Shadow of Vengeance

by Kristine Mason

  “Walter found footprints,” Jake shouted, his voice bouncing off the tree trunks. He waved his phone. “Sounds like he’s heading back in our direction. Let’s get to the clearing up ahead, then head east and intercept his group.”

  Still wide-eyed, Percy stared at him and shook his head. “This ain’t good.” He looked over his shoulder to where Rachel hiked. “The women in my family grew up hunting, but what you’re suggesting isn’t something even I think I can stomach. How about your partner?”

  The only murder victims Rachel had ever seen were from photographs or video footage. No doubt he considered her tough and—mentally and emotionally—one of the strongest women he knew. Still, he’d rather shelter her from what he suspected lay beyond the trees. Then again, working in the field was important to her and she needed to earn her stripes. “She’ll be fine,” he said and quickened his pace.

  As he neared the edge of the tree line, he caught sight of where the crows circled, and took off in a full sprint. The icy air burned his lungs as he ran through the clearing toward the next set of trees. Toward where dozens of crows gathered on the ground and in the sky.

  His heart sped, and adrenaline and dread rushed through his veins. Percy and Jake shouted behind him, but between the cawing and wind, their calls were muffled and indistinct. Then he heard Rachel cry out, the alarm in her voice had him slowing. He turned, slowly jogged backward, then freaked by the horror crumpling her pretty face, stopped dead. She’d shoved the scarf under her chin and was running full steam, waving her arms and calling for him. Worried he’d missed something while sprinting to the crows, terrified by the way she was panicking, he retraced his steps and took off toward her. Running as fast as he could through the layers of snow until they stood face-to-face.

  “Oh my God,” she panted, bent and placed her gloved hands on her legs. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  He grabbed her upper arms and gripped her thick coat sleeves. Torn between shaking her and hauling her into his arms, he asked, “What the hell happened? Why are you—?”

  A shot exploded behind him.

  He hauled Rachel into his arms, covered her head and used his body to shield her. Keeping her protected, he quickly looked over his shoulder just as a thick black cloak rose from the ground then scattered in a wave of beating wings and piercing shrieks.

  “It’s just Walter firing a warning shot,” Jake said as he slowed to a jog and approached them. “Didn’t want you getting in the way.”

  Men’s shouts replaced the crows’ caws. With reluctance, he released Rachel, and turned back toward the tree line. The moment he did, he wished he hadn’t let go of her. Wearing his security guard uniform, Bill Baker sat on the snow-covered ground against a tree. And it didn’t look like he was sleeping.

  Taking Rachel by the hand, he put himself in front of her and slowly approached. Walter and his men had already surrounded Bill. By the haunting expressions paling their faces, Owen knew this wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “What do we have?” Jake pushed his way between the men. They parted ways, giving the sheriff ample room and in the process revealed a sight Owen could have gone without seeing.

  The crows had picked at Bill’s eyes, leaving behind hollow cavities that made the man look less human and more like something out of a grotesque horror movie. The birds had torn the skin away from his mouth and fleshy cheeks, giving Bill a monstrous grin. Thick ropes intersected and twined around Bill’s neck, wide chest and stomach. His arms had been wrapped behind his back in a way only a limber contortionist could manage. In a way meant to keep Bill from protecting himself from the harsh elements, the birds…from escaping.

  When Rachel gasped, he turned and realized she’d moved next to him. As she stared at Bill’s lifeless body, her face grew alarmingly ashen. Her eyes watered with unshed tears, but she quickly blinked and held a gloved hand to her mouth. Knowing this was likely the first victim she’d encountered, he had an overwhelming protective urge to shelter her. Actually, he wanted to shake some sense into her. She might be brilliant and have a knack for coming up with different angles and leads, but she shouldn’t be in the field. She shouldn’t have to see this. Then again, maybe now she’d realize her position as CORE’s computer forensic analyst wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. She could go back to her regular job, to the safety of the office and not have him worrying. About her, about how cases like this one would affect her emotional, mental and physical well-being.

  Worried she might vomit, he ushered her away from the body and other men. “Do you have the camera?”

