Then he made a little shrugging motion with his eyebrows. 'Maybe we ought to turn around,' Grissom admitted. 'Could be someone just doing a little target practice.'
'Good. Yes. Let's do that.'
But he made no move to go back. Snow now covered their boot tops and threatened their knees. They were deep in the woods, deep in snow, somewhere on the slope behind the hotel-they could still make out its towers through the skeletal branches and haze of snow. Soon it would be dark, and they'd have to navigate by the lights of the hotel.
Looking at Grissom, Sara realized that his varsity jacket wasn't doing him much more good than his windbreaker would have. The CSI supervisor was working to hide it, but he obviously was shivering. His cheeks were rosy, the snow in his hair making it appear more white than gray.
Still, she knew him well enough to know the cold wasn't what was on his mind.
Just ahead, a round wooden pole peeked above the drifting snow, bearing two signs: one, pointing left, read Partridgeberry Trail to Lakeshore Path (whatever that was); the other, pointing to the right, said Forest Drive.
'Either of these paths get us back faster?' Grissom asked.
Sara shrugged. 'As long as we can see the hotel, we're okay.'
'But we can go back the way we came, right? You do know the way.'
She twitched a sheepish smile. 'Well, to be honest…when we were looking for those snowflies, and we cut through the woods…'
'Sara, if we're lost, say we're lost.'
'We're not lost,' Sara insisted. 'If you look through there, you can see the hotel.'
He turned to look at the path they'd carved coming up the trail. Already the snow filled in their tracks and, if they tried retracing their steps, the guesswork would soon begin….
'Look, I've got my cell phone,' she said. 'Why don't we just call the hotel and tell them where we are?'
Without answering, Grissom looked down where the Partridgeberry Trail ought to be, then back in the direction they'd been going, then sharply back toward the Partridgeberry Trail, his nose in the air, sniffing the wind.
'Grissom,' Sara said. 'This is no time to be a guy. Asking for directions is nothing to be ashamed of.'
He kept sniffing.
She continued: 'Let's just phone the hotel and tell them we're…' Something about the look on his face stopped her. 'What?'
His nose still high, the snow turning his eyebrows white, he asked, 'You smell that?'
Now Sara sniffed the air. 'Grilling, maybe?'
'In this weather? No…I recognize that smell!'
And Grissom took off running, kicking up snow as he struggled to sprint through the deepening white stuff. Without thinking, Sara plunged after him; it was like trudging through sand.
'Grissom! Wait up!'
But he did not slow for her.
She didn't know why they were running, where they were going or what had set Grissom off; but she suspected what it was and knew she wasn't going to like it.
Grissom just kept running, his head swiveling, and when he finally stopped it was so sudden she almost barreled into him.
She let out a squeak, and lurched to the right to avoid colliding with Grissom, who turned and sprinted left into the woods.
Sara slipped, gathered herself, then tore off after him again. 'Grissom!'
He fell to his knees, maybe ten yards in front of her, as if seized by the urge to pray. When she caught up and bent to help him, she realized he was scooping up handfuls of snow, and throwing them at a burning human body.
The snow hissed and steamed when it struck the flames. Swallowing quickly to avoid being sick, Sara dropped to her knees and joined him in flinging handfuls of snow at the burning body.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was probably only a couple of minutes, of heaping snow on the body, the fire was extinguished. For the most part, the flames seemed to have been centered on the chest and face of a male who lay on his back, his arms at his sides, his legs slightly splayed.
Reaching carefully, avoiding the still steaming torso, Grissom felt the man's wrist for a pulse.
'Damnit,' Grissom said bitterly, as if this were his fault. 'Dead.'
'What happened here? Not spontaneous combustion, certainly.'
Grissom took a quick look around. 'No. There are other sets of tracks here.' He pointed further down the hill toward the hotel. 'Give me your cell phone; I'll call 911. You start taking pictures of everything-fast. The way this snow's coming down, this crime scene will be history in fifteen minutes.'
'It's a digital camera….'
They both knew that in some states, photographs taken on a digital camera were inadmissible in court-digital doctoring was simply too easy.
'It's what we have,' Grissom said. 'We can both testify to that. Get started.'
A comforting sense of detachment settling down on her, Sara tossed Grissom the phone and got to work.
She'd start with the body, then work her way outward from there. She logged the facts in her head as she took her photos. He was a white man between nineteen and twenty-five, judging from his young-looking hands-tall, maybe six feet, six feet one, 175 to 185, dark hair, most of it burned off, wearing a navy blue parka, mostly melted now, over a tee shirt (black possibly, but that might have been the charring), jeans, boots and, surprisingly, no gloves.
Sara devoted a couple dozen shots to the body-already planning to erase the nature photos, if need be-and was careful to capture as much detail as she could. Then she moved to the tracks in the snow. They were already filling in; she took close-ups and distance shots, wishing she had the tripod after all, using one of her gloves to show scale.
Five sets of tracks: three sets coming from the hotel, two sets going back. With the way the snow was coming down, Sara couldn't even tell if the other sets were the same approximate size, let alone whether they had been made by one set of boots or two. And her hand was freezing.
Grissom walked up to her. 'How's it going?'
'Lost cause,' she said, glumly. 'Boot holes are filling up-no way to get a decent picture.'
'That's the least of our problems,' Grissom said. His voice was tight; he was either irritated or frustrated- maybe both. 'I just got off the phone with the Ulster County Sheriff's Office.'
'On their way?'
'Not exactly. Deputy says they might have a car out here…tomorrow.'
She brushed snow off her face. 'That's not funny.'
'Am I laughing? It's snowing so hard they've closed the roads.'
'Well…I guess that's no surprise.'
'Add to that, they've had a major chain reaction accident up on Interstate 87…. All the available deputies and state troopers are working that scene.'
'Shit.' She was hopping now, trying to stay warm.
'So we're on our own.'
'On our own….'
Grissom gestured toward the smoldering human chunk of firewood. 'Our victim was already dead when the fire started, or he would have been face down.'
'I'm too cold to think that one through. Help me.'
'Sara, nobody alive stays on his back in the snow with his face on fire.'
'I see your point.'
Grissom headed back to the corpse. 'We need to try to determine cause of death.'
She fell in with him, slipping her camera in her parka pocket. 'Okay. But with this snow coming down, we can't treat the body with the respect it deserves.'
'That's a given.'
