We look like a Jenga puzzle game, all arms and legs askew. The breath is knocked from me, and I can hear Deputy Davis grunting. He’d better not be enjoying himself. I roll off and he helps me up. He begins brushing the sand and dirt from the back of my jacket while I use my fingers to comb the sand out of my hair. He brushes the back of my butt and I move away.
I’m armed.
“I owe you one, Deputy Davis,” I say.
Actually, I owe him two—black eyes—if he touches me again.
“Not necessary, ma’am. I mean Detective Carpenter.”
Deputy Davis is a year younger than me. He has thick brown hair and a mustache that screams vintage porn star. Or maybe cop. Cop is much better. He’s not particularly overweight, but his stomach somehow manages to roll over his coaster-size buckle. He’s a good cop and a total pleaser as evidenced by his willingness and ability to make the climb down. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to break him of the habit of calling me “ma’am” and he tries. I have learned to accept it. He is being a gentleman. It’s the way he was raised. He explained to me that his mother taught him to call all ladies “ma’am” and all men “sir.”
My mother taught me to lie, manipulate, betray, and worse.
“Show me what we have, Deputy Davis,” I say. He likes to be called “Deputy.”
He climbs over some of the bigger rocks and I try to keep up. I can see the water lick at the rocks thirty feet away. I still don’t see a body. I wonder how Boyd saw a foot. I reposition myself on a large rock and look toward the water and I see it. A bare foot, ankle, and part of a lower leg. Toes pointing up.
We make our way closer until I can see the body. A woman. White. On her back in a small sandy area, a twenty-by-ten-foot stretch of beach. Her legs are pointed toward me, her head toward the cove. Her legs are spread with the rock between them. I look to the left and to the right. Boyd was correct: the rocks block any entrance to the body without going into the water. I will have to go over the rocks to get to the body. Or swim from the boat ramp.
I climb on top of another rock and look directly down on the body. Long reddish hair covers half of the face. My guess is she’s in her mid-twenties. Just as Robbie Boyd said, she’s wearing only a bra and panties. I look around but don’t see clothes. Her face is battered; her bottom lip split so much that I can see teeth through the cut. Dark, indented marks circle her wrists and ankles. A wider one encircles her slender neck. Her skin is light blue, but I see deeper blue or black marks on her torso.
It appears she’s been beaten or kicked.
I take out my cell phone and breathe in. I’ve got two bars. I’m tempted to call Ronnie and ask her to climb down. Instead, I call Captain Marvel of the Marine Patrol and advise him of the situation. It will take half an hour for the patrol to arrive.
I also phone Jerry Larsen, our coroner. Since he’s in his sixties, he won’t be able to make the climb. When he answers, I tell him to meet me at the boat ramp where Mac is parked. He can take the boat. I’d rather not get on the boat with Marvel.
“Do you have a camera, Deputy Davis?”
Davis reaches for his backpack and proffers a digital Nikon.
“Take all the pictures you can,” I tell him. “Some of where we climbed down and from there to where I’m at now. How high do you think that cliff is? Thirty feet? Forty?”
“Over thirty, ma’am.” He starts clicking away. He doesn’t have to be told to get close-ups or to tell me if he saw something unusual. Davis has worked crime scenes before.
“Captain Martin will want to take his own,” Davis reminds me, and I say nothing.
Captain Marvel can do whatever the hell he wants as long as he gets the body out without destroying evidence, and gets it someplace where I can get a better look. I always assume homicide until I know different.
Davis says what I’m thinking.
“I don’t think she was swimming.”
“And she didn’t fall from the top of the cliff unless she was running about forty miles an hour before she jumped,” I add.
“How long do you think she’s been here, ma’am?” he asks.
“Long enough to be dead,” I say, and immediately regret being smart with him. “We’ll have to wait for the coroner.”
I trace a way to move from rock to rock and maybe get down to the body, and I go for it. I slip only once and bang a knee. That’s going to leave a bruise. I’m on the gravelly, sandy shoreline now. Ten feet from the body. Her legs are pointed inland. She had to be brought in by boat. Pulled up into the rocks. Dumped. Posed. The tide has erased any drag marks in the sand. The body is at least fifteen, twenty feet from the water, but she has been pulled in between some rocks large enough to hide her body from the water. If Boyd hadn’t climbed down the cliff and spotted her, it might have been some time before she was found.
“Damn,” Davis says, and I turn toward him.
“What?” My heart is pumping a little.
“I ran out of film,” Davis says.
“That’s a digital camera. Stop fooling around.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
He doesn’t sound sorry, but I forgive him. It’s the first time he’s ever shown any type of humor. He’s usually so focused and eager to please that I want him to loosen up. Humor is law enforcement’s way of pushing emotion away so you can function under pressure. I wonder what is stressing Davis out. He has worked horrible scenes with me before and seemed okay. I would ask him, but I don’t want to see another grown man cry today. I had that earlier with the fire marshal.
As I look over the body, I wonder how she got there. Maybe she was kidnapped, beaten, taken on a boat to be dumped at sea. Then she jumped overboard and ended up here. She would have had to have been pretty desperate to do something like that. I don’t even want to step out into the cold water.
The more I look at the position of the body, the more I see a dump site. She was brought here by someone.
I’m punching the sheriff’s number into my phone to update him when my phone rings. I answer.
“This is Nan. I’ve been trying to call you for half an hour.”
Nan is an administrative assistant, not my boss. Not anyone’s boss, for that matter. Even so, she acts like one.
“Sorry, Nan. The reception is sketchy here. I was just getting ready to call Sheriff Gray to tell him there are body parts everywhere and… oh, crap!”
“What?”
I say with a wicked grin, “I just stepped on a finger. At least, I think it’s a finger. Or maybe it’s a small—”
“I don’t want to hear,” Nan says. “I just want to tell you that a state patrolman named MacDonald has been calling and asking for your phone number.”
“Did you give it to him?”
“I didn’t think I should. I told him I’d pass the message on to you. Do you want his number?”
“Yes.”
She provides the number.
“Is the sheriff done with the Gamble family?” I ask.
“I can go ask him.”
I know she’s lying. She knows everything about everybody. Except me. “Never mind. Tell him to call me,” I say. I disconnect before I yell at her. I don’t know if she’s really stupid or if she’s just trying to get my goat.