LITMIR.BIZ

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spotted his team standing in a wide, open field that ran behind the houses. The forest was just beyond the rise, at least one hundred yards away. Jeffrey stepped out of the street. There wasn’t a sidewalk. He walked through a vacant lot, carefully scanning the ground as he followed a worn path through the grass. Cigarette butts. Beer bottles. Wadded-up pieces of aluminum foil. Jeffrey leaned down for a better look. He caught a whiff of cat urine.

      “Chief.” Lena Adams jogged to meet him. The young officer’s blue uniform jacket was so big that it rode up under her chin. Jeffrey made a mental note to look into women’s sizes the next time he ordered uniforms. Lena wasn’t going to complain, but he was embarrassed by the oversight.

      He asked, “You were the responding officer?”

      “Yes, sir.” She started to read from her notebook. “The nine-one-one call came in from a cell phone at 5:58 a.m. I was dispatched at that time and arrived at this location at 6:02. The caller met me in the middle of the field at 6:03. Officer Brad Stephens arrived to assist at 6:04. Truong then took us to the location. I verified the victim was deceased at 6:08. I assessed the position of the body and noted a large, blood-covered rock by the victim’s head. I called Detective Wallace at 6:09. We then taped off the area around the body and awaited Frank’s arrival at 6:22.”

      Frank had called Jeffrey en route. He already knew the details, but he nodded for Lena to continue. The only way you learned how to do something was to do something.

      Lena read, “Victim is a white female between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, dressed in red running shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt with a Grant Tech logo. She was found by another student, Leslie Truong, age twenty-two. Truong walks this path four-to-five times a week. She goes to the lake to do tai chi. Truong didn’t know the victim, but she was pretty upset all the same. I offered to radio a car to drive her to the campus nurse. She said she wanted to walk it off, take some time to think. She struck me as the woo-woo type.”

      Jeffrey’s jaw had tightened. “You let her walk back to campus on her own?”

      “Yes, Chief. She was going to see the nurse. I made her promise she’d—”

      “That’s at least a twenty-minute hike, Lena. All by herself.”

      “She said she wanted—”

      “Stop.” Jeffrey worked to maintain an even tone. Most of policing was learning through mistakes. “Don’t do that again. We turn over witnesses to family or friends. We don’t send them on a two-mile hike.”

      “But, she—”

      Jeffrey shook his head, but now wasn’t the time to lecture Lena about compassion. “I want to talk to Truong before the day is out. Even if she didn’t know the victim, what she saw was traumatic. She needs to know that someone is in charge and looking out for people.”

      Lena gave a perfunctory nod.

      Jeffrey gave up. “When you got here, the victim was lying on her back?”

      “Yes, sir.” Lena thumbed to the back of her notebook. She had made a crude drawing of the body in relation to a stand of trees. “The rock was to the right of her head. Her chin was turned slightly to the left. The ground was undisturbed. She didn’t turn over. She landed on her back and hit her head.”

      “We’ll let the coroner make that determination.” He pointed to the foil. “Someone was smoking meth recently. Junkies are creatures of habit. I want you to pull all the incident reports for the last three months and see if we can match a name to the foil.”

      Lena had her pen out, but she wasn’t writing.

      He said, “It’s garbage pick-up day. Make sure we talk to the crew. I want to know if they saw anything suspicious.”

      Lena looked back toward the street, then at the forest. “The victim tripped, Chief. Her head hit a giant rock. There’s blood all over it. Why do we need witnesses?”

      “Were you there when it happened? Is that exactly what you saw?”

      Lena had no immediate answer. Jeffrey started walking across the field. Lena had to jog to keep up with him. She had been on the force for three and a half years, but she was smart and most of the time, she listened, so he went out of his way to teach her.

      He said, “I want you to remember this, because it’s important. This young woman has a family. She’s got parents, siblings, friends. We are going to have to tell them that she’s dead. They need to know we did a thorough job investigating the cause of her death. You treat every case as a homicide until you know it’s not.”

      Lena’s pen was finally moving. She was transcribing every word. He saw her underline homicide twice. “I’ll check the incident reports and follow up on the garbage truck.”

      “What’s the victim’s name?”

      “She didn’t have ID, but Matt’s at the college asking around.”

      “Good.” Of the detectives on the force, Matt Hogan was the most compassionate. There were some solid men on patrol, too. Jeffrey had gotten lucky with most of the legacy hires. Only a few were dead weight, and they would be gone by the end of the year. After four years of proving he could do this job, Jeffrey felt he had earned the benefit of tossing the bad apples.

      “Chief.” Frank stood in the middle of the field. He was twenty years Jeffrey’s senior with the physical presence of an asthmatic walrus. Frank had passed on the job of chief when the position had opened. He wasn’t one for politics, and he knew his limitations. Jeffrey was certain the detective had his back so long as it related to the job. He wasn’t so sure about the other areas of his life.

      “Brock—” Frank coughed around the cigarette in his mouth. “Brock just got here. He’s on his way to the body. She’s that-a-way, about two hundred feet over the hill.”

      Dan Brock was the county coroner. His full-time job was at the funeral home. Jeffrey had found him to be competent, but Brock’s father had dropped dead of a heart attack two days ago. The senior Brock had been found at the bottom of the stairs, which hadn’t surprised Jeffrey. The man was a closet drinker. He’d reeked of alcohol.

      Jeffrey asked, “Do you think Brock’s up to this?”

      “He’s still torn up, poor fella. He was real close to his daddy.” For unknown reasons, Frank started grinning. “I think we’ll be okay.”

      Jeffrey turned to see the reason behind Frank’s glee.

      Sara Linton was walking through the vacant lot. She was wearing dark sunglasses. Her auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt and matching short skirt.

      “Oh great,” Lena mumbled. “Tennis Barbie to the rescue.”

      Jeffrey gave Lena a look of warning. Around the time of his divorce, he’d made the mistake of complaining about Sara in front of Lena. She had taken carte blanche on the insults since then.

      He told her, “Make sure Brock isn’t lost in the woods. Tell him Sara is here.”

      Lena reluctantly trotted off.

      Frank stubbed his cigarette out on his shoe as Sara walked across the field.

      Jeffrey allowed himself the pleasure of watching her. Objectively, she was beautiful. Her legs were long and lean. She had a certain grace to her movements. She was the smartest woman he had ever met in a long line of incredibly intelligent women. After their divorce, he had persuaded himself that she hated him. Only recently had he realized that what Sara felt for him was worse than hate. She was deeply disappointed.

      On a good day, Jeffrey could admit that he was disappointed, too.

      Frank said, “I could punch you in the nuts for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t be punishment enough for what you did.”

      “Thanks, buddy.” Jeffrey patted Frank’s shoulder in a non-appreciative way.

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