by Maureen Tan
Under different circumstances, I would have complained bitterly to Chad. But his situation was worse than mine. He had already been informed by his boss, the county sheriff, that right after the press conference he was to take the rest of the afternoon off and return to his regular patrol duties the next day. The sheriff’s explanation for Chad’s banishment was amazingly straightforward. He was an elected official, and no matter how competent Chad was—no matter how much the sheriff liked him personally—this case was too important to the outcome of his upcoming reelection bid to be left in the hands of a young deputy.
As the FBI spokesman spent a bit of time talking about the Bureau’s success rate on cases just like these and made another mention of the value of interdepartmental cooperation, the sheriff ran his fingers over his balding dome to re-plaster long strands of very black hair back into place and then ran those same fingers beneath his nose to neaten his salt-and-pepper mustache.
“And now Jake Hargrove, sheriff of Hardin County, will make some comments.”
At that introduction, Sheriff Hargrove straightened his shoulders and puffed out his burly chest. Then, very deliberately, he stepped forward just enough to put Agent Franklin behind his left shoulder. And smiled for the cameras.
“First, I want to congratulate Hardin County deputy Chad Robinson and Maryville police officer Brooke Tyler for the fine work they’ve done. Their initiative brought these murders to light. Deputy Robinson characterizes the kind of dedicated officer who protects and serves the citizens of Hardin County. And I know that all the fine folks who live in Maryville are particularly proud of this feisty little hometown gal of theirs.”
That’s when he reached over and put his arm around my shoulders to pull me in closer to him. He held that pose long enough to give the still photographers from the local newspapers a good shot of the two of us. I smiled into the cameras, knowing darned well that the sheriff was using me to cultivate my town’s voters. But I was all too aware that continued goodwill between my department and the county was essential. Which, I supposed, made me just as political as the sheriff.
Released from the sheriff’s avuncular embrace, I stepped back out of the limelight as he kept speaking.
“I also want to take this opportunity to assure local residents that they’re in absolutely no danger. I can’t compromise an ongoing investigation, but I can say that early indications suggest some kind of a connection with organized crime.”
That statement earned him a repressive glare from Agent Franklin. But the sheriff had his back to Agent Franklin, so he continued heedlessly on.
“The murders sure have the look of mob executions.”
At that point, Agent Franklin pushed forward.
“The sheriff and I have a lot of work to do,” he said smoothly. “So we’ll take a few questions before wrapping this up.”
That’s when, much to my surprise and—I was certain—the sheriff and Agent Franklin’s dismay, a female reporter turned the press’s attention to me.
“Hey, Brooke,” she said, “aren’t you the one with the search dogs?”
I nodded. “I am.”
“You and your dog discovered a skeleton out here a few days ago, didn’t you? While you were looking for a lost toddler?”
I nodded again, adding that the child had been found safely and returned to her parents.
Another reporter chimed in, a thin guy with an aggressive chin.
“Hey, I remember you!”
In that moment, I remembered him, too. Remembered how he’d shoved his microphone into my face, demanding to know how I felt about finding a little boy’s body. As if my tears hadn’t said it all.
“Didn’t you find a murdered kid right around here, too? About a year ago? Are all these murders somehow connected?”
Well, all the victims are dead, I thought sarcastically. But I kept my face bland and my voice neutral when I answered.
“The child’s body was discovered near a residential area, there was a history of domestic abuse, and the boy’s father confessed to his murder. So no, I don’t think they’re related.”
Then Agent Franklin announced that the interviews were done and that the next official news conference would be tomorrow morning at nine.
I turned my back on the camera and walked back across the length of Camp Cadiz, knowing that I’d only answered half the reporter’s question. I, too, wondered how—and if—the murder I’d uncovered days earlier was tied into the bodies in the ravine.
Mowed areas of grass marked each of the campsites at Camp Cadiz. Beyond the outhouse, on the far side of the campground, were two adjacent campsites. That was where the human remains brought up from the ravine were laid out on plastic tarps. A stand of trees and the stone foundation of an old Civilian Conservation Corps building shielded the makeshift morgue area from the curious eyes of the press and a gathering crowd of spectators. Not surprisingly, word of the murders—like every other piece of bad news that surfaced in Hardin County—had spread quickly.
Though it was hours from sunset and the afternoon sun beat down on the unshaded field, battery-powered light stands already ringed the grassy morgue area. Similar lights were also among the equipment that had been lowered down into the ravine along with a small army of crime-scene techs and forensic investigators. With the resources of the FBI driving it, this investigation wasn’t going to be interrupted by sunset. Or limited by lack of equipment or personnel.
The weather, I thought, was the only element they couldn’t control. I’d mentioned that to the first investigators arriving on the scene. Mentioned how quickly the shallow stream could be turned into a raging torrent. The kind of torrent that had already scattered body parts down the length of the ravine. Since then, a portable weather radio had arrived on the scene. Now periodic National Weather Service announcements echoed across the campground, reinforcing my warning, spurring the investigation into high gear. Severe thunderstorms were predicted for tomorrow afternoon. Flooding was likely in low-lying areas. And nothing, I thought, was lower-lying than the bottom of the ravine.
