She narrowed her eyes. “Watch a lot of CSI?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I have nieces, though. Three of them.” He used a forearm to wipe a sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Before the police asked me to move out of the way, I heard one of the forensic team speculate that the girl was buried four to five years ago at the same time the tree was planted. Whatever she was wrapped in had helped preserve what little bit there is left of hair and skin.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Without a coffin, I guess it doesn’t take as long for a skeleton to decompose.”
“Any idea how old that tree was?”
He shook his head.
“Does Parks and Recreation keep track of when trees are planted?”
He scratched his chin. “No idea.”
“Hey, Billy!” someone called. “The boss said it’s time to get back to work.”
“Gotta go,” Billy told Sawyer.
After he left, Sawyer made notes on her cell of everything he’d told her.
She looked around, spotted Geezer taking a smoke break and flirting with the news reporter from Channel 10. Perez was talking to a police officer. Palmer was nowhere to be seen.
A quick search on her phone revealed names and ages of young girls who had gone missing in the area in the past four to ten years. Besides a string of possible runaways, she found a slideshow of missing children, boys and girls. Nineteen photos in all. Nine females, aged seven to twelve. She saved the link. When she got back to the office, she planned to do some digging and make a few inquiries.
A breeze sent a chill crawling up the back of her neck as she envisioned someone carrying a young child up the hill from the parking lot.
She turned back to view the scene of the crime. How could someone possibly carry a body, let alone a tree and a shovel, such a long way without being seen? The question niggled as she walked past the yellow tape in the direction Billy had gone after he was called off to work.
More trees dotted the grassy land that stretched on acre after acre. Across the way, the grass looked greener, the trees younger, but between where she stood and the greener areas was a long stretch of dirt and gravel where nothing grew. The gravelly path stretched on for at least fifty feet before disappearing beneath new growth.
Billy had returned for his gloves, and before he could get away, she pointed at the small strip of gravel and asked, “Any idea what happened here?”
“It’s part of an old back road that the staff used to get to the building where we keep our equipment.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Three or four years ago, they paved an easier route on the other side of the park and let this unpaved road grow over.”
“Before the new one was constructed, could anyone get access to this?” she asked.
He pointed down the way at some unknown marker. “There used to be a chain about a mile down and a sign letting the public know that it was a private road, but yeah, sure, anyone could easily unlatch the chain and use the road if they wanted to.”
“Thanks again,” she said before he trudged off.
Assuming the tree was planted at the same time the bones were buried, Sawyer wondered how difficult it might be for someone to drag a young girl’s body that she estimated to be between fifty and sixty pounds from the gravel road to the crime scene. She looked from the patch of gravel back to where she could see technicians still working the grounds. Between the body and the tree, it would take someone at least two trips to carry it all from point A to point B. But it was much more doable from the gravel road. Unlike the parking lot below where Palmer had left his car, there were no cameras or light fixtures in the vicinity where she now stood. Yes. Whoever buried the girl most likely drove up this road under the cloak of darkness and worked unseen.
As she walked back toward the crime scene, more questions arose. Why bury the girl here in the first place? Why take the time to plant a tree? Behind the yellow tape she saw a small stuffed animal that had been bagged, labeled, and placed in a bin. It could be a bear, but with its matted faux fur and missing nose and eyes, it was hard to tell.
A bell went off inside her head. She had her answer: This was no slash-and-dash killer. Someone had cared about the girl and wanted her to be put to rest in a happy place.
A killer with a heart?
Sawyer thought about her parents.
No. Killers didn’t have hearts. They had no souls either.
With her gaze fixated on the young girl’s bones laid out on a black tarp, Sawyer vowed to do all she could to help find this little girl’s killer, so she could get the justice she deserved.
But first, Sawyer needed a name.
CHAPTER THREE
Harper Pohler got situated at a table in the Sacramento Public Library and opened her laptop. She hadn’t checked in with The Crew in weeks, but it was time. D-Day was approaching fast.
The Crew consisted of five women who had been abused at some point in their lives. They used nicknames: Psycho, Cleo, Lily, and Bug. Harper was known in the group as Malice.
Her insides turned, agitated, like too many clothes stuffed inside a washing machine, and not because she was close to three months pregnant, but because her association with The Crew reminded her that she—Malice, not Harper—was a murderer. The distinction was an important one. Harper was a wife and mother of two. She was a good person, a compassionate being. Malice, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still for too long. She only saw black and white. She had a thirst for revenge. And as of a month ago, she was a killer.
Harper drew in a breath as she straightened in her chair.
Some might call The Crew “survivors,” but that didn’t make much sense to Harper since all five women had met out of their desire for vengeance. If being a survivor meant being alive, then, Yay, cool. But to her way of thinking, a true survivor was someone who found a way to move forward and live a whole and satisfying life, free from night terrors and symptoms of PTSD.
Although The Crew had known one another for a while now, they had not begun to dish out their punishments until recently. Their plan had been to scare their tormentors in some way, let the assholes know they were being watched and they would pay for what they had done. The Crew wanted their abusers to know humiliation and experience what it was like to feel trapped and have no control.
That was their goal.
But so far, things hadn’t worked out as planned.
Lily’s abuser, Brad Vicente, their first target of revenge, had made the mistake of pissing off Psycho, a woman who had chosen her nickname for a reason. They all agreed that Brad was a dick. When he refused to shut his mouth, Psycho cut off said appendage, and now Brad was a dickless dick. Surgeons had been unable to reattach his penis. Poor Brad.
Once Brad was taken care of, The Crew had moved on to the next abuser on their list: Otto Radley. Again things didn’t turn out quite as planned. After Otto was released from prison, The Crew used Cleo as bait and abducted the brawny man. Like taking candy from a baby. At least it started out well. Unfortunately Otto freed himself from his bindings and was about to attack Psycho when Malice shot him dead.
A third abuser, Dennis Brooks, Malice’s rapist father, and Joyce Brooks, her mother, were now dead.
In a short time, three out of five of The Crew members had experienced a reckoning of sorts. Not bad for a band of fucked-up misfits with absolutely no skills whatsoever.