As Kylie had suspected, the full response team was at the bar when she arrived. The sky was pitch black, sunrise still hours away. Two patrol cars, a fire engine, an ambulance, and the sheriff’s personal car—an old Ram truck—were parked in the lot. Three construction lights, mounted on tripods six or seven feet above the ground, illuminated the rusty dumpster as though it were at the center of a movie set.
Kylie drove to the far side of the gravel lot. There had been no new snow in the past twenty-four hours, but the winds were strong. Any tire tracks from the night before had been blown clean. The ones that remained led directly to the vehicles in the lot now—parked a little too close to the dumpster, considering it was the scene of a crime.
Keep your opinions to yourself, she thought.
Eleven bodies—all men—huddled around the rusty dumpster, and a ladder was propped against the outside, but otherwise, no one seemed to be doing anything.
The bar was maybe ten yards from the dumpster, to the north. To the south was a gap for access and, beyond that, parking. To the dumpster’s east, maybe fifteen yards, a patch of thick woods began. She’d been called out to Skål before—or rather she’d joined Patrol on a few of the drunk-and-disorderly calls. There were very few real crimes in Hagen—a few accidental shootings, mostly hunting related, but no murder in almost a decade. With the low crime rate, Kylie spent a fair amount of her time helping Patrol and getting to know the town. So she’d been to Skål.
In the summer months, couples disappeared into the woods here for privacy. Patrons regularly used the trees to piss if the bar was full and the weather warm. But with the temps below freezing, she wasn’t sure they’d find much traffic now. They’d have to take a look around.
Stepping out of her car, she pulled down the flaps of her hat to cover her ears from the bitter wind and adjusted the fingers on her heavy work gloves. The men were surprisingly still and quiet in the cold air as she grew close, their faces turned to hers. The artificial lighting cast them in strange shadows, hollowing their eye sockets and cutting across their cheekbones. For one short moment, she was staring at almost a dozen skeletons.
A hand touched her back, and she whipped around, swallowing the sound that rose in her throat.
It was Sheriff Davis, phone to his ear. Though it had been fifteen years since he’d been on a team, Davis’s appearance screamed football star. The broad shoulders, the thick neck and sandy-blond hair, plus that easy, charming smile. Even the way he walked was like he was coming off the field. Not her type. But that was as far as it went for Davis. He didn’t have the asshole jock personality or the bravado. Though she had expected to have to work around a big ego, Davis was surprisingly humble.
“Of course,” Davis said. “I understand, sir.”
The mayor, she guessed. This would not be happy news for the mayor, who was already battling unfavorable press over his girlfriend, about whom his wife was none too happy. Davis covered the phone with one palm and said, “We’re waiting for the crime scene team.”
Hagen’s “crime scene team” was two patrol officers who had completed a twenty-hour training course on evidence collection in Bismarck, training Kylie herself was halfway through. Hardly a mighty forensic team. She greeted the group and noticed that everyone wore gloves. It was bitter cold, but the layer also meant they were preserving the evidence.
Carl Gilbert, the patrol officer she worked with most, approached. A couple of years older than her, Gilbert was lanky and a little awkward, like there was too much limb to control. He always jangled—a full ring of keys on his belt that rang like wind chimes when he moved and the change in his pocket he constantly worked with one hand. And he had a habit of sucking on hard candies—one after another. He didn’t gain a pound, but she did wonder about his teeth.
Gilbert had been a patrol officer for only a few years, having taken some detours outside Hagen after high school before getting his degree. She wondered if he aspired to detective and whether her appointment had stepped on his toes. If so, he never let on. “Victim’s mid- to late twenties, Caucasian,” he said, his gaze drifting toward the dumpster without quite reaching it. “That’s all we know right now.”
This was Hagen, where everyone knew everyone. “Who is she?” Kylie asked. As she surveyed the men, her pulse galloped under her heavy coat. What weren’t they saying?
Kylie reached her thumb across her index finger and pulled it down, popping the knuckle in a rush of pain and release. The action was like a reset, and she was herself again. She was a professional. “Hold the ladder. I’m going up.”
“Are you—” Gilbert started.
“Hold it, please.”
Gilbert gripped the ladder as she climbed. She pounded her feet into each rung, willing them to hold her up, keep her strong. By the fourth step, the inside of the dumpster was visible, more than halfway filled with black trash bags, stray beer bottles, and plastic cups. And the woman.
Kylie flinched at the blue-white skin, her gloved hands clenching the hard metal edge. She had imagined the dead woman lying peacefully on a bed of trash bags. As though she might have been asleep.
Instead, her body was splayed with violence. Her limbs struck unnatural poses, her head too far back, chin too far to the right, the right arm too far to the left. Kylie’s gaze traveled up her arm until it met with a bony shoulder cocked so strangely that it had to be detached.
She noticed the broken angle of the opposite arm. The woman wore black jeans, a spaghetti strap blouse, and no shoes. Her only jewelry was a wide red leather bracelet, its color dingy from wear. A generic puffy coat hung off one arm, worn shiny in places and dotted with little strips of black duct tape to cover the holes. The victim was oddly beautiful in her violent death. Her eyes were open, and the skin around them had the same soft green tint as her irises. Petechiae were visible in the whites of her eyes—small red blood vessels that had burst, often caused by strangulation. Kylie tried to think of them as clues, of the dead woman as a puzzle.
Behind the victim’s head was a dark shadow, maybe something or maybe a trick of the bright lights. Kylie shifted on the ladder, noticing for the first time that the back of the victim’s hair was dark and matted.
Blood.
She took a moment, not sure she trusted her voice, then said, “Has anyone checked the woods?”
“I did a cursory look, but it’s too dark to see much,” Gilbert said. “I’ll go back when it’s light.” He took her hand to help her back down, and the touch gave her chills. On the ground again, she shook out her arms to get the blood moving and searched for the sheriff.
Sheriff Davis was ending his call when Kylie approached. “We have any idea who she is?” Kylie asked.
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen her before.” His eyes flashed back to the street, and she caught in them something unusual. Fear. “We’ve all looked. She’s not familiar to any of us.”
Someone had to know her. Kylie glanced around the parking lot. “Any sign of her car?”
“None. Nothing in a four-block radius—it’s all warehouses out here.”
Hagen was not an easy place to get around without a car. Someone had brought her there. “No one knows her,” she repeated.