Devil Dead

by Linda Ladd

“Okay. It might take us a while to negotiate these roads. It’s crazy out here and it’s startin’ to come down hard again.”

  “The park guy said the best bet is to come in by car at the main gate. I’m sending Buck and his forensics team out there by boat because, as I understand it, the victim landed fairly close to the water and that way’ll be easier for them to carry in their equipment. All our patrol officers are working traffic, so you’ll probably need to string the crime scene tape and make sure the park’s shut down. Not that anybody in their right mind would go out there in this kind of weather. And be careful, for God’s sake.”

  Claire had to agree with him. Ha Ha Tonka was a beautiful and wild place, a siren’s song for hikers and explorers and geologists, but it was rather remote once you got inside, with lots of high craggy cliffs and gorgeous views and foot trails winding through woods and streams and rocky outcroppings. Still, it could be a treacherous place if visitors stepped off the wood-planked walkways or ignored the safety barriers and warning signs. Heavy snow was going to make it even more so, and the Park Service had already closed it, as soon as the storm had been predicted. But the victim had gotten inside somehow, whether on foot, car, or by boat, and it was their job to figure out how and why and when.

  Beeping the horn a couple of times, she finally got Bud’s attention and waved him back to the SUV. Another uniformed officer was already out on the street with him directing the slow-moving traffic. Bud trudged his way back through the deep snow at the side of the road until he reached the Bronco and got in with a rush of cold air and fluttering snowflakes and one rather inventive curse. His lean face was ruddy with cold and windburn, which really emphasized his ashy-gray eyes, and he grumbled around as he pulled off his gloves and held his fingers up against the heat vents. “Man, this sucks so damn bad. I bet I lose some fingers to frostbite this time. I wish I’d never left Atlanta.”

  “I told you to wear more layers, Bud. It’s six degrees out there.”

  “Tell me about it. And if I put on anything else I couldn’t walk two steps. You have the constitution of a damn Eskimo, Claire.”

  “No, I just put on lots of layers, and some Polartec underwear and a fleece pullover and then a Down Tek jacket that Black got me from L.L. Bean, and then my parka. I dress a lot warmer than you do, but enough about the weather. Charlie says we’ve caught a body out at Ha Ha Tonka.”

  That got his full attention. He turned his head and stared at her. “Are you freakin’ kiddin’ me? Today? Please tell me it’s not a homicide. And I do wear insulated underwear. And it’s the good stuff that I get over at Bass Pro Shop in Springfield.”

  Claire shrugged. Bud was Southern. He was always cold in the winter months, but this weather was extreme, she had to admit. “Don’t know yet what it is. Charlie wants us to go in down there and tape it off at the gate. The body’s up somewhere around the Castle ruins. Not sure exactly where. You’ve got tape in the back, right? And flares?”

  “Yeah. If it’s a homicide, we’ll be out there ’til midnight. The temperature’s supposed to drop ten degrees below zero again tonight.”

  “Well, that does suck, I have to agree. But Charlie wants the top of the cliff taped off before we climb down to where the body is.”

  Starting the engine, Bud kept up the grumbling under his breath. “Climb down there? How the hell are we gonna get down those cliffs in this ice? I can’t even walk across the pavement without goin’ down and slidin’ ten feet.”

  “Guess we’ll figure that out when we get there. Buck’s bringing in his team by boat. The lake’s gonna be iced up around the bank, too. At least it is in my cove.”

  “Well, I guess anything’s better than standin’ around and watchin’ idiots crash their vehicles into each other. Morons, all of ’em. Out shopping. Really? Today? Come on. Why don’t they just stay home and watch the soaps and give us a damn break?”

  Used to Bud’s grousing, Claire said, “Amen to all of that.”

  Bud inched his way out into the highway intersection and took a wide slow left turn that avoided the wrecked cars still blocking the roadway. “God, I’m hungry. Starving. You got any of those Snickers bars left over?”

  “Yeah. I got some hot chocolate in my thermos, too.”

