by Sara Gauldin
I grumbled at the car, "Come on and get me there and back without bottoming out!" I continued on with both hands firmly on the wheel, leaning forward. The road went on for as far as I could see.
Ahead, the road disappeared. I took a deep breath. Please don’t be the wrong road, I thought. I really don’t want to back this car all the way out. There's no turn around anywhere!
As I approached the end of the road, a turn-off to the right appeared. I turned, and breathed a sigh of relief when the forest opened up to reveal a wide, circular driveway leading to a high-end cabin.
Wow, I did not see that coming! This place must have cost a fortune! The thought had just formed when I felt the prickle of goose bumps on my skin, despite the summer day. Who can afford this much land and that kind of home so close to the city?
I shook off the foreboding feeling as the menagerie of patrol cars and officers already working the case drew my attention away from the home. A female officer, petite and with dark hair and eyes, approached my car. I rolled down my window. The heat of the mid-afternoon sun overcame my feeble air conditioned space like the blast from an oven.
“Detective Avery Rich?”
“Yes, and you must be…?”
“Officer Lou Johnson, it's nice to meet you.”
“Lou?” I asked.
“It's short for Lucille. It’s a family name. Anyway, I'm supposed to show you to the remains.”
“All right, I’m surprised that the medical examiner hasn’t taken the remains to the morgue yet.”
“There are some problems. You really need to see this for yourself.”
I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. What could possibly be keeping the medical examiner from collecting the body? I crunched across the gravel driveway and into the woods, following Officer Johnson. We walked along a narrow game trail, pushing the branches aside as we passed through. I pulled my hair off of my neck and into a bun as I walked. I realized I had no idea whom the house belonged to or how the remains had been discovered. “Officer Johnson, I didn’t get a copy of the initial report. Can you see that one is sent to me?”
“That’s strange. I’ll send it to you again. Usually dispatch takes care of that.”
As the house and blinking swarm of patrol cars disappeared behind me, I noticed the unmistakable odor of death and decay, growing more intense with each step.
“How long does the medical examiner think the body has been out here?” I wrinkled my nose.
“A few days, maybe? It's hard to say,” Officer Johnson said. “The heat's not helping.”
“No, it isn’t.” I could feel what little makeup I was wearing melting away. We stepped into a clearing that likely was home to deer when not being used to dispose of a body.
As I entered the clearing, I noticed the gruesome bits of human remains that were strewn across the ground, which appeared to be painted with the blood of the dead.
“So much blood,” I murmured.
“That’s right,” Officer Johnson said. She grimaced. “Have you met our medical examiner?” She gestured toward an older man with thick, white hair, wearing coveralls.
“No,” I said, approaching the doctor.
“Detective Avery Rich, this is Dr. Glen Cleary. He'll be able to answer your questions.”
I held out my hand to greet Dr. Cleary.
“If you don’t mind, I don’t think now is time for a handshake." He held up both of his hands, gloved and bloody, in explanation.
I nodded my understanding. “It's nice to meet you. What have you found out so far?” I asked.
“I won’t have an exact time or cause of death until I can do a complete examination of the remains, but clearly the bodies were cut apart.”
“Bodies? The dispatch told me that a single body had been found. ” The amount of blood I was seeing suddenly made sense.
Dr. Cleary’s glasses were sliding down his nose as the heat assaulted him. “There are dismembered pieces of at least three people here. There are two different blood types, but we've found three craniums.”
The smell of rot and the heat made the bile rise in my throat. “Craniums? You found three heads?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Each of the bodied had been dismembered, and we've yet to find all the parts. It's taking some time.”
“I’m sure that's a problem. I’ll just have a look around. I'll need to take some pictures.”
“That’s fine, but if you see any body parts that we haven’t already marked, please notify my team and leave it where you found it, so we can catalogue it later.”
“Not a problem.” My voice cracked. The idea of actually picking up a body part did nothing to help my queasiness. “Have you found anything that might help identify these people?”
“Not so far. We'll have to look at missing persons, and the dental records. We may get lucky and find a DNA match."
"Is there anything else I should know?" I asked.
Officer Johnson spoke up. "It wasn’t a robbery. One of the men was wearing a Rolex. It's still strapped to his wrist."
"I guess we'll have to dig deeper to find a motive," I said.
Officer Johnson nodded.
Dr. Cleary gestured towards a cooler, nearby. "There's something else you should see. It's the reason why I asked the dispatcher to send you, specifically.”
I followed the doctor to the cooler.
He opened it, and pulled something out of it, wrapped in a plastic bag. “We aren’t sure which victim this hand belonged to, but he may have known you. I was wondering if it could be one of your contacts.”
“I don’t really have any contacts here. I haven’t been working in this department for long.”
“Then you do have a mystery, but in this case it's on his hand instead of on yours.” Doctor Cleary pulled the plastic from around the bloody hand so that I could see it more clearly. There was writing on the back of the hand. I leaned closer so I could read it:
Ryan Kain
Detective Avery Rich
I felt the vomit rise in my throat, and had to swallow hard to stop it. “Thank you for letting me know.”
