Freezings were a tricky thing. The heart slowed and the mammalian cold response could kick in, preserving life at a level undetectable to medical professionals. A person wasn’t dead until they were warm and dead, as the aphorism went. Mrs. Andy Collins would have to be brought inside and warmed slowly to see whether she could be revived.
But even as Kenzie stooped to check for a pulse and evaluate the newlywed’s condition, she saw the blood on the front of Mrs. Collins’s nightgown. Kenzie stripped off her glove and felt for a pulse anyway. Ice crystals crunched under the rubbery skin. No detectable pulse.
In the cold, that didn’t mean that she was dead.
But the stab wounds down the front of the woman’s torso told her that there was nothing that could be done for the woman, who was almost as pale as the snow in which she lay. Kenzie’s anatomy classes, the dissections she had done, and the autopsies she had attended told her that Mrs. Andy Collins had sustained at least one stab wound directly to the heart. And no mammalian cold response would save her from that.
“Nothing?” Zachary asked, as Kenzie stepped back.
“No sign of life. She’s been here a few hours, or there wouldn’t be ice crystals forming. She’s been stabbed multiple times.” Kenzie surveyed the holes in the victim’s nightgown, each with a blot of blood around it, some of them spread out and merging. “By my count, about nine times.” Kenzie paused. She took out her phone again, took off her gloves to operate it, and turned on the video recording. She took a long shot, then zoomed in on the injuries, dictating her observations again for the record. She panned over the footprints that went all around the body. None of the footprints continued into the woods; they stopped at the body and returned again along the same path they had come on. Except for the set of footprints which didn’t return.
Kenzie dictated the time and date and her and Zachary’s names. She needed to record everything for the medical examiner who would eventually get the case. Make sure that he had all the details he would need. The police would also need the footprint evidence to interpret the story it told.
“What do we do?” Zachary asked, his voice low, almost reverent.
“The practice should always be to leave the body in situ until the medical examiner can get there, and to preserve as much of the scene and forensic evidence as possible. But we don’t know how long it will be until someone can get up here, and we can’t leave the body subject to predation.” Kenzie pondered what to do next. “I think that we should get a couple of blankets. Wrap the body and create a sling to carry her in. Take her up to the house where her body can be preserved. Like Mr. Dewey’s.”
“Is there any connection between what happened to Mr. Dewey and... Mrs. Collins?”
“The two deaths couldn’t be more different. I don’t see any connection between the two except that they were proximate in time and place.”
Zachary didn’t say anything to disagree, but Kenzie knew that he did. He was looking for the connections, analyzing everything he knew about both deaths. He was a trained investigator. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he had the answers.
Maybe there was no connection between the two deaths. But maybe there was. Could it really be a coincidence that both people had now died at the Lodge?
24
They made their way back to the cabins. Zachary stopped at the edge of the woods.
“I’ll wait here. I want to make sure that no one else touches the evidence while you’re getting help.”
“Yeah. Good idea. I’ll be as quick as I can.”
She hurried on and returned to cabin four, where the others were starting to gather again. Apparently, none of the trails had led very far away.
“No luck,” Redd Flagg called to Kenzie as she got closer. “No one has seen her.”
Kenzie drew up closer to them. “We found her,” she said, her tone somber, letting them know that it was not happy news.
“You found her?” Raven repeated. “But... she’s okay, isn’t she? Where is she?”
Kenzie shook her head. “No. She’s not okay. I need a couple of blankets, and someone to help me to... transport her up to the house.”
Andy Collins came out of the cabin, his face white. “What is it? Do you have news? Did you find her?”
Kenzie looked down at Andy’s hands, but he was wearing winter gloves. “You should wait in your cabin. You don’t need to see this.”
“What does that mean?” he asked in a confrontational tone, then repeated it, voice breaking, “What does that mean?”
“It means you should go inside,” Kenzie told him firmly.
“I want to know what you mean by that!”
Kenzie looked around the group for help. Burknall would be of the most assistance to her, she thought. Jack? Redd? She chose the author. “Redd, could you go in with him? Look after him until we get everything taken care of?”
“I don’t really know what to do.”
“Just keep him company. Listen. Don’t... don’t ask him a lot of questions, try to just keep him calm and in one place.”
Redd’s eyes widened a little in surprise. Kenzie couldn’t see the rest of his face because it was obscured by a scarf. Redd nodded his head and took Andy by the arm, turning him in a circle back into the cabin.
Kenzie waited until the door was shut before saying anything. She then nodded to Burknall. “I could use some help. I’m used to moving—uh, things,” she caught herself before revealing that she had occasion to move dead bodies with regularity. “But I need a way to get her up the hill to the main house. We can wrap her in blanket and then use another blanket as a sling-style stretcher between two of us. It’s a fair distance up the hill, carrying a weight like that.”
“I have a snowmobile with a freight sled. Will that work?”
Kenzie raised her hands palms-up, uncertain. “I’ve never seen one, so I can’t picture how big it would be. It sounds as if it might work.”
“I can fit a deer carcass on it.”
