Cold Heart Creek: A nail-biting and gripping mystery suspense thriller (Detective Josie Quinn Book 7)

by Lisa Regan

  Three

  Josie picked her way around the edges of the small campsite, Noah in tow. Behind him, Lenore sheriff’s deputy Josh Moore stood watching. She stopped next to a large red maple tree and wiped the sweat from her brow. Insects crowded her face and she waved them away. Glancing back at Moore, she was surprised to see he wasn’t sweating nearly as much as she and Noah were. He was in his mid-forties, Josie guessed, tall and thick like a tree trunk, but obviously fit since he hadn’t had any trouble leading them nearly two miles through the forest to this small campsite.

  Noah fiddled with the buttons on his handheld GPS device, attempting to zoom out. The device took several seconds to power on and load. Noah grunted in frustration and said, “How far are we from the county line?”

  Moore shrugged. “Hard to say. Maybe a half mile. I do believe this is Denton, though.”

  Josie’s GPS unit worked more quickly. She studied the screen and agreed, “It is, technically. We’re maybe a quarter mile from the county line. This is our jurisdiction. You were right to call.”

  Moore said, “Great. I’ll be on my way then.”

  Noah said, “You have something more pressing than two dead bodies?”

  Moore gave a humorless laugh. “This isn’t my jurisdiction.”

  Noah pointed toward the other side of the campsite. “You heard Detective Quinn. A quarter mile in that direction is your jurisdiction.”

  “But the bodies are here. In Denton.”

  Josie said, “Deputy Moore, I know you have to return to your duties in Lenore County, but could you just give us a few minutes to assess what’s happened here in case we need your assistance?”

  He gave a slight eye-roll. Noah opened his mouth to speak, but Josie stopped him with a look. “A few minutes,” she said to them both and turned back toward the site.

  From the treeline, Josie studied the scene. A small blue tent had been erected to her right. One of its flaps had been tied open. From where Josie stood, it looked unoccupied. Several feet away from it, directly across from her, lay the remnants of a campfire: a ring of stones with smoldering wood and ash inside it. Against one of the opposite trees lay a rolled sleeping bag. All around the clearing lay various camping supplies, as though someone had walked around the site with their backpack hanging open, spilling items haphazardly, most of which appeared to be clothing. She could see a pair of bodies in the dirt, a man and a woman, positioned so their feet were near the campfire. Josie took a step closer, her heart taking a couple of uneven beats in her chest.

  Walking up beside her, Noah murmured, “They almost look like they’re sleeping.”

  The bodies lay side by side on their backs, their hands clasped together. Josie saw a chunky gold band on the man’s wedding finger. They were young, probably not thirty yet. Both were dressed in khaki shorts. The man wore a blue T-shirt with the Nike swoosh logo emblazoned across it and the woman a tight-fitting purple tank top. Their lithe frames and well-worn hiking boots indicated they spent a lot of time outdoors. They hadn’t been dead long. Out in the middle of the Pennsylvania woods in the thick August heat, they would have started to smell a lot worse if they had been.

  Josie snapped on a pair of gloves and stepped closer to the bodies, kneeling beside the woman’s head. She pointed to the woman’s mouth. “You can see signs of cyanosis—their lips are blue—and it looks like dried froth on their chins.”

  Moore took a tentative step from the trees into the campsite. “How long do you think they’ve been dead?”

  “Not long,” Josie said. “They haven’t even started to bloat yet. In this heat, decomposition would be fast.” Gently, she prodded the woman’s arm. It was stiff and unyielding. “They’re still in rigor mortis.” She looked over toward the man and pointed to a blister on his cheek. “Maybe three to six hours?”

  Noah looked at his watch. “It’s eight fifteen now. So they died early this morning.”

  Josie sighed and stood up, panning the campsite again. “I’m thinking maybe they ingested something. I don’t see any signs of violence. No cuts, scrapes, or bruises. No stab or bullet wounds. No torn clothing.”

  Noah motioned toward the trail of clothing and toiletries. “What about that?”

