thing missing from the scene before me now.
“Is Hurley coming?” I ask no one in particular.
“He had to go to Madison yesterday to testify in a trial and spent the night there,” Junior says. “He called just a bit ago to say he had just gotten back and would be here soon.” As if on cue, we hear the sound of a car approaching.
I look toward the road and recognize the car as Hurley’s. My heart skips a beat, something that seems to happen whenever Hurley is around. His black hair, intense blue eyes, and sit-on-my-lap thighs always get me revved up, but I’ve been working extra hard to rein in my hormones. That’s because, lately, Hurley has been oddly distant whenever we’re together: courteous and professional, but also strangely detached. It’s a puzzling change given that we’ve shared a couple of heated kisses in the not-so-distant past and I’m afraid I know the reason for it.
I watch him now as he parks behind my car, climbs out, and scans the road. When I see him shake his head in dismay I think I know why: the macadam is damp, but otherwise clear. What little snow the plows left on the road has melted beneath the morning sun, effectively obliterating any tire-track evidence we might have been able to collect.
“Too bad the plow came through,” Hurley hollers down to us, verifying my suspicion.
“It may not be all bad,” I yell back. “It looks like the body was dumped here and knowing when the plow came through may help us figure out when.”
Unfortunately the killer’s trail down to the body has been smeared, smudged, and kicked apart enough that there are no usable boot prints to identify, damage I suspect may have been done intentionally. All may not be lost, however. Incidental evidence, like a fallen hair or fiber, could have been dropped along the path. Keenly aware of this possibility, everyone who has arrived on the scene has been careful to blaze their own trail to the body rather than contaminate the existing one.
After Junior points out the path the rest of us have followed, Hurley makes his way down to us and the body. I try to catch his eye to gauge today’s level of temperament toward me, but his attention is focused solely on the surrounding area until he reaches our little group. Then his gaze shifts to the victim.
He stops dead in his tracks and the rosy color the cold has stamped on his cheeks drains away with frightening rapidity, leaving him nearly as pale as our corpse. As a nurse I’ve seen that happen plenty of times before, usually right before someone faints and does a face-plant on the floor.
I edge a bit closer to Hurley just in case. I harbor no illusions about my ability to catch him—he is well over six feet tall and sturdily built. But I figure if he does start to go down I can at least shove him hard enough to keep him from falling into our crime scene.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
The others turn to look at him but he ignores us for several beats as he stares at the body. “Not really,” he says finally, cutting his eyes back toward the neighboring field. He covers his mouth with one hand and his Adam’s apple bounces as he swallows hard. “I’m feeling a bit off this morning. Must be something I ate.”
The others in the group all shift a step away from Hurley, no doubt because they’re afraid of getting ralphed on. I, on the other hand, move closer. I overcame my aversion to gross bodily excretions very early in my nursing career and it’s going to take more than the threat of a little early morning barf to keep me away from a man who I’ve discovered can curl my toes with one kiss.
“I think I’m going to call someone else in for this one,” Hurley says. He turns and backtracks along the trail he came in on, allowing me a few moments to surreptitiously admire his backside. Along the way he takes out his cell phone and punches in a number, but by the time he gets an answer he is too far away for me to hear the conversation. When he reaches the road, he hangs up and turns back to us.
“Bob Richmond is going to take this one,” he hollers. “He should be here in about ten minutes. I’m heading home to bed.”
This is bad news for me on several fronts. Bob Richmond is a grizzled old detective who is basically retired, though he occasionally fills in when needed. He’s cranky, impatient, and built like the Pillsbury Dough Boy—and that’s before you stuff him into a down-filled winter jacket. Plus, he’s not Hurley, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s his biggest fault.
Crestfallen, I watch as Hurley climbs into his car and pulls away without so much as a wave or a second glance. Once again I’m left feeling slighted and snubbed, and I have no idea why. Actually, that’s not true; I do have a suspicion. A few weeks ago, while riding in the back of an ambulance with Hurley, fearing he was mortally wounded, I whispered in his ear that I might be falling in love with him. He was more or less unconscious at the time so I didn’t think he heard me, but now I’m not so sure.
Swallowing down my frustration, I turn my attention back to our victim and try to push thoughts of Hurley from my mind, which is like trying not to breathe. Izzy has finished taking his pictures and we squat down on either side of the corpse to begin our field processing. The body is cold and rigid but I’m not sure if it’s from the weather, rigor mortis, or a mix of the two. If she’s frozen it will make it more difficult for us to determine a time of death since none of the usual indicators—stage of rigor, body temperature, and lividity—will be of much help. I’m getting a sinking feeling that nothing about this case is going to be easy.
As Izzy and I process the body—looking for surface evidence, bagging the hands, and rolling her over to place a sheet beneath her—Ron Colbert and Junior carefully examine the surrounding snow. About fifteen minutes into our efforts we hear another car engine approach and an old-model, blue sedan covered with patches of rust and primer rumbles around the curve.
I haven’t seen Bob Richmond in a few years and he’s even bigger now than he was then. I guess his weight at well over four hundred pounds, and as I watch him struggle out of his car and waddle toward us, the words, “Bring me Solo and the Wookie,” come to mind. By the time he reaches the crest of the snow berm above us, he’s so winded, all he can do is stand there for a minute and gasp for breath, his ragged exhalations creating giant cumulus clouds as they hit the cold morning air.
“Anyone . . . know . . . who she is?” he manages, staring down at the corpse.
We all shake our heads.
“Any trace?”
Izzy fields this one. “Nothing obvious yet. It looks like she was killed somewhere else and dumped here. We’ve got a trail in the snow but it’s too messed up to be useful for prints.”
“TOD?” Richmond asks.
Izzy shrugs. “At this point there’s no way to know when she was killed. And since she may be frozen to some degree, I’m not sure how accurate a range I’ll be able to give you later on.”
Richmond nods and then looks over at me, staring with a curious expression. “Do I know you?”
“Mattie Winston. I’m a deputy coroner.”
He looks confused and shakes his head, as if he’s trying to get his hamster back on its wheel. “Since when?”
“Since a few weeks ago.”
“What were you before that?”
“I worked as a nurse at Mercy Hospital.”
His assumes an
“For the past few years, yes. Before that I worked in the ER.”
“I think you were working when I had my bunions removed.”
I was, so I nod but say nothing. Most of what I remember about his case is how hard we struggled to move him off the OR table, but I figure mentioning that might not be the best way to start getting reacquainted.
“So how did you end up doing this?” he says, gesturing toward the dead woman.
Izzy and Junior exchange a look and then go back to their respective jobs with renewed intensity. They already know the sordid details, as does most of the town. Colbert, being new here, does not, but I can tell from the way he’s eyeing the other two men that he caught their look and knows there’s something juicy behind it.
“It’s a long story,” I tell Richmond, hoping he’ll take the hint. But judging from the bemused expression on his face, all I’ve done is pique his interest.
“Aren’t you married to a surgeon or something like that?” Richmond asks.
“Sort of,” I say vaguely.
“Sort of?” he snorts. “You’re sort of married? Isn’t that like being a little bit pregnant?”