“Well then... that would be perfect.”
Burknall nodded and, without another word, walked back toward the barn. He was a man of few words, but intuitive and efficient.
Raven moaned and covered her eyes. “Why did she do it? Why didn’t she come see me? I told her about the monsters.”
Kenzie looked at her uncertainly. “The monsters?”
“I told her. I told her they were out last night. I saw them out the window. Shadows in the trees. They were waiting. Watching us and waiting...”
“What did these monsters look like?”
“I don’t know.” Raven dropped her hands from her face and peered around. “Are they still out? I thought they would go away when the sun came up. I told her about the monsters. I told her.”
“Are you feeling okay, Raven? Have you taken something? Some pills?” Burknall had said that he thought that the newlyweds had taken something the night before, and Raven was acting as if she were hallucinating. It could just be the shock, but hallucinating or having paranoid delusions were not typical reactions to emotional shock.
“I’m not on anything! Just my meds. I don’t do anything illegal!”
“Okay. I believe you. Have you had a fever? Achy joints?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s so cold out.”
“Yes, it is,” Kenzie agreed. She put her hands under her armpits again to try to keep them warm. Her gloves were good for casual winter use, but they were not good for working outside for any length of time in sub-zero temperatures. Kenzie looked over the faces of the others. Vance Stiller was still not in evidence. Was he just sleeping in? Or had something happened to him too? Maybe he didn’t care that something had happened to one of their number. He didn’t think he was one of them. He thought he was better than everyone else. He probably had some sort of morning routine that could not be broken under any circumstances. Winter storms and sudden deaths were no exception. “Brittany, do you think you could take Raven inside and make sure she is okay? Maybe somethi
ng to eat...? I don’t think she should be on her own, but staying out here in the cold isn’t helping anything.”
Brittany’s eyes slanted up, seeming pleased to have been given an assignment. “Of course! Come on, sweetie. Let’s get you inside and warmed up.”
That left Kenzie with Jack Fowler, Samantha the maid, who had returned from the house after a fruitless search for the missing woman, and Mrs. Hubbard, her bare face red with the cold. Kenzie shifted uncomfortably. She didn’t want to answer a lot of questions about what kind of shape Mrs. Andy Collins’s body had been in, and she thought Jack was just the type of character who would ask.
“I’m going to go back and meet up with Zachary. When Mr. Burknall comes back, just have him follow this trail into the woods. That’s where we will be.”
Zachary and Kenzie trekked back to the place where they had left Mrs. Collins’s body. Zachary looked around carefully. “No one came by here while I was watching.”
Kenzie also scanned the snow for any new footprints or any other disturbances. “I don’t see anything. I think we can rest assured that nothing has been touched in the time we’ve been gone.”
He nodded. “Good.”
“Burknall should be here any minute, I doubt it will take long for him to get his sled hooked up to the snowmobile and to get here.”
Zachary nodded. They both stood in silence, watchful. It wasn’t as windy as it had been the day before, and while snow was still falling, Kenzie could hear animals in the woods around them. A chickadee. Rustling in the leaves and bushes. Maybe a rabbit out foraging for something to eat. And deer. Burknall had said that there were deer. As long as the wind wasn’t too strong, Kenzie imagined the deer would go out to search for food. They were used to the snow. It felt as if they were all alone in the world, isolated from the rest of civilization. Kenzie would not have guessed, if she had been dropped there, that there were people only a few minutes’ walk away.
In a few minutes, the silence was broken by the sounds of Burknall’s snowmobile. He came alongside the trail, skiing in the fresh snow beside the footprints rather than over them. He climbed off the snowmobile and walked over to have a look at Mrs. Collins without a word. He looked her over, observing the bloodied nightgown. He shook his head.
“It’s a crying shame.”
“It is,” Kenzie agreed. “I have no idea what happened last night. If she and her husband got into a fight, or if someone else came upon her here. Or even chased her. The police will have to analyze the footprints, compare them against everyone’s boots to see who else was here. I can’t believe that something like this could happen just a few yards away from our cabin. It’s frightening.”
Burknall went to his sled and pulled a couple of blankets off. He stretched them over the undisturbed ground near Mrs. Collins, one on top of the other, then approached her to pick her up.
“Let me help,” Kenzie told him. “It’s always easier to move a body with two people.”
She took the woman’s ankles and let Burknall handle her shoulders. That gave him more weight, but he was bigger than Kenzie was and had better upper body strength. They lifted her carefully from the ground and laid her down on the blankets. Kenzie wrapped her up like a taco with the top blanket. The woman’s limbs were in rigor or frozen, so she wasn’t a long, thin package like a body bag, but closer to a ball shape.
Then they used the corners of the bottom blanket to lift her and carry her over to the sled. There was plenty of room. They folded the outer blanket loosely over her, disguising her shape a little more, and Burknall pulled several straps over her to secure the cargo. They certainly didn’t want her flying off the sled as they went up the hill.
“Thank you,” Kenzie said. “This is really helpful.”