  “Not sure it indicates a struggle. It could have been one of them looking for something.”

  Moore’s voice came from the trees behind the tent. “Looks like we’ve got something over here.”

  Josie and Noah followed the sound of his voice several feet into the woods. Moore covered his nose and mouth with one hand, his eyes fixed on something on the ground. As the smell of vomit reached her, Josie identified several large piles of it scattered among the trees.

  Noah said, “Looks like whatever they ingested made them pretty damn sick before it killed them.”

  Josie looked at Moore. “Can you take another look around the campsite, see if you find any more of this?”

  Moore raised a brow. “I shouldn’t even be here. I’ve got work to do in my own county.”

  Josie smiled tightly. “How about you search below the Lenore County line then? Will that work?”

  With a heavy sigh, Moore trudged off into the woods. Josie and Noah went back to the campers.

  “If they were sick,” Noah asked, “why didn’t they just go for help?”

  Josie said, “It’s at least a two-mile walk from here to any sign of civilization. Maybe they were too ill to move far.” She took out her cell phone and tapped in her passcode to bring up the home screen only to see another voicemail notification. She didn’t need to listen to it to know it was from Muncy. A flash of her nightmare from the night before rushed at her. She didn’t realize she was swaying until she heard Noah’s voice.

  “You okay?”

  Josie looked up to see him staring at her with a quizzical look. She braced herself against a nearby tree and willed her mind and body to obey. This was work. She needed to focus.

  “Fine.” She held her phone up in the air. “I’ve only got one bar. Cell service isn’t great out here.”

  “You think maybe they tried to call for help, but their phones didn’t work?”

  She nodded.

  Noah stepped toward the tent, leaning over and peering inside. “We should try to find their phones.”

  “Wait,” Josie told him. “I want to call Hummel and have the Evidence Response Team come out before we start moving things around.”

  He turned back toward her. “You think this is a homicide?”

  “I think it’s suspicious.”

  Noah looked back toward the bodies. “If they were that sick, they would have gone into the tent, not laid down on the ground to die.” He hooked a thumb back toward the tent. “I saw one of those portable ceiling fans for tents in there. It probably would have been more comfortable for them in there, as sick as they were.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Josie said. She pushed off the tree, testing her own steadiness.

  “Maybe it was some kind of suicide pact,” Noah suggested.

  “Maybe. Or maybe someone poisoned them and staged their bodies like this.”

  Noah frowned. “Not sure I’m sold on that, but we don’t know enough to make that determination.”

  “Exactly,” Josie said. Phone still in hand, she punched in Hummel’s cell phone number. He picked up on the fourth ring and she briefed him as quickly as she could, then gave him the approximate location. “Noah will go back out to the road and wait for you,” she told him. “I don’t have great service out here so call the medical examiner before you leave.”

  She looked back toward the couple. Noah stood at their feet like a sentry. His face was flushed, a sheen of sweat covering his skin. Josie knew that the forecast called for a ninety-degree day. Very soon, the bodies would enter a more advanced stage of decomposition and it would not be pretty. “I want to get these people out of the woods as soon as possible,” she added.

  Four

  It took a half hour for Hummel and the ERT to
arrive. Noah walked behind them. Thick clouds rolled overhead from what they could see through the canopy of trees, but the heat only increased. Each person who arrived sported sweat stains on their clothes. “I put an officer out by the road until Dr. Feist gets here. She’s right behind me,” Hummel told Josie. “She’s trying to get two ambulances so we can get both bodies out of the woods at the same time.”

  Josie glanced over at the dead couple whose skin had started to expand and turn a light shade of green. The smell of putrefaction grew stronger by the minute. “That’s a good idea,” she said.

  Hummel and his team went to work photographing and processing the scene while Josie and Noah waited on the fringe.

  “Moore hasn’t come back?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You think he took off? How long does it take to look for vomit?”

  “Apparently, a long time,” she said.

  “What an asshole,” Noah groused.

