“You going yourself?”
“I always do.”
“That’s what I like about you,” he said.
“My work ethic?”
“Your respect for human life,” he clarified. He lowered the body back to the snow. “Dead or alive.”
The truth was, Nicole did better with people after they’d taken their last breath. She was good at fighting for those who couldn’t do it for themselves. Her old CO had called her tenacious. A number of ex-lovers had been less diplomatic, and Nicole was no longer surprised when, toward the end of each relationship, her passionate nature had become a “problem.” “Single-minded” and “stubborn” often followed declarations of that kind. Her son, however—because Jordan was straddling those years between child and teen—was as kind as he was judgmental about her job. “It’s cool,” he assured her. “A little cray-cray, but you spend a lot of time with dead people.”
She felt a smile spread from the inside out. Her son did that for her—he was light in a dark place.
Nicole glanced again at the girl. A child still, with the soft curves of womanhood just developing. Neither she nor the world would know her full potential. And that caused a chain reaction of emotion in Nicole, beginning with an intense sadness she knew was useless and finishing with a consuming anger that would propel her through the necessary steps toward justice.
She was looking at another mother’s child. Much loved or cast away? She focused on the raven hair spread out on the ice and the gold piercings in the girl’s ears—a hammered teardrop hoop with a diamond accent dangling in the center. A quarter carat. Beatrice Esparza was tended to, from her long, trimmed tresses to the tips of her acrylic nails.
“Time of death’s going to be a bitch,” she said. The first officer had arrived on scene at 12:22 AM and taken an ambient temperature reading. Two degrees. And she’d watched MacAulay insert a common mercury thermometer through a nostril in the victim’s nose, then note the body temperature in a small notebook he kept. He’d already reconciled the numbers and given her a window of possibility, but it was wide open at four hours—sometime between 8:00 PM and midnight. Most criminals could slip through a crack in the pavement, and currently they had a crater.
MacAulay nodded.
“You can’t narrow that window a little, Doc?”
“That’s the best I can do, but it’ll work until Missoula.”
The state lab and morgue. Nicole thought briefly about having the body bagged and driven the 230 miles to the Big City and the state medical examiner, but there was nothing extraordinary about the case. Not yet. Murder by asphyxiation was about as common as a hangnail. A child victim was no longer an anomaly. MacAulay would do the prelim in the basement morgue of their tiny hospital and then move her on to Missoula, where the body would wait in line behind other murder victims for a more thorough exam.
“Sheriff?”
Nicole looked up. She had promoted Lars Solberg to undersheriff when she’d won the election two years ago. It was his job to supervise heavy crime—murder, grand theft, abduction—and the three sergeants under him worked the lighter investigative detail. Then there were eight deputies who patrolled and answered calls. Together they were spread out over nineteen hundred miles of county jurisdiction.
She had moved all but three deputies to Lake Maria. She had called in their reserves—there were only two, and she made a mental note to increase that number—and borrowed a handful of forensic techs from the highway patrol. She’d alerted them to the need for heightened watch, as was protocol when one of the related agencies was stretched thin.
She stood and gave her second-in-command her full attention. “What do you have, Lars?”
“A size-ten shoe, heavy tread. Probably a hiking boot.”
Nicole looked at the girl’s feet. One foot was bare, her toes painted a solid shade of pumpkin. The other foot bore a stone-colored suede boot that ended at her knee. It had a discreet half-inch heel and, on the sole, the embossed-triangle logo of Prada.
Not a snow boot. Their vic was dressed for a party, not the slopes.
Lars nodded his head. “My wife has a knock-off pair,” he said, and shrugged. “Three kids, a house, and a car.”
And nowhere on a cop’s salary for the real thing.
“Vic’s a size six,” he continued. “We bagged the left boot and a knee-high purple sock seventy and a hundred and twenty yards southeast.”
“Anything else?”
“A pair of gloves. Brown suede, made for a man.”
“And you found both?”
“A present under the tree,” he said.
“Can I see them?” MacAulay asked.
“Sure, Doc.” Lars made the request through his radio, then turned back to Nicole. “There’s a reason you made me lead,” he informed her. “And it had nothing to do with my prowess in the box or at the range.”
He was smiling broadly, and Nicole felt her lips splinter in the cold as she responded. The solemn mood of a crime scene often relied on humor.
Lars was a bad shot and every year had to repeat the marksmanship test for a pass.
“It was your ability to remain level-headed even under the esteemed accolades of your peers,” she assured him.
MacAulay laughed, and Lars’s smile grew impossibly wider.
“That, and assess a crime scene for motivation.”
The last part was true. Nicole had already made undersheriff when Lars came around in answer to a recruitment ad. He’d had several years in Missoula and wanted a slower pace and to keep his state retirement. The man was good. He had a degree in criminal psychology and made practical use of it. And he was the only city, other than her, in the department.
“You know the why?”
“I have a hunch.”
He held up a clear evidence bag. Inside were two items, individually bagged, tagged, and numbered: one unopened condom packet and a prescription bottle. “This stuff”—he jiggled the bag— “scattered but easily recovered.”
“Too easy?” she asked.
“Maybe not. There are impressions in the snow, like the guy was kneeling. He’s right-handed—he pulled off his left glove first, then the right, and dropped them beside him, left of his position.”
“Kneeling because he dropped the condom and the pills?”
Lars nodded. “Like they fell out of a pocket while he was running.”
“And he took his gloves off to try and pick them up.” She smiled, following his thoughts to what was a clear break in the case. Few people thought forward to cleaning up evidence. “We’ll get prints off them.”
“Exactly.” Lars didn’t pause to enjoy the moment. “There’s a third set of footprints,” he began. “And they put a spin on things.”
“Predator or prey?” Nicole asked.
But as usual, Lars didn’t answer. He set up the scene and ran through the evidence so Nicole could form her own opinion.
“Three sets of footprints that matter to us. The vic’s. This guy”—he raised his arm and waved the evidence bag—the hiking boot. His prints leave a longer trail. “After his scramble in the snow, they pick back up and end here, with our vic’s body.” He’s our killer. He does the deed, then cuts over the slope, across the bike path, and we lose him on the Lake Road.