“Sheriff?” Lucy called when she got close enough that her voice wouldn’t be swallowed by the slap of rain against oversaturated earth.
He heard her, he did. There was a new tension in his body that hadn’t been there before. But he didn’t turn when he answered. “Yes, ma’am.”
Lucy stepped up beside him, let herself follow his sight line. They were on a slight rise, a hill that sloped down, gently at first, until it dropped off into a wide valley. Mountains rose up on either side, jagged thrusts of gray, weathered rock against an oatmeal-colored sky. A thick, black river wound its way through the center.
“I’m Special Agent—”
“Know who you are,” Hicks cut her off, finally glancing in her direction, his face still shadowed by his cowboy hat. Only the strong line of his clenched jaw was visible.
The brusqueness didn’t come with any sharp edges, just the familiar practicality Lucy was used to with people who lived on modern frontiers. She wasn’t so removed from her own childhood as to forget it.
No need for small talk or further introductions, clearly.
“That’s where Noah Dawson was found?” she asked, jerking her chin toward the tree line not far from where they stood. Found, because the body had been moved. There hadn’t been enough blood for the location to be where he’d died, the team had reported.
Nodding once, Hicks shifted, his shoulder brushing hers enough to get her to turn with him as he did. They started toward the forest, keeping to the slight ridgeline by unspoken agreement. The mud along the graveled parking lot had loosened up beneath the unrelenting rain, making it nearly unpassable. Where they walked was only marginally better, both catching the other once or twice as their boots, despite their tough treads, lost their traction against the slickness.
The evergreen trees huddled together, their branches overlapping enough to provide the first little bit of relief since Lucy had stepped out of the car. She wasn’t completely protected, but she could actually breathe, could actually think beyond cold and wet.
Once they entered the woods, the pounding sheets of rain were muted as if coming from a distance—and neither she nor Hicks broke the silence as they trekked deeper. Lucy followed close behind the sheriff as he led the way along a trail that could only generously be called “maintained.”
An itch started at her shoulder blades, getting more persistent the farther she and Hicks went, and Lucy called up an image of Eliza. The girl was five foot nothing, if that, her frame delicate, her bones almost fragile beneath that pale skin. She seemed more like an idea, a wisp that could dissolve into air, than a solid person.
How had she carried a twelve-year-old boy this far?
There was no way. She couldn’t have.
But then if Noah Dawson hadn’t been dead at the time Eliza had brought him here, how had she controlled him? With the knife that Eliza said was the murder weapon?
Even a small twelve-year-old boy could probably have overwhelmed Eliza if that had been her only weapon. Or at the very least he could have run off into the night to get away from his captor. Had she had a gun? If so, why not use it to kill Noah? Had he been drugged? If so, why go through the trouble of taking him so deep into the forest?
The FBI team Vaughn had deployed the minute Eliza had turned over the directions to the body had deferred to the local medical examiner instead of transporting the body all the way back to the Spokane lab. Lucy almost wished they hadn’t.
The report from the field team had been brief to a fault, the bare facts doing nothing to add to the picture Lucy was trying to get of the murder.
There were too many questions here, and rushed by Vaughn’s deadline, Lucy hadn’t had time to start the deep background research she usually did on cases. Beyond some basic Google and database searches about the town, and a few crime scene photos from the Spokane team, Lucy didn’t have much to go on.
Except . . . she did.
She had the confession, the location of the body, and the murder weapon. Did it really matter if she knew exactly how Eliza had gotten Noah out this deep in the woods? Did it really matter that walking all this way had made Lucy start to wonder about a possible accomplice?
It wasn’t her job to tell a story about what happened; that was up to the prosecutor when the time came. And Lucy was sure, even without whatever she found here, he would have a nice narrative to spin for the jury.
But she’d bought herself a few days to scratch this itch beneath her skin, and so she would use them wisely.
She’d been glad the sheriff had wanted to meet here, because getting a sense of the body drop location had been second only to touching base with him anyway. She usually took for granted that it would be one of the first things she’d do on a case—walking the same paths the killer walked gave her a much better sense of all the practical pitfalls Eliza would have had to deal with.
Next would be seeing the body and then talking to the families. To see if Noah and Eliza had ever interacted, to see where their lives had crossed and for how long. To figure out if Noah had been just a random victim, or if he’d been chosen by Eliza for a particular reason.
When she was done with all that, she might just have more than a gut reaction to report back to Vaughn. Or maybe Lucy would have exactly what she’d started with—a closed case.
Lucy stuttered to a halt on the path behind Hicks when he stopped without warning. There didn’t seem to be much around, so she just waited.
“The creek,” Hicks said, and once he did, Lucy could hear it, the babble blending in with the rain so that it was almost indistinguishable.
Hicks stepped off the path, and Lucy followed once more, brambles catching against the denim that was plastered to her thighs. After a few steps the trees thinned out, opening onto a narrow stream swollen from the storm.
About ten feet to their right was the unmistakable yellow of crime scene tape, cordoning off several large boulders.
“Tell me,” Lucy murmured, adopting the clipped, efficient speech pattern with the ease of returning to a long-lost but well-practiced skill.
“The body was wedged between those rocks,” Hicks said. “Mostly covered with a rain jacket.”
“His own?”
“No. Adult-sized.” Hicks spared her a glance and a slight nod. As if he approved of the question. “Male.”
So not Eliza’s then, either. “All right.”
“The body was in fairly good condition,” Hicks continued, and that gave her pause. It was a near miracle that the boy hadn’t been picked apart to scraps—the predators this far north were plentiful and hungry. Hicks must have read the thought on her face. “We found rags soaked with ammonia nearby.”
“Ammonia?” That was an old-school coyote deterrent, only somewhat effective but better than nothing. So maybe not so much a miracle, but planned. “She was trying to protect him.”
“At least until he was found,” Hicks agreed. “It wouldn’t hold them off for very long.”
But it had been an attempt. Eliza had wanted the body to be safe, yet she hadn’t buried it. The itch crept back again. If she was so concerned with making sure that it would be preserved, that it would be found, why bring it into the woods in the first place?
The rocks, the stream—they weren’t unusual as a body drop location. It was off the trail, deep in the woods, and from what Lucy could tell, didn’t seem to be built up into a popular hiking area. This would be the perfect place to dispose of a murder victim and have the body go years without being discovered.