  “Well, pour me some and get me those Snickers quick. I can’t believe we didn’t even have time to eat lunch. I gotta keep up my energy levels. It’s gonna take a long time to get to that damn park.”

  “You’ll live, Bud. All you ever think about anyway is food.”

  “So? You got something better to talk about when you’re hungry?”

  Claire handed him a couple of candy bars, wondering how the hell they were going to work a crime scene in this kind of weather if the victim was located at the bottom of a cliff. She usually loved falling snow and ice and warm fires and sitting in hot tubs with her honeybun, Nicholas Black, but not this time and not today. She didn’t think she’d ever been this cold for this long in her entire life, and she had a bad feeling that they were still going to be working this crime scene well after dark and in the predicted blizzard that was coming in from the southwest.

  Suddenly, Black’s idea of spending the winter months down in New Orleans, where there was little snow and no ice and where he had a spacious walled mansion in the French Quarter, sounded more enticing than residing in the current frigid Missouri climes. She figured that he was already back from Los Angeles by now and that he was smart enough to stay inside and was as warm as toast no matter where he was working. Too bad she and Bud didn’t have that option. But if Black had made it in before the snow had started again, that was a very good thing. He had been gone almost a week this time.

  Fortunately, she and Bud made the drive to the state park without going into a ditch and/or getting slammed into by helpless motorists sliding around in recently dented and damaged automobiles. The length of the ride and Bud’s super-hot, magnificent heater managed to thaw both of them out to some degree, but that wouldn’t last long once they got outside and into the wind and tromped around in ridiculously deep snow drifts for four or five hours. The front entrance to the park was wide open, but the smooth white mantle cloaking the road was unblemished by tire tracks. They pulled up and stopped long enough to stretch the fluorescent-yellow crime scene tape at the front entrance. They didn’t want anybody to cross that line, especially media or ambulance chasers, which would only disrupt footprints and trample evidence, if there even was anything left behind that hadn’t already been covered with the heavy snowfall.

  When they got back inside the car, Bud turned to her. “No tire tracks. So how did he get in here?”

  “Snow could’ve already covered it up. It’s been falling on and off all day long. Last night, too.”

  “Yeah, true. Wonder how the park ranger found him.”

  “I’d say he came in down by the water like Buck’s gonna do. It’d be easier than climbing down there like we’ve got to do.”

  Bud frowned. “Yeah, it’s a tough job, and all that crap.”

  The parking lot was situated on a hill, as was most of the park, not to mention the rugged cliffs and craggy rock formations. They left the Bronco there, and headed up the road on foot to what was left of the old stone mansion. It was called the Castle by the locals, but had once been a magnificent family home overlooking the lake and Niangua River, constructed of white granite blocks, and no doubt full of rich furnishings. But fire had destroyed it at some point, leaving barren outer walls and open cellars and empty arched stone window frames. Still, it was quite a sight to behold and brought in even more tourists and hikers and botanists to explore its surroundings, not to mention lovers looking for a dark place to make out with one heck of a light-spangled romantic night view out over the lake. She and Black hadn’t tried it out yet, but maybe they should.

  Bud and Claire struggled along the edge of the pavement, through the deeper drifts, but it probably didn’t matter where they walked. No footprints were going to be found anywhere i
n the park, not with the six more inches that had fallen since daybreak.

  Bud stopped at one point, hands on his hips, and looked disgusted. The wind was picking up where they stood, now very high on the cliffs, almost howling around the Castle ruins, like in a horror movie. Maybe it was. Maybe those nasty walking dead or super sexy vampires were going to jump out at them, unaffected by the frigid temps since they were already cold and dead. Bud said, “We aren’t gonna find a shred of evidence up here, I can tell you that right now. Look around. It’s like a barren landscape. Looks like the surface of the moon, or something.”

  Bud was right, of course. Claire already had a bad feeling about the case, and she hadn’t even seen the body yet. How could they find any usable evidence in such deep and undisturbed snow? Maybe that’s why the killer, if there was a killer, chose such a remote spot in which to dump the victim’s body. On the other hand, there might be something underneath the snow, signs of a struggle perhaps, or the murder weapon or a bloodstained shirt or another body or a road map to the perpetrator’s hideout. Who could tell? But to find it, they’d probably have to either melt off three tons of icy precipitation with a flamethrower or wait until the sun came out in April and did it for them. No telling when the storm would break, either. It had been snowing almost nonstop for the last week and a half, except for some lovely hours of sun that very morning.