The perimeter of the morgue area was marked with crime-scene tape. A single opening, on the side nearest the River-to-River Trail, was monitored by a woman dressed in a short-sleeved blouse and khaki slacks with a badge and ID hanging from a cord around her neck. She was also in charge of a nearby bulletin board on which a blown-up section of Chad’s topographical map had been mounted. Bright colored pushpins, each with a number, dotted the map, indicating where remains had been found. The pushpins were keyed to numbered plastic triangles placed on a corner of each of the tarps.
I looked over the double row of tarps then back at the map, my eyes lingering on a lemon-yellow pushpin. Number one. There was no corresponding tarp for that pin because the remains that Possum and I had found were already at the state’s forensics lab. Thinking back to that night, I now wondered about Possum’s reaction. When he’d whined and tucked his tail down, he probably hadn’t been reacting just to the remains on the ledge, but to the odor of decaying bodies wafting up from the depths of the ravine. Overlaying the scent of a little girl who was very much alive. And still Possum had managed to stay on task and find Tina.
I moved slowly around the perimeter of the morgue area, pausing often to watch what was going on while trying to stay out of the way of the people who scurried back and forth despite the heat. Only one edge of the campsite was shaded by trees, so the technicians worked in the beating afternoon sun. And most of them were dressed for air-conditioned labs.
As I stood nearby, several grubby searchers arrived with more remains. After consulting briefly with them, the woman in the khaki slacks pointed to the next empty sheet. She added pin number fourteen to the board. A police photographer documented the fourteenth body just as he had every new addition to the sheets.
Other workers—some wearing lab coats, some in civilian clothing, and all wearing latex gloves—bent over particular piles. A few concentrated on the bits of clothing and per
sonal effects salvaged from the kill sites and placed in bags that were also numbered. Most were carefully arranging bones, creating incomplete jigsaw skeletons with a few ribs and a jaw bone and a shattered hand. Or a femur, a pelvis and bits of spine. Or matching forearms, one with a fingerless hand still attached.
The collections on each tarp, I knew, had been found in geographic proximity to each other. But it would take DNA testing to match all the pieces that had been scattered over longer distances by scavengers and the stream.
Every intact skull I saw had a ragged hole at the back of the head.
“Execution style,” I overheard a nearby county cop say. “Stand ’em up or kneel ’em on the edge. Put the gun up near their head. Then—” he pointed at one of the skulls with his right index finger and jerked his thumb upward “—bang. A quick push and you’re done.”
That, I thought, explained the sheriff’s off-the-cuff comment to the media. He probably figured the ravine for a dryland equivalent of a pair of cement overshoes. Certainly, the Shawnee National Forest could be as impenetrable as the deepest lake. And a bullet to the brain was just as permanent as drowning.
I looked back down at the remains nearest my feet. A single item on a corner sheet. It was the cap of a skull, the bone still half covered with skin, soil clumping the hair, making the color impossible to determine. And on the sheet beside that, a pair of femurs, their heads tucked in next to the hip sockets they fit in, looked almost porous and polished clean.
I waylaid one of the FBI technicians, a younger guy with a pleasant face whom I’d noticed earlier. Then, he’d been standing off to one side, staring over the bodies laid out before him, looking more than a little overwhelmed. Now, he was moving efficiently along the perimeter, dividing his attention between two incessantly squawking walkie-talkies.
I managed to catch him in a moment when he wasn’t talking into either.
“This has been done over a lot of years, hasn’t it?” I said.
He hesitated as he searched for my ID, then noticed the Maryville PD badge I’d retrieved from my SUV and clipped to my waist.
“Oh, you’re the one who got this circus started. You and your partner.”
No point in telling him that Chad wasn’t my partner.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry about that.”
“You should be,” he said, suddenly grinning. “To answer your question unofficially, some of these bodies may have been down there for twenty years or more. But a couple of them—like number six over there—are a lot more recent. Maybe just a few months old.”
One of the walkie-talkies crackled to life, demanding his attention.
I mouthed a “thank you,” carefully kept the relief I felt from showing in my expression, and left him to his work.
These murders, I thought, had nothing to do with my sister, nothing to do with the secret that had prompted her to threaten me. This place was someone’s killing field—someone’s dumping ground—when Katie and I had still been children. Maybe even before we’d been born. And it was too much of a coincidence to believe that the remains I’d found on the ledge were unrelated to the bodies down in the ravine. As the search progressed, I was confident that other victims would be discovered along the edge of the ravine.
I continued my walk around the perimeter. Looking. Listening to the conversations around me. Gathering information I feared that “cooperation” through official channels would be much slower to provide.
A tall, thin man with wire-framed glasses and wispy hair had been moving from one set of remains to the next, squatting down close to each sheet to look carefully at them. Sometimes turning a skull over to examine it or using calipers or a tape to measure a rib or a piece of spine or a bone from an arm or leg.