  Ignoring him, Josie looked around again. “This is kind of deep in the woods for camping,” she said.

  Noah pulled out his GPS unit again. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s weird that they chose this spot.” He zoomed out from the red pin only to see miles and miles of green forest around them. “Well, I guess if they wanted to get far from civilization, this is a good spot.”

  Hummel emerged from the small tent with a backpack in each hand. “I think I’ve got IDs,” he said.

  Josie and Noah put gloves back on and walked over to where Hummel stood. He handed Noah one of the bags while he riffled through the other, finally coming up with a man’s wallet which he handed to Josie. She flipped it open, found the driver’s license and read off the name. “Tyler Yates, age twenty-seven. Lives in Fox Mill.”

  “Fox Mill?” Noah said. “That’s near Philadelphia.”

  “At least two hours from here,” Josie agreed.

  “Well, we are on the Lenore County line, and they’ve got a lot of state gameland. A lot of people hike and camp there,” Hummel pointed out. “It’s the only thing Lenore County has to offer tourists.”

  “True,” Josie said. She took out her phone and snapped a photo of the driver’s license before placing it back in the wallet.

  Noah searched through the other bag until he came up with a large woman’s wallet. After thumbing through several credit cards, he found another driver’s license. “Valerie Yates, twenty-nine,” he said. “Same address. Maybe a murder-suicide? Maybe the husband poisoned the wife, then after she passed, he poisoned himself and when he was ready to go, he laid down next to her and held her hand?”

  “It’s possible,” Josie conceded. “We’ll dig into their backgrounds when we get back to the station.” She snapped a photo of Valerie’s license before handing it back to Noah. Then she swiped back and forth between the photos, studying their young, vital, smiling faces. Sadness stabbed at her. They weren’t much younger than her and Noah. She wondered how long they’d been married, and if this camping trip had been some kind of romantic getaway. Josie wouldn’t have chosen camping herself, but it was cheap and in an area as remote as the woods in which they now stood, it would be ideal for a couple to have some alone time.

  “Let me see that bag,” Josie said to Hummel. He handed it to her, and she took a quick look through it, finding nothing more than a pair of shorts, two pairs of men’s underwear, some deodorant, a lighter, a phone, and phone charger. “We’ll need the phone,” she said and then handed the bag back to Hummel.

  Valerie’s bag had considerably more stuff in it—a couple of sports bras, several pairs of shorts, a half dozen T-shirts, underwear, socks, feminine hygiene products, a brush, hair ties, some makeup, a paperback book, and just like her husband’s pack: deodorant, a phone and phone charger.

  “What are you thinking?” Noah asked.

  Josie addressed Hummel before answering Noah. “How did you find these? Were they open or zipped up?”

  “Open,” Hummel responded. “Just like you see them now.”

  She looked at Noah. “Maybe they left these bags open, but I’m wondering if someone went through them. Look around. There’s no food. No water. No actual camping supplies. No flashlights, no battery packs, no pots and pans, water bottles. No mosquito repellant or sunblock. No first aid kit. No soap or towels or washcloths—nothing to wash up with. You don’t go camping with a couple of outfits and some deodorant.”

  Josie handed the pack to Noah and looked behind her at the trail of items discarded around the campsite. More clothing. A couple of toothbrushes. Josie ducked inside the tent and looked around. A small cooler sat just inside. Josie lifted its lid, but it was empty. In fact, the tent held nothing at all save the cooler and two sleeping bags side by side.

  “Shit,” she said, turning and moving out of the tent. She looked from Hummel to Noah. “We have a problem.”

  They stared at her, puzzled. She pointed to the sleeping bag rolled up against the tree. “There are three sleeping bags, but only two dead bodies.”

