw a yellow light shining unnaturally brightly amid leafless trees in a forest that should’ve still been dark. She walked towards it.

The air had been cold. Colder than it was today. Ice hung heavy in the damp morning air. The fallen, rotten leaves crunched and broke under her sneakers, because they were frozen. But she’d still been warm. Because she’d just come from the best night of her life.

Her father’s deputy—Terrence—had caught her in a wide embrace before she reached the pool of bright light, his broad back shielding her from the view that light illuminated from her. But not before she saw her best friend’s sightless blue eyes staring at the grey sky. Alicia’s skin glowed gold in the artificial light of the reflectors, everything else seemed to be in black and white.

The second time a trek through these woods ended the life she had known, it had been night and the lights guiding her were blue and white and flashing. They were bringing her to a two-story house with well-kept, white wood siding, and a pitched roof, red carnations in white pots on all the windows and embroidered lace curtains obstructing the view inside. Only the window of her bedroom on the second floor overlooking the forest was open. Only her window was dark.

Deputy Terrence didn’t rush out to intercept her this time. He had been standing by the old, wide, oak tree growing just to the side of the front door as she passed him, one of his hands braced against the thick trunk, the other across his stomach like he had been about to throw up. No one stopped her from going into the house.

So she had entered her home. And saw the blood. Saw her mother in her pink and yellow floral night gown lying in a glistening pool of crimson by the kitchen counter, the cup of warm milk and honey she’d always drink before bed laying in pieces beside her, the white almost swallowed by the red.

Her father was in the den just off the kitchen. Sitting behind the honey-colored walnut desk in his high back, black leather chair, his head thrown back, a single star-shaped circle of black in the center of his forehead. His face and white button-down shirt covered in dark blood.

Her brother Drew had already been taken to the hospital. She wouldn’t see him again for a while. Not until he healed from the gunshot wound to his stomach and the stab to his throat, claiming he remembered nothing of that night and protesting his innocence, screaming that he hadn’t killed his mother and father.

No one had believed him. Not Deputy Terrence or any of their father’s other men. Not anyone in town. Not the twelve men and women of the jury. Not their sister Kate. Not even Lynn. Not all the time, anyway.

Lynn stopped and took a deep breath of the cool air. Then she let her coat fall open relaxed her arms, shaking them out as she threw her head back and slowly counted to ten, picturing each number in her head like the glowing green digits on a radio alarm clock, focusing just on the freezing air going in and out of lungs. An exercise in grounding and focus that usually worked. Today she’d have to count to at least a thousand if she wanted to get even close to calmness. She didn’t have that kind of time.

These woods touched the ones surrounding the house and the town she grew up in. It’s been twenty years since she was anywhere near them. And it’s been nearly that long since the memories of what happened there had been this vivid in her mind.

But that’s all they were, memories. Things long since done and dusted and dealt with, however poorly.

She was needed here and now. That’s all she should be focusing on.

Her former criminal psychology professor and one of her closest friends, Cindy Myers, had called her last night. Frantic. Speaking disjointedly and almost incoherently, saying her daughter had gone missing in the woods upstate two days ago and no one was looking for her. Asking Lynn to help find her.

Cindy and her husband Roy were in the middle of their annual two-week break in Cabo, but were returning on an overnight flight this morning.

Lynn had tried to calm her friend down, placating her as best she could, promising she’d look into it. Which she did. And got the call this morning.

Shanna Myers wasn’t missing anymore.

She’d been found at dawn by a camper who couldn’t sleep.

No one had requested the FBI’s presence, but Lynn was here anyway and her partner TJ would be arriving shortly. And as much as she’d rather still be far away from these woods, she’d find out who killed Shanna Myers.

Which, twenty years on, was a lot more than she could say about the murders of her parents and her best friend.

* * *

Lynn heard the chatter of voices and saw the officers making it long before she reached the yellow and black crime scene tape tied around thick tree trunks in a haphazard manner, higher up on one side and lower on the other, forming an irregularly shaped circle. The arrangement worked fairly well to keep the gawking public at a good distance from the body, behind thick trees and bushes so they didn’t have a good view, but too few officers were manning the perimeter, and she was about fifteen yards from the bloodied body tied to a tree before anyone stopped her.

Bloodied. That’s the only way to describe it. Shanna’s pretty face was gone. Concealed by maroon-colored blood and black gashes. Her clothes—jeans and a hot pink windbreaker—were maroon too. The only reason they could ID her so quickly was her phone and wallet, which had been placed at her feet. One of her shoes was tightly laced, the other loose and slanted sideways as though she had just sprained her ankle and hadn’t yet righted her foot. She never would. The thought made Lynn’s throat constrict painfully.

“Who are you?” a gruff voice asked her.

She turned to face the man who spoke. He was wearing the black-on-black sheriff’s uniform, the collar of his fleece-lined leather jacket turned up around his neck, his moustache, hair and eyebrows a silvery grey.

But she didn’t really see him. She saw Shanna as she had been—the baby Cindy and Roy brought back from New Mexico where she was born to a mother that didn’t want her, the little four-year-old with golden brown hair laughing and talking a mile a minute, thanking Lynn for the birthday present of a robot dog, the eighteen-year-old graduating from high school, her golden face aglow with joy and pride. Lynn was always there during Shanna’s early years, so much so that Shanna called her auntie, but then life had taken them all in different directions since then.

Yet she did still make an effort to attend at least the most important milestones in Shanna’s life. The last such was her high school graduation. That was only three years ago now. Lynn was glad she couldn’t see Shanna’s face today. And she had to put the vivid one from her memories out of her mind too. Else she’d be no help.

She produced her badge from the pocket of her coat and showed it to the Sheriff. “I’m Special Agent Lynn Rivers. FBI. Here at the request of the family. And who are you?”

She’d forestalled his question of why she was here by already answering it, and his mouth worked silently for a couple of moments, probably trying to come up with a new one.

“Sheriff Payton,” he finally said. “Rivers, you say? We had a Sheriff by that name in the next county once. Any relation?”

Lynn pocketed the badge again and pointed to the crime scene tape. “You need to extend the perimeter, get people further back. And find more men to oversee it.”

She ignored his question because they were standing in one of the more gruesome crime scenes Lynn had visited in the last twenty years. And because, yes, her father had been Sheriff Clyde Rivers from the next county over and she would not be taking that particular trip down memory lane with this man.

He puffed out his chest and harrumphed. “This is my crime scene and I know what I’m doing.”

“The victim’s parents are on the way,” she said. “No one stopped me from walking right up to the body. Do you want her mother and father to see her like this?”

He paled, muttered something under his breath and called over two of his deputies, instructing them to oversee the cordon and not let anyone nearer than a hundred yards. Easier said than done, since they were in the middle of a popular camping ground and most of the dark wood log cabins scattered amid the trees looked occupied.

Lynn walked up to the body, careful to only step in the prints left by the thick-soled boots the Sheriff and his deputies were wearing. As it was, they’d trampled the area around the tree and Shanna’s body to a nearly flat surface, but she’d do what she could to preserve the rest of it.

It had rained sometime during the night. Not much, but enough to turn the ground muddy. She could still smell the fresh moisture infusing the leaves and branches, as well as the rot and dying that moisture accentuated.