46

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   Sixteen years on the job, half to those working murders, Kay couldn’t remember if she’d ever been as deeply affected as she was by what lay at the bottom of the ravine.
   Making their way down the sheer slope, the smell of decay intensifying with every step, Kay knew it wasn’t good even before she’d laid eyes on the naked, bloated remains listing in the stream. In the mid-summer heat the body in the creek, in spite of the eight or ten inches of cold spring water, had certainly passed the early stages of decomposition.
   It wasn’t Micky.
   The woman had fallen face-up, and Reaney’s guess at a broken neck had been a no-brainer, her head wedged in a severely wrong angle between a rock and her shoulder. Across her bloated body, the skin had blistered and was peeling. Marbling was pronounced along the limbs, extending across the chest and distended abdomen, the greenish-black discoloration marking the decomposition of blood within the vessels just below the skin’s surface.
   Her face was the worst: swollen beyond recognition, the lips mushroomed out, and the skin almost purple in color. There would be no visual identification of the remains, and Kay hoped she was a hooker. That her prints were on file somewhere.
   The hands and feet were already gloving, the skin sloughing off, detaching in one piece like a glove. It would be work, but Kay suspected they’d get at least a couple useable prints.
   She waved at several slow, metallic-colored flies. Reaney had given both her and Finn a good dose of bug repellent before they’d gone down into the ravine. It worked for the mosquitos, more or less, but did nothing for the flies. And as they crawled across Kay’s skin, she shuddered as she imagined where they’d been.
   More than any decomp case Kay had worked, this one was rife with insect activity. Rudy O’Hearn, the Armed Forces Police entomology specialist, had arrived not long after Kay and Finn had finished their preliminary survey. Now the bug guy squatted in the shallow stream, the water lapping over his boots, as he examined the insect microcosm playing out across the woman’s body. He was a small, eager man with a careful and serious demeanor. He’d already snapped dozens of photos of the insects laying claim to the exposed flesh, and now picked through the maggots and carrion beetles with a pair of long forceps. Some he deposited into jars of ethanol, while others were placed in live-specimen containers.
   He smiled when he lifted one of the flat receptacles to the light and rattled several maggots around its bottom.
   “We’ll raise these little guys in the lab,” he explained when he noticed Kay’s stare.
   “And then what?”
   “Determine species. That’ll give us a time frame. Different insects are drawn to carrion at different stages. Some prefer the freshly dead. Others aren’t attracted until the putrefactive gases are present. And then there are others who are only interested in the molds or the other insects. But these here are likely your typical blue blowflies.”
   “And what does that tell you?”
   “Blowflies are generally your first on the scene. They can arrive within minutes of a body hitting the ground.”
   “So what’s your guess on how long she’s been out here?” Finn asked.
   “Won’t know until I run all the stats. Temperature, humidity, weather data for the past few days. Then replicate the conditions in order to raise these beauts.” He leaned across the body and extracted several larger maggots from the corner of the girl’s nose. “These look to be second instar. Meaning, your second crop. In this heat, blowfly eggs can hatch in one or two days.”
   “Which means what? She’s been here three, maybe four days?”
   O’Hearn’s balding head bobbed once. “It’s a good estimate. But like I said, I’ll have a more accurate time-frame once I factor in the temperatures and other environmental factors.”
   Kay swatted at a couple of mosquitos. She felt faint. It was the heat, she was sure. The sauna-like humidity had sapped her energy. And she should have eaten before they’d left the city.
   Time had ceased to have any meaning in the heat and stench of the small clearing. She had no idea how long she’d stood there at the water’s edge, the toes of her runners already soaked from sliding on the slick rocks, her gaze raking over and over the dead girl, scrutinizing every aspect as though, somehow, something would speak to her, give her direction.
   And always, involuntarily, Kay’s eyes returned to the other victim in the ravine.
   The other life that had been lost.
   She wondered if the men who’d found her had recognized the double tragedy in the woman’s death.
   Just below the stream’s surface, the tiny, perfectly-formed feet and legs were barely noticeable between the woman’s swollen and peeling thighs. The feeble current stirred them, making them appear almost animated. She’d heard of it happening: the bloating and putrefactive gases expelling a fetus, and Kay wondered if another day in the heat would have caused a full discharge.
   “You doing okay?” Finn’s voice was a whisper as he moved alongside her.
   Kay nodded.
   “You don’t look too good.”
   “It’s this fucking heat.”
   The little feet dipped and swayed in the stream.
   A life ended before it had ever taken a breath. All because of a monster.
   “Someone’s gotta be missing this girl, Finn.”
   “You mean a husband?”
   “Or boyfriend.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the fetus. “Why haven’t we heard about a missing pregnant woman?”
   “Not every Laci Peterson becomes a media frenzy.”
   Kay looked past the stream into the thick woods. “He’s got to be close.”
   She scanned the bank, the dense underbrush and beyond. “She can’t have come far,” she said, and suddenly Kay imagined Micky somewhere beyond the dark trunks of the maple and basswood, the choking creepers and kudzu. She imagined screaming Micky’s name into the woods. She imagined getting an answer.
   “Or she might have wandered for days,” Finn argued. “If this was one of his victims, I doubt he would have hunted for a new victim until she was gone.”
   “You mean Micky.”
   Finn nodded. He looked as sapped of energy as she felt. His T-shirt was damp and even his hair under the short ponytail was soaked with sweat. “Micky was snatched Saturday night.” Kay knew he was thinking aloud. “If Micky was this girl’s replacement, then she could have been out here since Saturday. Maybe longer if you figure he might have spent a day or two looking for her.”
   “Unless he realized she was pregnant and didn’t want her,” Kay said. “Maybe he wanted to get rid of her. Drove her out here, dumped her in the dead of night so she wouldn’t find the road. Or maybe even pushed her down into this ravine himself.”
   “Which means he could live in the next county. Or fucking West Virginia for all we know.”
   Kay’s frustration was about to brim over.
   “But what about the shackle then?” She pointed to the steel jaws around the woman’s ankle, held together with a heavy padlock. The device looked medieval, but even though rust had started eating the surface, it wasn’t that old. And forged directly to the shackle was what looked to be at least twenty pounds of chain, the heavy links snaking through the rocks along the creek’s bank. “She had to have escaped,” Kay said. “The eye-screw is still attached to the chain. If he was dumping her, why wouldn’t he have removed the shackle and chain?”
   But Finn didn’t have an answer.
   “Jesus Christ, Finn. Who is this son of a bitch?”
   Loose stones rained down the slope as Reaney descended again. He crossed the rocky streambed to join them. “We’re not finding any kind of footprints, Detectives. Ground’s too hard up on either side of the ravine. There’s no telling which direction she came from.”
   “We need a dog out here,” Kay said, and Reaney was already nodding.
   “Once we get some of the personnel cleared out, and lift her out of here, we’ll bring in the K9 unit.” He removed his cap and ran one meaty hand through his sandy-colored hair. “You two be wanting a ride back outta here soon?”
   Kay shook her head. “No. I want to help carrying her out of here.” It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the County’s technicians to handle it properly. Kay just wanted to be there for the girl. And the fetus. She couldn’t explain why.
   Reaney nodded, then moved on, giving instructions for his men to wrap up the scene.
   Kay scanned the forest again, the heat and humidity washing over her. And she imagined eyes, imagined they were being watched, but she doubted that was true.
   Where are you, Micky?
   And as Kay considered all the copies of all the case files collecting dust in Ed Gunderson’s basement, all the missing prostitutes over the years, she wondered how many more bodies these woods must be hiding. How may girl’s bodies were lost out here on this mountain side, never to be found?

   
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