Chapter20
As a detective, I've witnessed many murder scenes, but finding a dismembered corpse with my name written on his hand was a new brand of screwed up.
“So, Detective Rich, I wanted to ask you if anybody you knew was missing,” Dr. Cleary said. “Whoever chopped these guys up likely hoped the animals would carry off the bits and save them the trouble of concealing them. However, it looks like most of the parts are still here. During the summer, the animals aren't exactly starving, plus we're pretty close to the city, so there's less wildlife, and not as much scavenging. They shouldn’t be terribly hard to identify as a result.”
The recent memory of Calbert and his granddaughter hoping against the odds that their family would come home flashed into my memory. “No, I don’t know of anybody who's currently missing.”
The doctor pulled off one of his gloves and pushed his glasses back into position. “Well, it looks like whomever this was, they knew you.”
“Or knew of me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my digital camera. “May I?”
“Of course.” Dr. Cleary held out the bag so I could document the writing. “Do you know whom the other person listed is?”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
Dr. Cleary raised his eyebrows expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
“This may pertain to another case I've been investigating. I intend to find out either way.”
“I’ll contact you as soon as I learn more about what happened,” Dr. Cleary said.
“I appreciate that.” I pulled a card from my pocket and handed it to the doctor. He took it with his ungloved hand.
I walked to each evidence marker and took a picture. Somewhere in this carnage there was evidence that would tell the story of what had happened at this grisly scene, and I was determined to find it. I was tempted to ask to see the heads of the dead men, for a moment. Wo
uld I recognize their faces?
I shook off the thought. I would see them after they'd been neatly placed on a slab in the morgue. That was the good doctor’s part to play. I was here to put together the narrative, and link it back to whoever was responsible.
A gentle breeze came through the clearing as I searched, cooling me and dispelling some of the stench. I glanced up at the swaying trees and realized I'd been thankful for the breeze too soon. “Officer Johnson, are we under a storm warning?” I called out.
“I’m not sure, but that sky doesn't look good. We need to find as much as we can before the rain tries to wash it all away.”
“Please see if anyone has any tarps or tents in the patrol cars--I think we're going to need them,” I said.
“I’ll go check. There should be something, but this is a big clearing!” Officer Johnson started back down the game trail, toward the driveway.
The wind continued to intensify as I snapped pictures. A loud crack from above me caught my attention. I looked up as a large branch careened toward me from the treetops. “Everyone, look out!” I heard my voice before I realized I was speaking. I ran out of the path of the branch as it tumbled through the branches of the nearby trees. Several officers scrambled to get clear. The branch was large enough to have been a tree on its own. It landed with a dull thud in the center of the crime scene.
“That was too close!” one of the officers said. I read his name tag--Evans, it said.
A young officer ran toward us, stumbling over his feet as he approached, “Is everyone all right?” he asked. “I saw the branch fall from the trail.”
“Yeah, it missed us. Did you get the bags I asked for?” Evans asked.
“I did.” He held up a handful of evidence bags, dropping most of them on the ground. “Oops, sorry. I’ll get more.” He scooped up the bags and jogged back down the trail.
Evans shook his head. “Rookie.”
I nodded. “The wind in the tree tops must be stronger than here in the clearing,” I said.
The officer shaded his eyes as he looked up into the trees, trying to see where the branch had come from. “I hope there's nothing else coming down.”
“Quite a few branches slowed this giant chunk down. Any of them could come down now. We're going to have to be really careful.” I looked up the trunk of the tree that had dropped its branch, and something caught my eye. A tiny glint winked at me, reflecting the rapidly retreating sunlight. I walked to the tree. There, embedded in the tree bark at eye-level, was a bit of copper. I snapped a picture of the tree and the copper. “We are going to need an evidence marker, a knife, and an evidence bag,” I said to Officer Evans.
“What did you find?” he asked.
“I think there's a bullet embedded in the trunk of this tree.”
“A bullet? It’s probably nothing. Some hunter must have missed.”
“A bullet in a crime scene seems worth documenting to me. If it's just left over from a hunter, then we'll find out. Even so, we need to be sure.”
Evans laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Sir,” I corrected.
Evans smirked. “Hey, Doc, how many bullet wounds did you find in the bodies so far?”
Dr. Cleary lifted a plastic-clad piece from the ground. “None, so far. I can’t give you a cause of death just yet, but so far there are no obvious bullet wounds.”
“Yeah, and we haven’t found any guns either,” Evans said.
My jaw clenched as I turned toward Evans. I looked him in the eye. “And you haven’t found a killer yet, either, so we will process the evidence at the crime scene.”
He glanced down. “Yes, sir.” He pulled his pocket knife out of his pocket and handed it to me.
