Chapter 1-2
1545 Words
She passed several puddles of greenish brown liquid and the stench of puke mixed with the smell of Shanna’s blood as she neared the body. She felt no urge to throw up herself, or anything much at all. But that was because she’d somehow managed to disassociate. She was very good at dissociating. This sight would haunt her nightmares for years to come, probably until the end of her life, but right now she no longer saw the daughter of her good friend, but a victim that she needed to get justice for.
A young woman whose face and neck and probably much of the rest of her body were covered by shallow knife slashes, some of which had already scabbed over. This death didn’t come quickly. Shanna had suffered. And Lynn dreaded the moment she would have to face Cindy and Roy and tell them that.
Shanna’s hands and feet were bound to the wide maple tree trunk by a thick black nylon rope. But despite all the blood covering her face, torso and legs, there was none on the ground around her. Or the tree trunk behind her. Except a few swipes from where the killer maneuvered her into position so he could tie her to it. She had been dead by then. A small mercy.
Shanna was killed somewhere else and brought here after the rain had already stopped. Lynn was sure of it, because otherwise the rain would have washed the blood off her face too.
Lynn snapped a few photos of the body and the scene, carefully stepping around the tree noting all she could. Nothing struck out.
Sheriff Payton had begun approaching and she waved at him to stop, then retreated back to him, careful to only step the tracks she had already made on her way there.
“Why hasn’t she been cut down?” she asked Payton. “Has the medical examiner attended yet?”
Payton nodded. “Yes, he pronounced her dead. But we agreed it was best to keep everything else as it was for the forensics to take a look at.”
Lynn glanced around. “Where are the forensics?”
They were in a part of the camping ground that seemed out of service. The five or so cabins nearest to there had shuttered windows. Bushes and trees grew right up to their porches, and in some cases through them. On one, a tree sapling had sprouted in the middle of the porch and had already reached the awning. Some of the bushes came up to Lynn’s waist and at almost five feet nine inches she wasn’t a short woman.
“Getting here soon,” Payton said. “They’re coming out from Albany.”
In the distance, she could see a few occupied cabins. And the pale faces of the renters—people who had come here for a fun, adventurous getaway, but instead woke up to a gruesome crime scene.
“I’ll get our people on it,” she told Payton. “Have your deputies find a tent to conceal the body from view. Something big, like what they put up at outdoor weddings.”
He gave her a dark look.
“I don’t take orders from you,” Payton said petulantly, sounding like a kid and not a man over sixty, which he was. “And I didn’t say you could stay.”
That wasn’t up to him. Lynn hadn’t asked for his permission to investigate this case, and she didn’t need it. Getting the local authorities to cooperate is always better and easier in the long run, but it’s also always a dance, according to her colleagues, anyway. Lynn was in no mood to be friendly with rude old men for this morning.
“I will be conducting the investigation into Ms. Myers’ death. I hope we can find a way to work together,” Lynn told him bluntly. “My partner will be here shortly and we will be utilizing our crime lab and techs. As well as our own pathologist.”
Payton’s light blue eyes had started growing narrower and narrower as she spoke, and they were mere black slits now.
“We can’t rule out that this was a hate crime either, which would put it under FBI’s jurisdiction,” Lynn added. “The victim was mixed race, African American and Indian. And this is a predominantly white area of the country.”
He’d opened his mouth to argue, doubtlessly to say something nasty, but laying out those facts for him had shut him up.
“Please find a way to conceal the body and preserve the area around it as quickly as possible,” she told him. “Has anyone started canvassing the area and interviewing possible witnesses yet?”
“I have four deputies taking statements, and the police are enroute,” he said.
“Who reported her missing?” Lynn asked.
“She was here with a group of ten film students from New York University, as far as we can tell,” Payton said. “She was the star of the movie they were making. And when she didn’t show up for filming yesterday evening, they called us.”
“But you didn’t come out last night, did you?”
Payton shrugs, the left side of his mouth twisting up. “Procedure is to wait 24 hours before going to look for a missing person.”
“Not when a hiker might’ve gotten hurt,” Lynn interjected.
Payton nodded. “Right, which is why a deputy was dispatched. And after speaking to the victim’s friends, the ones who reported her missing, he concluded that she had most likely just gone back home without telling them. According to them, she’d spent more time complaining about the role she was playing and the conditions under which they were filming than she did acting.”
Lynn’s heart felt like someone was squeezing it in an iron-clad fist. Shanna was spoiled. She’d grown up with everything, including the love and devotion of her adoptive parents. But she wasn’t a bad kid. She was kind and attentive and caring.
“Did she take any belongings with her when she left?” Lynn asked. “How was the Deputy so sure there was nothing to worry about?”
The town she grew up in was surrounded by vacation homes much like the cabins in these woods. If an out-of-towner back home had gone missing on a hike, her father would’ve organized a full search right away. The Sheriff’s office, canine unit, volunteers and townsfolk would all have participated. But Sheriff Rivers ran a tight ship, both at work and at home. Payton might not be cut from the same cloth.
“There was a strong reason to suspect she’d simply gone back home,” Payton said, waving to someone over Lynn’s shoulder.
She turned to see the forensics unit finally arriving—a woman and three men all in white coveralls, carrying silver-colored cases.
“Deputy Walsh took the report. Speak to him.”
Then he hurried to meet the forensic team without waiting for Lynn to say anything else. Lynn saw no harm in them getting started while they waited for the Bureau’s crime scene specialists to get here.
She walked over to the crime scene tape, looking this way and that, trying and failing to read the officers’ name tags in the gloom under the thick foliage.
“Walsh is in the dining hall building talking with the victim’s friends,” a female deputy said to her.
She was maybe thirty years old, with nearly white blonde hair pulled into a tight ballerina-type bun on the back of her head and the lightest blue eyes Lynn had ever seen. The black uniform made her seem even paler than she was and her hand was ice cold as she offered it to Lynn. “I’m Tara Stone. I can show you the way.”
“That will have to wait. I’m going to meet the victim’s parents now,” Lynn said and the deep hurt entering the young woman’s eyes almost made Lynn change her mind about asking what she was about to. But at the same time, it also made Tara perfect for the task.
“I would like to do so in a private room at the Sheriff’s office, with someone on hand who can tell them everything that’s been discovered and offer them comfort. Could you come with me and facilitate this?”
Tara’s eyes clouded over, turning glassy and Lynn was sure she’d try and make an excuse. Then she squared her shoulders and nodded. “I can help. I’ll go ahead to the office and make the arrangements. Bring them in when they arrive.”
Lynn thanked her and checked her watch as Tara walked away. It was just after ten AM.
Shanna’s parents had taken a red-eye flight out of Mexico City that would have put them at JFK Airport at seven AM. They’d be here soon.
She had to intercept them before they stumbled onto the crime scene the way she had.
Getting over the loss of their only child would be hard enough without seeing exactly how she had died.
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