Lars peered over her shoulder, into the darkness beyond the halogen lamps.
“Two perps. We need to know if they worked together,” she said. “Right now it’s just best guess they didn’t.”
“We need motive for the soft-soled guy. He was after something.”
“It bothers me,” Nicole said. “The two perps. It makes this more than a date rape gone wrong.”
“Something else is at play,” Lars agreed.
“And the roofie,” Nicole said. “It has more than one use.” Of course it did. The drug wasn’t manufactured to facilitate sex crimes. Though illegal in the United States, it was widely used in Mexico and Europe to treat anxiety and insomnia. “It makes a victim agreeable. It wipes out memory. But sex isn’t always the prize.”
“The condom makes it the go-to.”
She agreed, but there were too many players on the board. And the UGG boot—more women wore those than men.
“We’re missing something.” Nicole said. “Find it.” She turned to MacAulay. “Bag the body. A thorough exam,” she reminded him. “Make sure you look for bruising around the thighs and hips, inside her mouth.”
“I know how to confirm rape,” he said, but his voice was tight, and when Nicole looked into his face she found what he never tried to hide: his humanity.
“But you don’t know how to think like a cop—or even an ME,” Nicole pointed out. Brutal, and she was sorry for it, but sorrier that it was necessary. “Someone killed this girl. It’s our job to speak for her now.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I want him caught as much as you do.”
Nicole held his gaze and took a breath. Then she nodded, because she knew his words were true. MacAulay cared. “Was she wearing underwear?”
Because sometimes, especially in cases of date rape, the victim’s clothing was restored after the crime was committed, and the underwear almost always forgotten.
He bent and peeled back the waistband of Beatrice Esparza’s jeans, exposing a strip of pink cotton.
“Sheriff?”
A deputy approached, wrapped head to toe in Gore-Tex and down. He held up a sealed evidence bag. The gloves. They were insulated, lined with fleece, and looked new.
“Maybe,” Doc said. He took the bag and flattened it between his hands. MacAulay was a big man with hands the size of oven mitts. By comparison, the gloves were ridiculously small. “The hands that fit these gloves could also fit the bruise markings on Beatrice’s neck.”
“Who are we looking for, MacAulay? A kid or an adult, small or medium?”
He looked beyond her, his eyes focused as he thought. “I’ll know better after I’ve measured the markings and completed some comparisons. But without the forensic backup?”
“For now,” she assured him.
“Aged fourteen to seventy. Small to medium stature. During strangulation, it’s the pads of the fingers that dig in, leave their mark.” He nodded toward the body. “These hands were thin but average in length. The killer was taller than the vic by maybe seven or eight inches. I can tell that by the angle of the bruises. What does all this mean? Small to average size for a man, taller for a woman.” He hesitated. “If it was a juvenile?” he posed. “Tall and thin. But this is all guesswork.”
“That’s good,” Lars said, and the surprise was evident in his tone. MacAulay wasn’t known for extrapolating, and they were rarely able to get him to manipulate facts for direction. Nicole chewed on it for a moment as she began to profile the perp.
“The impressions in the snow—are the castings finished?” she asked.
She loved impression analysis. One hundred percent factual. Castings were tangible evidence that the DA often lined up on a table in front of a jury, next to each the shoe that matched the print. It was a solid link between perpetrator and crime. It was like building a stone wall in an open field. Obvious. Small but unmistakable, even in satellite photos.
Lars nodded. “Until we hear from Arty, I’d say our killer is somewhere between a hundred fifteen and a hundred and fifty pounds. The other guy, the soft-soled boots, he weighs in between one twenty and one hundred, sixty-five pounds.”
Jordan, at eleven years old, weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. But he was small. Nicole wanted a probable age range. She was building a profile of their most likely suspect. Rarely was murder committed by a person under fourteen years of age.
“How much does the average fifteen-year-old boy weigh, Doc?”
MacAulay shrugged. “Current guidelines, about one hundred twenty-six pounds. That gives us a range of one nineteen to one hundred thirty-two pounds.”
He pulled up his hood and stepped closer to the body. He raised an arm and waved the attendants over. Nicole noticed that his limbs had stiffened and knew the cold wasn’t to blame for it. MacAulay took death personally, and it was even more offensive when it was murder. Talk of kids harming kids wasn’t just disturbing for the doctor. It was unnatural.
Nicole was stuck with a temperamental family doc for an ME, and at this point she doubted that she would change that.
“He’s a healer,” Lars said, and Nicole noticed that some of the past complaint was absent from his tone.
“Lucky for us.” Nicole watched MacAulay hunker down next to the body and slide his hands under her shoulders. The girl’s head settled into the cradle of his arms. He nodded his readiness, and the forensic tech lifted her feet. Together they tucked Beatrice Esparza into a body bag.
3
The resorts were northwest of town, many of them in the foothills of Glacier National Park. Part of the allure of Montana, especially this far north, was its rugged, secluded landscape, and Big Business knew this. The consortiums that came in and bought large tracks of land left as many trees standing as they could. The Huntington Spa was set back from the road and was perched on a small rise nestled between mature aspen and evergreen. On its list of amenities were snowshoeing, tobogganing, and tubing, and the place was classy enough not to charge an additional fee for the fun.
Nicole turned into the sweeping driveway and followed the blacktop to the front doors. The place was big, accommodating a maximum of 433 guests. A wall of paned glass let the ambient glow from the lobby seep into the parking lot. Christmas lights were strung from the eaves, red and green, yellow and blue, twinkling to the tune “Silver Bells.” A twenty-foot noble fir stood in the center of the lobby, lighted and tinseled. Beneath it were an assortment of boxes wrapped in bright paper. She parked and climbed out of the department Yukon, then looked back the way she’d come. Lake Maria, the site of their crime scene, was less than three miles southeast. How had their vic gotten there? Despite her time in the elements, Beatrice Esparza hadn’t looked chapped by the wind, and she’d died before frostbite could set in. There’d been no gray patches of skin nor missing fingers or toes, which were a common find in people exposed to the cold.
And somewhere along the way she’d taken off her coat, hat, scarf, and gloves. Had she bolted from a car, stopped along the Lake Road, suddenly fearful for her life? Or from a nearby home, chased by malignant intent?
They knew what their killer had wanted, but what about the soft-soled pursuer?