“Not judging by that ring, they weren’t.”
CHAPTER TEN
Next we move to the likely cause of death—the neck wound. I examine it and then have April take a closer look. The wound suggests a textbook case of strangulation with a cord. A smooth line around the neck. Some light abrasion—I’d removed fibers on the scene, and I find a few more now. White fibers. Petechial hemorrhaging in the eyes. Broken hyoid bone.
To be absolutely certain this was the cause of death requires an autopsy. Otherwise, Blake might have been strangled to unconsciousness and then killed another way. Extremely unlikely, but all possibilities must be considered, even if I cannot fathom a way that this was anything other than cold-blooded murder. Yes, strangulation can be used for pleasure, but not when it comes with a crack to the back of the head and a cord pulled tight enough to leave a welt.
The autopsy focuses on his neck because… well, there’s not a lot more to autopsy. The torso has been almost emptied, including most of the lungs. From the neck, everything remains consistent with strangulation. There’s just no way tocheck other organs because… if they’re still there, they are not intact.
Once April has done what she can, we wrap the body and put it into the underfloor compartment. With the permafrost, it’ll stay preserved enough until we figure out what to do with it.
Before April cleans the exam room, she shoos me upstairs. Rory is still sleeping, so I can discuss the grizzly with Kenny. He’ll do double patrols while asking for discretion. No one needs to know about the bear… and no one definitely needs to know about the body.
We don’t have any outings scheduled for the rest of the day. It’s hunting season, but we just finished a round, and nothing else is scheduled for the next week. Otherwise, at this time of year, there’s a bit of fishing, but mostly gathering, and even then, primarily the gathering of dead wood, as we prepare for winter.
By the time Dalton returns, Rory is up and I’ve taken her out while I eat my lunch and grab a packed meal for Dalton. Yolanda has offered to take the next shift, but I’d like her on militia duty, so Rory will be hanging out with Max and Carson and their mom, Dana.
In a town with no other babies, I have enough volunteer sitters that I don’t worry about imposing on anyone too much. I sometimes imagine what that would be like if we led normal lives. My parents are gone… and I wouldn’t have let them babysit even if they weren’t. April would probably live too far away. Dalton’s brother would be up here. I’ve never been the sort to make friends easily, so I can imagine that, down south, we’d be relying on standard day care—if we could get a spot—with few options outside of day-care operating hours. If I already feel frazzled, torn between workand my baby, despite an amazing partner and a wonderful community, I shudder to think what it would be like anywhere else.
I always remember, though, that I’m not the only one who feels torn these days, and when Dalton and Anders get back, I pass Rory off to her dad with the excuse that I need to talk to Anders about patrols. The way his face lights up—and the way hers does—makes the lie well worth it. It’s late afternoon, and I figure we can delay our departure about thirty minutes and still make it back before dark.
I do discuss patrols with Anders, along with the autopsy results. He might not be a detective, but investigations include all three of us, and I appreciate having extra brains mulling over the same data.
As for their trip to the mining camp, we don’t discuss that. It won’t be urgent. Well, not unless Rogers said, “Hey, if you happen to find a dead man out there, we killed him.” Which he did not, obviously.
I swing by our place at four thirty. Dalton has eaten and he’s half dozing with Rory. Storm is on the floor, half dozing as well. As much as I’d like to leave them all to it—or collapse into a chair and join them—we have work to do.
I take Rory from Dalton and steal a few moments to cuddle her. Then Dalton and I drop Rory off with Dana and give Storm the option of staying behind. She responds by sticking right at my side, telling me she’s going wherever I am.
Dalton and I head out to warn Lilith. It’s still broad daylight, with twilight hours away. It’s cooler, the sun having vanished, but that just makes it a pleasant walk when we’re moving briskly. We’re away from the town before he says, “Talking to Rogers was a waste of time. Complete bullshit.”
“Did you expect anything else?”
“No, but I’ll still grumble. We offered a courtesy call to update him on the situation, and he acted like I was one of his guys checking in with an overdue report.”
“In other words, Rogers was being Rogers.”
“Yeah. Fucking asshole.”
“What did you learn?”
Dalton gives me a sidelong glance. I only shake my head. Obviously we were doing more than “checking in.” The point of visiting Rogers was twofold. First, to keep him from showing up on our doorstep demanding an update. Second, to get a sense of how much he knew regarding our hiking duo. We hadn’t discussed that. We didn’t need to. Dalton knew what he was doing, and his look is just playing with me… and drawing out suspense on his answer.
“They saw smoke last night, like his guys said,” Dalton says finally, as we take a fork in the path. “They figured it was us, so they didn’t hurry.”
“Truth?”
He waggles a hand. “Fifty-fifty. I believe they saw smoke. I’m just not surewhenthey actually saw it and whether—if they thought it was us—they’d really hold off investigating. Don’t see how it matters much, though. We met their guys searching the forest. So even if they investigated earlier, they didn’t find Blake and Gretchen.”
“Unless they found their camp and let it slide until morning, like we did.”
He grunts. “Good point. Anyway, I stuck to the story we gave the guards. We also saw smoke last night. We investigated early this morning and found the remains of a camp. Our dog confirmed that whoever it was, they headed west, away from our settlements.”
“What did you say about your delay getting back to him?”
“That we aren’t his minions. We decided he could go fuck himself and went home for lunch first.”
I roll my eyes, knowing this is not what he said, even if he might have wanted to.