  Her gaze remained on Bill as she nodded and pulled the small camera out of her pocket.

  “I’ll take some pictures. Why don’t you hang tight and—”

  “No. I can do this,” she said, but the uncertainty in her tone told him otherwise.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said, and still holding the camera, added, “I’ll take the pictures. Just give me a head’s up if it looks like I’m missing anything.”

  His earlier anger subsided. He still didn’t want her exposed to this, but he couldn’t help but admire her determination. She’d set out to do a job, to lead her first investigation and she planned to see it through, despite the outcome. Despite the possible body count.

  When they reached the group of men again, Jake took a step away from Bill’s body. “Did anybody call the other team yet?” After receiving a unanimous no, he nodded. “Good. Let’s hold off. I don’t want Hal here for this.”

  Bill’s dad was part of the other group that had splintered off after searching the river. Like the sheriff, Owen was also grateful those men hadn’t been notified of their discovery yet. He could only imagine the distraught father’s grief. Until they had a better look at what exactly happened to Bill, he didn’t want Hal compromising their possible crime scene.

  “I’m not a medical examiner,” Jake said. “But I think Bill died of hypothermia.”

  Rachel squatted and began taking pictures. “The rope around his neck is loose. He could twist his head, but couldn’t slip out of it. Look at the skin around his neck.”

  Rope burns lined Bill’s blue skin. Bits of flesh had been removed along the abrasion, likely from the crows.

  “More of the same here,” Walter said from behind the tree. “Looks like he tried to work his way out of the ropes around his wrist.” He craned his neck around the tree trunk. “He had to have been in a lot of pain. Got some nasty frostbite. I’m guessing his shoulders were dislocated, too.”

  Owen had suspected the same thing. Replacing his warm gloves for Latex ones, he bent and examined Bill’s neck and face. Due to the freezing temperatures and rigor mortis, he had a hard time twisting his neck. Leaving the body exam for the ME, he moved to stand, but something sticking out of Bill’s front shirt pocket caught his attention. Plucking the folded piece of paper free, he flexed his hand to ward off the numbness, then opened the note.

  Dread gripped him, held him by the throat and shook him to the core.

  “What does it say?” Rachel asked, her voice quiet, uncertain, as if she might not want to really know.

  He glanced at her, then back to the note. “Now look what you made me do. Enjoy the rest of Hell Week. I know I will.”

  Chapter 14

  Rachel blew out a deep breath after Walter closed the back passenger door of Owen’s Lexus. They’d dropped Walter off at Dixon Medical Center where he planned to meet with Joy and Bill’s dad, Hal. Personally, she thought Walt should take Hal back to Joy’s. She didn’t see the point in the three of them sitting in a waiting room drinking crappy coffee while the medical examiner discovered what they already knew. Bill had been murdered.

  Her nauseated stomach rolled, her heart raced, her head ached. With the image of Bill Baker seared to her memory, she fought the urge to vomit, cry, complain and whine. The sudden impulse to jump out of the now moving vehicle had her fisting her hands in her lap before she reached for the door. The
roomy Lexus grew rapidly stuffy and suffocating. She didn’t want to be here. In the car. In Bola. She wanted to be home, lying on her ratty sofa, wearing her favorite PJs and drinking a gallon of vodka. What had happened to Bill was her fault. If she hadn’t involved him…

  Tears prickled her eyes and her throat tightened. She drew in a shaky breath and wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. Damn it. She needed out of this SUV. If she couldn’t magically transport to her apartment in Chicago, she would at least like to go back to Joy’s. Needing to be alone, needing to unleash the pain and grief tearing her from the inside out, she ached for the solitude of her room.

  “You doing okay?” Owen asked as he turned the Lexus toward the direction of the university.

  “Yes…no. I feel horrible about Bill,” she admitted, but stopped from saying anything more for fear she’d have an emotional conniption fit if she continued down that path. While she knew in her gut—in her heart—Owen wouldn’t hold a crying jag against her and would probably give her some well-needed words of wisdom, she refused to break down in front of him. Once they were back in Chicago, Ian would probably expect Owen to give him a detailed report with regards to how she’d handled the investigation.

