The stones sat there on the crest, rough glacial boulders, unshaped, showing about half her height above the ground, obviously moved and placed by men. And then forgotten — gray and yellow lichen blotched them and some bore a hairy thatch of grass and heather. As she climbed closer, they curved away from her and formed an arc, perhaps a circle.
The stone-smell closed in on her, a pressure against her skin like simmering anger. Kate felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck. That flashing came again, beyond the stones, rattling, the sound of plastic sheeting in the wind.
Something lay there, long, narrow, wrapped in builder's poly, displayed on a flat boulder or outcrop of ledge centered in the curve of stones. Kate stopped and stared, suddenly chilled in spite of the clear sun on her back. That shape reminded her too much of a body bag waiting for the medical examiner's meat wagon. She'd seen them all too often, car wrecks and drownings and the occasional "domestic." She'd seen one just two weeks ago, her ex dead of a lifetime of whiskey and she'd found the body when he hadn't answered his phone for two days . . .
But she was a cop. Not a cop in favor with the county DA right now, but still a cop. She shook her head, watched her feet to avoid stomping on any clues, and crossed the last twenty or thirty feet to the center of the stone circle.
A body, fresh enough it didn't stink. Wrapped in several layers of poly sheeting, six mil by the look of it, tied in place with green nylon net twine circling the bundle at six different points. Nude body, apparently, or flesh-colored underwear, lumps in the plastic looked like female. She didn't touch anything to find out more. And then she reached the head.
Blonde hair. Cut short. Damned tall body for a woman, broad shoulders like Kate's own. The ridge faded around Kate, and again Jackie flashed across her blurred eyes, face teen-age sullen.
They'd never found her body, after that shoot-out and fire at the Pratts' place. Found blood and bone and brain tissue spattered across the gravel, but they'd never found the body.
Kate was sitting. Her back leaned against something cold and rough. Blueberry bushes prickly under her butt and against her arms through the sleeves of her work shirt. Stone, stone at her back, stone solid and reliable, guarding, she'd never get shot from that direction.
Kate stared at the cell phone in her hand. Left hand, missing half the index finger from a second's carelessness with a power saw. Call in. Nine-one-one, report to dispatch, easier than groaning to her feet and limping back down the ridge to her truck and the police radio under the dash.
She felt the chill of those hostile eyes again and looked up. Jackie. Jackie standing by the tree-line, calm, weighing, nodding, then fading into nothing like a proper ghost. Kate's vision blurred, black dots swirling into a tunnel, and she blinked tears away. The edge of the field stood empty again, bracken and grass and blood-crimson blueberry bushes undisturbed.
Her right hand made its own choice and poked at the buttons for a memory number, memory number one, Alice, cell phone in her car or at the hospital or wherever. Anywhere except the House. Cell phone wouldn't work in the House. House didn't like it.
Get her out here before the sheriff or the state patrol, closest real cops. Too many things wrong.
Chapter Two
Alice tucked the foil blanket tighter around Kate's shoulders, gently forced her lover's head back down on the improvised pillow of a wadded-up jacket, and checked her temporal pulse again. Still weaker than normal, even lying in the grass with her head downhill. Then Alice looked up, glaring at the state trooper. Wescott, according to his nameplate. Not local. Both good and bad sides to that.
"Shit, yes, I touched the body. I used sterile gloves and left them lying on top of the plastic wrap in case they picked up any forensic goodies. In my professional opinion, as a registered nurse specializing in ER trauma and as an EMT, my patient needed to know that corpse was not her missing daughter. Life-or-death, extreme clinical shock. Now fuck off! I'm dealing with a medical emergency here."
A mix of code words and crude emphasis, shorthand that should penetrate even the thickest rote rule-book cop skull. State troopers weren't dumb, none of them. Even if they sometimes acted that way.
And he could see her industry-standard EMT crash bag and her photo-ID from Sunrise General clipped to her shirt pocket and the stethoscope draped professionally across her shoulders. Badges of authority, added to the command voice.
And since Wescott wasn't a Stonefort boy, he wouldn't know Kate was about as fragile as one of those boulders in the stone circle. Alice was just buying herself some space. Yeah, it sounded cold and calculating. Her lover lay under her hands, pale and clammy and her blood pressure down around sixty from shock, and the Haskell Witch subprogram had taken over Alice's brain, manipulating people and weighing which of their buttons to push.
It worked. The cop left, shaking his head.
But that trooper would be asking some damned awkward questions if he ever found out that Alice landed on the crime scene at least half an hour before the nine-one-one call. That she'd studied the wrappings and the knots on that do-it-yourself body bag before untying and opening it up to find out what was inside, to look for clues that the Medical Examiner would never understand. Photographing stuff with her digital camera. And then closing everything back up and matching all the original knots, including the botched ones. Whoever had wrapped that package wasn't a sailor or a fisherman.
Kate opened her eyes and stared up into nothing, unfocused, blue sky reflected in sky-blue eyes. Alice glanced over at the cops and forensics