I marked the bullet hole as evidence and took another picture. I tagged the entry and took a photo of the angle of the bullet's entry. Cutting the bark and wood away from the bullet was more difficult than I had imagined. The shot’s velocity penetrated the hardwood of the ancient oak deeply. It was wedged in at an upward angle. I carefully chiseled away at the unyielding wood, giving the bullet plenty of room. If there were any identifying marks on the bullet, I didn’t want to damage them. Finally, the bullet came free of the tree. I caught it with my gloved hands, and looked at it carefully. It was a small bullet, likely from a pistol, not a hunting rifle. Something dark and brown was near the bullet’s tip. “Hand me an evidence bag,” I ordered.
Officer Evans handed me the bag. “If it’s all right, I'm going to help the others cover the site before the storm hits,” he muttered.
“Go ahead,” I answered. I glanced up again. The sky had blackened and a flicker of lightning now dotted the cloud bank.
Evans walked off, looking thankful to go.
I crossed the clearing to find Dr. Cleary. As I approached he was placing a marker next to what appeared to have been part of someone’s leg. I braced myself. I would not react to this carnage. “Dr. Cleary, I found this bullet. I know you said that it didn’t look like any of the victims had been shot, but it looks like it may have blood on it. Would you mind processing it for DNA?” I handed him the bag.
Dr. Cleary looked at the bullet closely. "There's something there. I’ll test it to be sure. Do you want me to send it to ballistics when I’m done with it?”
“That would be great,” I said. A large drop of rain fell on my shoulder. “I'm going to look around a bit more."
The doctor nodded, and he turned to place the leg section in a cooler.
I walked back to the tree where I'd found the bullet and looked at the ground around the base of the tree. There were no obvious signs of blood splatter. If someone had been shot and the bullet passed through them and into the tree, then they had to be standing fairly near the tree when it happened. I stood in front of the tree and tried to estimate where the person would have to stand for the bullet to strike first them and then the tree, but none of the angles felt right. I pulled out my camera and looked back at the markers showing the bullet's entry path. The bullet had been fired at an upward angle, as though someone on the ground had fired toward someone standing. I knelt down and looked up at the tree. Could one of the victims have managed to take a shot at whoever had brought them there?
The thunder rumbled around the clearing, threatening all who dared to remain.
“What do you see, Detective Rich?” Dr. Cleary asked.
The sound of his approaching footsteps must have been obscured by the storm, and I jumped slightly at the sound of his voice. “The bullet was fired up at an angle from the ground. I wonder if one of the victims fired the shot. Will you test for gun powder residue when you examine the bodies?”
“No problem,” Dr. Cleary said. “If you’re right, and whoever was shot turns out to not still be in the clearing, they would have left a blood trail.”
“There's so much blood already on the ground. Without an on the spot DNA test, how can we be sure of what we find?” I asked. More rain drops spattered around us, making the discovery of a blood trail less likely by the minute.
"From what I can tell, there is only one trail that leads in and out of this clearing. The woods around here were timbered several years ago. They left many of the larger trees, but the brush is thick underneath,” Dr. Cleary said.
Another peal of thunder clapped.
The doctor’s implication was simple and brilliant. “So you think I should look for blood along the trail?” I asked.
Dr. Cleary nodded. “I think we both need to head in that direction before this storm catches us!”
I glanced around the clearing. Under Officer Johnson’s direction, the team had made short work of covering the crime scene, and Cleary and I were the only ones left behind. “Let’s go,” I said in agreement.
We worked our way along the trail, this time examining the branches we moved aside more closely. We had only gone down the trail a few yards when I spotted blood on a limb. “Here, I found something!”
Dr. Cleary collected a sample while I took pict
ures. We worked our way back down the trail, stopping to collect and catalogue each tiny fragment of blood before the rain could wash it away. About midway back, the storm caught up with us, the torrential rain making the trail even harder to pass. Mud squished under my flats as we made our way back toward the house.
Chapter 21
When we reached the end of the trail there was a gathering of officers taking shelter under the wraparound porch of the cabin. I wondered if the cabin belonged to one of the victims.
The rain streamed down in sheets as we crossed the driveway. I was drenched. My button-down grey top clung to my skin. Rivulets ran from my hair and down my face and neck.
Did I wear water-proof mascara today? If not, I bet I looked like a raccoon. I smudged under each eye with my finger, hoping I was erasing any running mascara.
“Detective Rich! We were getting worried about you and Dr. Cleary!” Officer Johnson made her way toward us as we climbed the front steps.
“We're fine, just a bit soggy,” I said.
“What took you so long to make it back?” she asked.
“We found a blood trail leading from the crime scene,” I said. “We were collecting samples before the rain could wash them away.”
“I have three samples to test from branches along the trail,” Dr. Cleary said.
“That’s amazing--I wonder why none of us spotted it,” Officer Johnson said.
I opened my mouth to respond, but Dr. Cleary was faster. “When Detective Rich realized that the bullet she found may have been fired by one of the victims, we knew that whomever it hit would had to have left the clearing if they weren’t one of the dismembered bodies.”
“How did you know they weren’t a victim?” Officer Johnson asked.
“Because none of the remains I’ve examined have any sign of a bullet wound.” Dr. Cleary tried, unsuccessfully, to dry his glasses on his saturated coveralls.