had quickly become a success. There had come a lull in the work, though, for which Michelle was grateful. She was an outdoors woman, and she got as much satisfaction out of camping or running a marathon as she did busting counterfeiters or putting the clamps on a corporate spy.
The woods were quiet save for the rustling branches from a moisture-laden breeze that was conjuring miniature cyclones from last winter's dead leaves. However, the sudden crack of tree branches caught Michelle's attention. She'd been told that the occasional black bear could be spotted around here, but if she did encounter an animal, it was far more likely to be a deer, squirrel or fox. She thought nothing more of it, although she took comfort in the pistol riding in the clip holster attached to her fanny pack belt. As a Secret Service agent she'd never gone anywhere without her gun, not even the toilet. One never knew where a nine-millimeter SIG and fourteen rounds might come in handy.
Moments later another sound caught her attention and kept it: running feet. In her Secret Service days Michelle had heard many types of running feet. Most had been innocuous; others signaled a darker purpose: stealth, attack or panic. She wasn't sure how to classify this one yet: good, bad or out of shape. She slowed her pace a little, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sunlight breaking through the tree canopies. For a few seconds there was dead silence, then the sounds of rushing feet returned, now much closer. Okay, what she was hearing was clearly not the measured pace of a jogger. There was a level of fear in the rushed and unsteady- sounding footfalls. Off to her left now, it seemed, but she couldn't be sure. Sound tended to whipsaw here.
'Hello,' she called out, even as her hand reached down and took out her pistol. She didn't expect an answer and didn't get one. She chambered a round but kept the safety on. As with scissors, one should avoid running with a loaded gun while the safety was off. The sounds kept coming; it was human feet certainly. She glanced behind her; this might be a setup. It could be done in pairs: one to draw her attention while the other got the jump on her. Well, if so, they were going to be very sorry they chose to pick on her.
She stopped now as she finally locked on the sound's source: it was to the right, above the knoll directly in front of her. The breathing was accelerated; the rush of legs, the crashing of underbrush, seemed frenetic. In another few seconds whoever it was would have to clear the rim of dirt and rock.
Michelle slipped off her gun's safety and took up position behind a wide oak tree. Hopefully, it was only another jogger, and the person wouldn't even be aware of her armed presence. Dirt and pebbles shot out over the edge of the knoll heralding the arrival of the source of all the commotion. Michelle braced herself, both hands glued around her pistol grips, ready if necessary to put a bullet between someone's pupils.
A young boy burst out from the top of the knoll, was suspended in space for an instant and then with a scream tumbled down the slope. Before he hit bottom another boy, a little older, came into view at the knoll's crest but caught himself in time and merely slid down the slope on his butt, flopping next to his companion.
Michelle would have thought they were just horsing around, except for the look of utter terror etched on both their faces. The younger one was sobbing, his face streaked with dirt and tears. The older boy pulled him up by the scruff of his shirt, and they took off running, both their faces crimson with accelerated blood flow.
Michelle holstered her gun, stepped out from behind the tree and held up her hand. 'Boys, stop!'
The pair screamed and shot around on either side of her in a blur. She spun around, grabbed for one but missed. She called after them, 'What's wrong? I want to help you!'
For an instant she contemplated sprinting after them, but despite her Olympian background, it wasn't certain she could catch two young boys whose feet were apparently jet-fueled by sheer fright. She turned back around and looked toward the top of the knoll. What could have scared them that badly? She quickly altered her line of thinking. Or
At the top of the knoll she easily found the path the two had used. She slipped through the narrow trail erratically carved by their frantic flight. It ran for about a hundred feet and then opened into a small clearing. From here the path was less certain, but then she spotted the piece of cloth dangling on the lower branch of a dogwood, and she made her way through this cleft in the forest. Fifty feet later she came to another clearing, this one larger, where a campfire had been doused.
She wondered if the boys
In an instant the direction of the wind changed and drove the smell deep into her nostrils. She gagged, and her eyes assumed their own level of panic. She'd experienced that unmistakable smell before.
It was putrefied flesh..
Michelle pulled her tank shirt up and over her mouth and nose, trying to breathe in the stink of her own sweat rather than the rank odor of a decomposing body. She made her way around the perimeter of the clearing. At 120 degrees on her mental compass she found it. Or her. In the brush that ran along the fringe of the clearing the hand was sticking up, like the dead woman was waving hello or in this case good-bye. Even from this distance Michelle could see that the greenish skin on the arm was slipping down off the bone. She scooted around to the upwind side of the body and took a replenishing breath.
She ran her gaze along the corpse but kept her gun ready. Though the stench from the body, its discoloration and the skin slippage showed the woman had been dead for quite some time, it could have been recently dumped here and the killer still nearby. Michelle had no desire to join the lady's fate.
The sun was glinting off something on the woman's wrist. Michelle drew closer and saw that it was a watch. She glanced down at her own watch; it was two-thirty. She sat back on her haunches, her nose cemented into her armpit. She called 911, calmly telling the dispatcher what she'd found and her location. After that she called Sean King.
'Do you recognize her?' he asked.
'I don't think her own mother would know her, Sean.'
'I'm on my way. Just stay on your guard. Whoever did it might come back to admire his handiwork. Oh, and Michelle?' said King.
'Yeah?'
'Can't you just start running on a treadmill?'
She clicked off, took up a position as far away from the body as she could while still keeping it in view, and maintained a sharp lookout. The nice day and endorphin-churning run in the beautiful foothills had suddenly taken on a grim veneer.
Funny how murder had a way of doing that.
CHAPTER 3
THE SMALL CLEARING WAS SEEING quite a bit of activity, all of it man-made. A wide area had been cordoned off with yellow police tape intertwined among the trees. A two-person forensics team was foraging for clues directly around the crime scene, analyzing things that seemed far too small to be of any significance. Others hovered over the body of the dead woman, while still others were threading their way through the surrounding woods and underbrush looking for items of interest and possibly the ingress and egress of the killer. One uniformed officer had photographed and then videotaped the entire scene. All the cops wore floater masks to guard against the stench, and yet one by one they took turns hustling into the woods to empty their stomachs.
It all looked very efficient and orderly, but for a seasoned observer it was clearly bad guy one, good guys naught. They were finding zip.
Michelle stood off a ways and watched. Next to her was Sean King, her partner in the private investigation firm of King Maxwell. King was in his forties, three inches taller than the five-foot-ten Michelle, and had short dark hair graying at the temples. He was trim and broad-shouldered but had gimpy knees and a shoulder that a bullet had ripped into years ago during an arrest that had gone awry while he was working a forgery investigation as a