  When they finally slugged a path through the trees and to the cliff extending just past the Castle ruins, a brisk, bitterly cold wind stung them square in their already windburned faces, but they continued to make their way along the high precipice, but not too close, uh-uh and no way, until they could see the lights down below where three police boats had gathered in the water below them. Buckeye Boyd, Canton County’s trusted medical examiner, was already on the scene. They could see him standing out on the prow of one of the boats, bundled up to his ears and directing his topnotch technicians around the crime scene. The other boats had portable floodlights focused on the victim in the falling winter gloom, and she craned over as far as she safely could and tried to locate the body. As far as she could tell from so high above them, the victim had probably tumbled down the open area under the boardwalk and then slid right over the cliff drop and landed far below. She couldn’t really make out anything yet, but it was a pretty good guess that the body had to be frozen stiff. Everything else in the park was, including Bud and her.

  “Looks to me like he went off somewhere around here, all right,” Bud called out to her over the whirling wind, clapping his gloved hands together for warmth. “Probably bounced around some on the rocks and scrub trees before he tumbled to a stop down there somewhere.”

  “Yeah. Our problem is how we’re gonna get down there without killing ourselves. Any bright ideas?”

  Bud stamped his feet and clapped his gloved hands together some more and pulled the drawstring on his brown fur-lined hood tighter around his face. “Man, what a godawful way to die, especially if the fall didn’t kill him. Just to lie down there alone in the dark, all broken up and slowly freeze to death.”

  “If it makes you feel better, they say that when you freeze to death, it gets to the point where it’s sorta like just drifting off to sleep.” Claire took out her camera and started clicking photos of the outlook platform on which they stood. It didn’t have any disturbed snow or signs of footprints leading to or from it, except for the ones they had made in their approach. Several feet of snow had completely covered one side, sloping all the way up to the top of the handrail. “Maybe he didn’t go off from up here, Bud. Maybe a killer dumped him down there and wanted it to look like he fell.”

  Bud blew into his gloved palms. Stomped some more. He hailed from Georgia, poor guy. Snow was an anathema to him, certainly not his favorite thing. Winter, either. Or hypothermia. Or thermal underwear. Or electric socks. “Or he might’ve just jumped and ended it all. Got all despondent for some reason and decided to make the hurting stop. Could’ve been because of this stupid frigid weather. I think I want to end it all, too, now that we’ve got to stand out here all night.”

  “I feel your pain, Bud.”

  “Maybe he bought it even before the storm hit. The ranger probably wouldn’t’ve seen him down there right off the bat. He might’ve been down there for days. All winter maybe.”

  “Well, there’ve been suicides out here. He wouldn’t be the first.”

  “Makes sense to me. Still, he chose a hard way to go. Most guys just blow their brains out when they want to end it all. Faster, easier, manlier. Takes guts to put a gun in your mouth.”

  Pulling out her phone, Claire considered Bud’s theory as she punched in Buck’s cell phone number. From her high vantage point, she could see Buck grab his phone out of his pocket. She hoped the call would go through, considering the weather. It did. “Hey, Buck. We’re up top. What’d you got down there?”

  Claire watched as Buck bent his head way back and gazed up at them. He gave a wave when he picked out their position on the outlook platform. “It’s a male victim, I think, completely encased in ice. Looks like a damn grape Popsicle. From what I can tell, appears like he’s got some broken bones and abrasions, but we can’t see him all that well yet. The ice is clouded. But I’m pretty sure it’s a man by the size of the body. Can you see where he went off?”

  “Could’ve been anywhere along here. No signs of struggle or footprints. The snow’s covering up everything. Maybe we can find something underneath, but it’s gonna take days to shovel all this out.”