He gazed at her, his eyes unwavering. “Who are you really?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not an accountant.”
Kenzie opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head, looking grim. “You might be able to fool the others. But probably not for long. Who are you really? Are you police?”
“No,” Kenzie sighed. “I work with the medical examiner in Roxboro.”
Burknall nodded. “That makes more sense.”
“You don’t think a forensic accountant would have that much experience in moving bodies?” Zachary asked wryly.
Mentioning that might have been a mistake.
“That and other things,” Burknall agreed. Kenzie thought she detected a twinkle in his serious eyes.
Kenzie shrugged, embarrassed. But it wasn’t surprising that she would be caught out in a situation where there had been an unexpected death. How many other people would be used to dealing with such a situation? And what was the point in continuing to hide her identity? She was no longer worried about people asking her unwelcome questions. Now that there had been a homicide, it was probably best that everyone know who she was and that she had special expertise in the unusual situation.
“Things have changed,” she admitted. “We thought we would both be able to take a vacation from our jobs and avoid talking shop the whole time we were here. But now...”
Burknall looked at Zachary, his brows raised. “And what about you? Just some stiff she brought along from the office?”
Zachary chuckled. “Not quite. A stiff from home. I’m a private investigator. But I don’t know if anyone needs to know that yet.”
“People have already been speculating.”
“They have?” Zachary’s voice went up a few notes. “What have they said?”
“Hit man. Leg breaker. On the run for something or other.”
“They think he’s a criminal?” Kenzie asked, amused. She looked Zachary over. He did have a certain grim look to him. Like he was prepared to do whatever was necessary.
Zachary nodded, accepting their suspicions. He looked back down at the body on the sled. “We’d better get her up to the house. Then Kenzie can examine the body more closely.”
“You want to ride on the sled?” Burknall asked. There was still plenty of room around the corpse. But Zachary shook his head and Kenzie was inclined to agree. It might be more work to walk up the hill, but it seemed disrespectful to ride with the body.
“No, we’ll join you up there. Just wait when you get there, I’ll help transfer the body again.”
“I can do it myself,” Burknall offered. “She’s not that big. Where do you want her?”
“One of the upstairs rooms. She doesn’t need to be in with Mr. Dewey, but we’ll preserve the body the same way. Leave a window open to keep her cold and prevent decomposition until the medical examiner or other authorities can get here to transport her.”
“I’ll take her upstairs.”
Kenzie wasn’t too sure about that. “It’s more awkward to handle a dead body than you might think. Especially a frozen one. And if you drop her, something might break.”
“I’m not going to drop her. I move deer carcasses. I can handle a small woman.”
“I’d still prefer that you wait.”
He shrugged and climbed aboard the snowmobile. He raised a hand in farewell, turned the snowmobile in a wide circle away from the pathway, and then returned over the ski tracks he had already made.
Kenzie looked over the ground where Mrs. Collins had lain, looking for any evidence that they needed to preserve. She didn’t find the murder weapon or letters written in the snow to identify the name of the woman’s killer. There wasn’t anything that provided any more clues than the footprints in the snow that they had already observed.
Kenzie opened up her phone again and made a brief recording of the ground where the body had lain. Then they turned around and walked out of the woods, past their cabin, and up the hill to the farmhouse.
25
At the top of the hill, Kenzie saw Burknall’s snowmobile pulled to the side of the driveway, but there was no bundle of blankets on the sled behind it. Burknall had ignored her suggestion and had taken the body into the
house by himself. A spurt of anger and irritation shot through Kenzie. Just like a man to think that he knew better just because she was a woman. He should have listened to her as an expert in the field.
But she didn’t have the time or energy to waste being angry with him. It was what it was. She wouldn’t win that battle anyway.
She and Zachary entered the house without a word. Kenzie stood there for a moment, just letting the heat soak into her. They’d been outside for a long time. She didn’t think she had been outdoors in weather like that for long since she was a child, building snow forts and snowmen. She’d come a long way from childhood battles and snow angels. She remembered playing with Amanda...
Kenzie quickly shut these thoughts off. She would not think about Amanda and the times they had shared together. Times that were gone and lost forever. She wasn’t ever going to make snow angels with Amanda again, and there was no point in pining over it. Kenzie began to take off the winter gear with deliberation. It would be nice to get some circulation back into her fingers.
They hung up their coats and pried off their boots and headed upstairs to where Burknall had placed the deceased on the bed in a spare bedroom. Kenzie was glad to see that she was still wrapped in the blankets. Burknall had not pulled them open to examine Mrs. Collins’s body.
“Thank you.” Kenzie tried to treat him with the same professionalism as she would have one of the workers in her office who had helped to prep a body for Dr. Wiltshire. “Zachary, would you shut the door, please?”
Zachary put his hand on the door and looked at Burknall. Burknall didn’t move. “Do I have to leave?”
“It would probably be best,” Kenzie said. “This is my job. You don’t need to see this.”
“I really don’t know you two or anything about you. Maybe I should observe so that I can be a witness to the fact that no one tampered with or destroyed evidence.”
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