first drew me to Goddess worship.”
Loving steadfastly maintained a straight face, even though this sounded to him like something the boys at Orpha’s might spout after several six-packs. “I gotta admit, I never hearda this before. Who cooked this up?”
“No one cooked it up,” Kelly said, but she didn’t seem the least bit annoyed. “It’s existed for centuries. Have you read Marija Gimbutas?”
Loving knew better than to bluff when he was out of his depth. “I don’t think so. I’ve read Louis L’Amour.”
She laughed again. “Gimbutas has proved that goddess worship was a prehistoric belief eradicated by patriarchal invaders about six thousand years ago. In fact, she says goddess worship goes back to 25,000 B.C. That’s why farmers sometimes dig up those little female goddess statuettes.”
“But don’t you think those prehistoric beliefs probably died out … for a reason?”
“Yes, but it isn’t a good reason. Most progress isn’t, if you ask me. The prepatriarchal Utopia was egalitarian, peace-loving, and entirely gynocentric.”
Loving was blank-faced. “Entirely-”
“Centered around women.”
“Oh. Oh.” He tilted his head. “Well, that’s okay. I like women.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Somehow, without even appearing to move, Kelly had inched so close to him they were mere inches apart. “How would you like to get in touch with some of your … primitive urges?”
Loving was beginning to feel distinctly hot under the collar. “I don’t think-”
“Don’t think.” She wrapped her hand around his thick neck. “Focus on the here and now.”
“I don’t-” Loving peeled himself off the sofa so abruptly Kelly tumbled over in his wake. “Not that it isn’t tempting. But I’m on duty. So to speak.” He rubbed a hand across his sweaty forehead. “Got work to do.”
“I see. Pity.”
“And I wouldn’t wanna take advantage. What with the Goddess watching and everything.”
Kelly smiled.
“Are you sure there’s nothing more you can tell me about the murder?”
“Sorry. I know it must’ve taken you a while to find me. But I just don’t know anything.”
“Let me ask you one more question,” Loving said. He kept one eye on the door, just in case he needed to beat a hasty retreat. “Why did you leave Green Rage?”
Her eyes drifted, just as they had when the group had been mentioned earlier. “What did they tell you?”
“They didn’t want to talk about it.”
She turned away. “Well, neither do I.”
“Please. I’d really like to know.”
“I’m sorry. No.”
“Please.” Loving knelt down and placed his hand on her knee. Boy, the Skipper was going to owe him big-time for this one. “I need to know.”
Her head turned slowly back in his direction. “It’s not that I wasn’t committed to the cause. I was. I gave my heart and soul to Green Rage.” Her voice dropped a notch. “And Zak. But there are some things I wasn’t willing to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like taking advantage of people. Manipulating them. Of course the Green Rage crowd would say, when you’re wrestling with the devil, you have to get a little dirty. But honestly, if you get too dirty, how can you tell yourself and the devil apart?”
“What was it they wanted you to do?”
“It was something they were all planning to do. Something beyond the pale. So I left.”
“And … do you know whether they did it?”
“I know they did. After I left. I’m certain of it.” She placed her hand over the big strong hand on her knee and squeezed. “If they hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here now.”
Chapter 42
After the lunch break, Granny brought her next witness to the stand.
“The State calls Detective Arnold Cath.”
Ben watched as Cath ambled up to the front of the courtroom. He was a middle-aged man with about thirty pounds he didn’t need riding his midsection. He was wearing a suit jacket with complementary slacks, the standard issue plainclothes-cop-in-court regalia.
Granny quickly established the man’s credentials, including the twelve years he’d spent covering homicides in the county. She touched on a few of his past cases. None of them meant anything to Ben, but they garnered appreciative nods from some of the jurors.
As before, Granny spent no more time on the preliminaries than was absolutely necessary. “What were you doing on July thirteenth? Say about two in the morning.”
“Well, I was sound asleep in bed, like most everyone else, I expect.” He seemed amiable and good-natured, an appealing witness. “Till the phone call came.”
“And who was calling?”
“Sheriff Allen. He’d received a report of a homicide from one of his deputies. Poor kid had found the body- what was left of it-all by himself in the middle of the night. Sheriff Allen asked if I’d come out and take charge of the investigation.”
“Is that standard operating procedure?”
“Absolutely. Sheriff Allen’s a fine officer, but he’s not a homicide specialist. He always calls me when he has a murder on his hands. Not that that happens very often.”
“And what did you do after you received the call?”
“Well, I told him I’d get out there as soon as I could. I live in Mount Collie, ’bout twenty-five minutes out of Magic Valley. Plus I had to get dressed, splash some water on my face. Then I had to find this crime scene out in the middle of the green leafy nowhere. I got lost about six times; had to get on my cell phone and have Sheriff Allen lead me in step by step.”
“When did you arrive?”
“I think I got there about four-thirty, which I thought was pretty damn good, given the circumstances.”
“And what did you do when you arrived?”
“I conferred with Sheriff Allen briefly, then took control of the crime scene.”
Granny nodded appreciatively. “Detective Cath, for the sake of the jury, would you please explain what you mean by taking control of the crime scene?”
“Sure.” He turned to face the jury box. “Everything I do can probably be boiled down into two categories: restricting access and preserving the evidence. Obviously, we don’t want the crime scene contaminated. Something like seven out of ten homicides are solved in the first six hours based upon evidence found at the crime scene. We don’t want to lose that window of opportunity. So I cordon off the area and post guards at the entrances, to make sure no one gets in unless they have my okay.”
“And after that?”
“Then I start preserving the evidence on the site so it will still be there when the forensic teams arrive. I lay butcher paper down on the walkways so we can get in and out without damaging any evidence. In this case, out in the forest, there really weren’t any walkways as such, so I just created some, around the perimeter of the area and through the middle, near the remains. That way our footprints wouldn’t obliterate any evidence.”
“And what else?”
“I make sure no one sheds on the crime scene or bleeds on it or moves things around. We want everything to be just as it was when the killer left. Once that’s done, I admit the forensic teams.”
“Such as?”
“The hair and fiber team. The photographers and videographers. Trace evidence teams. Fingerprint experts. And of course the coroner’s team.” He shuddered involuntarily. “Man, I wouldn’t have wanted their job for all the