  “I don’t think we’ll get much down here, either. Looks like he might’ve been here a while. See any clothes or a coat up there? Any suicide note?”

  “Nope. Nothing. Unless it’s hidden under the snow. We’ll scrape around and see if we find anything where he could’ve gone off. I’m taking some photos, but there’s not much to see up here. Just smooth pure white snow, untouched.”

  “Then he must’ve come out here in his underwear or swim trunks or something. It looks like he’s almost completely nude, but with the body in this condition, it’s hard to tell much yet. We gotta get him back and thawed out under the heat lamps.”

  “So you think he’s been down there a while? Maybe nobody noticed him because of the storm fronts coming in and dumping snow on him?”

  “The body looks fairly fresh, but like I told you, there’s at least an inch of ice covering his entire body. He’s lying half in the lake and the other half is frozen to the rocks. I’ve got to get him back to the morgue and do the cut before I can tell you anything for certain.”

  “Okay, we’re gonna look around up here some more and then head down there along the boardwalk. We might find something along the way. How long are you gonna stay?”

  “A long time, it looks like. We’ve got to have a blowtorch to melt him off those rocks and then cut him out of the ice. He’s stuck tight from neck to waist. We’ve been trying to knock him loose with a sledgehammer, but it’s not working so far.”

  They hung up, and Claire glanced around. “Well, let’s tape off the edge along here and get the rest of the photos. I am so cold I can’t even feel my toes anymore.”

  “Tell me about it.” Bud grumbled some more, mostly under his breath, but he unwound the tape and walked along the edge, hooking it around the handrails.

  Claire shot pictures of everything along that area of the drop, most of which ended up as bare white landscapes that showed exactly nothing except undisturbed deep snow. No help that, not for a murder investigation, and that was for damn sure. She also checked out the area inside and behind the Castle for low mounds of snow that might indicate wadded up clothing or weapons or another corpse or any other hidden evidence. They dug off snow anywhere that looked promising but found nothing but more snow. If the guy wasn’t wearing clothes, Claire was pretty sure he’d been murdered. Why would he commit suicide in the nude? Who would do something like that? Especially a man. In her experience and unless the decision had been made on impulse, suicide victims usua
lly went the other way and tried to make themselves look as presentable as possible to whoever discovered their body. On the other hand, a killer would not want to leave anything behind, no evidence, no clue to the victim’s identity. It would be to his advantage to take any clothes that might be identifiable. Or the victim could’ve escaped his assailant and tried to flee, but in his panic had run right off the edge and fallen to his death.

  After half an hour of searching, they gave up and attempted unsuccessfully to follow the steep boardwalk down in its meandering switchback trail to the lake without slipping and sliding and plummeting themselves down to the crime scene. It was almost impossible to keep their footing on the steeper inclines and they both fell and slid on their backs multiple times. Claire ended up getting snow down inside her boots and up her pant legs and in her gloves, and so did Bud. So by the time they finally found their way to Buck and Shaggy and Vicky and the other technicians, they were not only cold but wet and miserable, too.

  There, they found their good friend, John Becker aka Shaggy, Canton County’s ace criminalist, where he was being supported by a couple of other techs while he used a small blowtorch to melt through the ice holding the corpse against the rocks. The bottom half of the body was still encased in the frozen water just off the bank. Buck had ordered the lights to be focused on the victim, but dusk had fallen fast and hard now, and it was difficult to see as the snow turned to sleet and began to come down harder and in swift, slanted arrows that felt and sounded like BB pellets.

  Shivering like crazy, Claire made her way closer to Buck, where he stood supervising the extraction of the body. There was little she could tell about the victim’s face, except that his skin looked purple. As Buck had said, the murky ice distorted his face and made his features unrecognizable. The scene in its entirety looked a lot like textbook photographs she’d seen of wooly mammoths being dug out of Arctic ice. The victim seemed to have frozen to the spot where he had landed in a relatively upright sitting position, head down, chin frozen tightly against his chest. The ice casing followed the contours of his body and made an ice effigy of a human being that created a very surreal and awful tableau of death in those smoky lights and windblown sleet.