“Mr. Stone, would you mind driving Emerson and Gold since the roads are still a mess?” Griffin directed his question at Eamon because he didn’t need to tell the detectives. They already knew. There was another body.
“Turn here.”Bel pointed to the right, and Eamon eased her SUV onto the dirt road. Trees were down all over Bajka, and emergency services were already swamped. It would take them time to clear the roads to the lake, so Griffin had given them the scene’s location, taking advantage of Eamon’s questionably legal presence at their crime scenes.
“This is the middle of nowhere.” Olivia leaned forward between the front seats to get a better view out of the windshield. “How on earth was a body spotted out here?”
“I don’t know,” Bel said. “Jogger?”
“In this aftermath?” Eamon asked. “The ground is still muddy, and—hold on.” The car heaved as it bounced over a fallen branch, and Olivia grunted as she fell into Bel’s seat.
“Sorry,” Eamon said.
“It’s fine.” Olivia righted herself. “It would be worse if I had to drive myself, and I would’ve had to wait for the roads to be cleaned… I can’t believe you actually picked up that tree back there.”
“You should’ve seen the size of the tree he pushed off the road on our way to pick you up,” Bel said.
“If only you’d gotten to my apartment before the tree fell on my car. You could’ve stopped it,” Olivia said.
“I could’ve, but you wouldn’t have called if it hadn’t fallen.” Eamon pinned her with a pointed glare, and she sank back into her seat, clearly understanding his accusation. Over the past months, only one of the partners had tried bridging their divide, and it hadn’t been her.
“We’ve beaten everyone here.” Bel grabbed Eamon’s wrist as he guided the SUV around the bend in the dirt road. “We’re at the location Griffin gave me… We’ll have to wait for him to catch up. I don’t know where the body is.”
“But I bet he does.” Eamon gestured to a man and his dog dressed in such neutral earth tones that she hadn’t seen them hovering between the trees.
“I guess that answers how we learned there’s a body,” Olivia said.
The man finally noticed the SUV and waved them down, his movements urgent as he gently dragged the muddy golden retriever with him. “Oh, good, you made it!” he called when Bel rolled down her window. “You’re the police, right?”
“We are,” she confirmed, flashing her badge. “I’m Detective Isobel Emerson, and this is my partner, Olivia Gold, and our consultant, Eamon Stone,” she half-lied. “Are you the one who called 911?”
“I am.” The man looked on the verge of vomiting. “I found a body… or shall I say Max here did. Come on, I’ll show you.”
“We need to wait for the rest of our team and the medical examiner.” Bel carefully exited the SUV so that she wouldn’t ruin her shoes in the mud. “But we can talk in the meantime. What’s your name?”
“Oh… right…” The man’s gaze flicked to Eamon, and for a moment, he looked like he forgot who he was. “Um, Sebastian. My name’s Sebastian, and this is my dog, Max.”
“Hi, Max.” Bel scratched the retriever’s head, and the dog gave her such puppy eyes that Cerberus would’ve grown territorial if he were there to witness it. “Can you tell us why you’re out here after such a bad storm? There are no homes close to these woods.”
“That would be Max’s fault,” Sebastian said. “We walk here all the time. He’s quite a fan of exercise, this boy. He’s young, so he has way too much energy. Drives my wife up the wall if he doesn’t get his daily walks, so we hike the trails by the lake every day. He’s very familiar with this area, and I didn’t realize that the storm knocked part of our fence over last night. After breakfast, I put him in the backyard, but when I went to bring him in, he was gone. I noticed the damaged fence and figured Max had taken himself for his walk, so I went after him. I finally found him… and he found the body.”
“Did someone get trapped out here in the storm?” Olivia asked.
“No.” Sebastian looked confused. “Didn’t they tell you? The body doesn’t belong to someone who died last night. Max found a grave.”
The hand protrudedfrom the dirt as if to beckon them to join it in death, and like moths to a flame, the police heeded its siren call.
“The summer heat speeds up decay, but based on the long hair and the clothing that’s yet to decompose, our Jane Doe is female,” Lina said once they’d removed the mud and debris to reveal the rest of the corpse. “It doesn’t look like animals got to her, so she was buried deep enough, but last night’s storm was borderline catastrophic. There aren’t many tree roots in this specific area, so the dirt would’ve eroded more easily. If the rain hadn’t caused flooding like it did, we would’ve never found her.”
“Any ID?” Bel asked.
“I’m not finding any,” Lina said. “There’s no wallet or cell—oh, you poor girl.”
“What’s wrong?” Bel asked.
“The autopsy will confirm it, but I doubt it’ll change anything. I suspect this was the cause of death. See here.” She sat back on her heels and pointed to Jane Doe’s throat, and the entire gathering leaned closer as if it would deliver the news to their ears faster. “Her hyoid bone is fractured. It’s an injury usually associated with strangulation.”
“Such an up close and personal way to murder someone,” Olivia said. “You have to look your victim in the eyes as you kill them.”
“It might speak of incredible rage,” Bel said, “or point to a heat-of-the-moment decision. Absent premeditation, the only weapon the killer could find was his hands. Without an ID, it’ll be hard to decipher which death she experienced.”
