The Next Killing. Rebecca Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ were words scratched in each point of the star. “Water,” Stephanie read out loud the word in the point closest to her. She followed the circle.

      “What is that?” Oz squatted down over a point with “Air” written in it, rocking back on his heels to take a closer look.

      “It’s a pentagram. The other points say Earth, Fire and Spirit.”

      “What is this, some satanic thing?”

      “I don’t know.” Stephanie looked up and called to the investigator with the camera. “You get pictures of that?”

      The guy nodded and she stepped carefully into the circle and closer to the body. The girl’s pupils were fixed and her skin and hair were wet. There was a small tattoo of a butterfly on her left shoulder, the brightly colored wings another startling contrast to the skin. The rope binding her to the tree looked like nylon. Approximately an inch thick and made of multicolored orange strands, it looked like something used by rock climbers.

      It had been wound tightly around the body, compressing the collarbone and shoulders, cutting sharply into the skin just below the small breasts, digging into the softer skin of the lower abdomen, and wrapping twice around the thighs. It was knotted tightly behind the tree and Stephanie noticed that some of the bark was worn against the knot as if the girl had struggled.

      “What’s the cause?” Oz asked.

      Stephanie moved close to the body, trying to get a closer look at the girl’s neck. “Looks like there might be some blood back of the head. Maybe trauma and exposure?”

      Oz stepped next to her and looked where she pointed and then peered at the other side of the girl’s head.

      The medical examiner’s arrival was signaled by an impatient cough behind them. Dr. Harriet Wembley was wearing a bright blue tracksuit that did nothing to mask the fact that she looked tired, cold, and impatient.

      “Whenever you’re done, detectives.”

      Oz grinned at her. “Early enough for you?”

      “I was having a nice dream, made nicer by the fact that you didn’t factor in it.”

      Oz staggered dramatically, one beefy hand to his chest. “You wound me.”

      Harriet rolled her eyes. “If only it was so easy to insult you.” She stepped past him with her case and then, seeing the victim, suddenly swore.

      It was completely out of character for her and Stephanie’s eyes jerked from the victim to the older woman.

      “Who called this in?” the medical examiner demanded. “This poor girl may not be dead at all!”

      “What? But her pupils are dilated and she’s already in rigor.” Stephanie pointed at the girl’s eyes and the clear rigidity of her body.

      “Severe hypothermia can mimic death. This might not be real rigor. Jesus H. Christ, we’ve got to get her down from here and warm her up. Get those paramedics over here,” she said to the air, “and see if they’ve got a Bair blanket!”

      “We need to get photographs,” Oz said, even as he shuffled backward.

      Dr. Wembley turned on him, blue eyes flashing. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about photographs! I’m trying to save this kid’s life!”

      Oz held up his hands in defeat and hustled off, calling to the paramedic standing on the outskirts of the crime scene tape.

      “Are you done with pix of the body?” Stephanie asked the investigator with the camera. She didn’t recognize him; he had to be new, which explained why he had a sheen of perspiration on his upper lip and looked like he might lose whatever breakfast he’d had time to grab.

      He nodded in response and looked away from the body as if he’d seen enough. Poor kid was going to have to toughen up if he wanted to stay on the job.

      “Okay, we can take her down,” she said to Dr. Wembley, who was practically shaking with anxiety. The paramedics hustled in with a stretcher and Oz pulled out a knife he was carrying and sawed away at the rope.

      Stephanie signaled the young investigator to get some more shots of the girl once she’d been pulled away from the tree and then of the tree itself.

      Then they hustled the girl away with some sort of heating blanket wrapped around her and Dr. Wembley rushed after them, promising over her shoulder to call Oz and Stephanie from the hospital.

      “No way is that girl alive,” Oz said. “I’m sorry, but that is just wishful thinking.”

      “Yeah, maybe.” Stephanie looked again at the crime scene, now devoid of a body, and walked over to one of the uniforms. “Who found the body?”

      The female officer jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the path where the woman in running clothes was standing with another officer. “A teacher. She’s pretty shook up.”

      “It would be news if she wasn’t,” Stephanie said. “Did she touch anything?”

      The officer flushed, an ugly color climbing her neck, all the way to the roots of her hair, which Stephanie could see because she was taller. The woman had obviously forgotten to check and Stephanie was glad that she’d asked and not Oz or one of the other detectives. There weren’t that many women on the force and she knew how quick some of the guys were to assume that your genitals determined your judgment.

      Schaeffer, the officer’s badge said. Somebody Schaeffer. Stephanie searched her memory, but couldn’t come up with the first name. Pam? Jan? Something short like that, but she didn’t risk trying one out.

      “No problem. I’ll talk to her.”

      The teacher was young enough that in her sweatshirt and exercise pants she could easily be mistaken for a student. She was average height and skinny to the point that she needed to put on a few pounds, with curly blond hair pulled back in a short ponytail.

      Stephanie introduced herself and the other woman shook her hand, turning wide blue eyes on her with a look that Stephanie recognized as shock.

      “Did you know the victim?” she said gently, but the woman still winced at the word.

      She shook her head. “No. I’m new.” Her voice trembled, but she paused and it toughened. “I don’t really know any of the students, not yet.”

      Stephanie talked her through the discovery of the body, taking notes while watching the woman’s body language and tone of voice, weighing almost unconsciously the truth of what she was saying. There was no deception that Stephanie could detect, at least not about this victim and this crime scene. There was a hint of fear, but it probably had as much to do with being the focus of police attention as anything else.

      “Did you touch anything?”

      “The rope. I tried to undo it.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. “I thought, I mean, I didn’t know if she was—” Her voice trembled again and she stopped talking.

      Dead, Stephanie finished for her mentally. “Did you see anyone else this morning?”

      “No.”

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