An intact rib cage and spinal cord with a bit of clothing still clinging to it seemed to catch his attention for a moment.
“Scoliosis,” he murmured.
Then he moved on to the adjacent sheet. Number nine.
Behind him, a young woman carrying a clipboard made another quick note, as she did whenever he spoke.
Another time, he pointed to the forearm with the partial hand still attached.
“See that. Teeth marks. Gnawed the fingers right off.”
The young woman nodded, looked a little green and took another note as she moved away from sheet number eleven.
The last set of remains they examined brought them close to me.
“Odd,” he said as he stood.
That softly spoken word focused the young woman’s attention—and mine—on him. He spoke to her as a teacher would to a student, and I wondered if that didn’t define their relationship.
“Consider the numbers you’ve recorded and what we’ve seen,” he said. “Skulls with relatively large external occipital protuberances. Long bones that are, overall, quite large and robust. Femoral shaft circumferences consistently exceeding eighty millimeters. Every femoral head we’ve measured is well over forty-five millimeters. What does that tell you?”
It certainly told me nothing.
The young woman seemed stumped, too. She glanced down at her clipboard as if the answer was there.
“No, don’t look at your notes,” her older colleague snapped. “Look around you. And think!”
Apparently unoffended by—or simply used to—his tone, she took a little time to work it out. The tall man stood quietly, not looking nearly as impatient as he had sounded, a slight smile playing across his features as he watched her.
Pride, I thought. And maybe a little affection.
Abruptly, the young woman lifted her head.
“Well?” he said, soliciting her opinion.
When she spoke, she sounded awestruck.
“Males,” she said. “All of these victims are men.”
I waited to shake my head until I had moved past the teacher and student. And in my mind, I scolded them for jumping to conclusions. What you have now might be all male, but the ground search is still in its earliest stages. Maybe the remains you’ve examined so far belong only to men, but one victim is definitely a woman, I thought. Which means the continuing search will probably turn up at least a few more female victims. And more victims who are buried along the ravine, not in it.
In the time it took me to walk completely around the perimeter, three more numbered pushpins were added to the map and three more plastic sheets were filled with soil-encrusted remains.
Even I could see they were male.
Chapter 17
I went home before dusk.
There was no point in staying and watching the makeshift morgue expand one tarp at a time when there was nothing I could do there. Unlike the others at the scene, I had a town to take care of. No matter that I’d already had a grueling day and would have preferred to spend the evening sitting on the back porch and pitching balls to my dogs. It was Friday and, within a few hours, the action at the bars on Dunn Street would be in full swing. It was my job to make sure nothing swung too far out of control.
But first, I needed a shower, clean clothes and maybe a decent meal. One involving fresh vegetables and protein. After that, I figured, I’d be pretty much ready for whatever life threw at me.
Before leaving my SUV I took my holstered gun and the inhaler from my glove compartment. Temporarily, I hitched my gun belt around my waist and tucked the evidence bag into my pocket. Then I crossed the yard to the kennel area, spent a moment fiddling with the latch on Possum’s dog-food bin, and scooped out a heaping portion of kibbles as he bounced and barked with anticipation.
“Sorry, bud,” I said as I dumped the food into his dish. “No playtime tonight.”
Whatever canine disappointment Possum might have felt was lost in tail-wagging enthusiasm over his food. He didn’t even notice when I let Highball out of his kennel and walked in the direction of the house. Highball followed me across the yard, wagging his tail happily as I detoured briefly to my garden—a quartet of staked tomato plants that flourished on heat, humidity and
neglect. After a quick inspection convinced Highball that the ripe tomato I pulled from the vine was not a tennis ball, he trotted to the back door and waited.
Briefly, I disrupted our routine by taking my boots off before letting us inside. Despite my trips back and forth through the stream—and though the smell I detected on my boots was now mostly in my imagination—a dog like Highball should have perceived the odor of decomposition still clinging to the rough leather. And he would have, even a few months earlier. But Highball simply sat patiently at my feet. Old and oblivious.
I felt a familiar twinge of sadness as I pushed open the door and watched him go directly to the empty food dish beside his cushion. He stared eagerly at it as I dumped my gun belt, car keys, the tomato and the contents of my pockets onto the kitchen counter next to the phone. Then I went to the pantry, measured out his kibbles and supplemented that meal with a can of soft food especially formulated for elderly dogs.
As Highball pushed his gray muzzle happily into his dish, I patted him.
“You’re a good boy,” I murmured. “A very good dog.”
After that, I poured myself a big glass of water from the tap, took several gulps, quickly rubbed the back of my arm across my eyes, and refocused my attention on the present. Away from the inevitable day in the near future when I would have to bury my old companion.
As I did every evening when I returned home, I made sure pen and paper were handy, then hit the flashing message button on the answering machine.
The first was from Katie. Whispery, sincere.
“I hope you like your surprise.”
The answering machine announced that the message had been left at 12:42. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Not understanding the message upped my anxiety and, along with it, the acid level in my stomach.