The tape player shuts off. My mind instantly switches back to the case—a defense mechanism, I’m sure. I need to send a full-face photo and physical description to all the surrounding law enforcement agencies to see if they have any record, had any contact, with my Jane Doe.
I hate calling her that. Depersonalizes her. I’ll give her a name and decide to call the victim Jane Snow.
I get on the phone and call Dispatch. Someone new answers the phone and I don’t want to talk with someone new. I finally get Susie.
“Susie, I need you to put out an all-points bulletin.”
“Nice to hear from you, Megan. I don’t think you’ve called me lately. How am I? I’m fine. What has been going on in my life? Well, you don’t want to know.”
“Susie,” I say. “Please don’t make me come over there and get nasty.”
Susie chuckles. “I’m teasing, Megan. What can I do you for?”
This is another slang cop line that never made any sense. She couldn’t do me for anything. I play along. “You heard about the woman we found on Marrowstone this morning?”
“We were just talking about that,” she says. “Do you have a name?”
“No. That’s why I want you to use whatever you have at your disposal to get her description out to every law enforcement agency in our county and the surrounding ones. If we don’t get a response, I may want to go wider.”
Susie’s all in. “What should the message say?”
I give her a complete description of the body and add the possibility the victim might have had a child. I don’t want to give out too much information, but I want to get some serious responses. Washington has the fourth-highest missing person rate in the country. A study was funded by taxpayers called the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs. Now every law enforcement agency uses it, including those in Oregon and Washington. I have the app on my computer and had run the description that afternoon. I got forty-two possibles, but none were close to the dates I wanted except two. I found nothing else on those two. Not even a Facebook page. I give Susie the names and other information on those two just in case something was entered since I last checked.
Susie says she’ll call me if she gets anything. I ask her to send me an email instead. It’ll be faster. And I want to listen to the rest of the tape. I disconnect and drink some Cutty.
The tumbler has somehow emptied itself. The Scotch is doing its job. I take the tape out of the player, put it back in its case, and return the case to the box. I put the tape player in with them and put the box back on the top shelf of my closet and crawl under the covers.
My eyes closed, I breathe in and exhale. Each deliberate breath is meant to calm, soothe me to sleep. Scare away the bad dreams.
It never works.
Nothing does.
It’s her.
She comes to me like a scorpion crawling up the stairs. Her eyes are red. Red, like an albino bunny. But not cute. Horrible. Full of terror. I turn from her eyes to the sound of cutting, gnawing into the wood of the steps. It’s her, of course. I don’t scream. I just get ready. Lifting herself by her muscled arms, she reminds me of Wyeth’s Christina’s World. I hate that painting.
I hate helplessness.
I will myself to wake up. I sit up shivering, staring at the darkness outside my window. I hold the feeling I had in my dream and I wonder if it is anything like how the victims in my case felt when confronted with their killer’s eyes. Did they fight or accede?
Twelve
A light rain mists the trees and grass this morning, sending dewy diamonds into my view as I make the drive to the office. A pair of deer stand in the roadway, taking their sweet time to cross. I live in a beautiful part of the country. Mountains. Lakes. Salt water. Sometimes I wonder if the beauty of the Northwest is a mask covering the ugly that lurks inside. Peel back the image. See the dead girl. Seal it back up.
Go on a picnic.
When I arrive at work, the sheriff has his door closed and I can hear laughter inside. A woman. Her laughter is penetrating. Forced.
Ronnie.
I don’t knock on the door, although I am tempted to break up whatever she is trying to do. No way am I going to be stuck with her again. I know Sheriff Gray wants me to take her to the autopsy today, but when she starts talking, the corpse will get up and run. I pick up my files on the case, check the basket for new reports from Crime Scene or the Marine Patrol, then head for the door.
I don’t make it very far.
Sheriff Gray calls to me from his doorway.
“Megan. I heard your car pull in.”
“You did?” I purposely parked in the farthest parking spot.
“It’s about time we upgraded you. The mufflers on that Taurus sound like they belong on a diesel truck.”
“I hadn’t noticed. The Taurus is fine. I’ll talk to you when I come back.”
“Not so fast.” He reaches in and brings Reserve Deputy Ronnie Marsh out by one arm. She doesn’t look excited. She’s not laughing anymore.
“Sorry. I forgot, Sheriff.” I nod at Ronnie. “Coming?”
She looks at the sheriff and he gives her a serious look.
“You’ve got to get the whole experience, Deputy Marsh,” he tells her. “You might want to work with Megan one day. Not that Motor Patrol’s not important. Or the jail. You could always work with the corrections officers at the jail. Have you rotated through there yet?”
Ronnie snatches her coat off a peg by the sheriff’s door and hurries over to me.
“We should get going,” she says. “Wouldn’t want to miss the autopsy.”
Ronnie looks pale. Sheriff Gray grins. She doesn’t see it, but I do.
The sly dog.
Outside the Taurus we go through the same routine. Me trying the key fob, remembering the fob doesn’t work, using the key. When we get settled, I see that Ronnie is wearing her uniform. Brown twill pants with a light brown stripe down the legs. A light brown shirt with a sparkling new gold sheriff’s badge. New brown lace-up boots too.
She sees me appraising her.
“I thought I should wear something I could work in today,” she says. “I hope it’s all right.”
I wonder if vomit will come out of the shirt very easily. Where we are headed, she may need a hooded raincoat.
“Perfect,” I say. “It will give you more authority until people get to know who you are.”
Ronnie adjusts the shiny badge on the left front of her shirt. Most of the deputies have opted for the embroidered badges. The shiny steel badges make for a good target, and they tear your expensive uniform shirt when they are ripped off during an arrest.
She’ll learn the hard way.
“I see you have your hair pinned up,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “I took the self-defense classes at the academy and the instructor kept harping on not having long hair.”
I wonder if she thinks I’ve been harping on her as well. I don’t care.
“Oh. I forgot to give you this.” She opens her purse and takes out an envelope with my name printed on it.
It is already opened. It’s the crime scene report I’ve been waiting for. I read the report and it more or less backs up what Larsen said last night. It also indicates they checked the cliff for one hundred yards and found no evidence of someone scaling down besides us. It documents every soda and beer can they’d found. The all-seeing eye is in the report and they collected the rock. I may want to keep it after this case is over.