  Five

  “We need more units,” Josie said, taking her cell phone out. “And search and rescue dogs.” She had to walk to the outer edge of the campsite to get a bar to show up on her cell so she could call dispatch again, asking them to send more Denton units and to call the Alcott County sheriff’s office and ask for their K-9 unit to come to the campsite as soon as possible. Once she finished, she pocketed her phone and turned to go back into the campsite. The fine hairs along her arms and nape of her neck prickled. The sense of being watched was like cold fingers tracing slowly along her spine. In spite of the oppressive heat, she shivered. Trying to keep her body still, she swiveled her head from side to side, studying her surroundings. There was nothing to indicate another person was nearby, other than her team, of course. Nothing in the woods moved.

  Hummel’s voice startled her. “Boss?”

  She turned and stepped back into the small camping area, tossing her head as if to shake off the strange feeling. Was it sleep deprivation? Leftover anxiety from her nightmare and the phone calls? Or was there someone out there? Someone watching them? It couldn’t be Moore. He had walked off in the opposite direction and likely returned to his cruiser to head back to the Lenore sheriff’s station. He’d been frustrating but she hadn’t felt threatened by him. The other camper, maybe? Or something worse?

  She studied the bodies again. Some clinical part of her brain, driven only by evidence she could see, identify, and quantify, told her that there was nothing here to indicate violence. But the deeper, more instinctual part of her brain told her not to dismiss her body’s reaction so quickly. Her hand reached for the reassuring weight of the Glock at her hip. The team would find out if there was anyone in the woods soon enough.

  “How many guys have you got out here with you?” she asked Hummel.

  “Five.”

  “Send four of them out to search the woods,” she instructed. “While you and one other person keep working. This camper could be sick and dying out there. As soon as the other units arrive, we’ll send them out to search as well—and we’ll need to make sure they’ve all got their GPS units with them. I want everyone on alert. We don’t actually know what’s going on here, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt. When the K-9 unit gets here, see if they can use the sleeping bag to scent the third camper.”

  Hummel nodded and then started barking commands to the officers on his Evidence Response team. All but one of them walked off into the woods. Josie said, “Also, look inside the sleeping bag and see if there’s anything we can use to identify the missing camper.”

  “You got it, boss,” Hummel replied.

  Beads of sweat rolled from the nape of Josie’s neck down her spine. Her polo shirt clung to her skin. The August heat was getting thicker by the minute. Overhead, the clouds had turned a deep gray, plump and oppressive. Storms were rolling in. That wasn’t good news for their crime scene. She took out her phone again and walked around outside the scene until two bars appeared on
its screen. She dialed Deputy Moore’s number.

  “Where are you?” she asked without preamble.

  He sounded annoyed. “I’m in the damn woods looking for puke like you asked.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed him, but it didn’t matter now. There was work to be done. She explained what they had found, let him know she’d called more units as well as a K-9 unit, and asked, “Have you had any reports of anyone acting suspiciously in or around the woods this morning?”

  Moore said, “Not that I’m aware of, but I can call dispatch to see if they’ve heard anything and also have someone call the nearest hospital. That’s pretty far from here, though.”

  “That would be really helpful,” Josie said.

  “I’ll head back to my cruiser then and make some calls.”

  “Some of my people are likely going to be searching for this third camper within the Lenore County line.”

  She could visualize his shrug of indifference. “Do what you have to do, I guess.”

  She hung up before she said something unprofessional and then made a call to dispatch, asking them to check for reports of suspicious behavior as well as anyone admitted to the hospital for poisoning on the Alcott County side. She waited on the edge of the scene while Hummel and his colleague continued working. Noah stood beside her. The additional units arrived, and Josie dispatched them to search a wider area for the missing camper.

  “The K-9 unit is at least two hours out,” Noah said, after making some calls of his own. “But we’re due for some pretty bad storms and it’s not safe for them to work if there’s lightning, so it may have to wait till tomorrow.”

  “Damn,” Josie said. “Yeah, we can’t have people out here if there are storms rolling in. Will that destroy the scent trail for the dogs?”

  Noah shook his head. “Nope. They said the dogs will still be able to find it, most likely. Water doesn’t destroy a person’s scent, apparently. The lady also said that time isn’t a factor either. They could come tomorrow or two months from now, and the dog should still be able to find and follow a scent.”