  How could she expect Ian to let her work in the field if she couldn’t hold it together? She couldn’t even view a dead body without the urge to puke. Curling into the fetal position and crying probably wasn’t proper field agent behavior. What was she even thinking? At this point, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a field agent. After seeing Bill, frozen and tied to a tree, his eyes and parts of his flesh plucked away by crows, the interior of CORE’s evidence and evaluation room was proving more her speed.

  “The killer wanted him to suffer.” Owen removed a glove and turned down the heat. “That’s something I don’t understand. Are we wrong to assume the killer murdered Bill because he used the pickup truck and wanted to destroy evidence? Or could it be that Bill was working with the killer and he somehow became a liability?”

  She didn’t want to talk about Bill. Every time she heard his name or thought about him, she pictured his face. His hollowed out eyes, the way his teeth had shown because the birds had removed his lips and parts of his cheeks. Cringing, she shifted in her seat. The urge to grab a pencil and do some serious gnawing struck her fast and hard. But her jaw already hurt from grinding her teeth and Owen hated when she chewed on pencils.

  Shoving her hands inside her pockets, she looked out the window. At the gloomy gray skies, the snow covered ground and barren trees. “I’m not sure what to think. Tying Bill to a tree and leaving him to…ah…freeze to death seems personal. Cruel.” Unnecessary.

  He touched her shoulder. Even though she wore a heavy coat, the contact brought comfort and at the same time, made her tense. While she’d longed for his comfort, for so much more of him beyond the physical, she’d learned a long time ago not to depend on anyone but herself.

  “Do you want me to take you back to Joy’s?” he asked as he pulled his hand away.

  Yes. “No. There’s too much to do. By the time we’re finished with our interviews at the university, hopefully the ME will have something for us. Which reminds me. I need to see if Jake wants us to ship Bill’s clothes and the rope used on him to Chihiro. Same with the note. We should have a handwriting analysis done to compare to the previous notes and also see if we can pull a print. Or maybe he’ll want to involve the Michigan State Police now that…you know.”

  “Chi-who?”

  When she turned to remind him that Chihiro Kimura was the forensic DNA tech at DecaLab, she caught him grinning. With that sexy smile of his momentarily wiping Bill’s image from her mind, she half-smiled. “Har, har. I’m serious about the state police. Especially with the Bigfoot festival starting tomorrow. Jake doesn’t have enough men to patrol the area. With an unpredictable killer running free, I think he needs to ask for help.”

  “We are the help.”

  Right. Some help she’d turned out to be. Because of her, Bill was dead. “If you say so.”

  “I do. But I agree. It’s not a bad idea.”

  He drove through the gates of Wexman University. The school no longer appealed to her the way it had when she’d first visited with Sean two years ago.

  Funny how murder taints a place.

  After Owen parked in front of the library, he killed the ignition. “First stop, Bill’s girlfriend.”

  And after that, they had ten more interviews with the Wexman maintenance employees that had been with the university for at least the past ten to fifteen years. Damn. If she wasn’t on the fence about working in the field she would have taken Owen up on the offer to go back to Joy’s. They still had a long day ahead of them and all she wanted—needed—was time to digest and deal with what had happened to Bill.

  The security guard’s gruesome image filled her mind. Overwhelming grief gripped her, took root in her heart. She gripped the door handle, but hesitated.

  You wanted action and adventure. Now you have it. You can to do this.

  She opened the door and caught her breath as the icy wind rushed through her lungs. Yeah, she wanted action and adventure, and she could do this. But the question remained…would she ever want to work in the field again?

  *

  Four hours later, Rachel slammed the Lexus’s passenger door shut. She couldn’t remember having a shittier day, and it was only four in the afternoon.

  “Don’t take it out on the car,” Owen said as he closed the door.

