“What time was that?”
“About ten p.m.”
“Did he see anyone up here?” Bryce asked.
“Said sometimes he sees kids or tourists on the ridge taking pictures. Selfies, you know. But he didn’t see anyone last night. I have his name if you want to interview him.”
“Thanks.” Bryce stared toward the fire’s epicenter and braced. “I best have a look.”
“I ain’t seen a body like that before, but I heard about the other in Helena. Jesus H. Christ.”
With a nod, Bryce worked his hands into the gloves. “Have any of your deputies been walking around up here?”
“No, sir,” Sheriff Wexler said. “The responding deputy was focused first on the fire. We’ve had rain, but it’s still dry. When the deputy saw the body, he suspected this case was connected to the other one, roped off the scene, and backed away. I’m afraid in the dark he trampled the tire tracks and the area around the body pretty good. He also had to wait for the body to cool before he could cover it.”
“And the mountain biker? Did he come up here?”
“Said he didn’t get near the scene. Just called in the fire.”
Cases like this could be made or broken by a first responder. The scene could be altered and valuable evidence destroyed by untrained ignorance or police personnel struggling to secure the scene. In the latter case, there was no blame to hand out.
Bryce moved toward the blue tarp and, with the sheriff’s help, removed it. Carefully, he crouched for a better look. The charred corpse lay on its back, its head pointed toward the valley and the distant mountains. The now-heavy smoky scent of burned hair, flesh, and bone swirled in the breeze. The blackened, marbled remains had withered appendages with snubbed fingers and toes consumed in the flames. The featureless face had a gaping jaw frozen in a ghoulish, toothy laugh.
Sheriff Wexler’s voice rattled with unprocessed emotions. “Don’t know what kind of person does this. I’ve seen bad things in my years, but this might be the worst.”
“Always amazes me what humans do to one another.” Bryce searched for clothing or jewelry. There was none.
Sheriff Wexler pulled off his hat and rubbed his forehead with his sleeve. “The medical examiner’s office is sending up a death investigator. She should be here any minute.”
Bryce rose, favoring his right knee, which he’d twisted on an Afghanistan march a decade ago. He took a moment to let the joint settle before he moved around the corpse to view what remained of the face. If he had not known what to look for, he might have missed the facial mutilation below the char.
“Did he do this to the other one?” the sheriff asked as he popped a mint in his mouth.
The other one had been found near Helena in mid-July. The medical examiner in Missoula had determined the victim had been female, Caucasian, and in her late twenties to early thirties. She had been stabbed multiple times, and her body had been stripped clean of clothing and jewelry; however, there were no signs of sexual assault. The killer had also removed the skin from the victim’s face before dousing the body with gasoline and setting the remains on fire. The inferno had done an expert job of destroying forensic evidence and the victim’s identity. DNA had been extracted from back molars and submitted for testing, but so far the victim had not been identified.
Gravel rattled under Bryce’s boot as he flexed his knee. “It looks pretty damn similar.”
The sheriff’s radio squawked. The deputy stationed at the roadside below announced the arrival of the medical examiner’s death investigator, Joan Mason. A former Philadelphia cop, Joan had relocated to Montana a year ago and taken the job in the medical examiner’s office shortly after the New Year.
Approaching footsteps had Bryce turning to see the brunette with a lean, athletic build. She wore jeans, weathered boots, and a navy-blue wind slicker that opened to a white T-shirt. She pulled on disposable gloves as she moved with steady steps toward the scene. When she saw the body, her pace faltered a beat before she steeled herself and continued forward.
“Harry.” Joan’s Philadelphia accent drew out the sheriff’s name as she shook hands with him and then Bryce. “Bryce, good to see you. Wish it could be under better circumstances.”
“Unfortunately, it’s rarely a good day when we cross paths,” Bryce said.
Joan was not a sworn officer in Montana, but ten years in the Philadelphia Police Department as a beat cop and then later as a homicide detective had equipped her with keen investigative skills and a no-nonsense urban-street-cop directness that won her praise in Montana’s law enforcement community. “Like the Helena victim.”
“Seems to be,” Bryce said.
As Joan circled slowly around the body, her expression turned grim. She cleared her throat. “Animal. No, I take that back. That isn’t fair to animals.”
She was right. Wilderness predators hunted for food and survival, not for sport.
Silence settled around Joan as she absently pushed up her sleeves, revealing the pink, puckered flesh on her forearm. Arson had been Joan’s specialty back east, and the burn scars were living reminders of the monsters she had tracked.
Bryce remained silent, giving her time to mentally shore up her resolve brick by brick. There were scenes like this that they all needed time to process.
Bryce had needed time to process the first crime scene, which investigators initially had classified as a violent anomaly. The rescue and police crews who had worked the case had been stunned by the way the body had been savaged, and theories floating around included domestic violence, drug cartels, and human trafficking. Investigators hadn’t reached any conclusions, so Bryce had sent the body to Missoula to Joan’s boss, the state’s best medical examiner, Dr. Peter Christopher.
Joan cleared her throat. “I assisted Dr. Christopher when he did the autopsy on the first victim. The doc determined the cause of death was stabbing.”
“There’s a lot of blood on the rock near the overlook and on the ground around it,” Sheriff Wexler said.
Joan squatted near the victim’s head and examined the skull. The slow rise and fall of her chest, coupled with unsettling uneasiness, suggested she was replaying her last brutal hunt for the arsonist who had nearly burned her alive.
“It looks like the face was removed in this instance as well.” She pointed to a slight cleft along the hairline. “In my opinion, here’s where the killer cut. Of course, that’ll be for the doc to officially confirm. I assume you want the body sent to him?”
“Yes,” Bryce said.
She rose with enviable ease. “The doc and I have had several discussions about this killer.”
“And?”
“He’s crazy as hell. And the consensus is to call Dr. Ann Bailey. Her background in forensic psychology could be of real use untangling this killer’s mind.”
“She’s back from summer vacation?” Bryce asked.
“And moved back into Missoula and starts teaching at the university in a week,” Joan said.
Dr. Bailey was in her early thirties and a professor at the University of Montana in Missoula. She was well respected in her field and had lectured to Bryce’s police recruits in late May on the topic of abhorrent behavior. If the class she had taught was any indication, this case was right up her alley.