  “Sorry.” She crossed her arms to ward off the cold. “I’m frustrated. That last guy we talked to was a total jackass.” Instead of showing any signs of sympathy for Bill, the last maintenance worker they’d met with had not only acted as if Hell Week was a bunch of bullshit, but that Bill was an incompetent fool. If the man hadn’t had a solid alibi, she’d have loved to bring him in for more questioning. Hell Week was real. And Bill…she hadn’t known the man, but incompetent or not, no one deserved to die the way he had.

  “I get it. But you need to shake assholes like him off and stay focused.” He held open the door to Dixon Medical Center. “Hopefully Jake and the ME will have something for us.”

  As they walked through the basement hallway of the hospital, her queasy stomach did a flip. She hoped to God she wouldn’t have to view Bill’s body again. Actually, she hoped Joy, Hal and Walter had already left. Seeing Bill on a metal slab was bad enough. Witnessing the pain his death caused his family would be worse. She might not know Joy or Walter well, but she’d come to like and respect them both. And Hal had found her brother the night he’d been left for dead. These were good people who shouldn’t have to deal with murder.

  Before they reached the morgue, Jake rounded the corner from a different hallway. “Hey. Perfect timing. I was starting to worry you two weren’t going to make it. How’d the interviews go?”

  Rachel unzipped her coat, then pulled her notebook and pencil from her pocket. “Longer than we planned. Is the ME ready for us?” Although she kept her tone even, her mouth grew dry and her heart raced with dread. She wasn’t ready for the ME and wasn’t sure if she ever would be, for that matter. After this case, she’d have to do some serious soul searching. Working in the field had major drawbacks. She stared at the word ‘Morgue’ etched on the frosted glass of the door at the end of the hall. Yeah, some serious drawbacks.

  Jake knocked on the door. “Let’s find out.”

  A young man, who looked as if he’d just graduated from high school, shut off the faucet he’d been using to wash his hands. Frowning, he dried his hands with a paper towel as he approached them. “Good to see you, Jake. Just sorry it’s under these circumstances.”

  Jake shook his hand. “No kidding. Where were you this morning? I was expecting to see you, not your old man. You should be ashamed of yourself for making him hike through the snow.”

  The ME sent Jake a sheepish grin. “Dad insisted. He said the people of this county expect to see him, not his punk ass kid.” He tu
rned and motioned to Rachel and Owen. “The investigators from Chicago, I assume?”

  Rachel shook his hand and introduced herself and Owen.

  “Henry Cline,” he said. “If we were at River’s Edge, I’d buy all of you a drink. I know I could use one. Unfortunately, we’re not. So why don’t we get at it and let me tell you what I’ve found.”

  She’d been so focused on Henry and his interaction with Jake that she hadn’t bothered to look around the room. Now that she did, she caught sight of a body on a metal table, a white sheet pulled up over the head.

  Bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down and followed the others across the room. Henry stopped in front of an x-ray view box, turned its light on, then reached for the clipboard sitting on the nearby counter. “Here are a couple of shots of the head.”

  Rachel forced herself to look at the x-ray, and held back a gasp. The two different x-rays showed large cracks running along the front and back of Bill’s head. Relief slightly settled her nervous stomach. Maybe Bill had been dead when he’d been tied to the tree, after all. She hoped so, because she couldn’t imagine the fear and pain he would have gone through if he had been left bound and conscious, with no way to free himself, and no hope of rescue.

  “He had a couple of skull fractures,” Henry continued, “but whatever was used to cause them didn’t break the skin. I did find slight swelling and signs of bleeding around the brain.”

  “Would that kill him?” Jake asked.

  “No. Cause of death is hypothermia. Based on his stage of frostbite, I estimate the time of death to be somewhere between ten and twelve Monday night.”

  “I noticed part of Bill’s nose was blue and it almost looked like he had blood blisters. Is that…ah…?” She tried not to picture Bill’s face. “Frostbite?”

  “Yes. He had it on his fingers, ears and I found signs on his cheeks. The crows removed a lot of the damaged skin and then some.” He sighed and shook his head. “My dad has been the county coroner for forty years. I’ve been in and out of the morgue since I was kid. I’ve seen a lot of things, but this…this doesn’t settle well. At all.”