*
Buck Hollow Trail is a pleasant stroll through hell; an oppressive chaparral thick with mossy oaks, rotting logs, and pollen. Jimmy loves it. The trail follows an old logging road north, passing streams, belching frogs, and a forest floor untidy from deciduous decay. A musty wet flavor taints the air; I taste it on my tongue, smell it in my sinuses, feel it in my throat.
Dead leaves.
Dead earth.
Worms.
Three hundred yards up the trail we come across an armada of deputies, detectives, and U.S. forest rangers corralled by yellow crime-scene tape. Two small generators and a dozen portable lights sit idly to the side, no longer needed with the coming of dawn. A trail, now well worn, has been hacked through the thick scrub to the west, leading some thirty feet to where a man in slacks, dress shoes, shirt, and tie stands juxtaposed against the wild.
“Steps, Jimmy, I’d like you to meet Dr. Noble Wallace, our coroner.”
“Call me Nob,” the doctor says without emotion. “Noble is too regal and Dr. Wallace makes me think you’re talking to my father.”
After the traditional round of palm-mating and arm-pumping, Jimmy asks, “What do you know so far?”
And then I see her.
On the other side of the good doctor, dumped unceremoniously on the ground, is a sad stretch of bones. Most of the flesh is gone, and several of the ribs with it. Other bones have been pulled away from the body and gnawed upon by teeth of every size.
I pull my lead-crystal glasses off, and the crime scene suddenly erupts with neon shine. If I paid any attention, the flood of color would be exhilarating: like static electricity pulling at every hair follicle on my body. But I don’t pay attention. Even the coolest sensation dulls after ten thousand repeats. Folding the metal earpieces down one by one, I slip the glasses into their leather case before turning my attention back to the body.
The skeleton is problematic.
As the flesh surrenders to rot and rodent, so goes the shine. On the ground around the corpse are no less than two dozen distinct shines, any one of which could be the killer. I need to find something that sets him apart from the others.
“Female,” Nob begins. “Based on bone fusing, I’d place her age at around twenty-four, give or take a year. I’ll be able to firm that up once I take X-rays. Height was between five-two and five-four and she was fairly trim. We don’t have the skull, so dental records won’t do us any good, but we can run DNA.” Looking at Walt, he adds, “All the physicals seem to match your missing person. Oh, and she was a natural blonde but dyed her hair brunette.”
“How do you know that if you don’t have a skull?” Jimmy asks.
The doctor remains silent, but points through the trees to the north. His jaw is set and the muscles of his face are taut. Our eyes meet briefly and I see the horror in his expression … the haunted stare … the same look I see in my bathroom mirror in the long hours of the night.
“I’ll show them,” Sheriff Gant says softly, waving us along as he starts picking his way through the brush.
The tree is unremarkable from all the others along Buck Hollow Trail, giving no clue as to why he chose this particular trunk to make his statement. Perhaps he had no preference and this one was just convenient. Regardless, the killer took his time decorating it, as if bestowing special favors upon the forest sentinel.
I look at the display.
Brilliant amaranth—almost crimson—with the texture of rust.
His hands are all over the tree, all over her bra, her shirt, her panties. Each is nailed to the tree. Her shirt is at the bottom, fastened lengthwise with three nails near the center and equal portions drooping off each side of the tree. Above the shirt the panties, barely recognizable, are held by a single nail. Then the bra, its straps wrapped around the trunk as if the tree were wearing it.
Above all this, as if crowning the display, is mounted a tangled mass of faux-brunette: a scalp peeled from the poor girl’s skull. I can see where he grabbed her hair, wrenching her head back as he went to work on her.
I pray she was already dead.
“This one’s killed before,” I say to no one in particular. But as I say it my mind is grinding, grinding, grinding. Brilliant amaranth and rust. Why do I know that? Why does it seem so familiar?
Turning suddenly, I snatch up my cell phone. Her number’s on speed dial and Diane answers on the first ring. I don’t even wait for her to say hello.
“I need you to do something.”
*
By 10:45 A.M. Dr. Wallace identifies the victim as twenty-three-year-old Alison Lister. “As suspected, the skull was found not far from the body, under some brush,” the good doctor explains, “though it didn’t find its way there due to predation.” He leaves the words hanging, begging for explanation.
I raise a curious eyebrow at him—after a two-hour plane ride and hours in the woods, it’s the most I can manage without some caffeine … and maybe a scone; a blueberry scone.
“How do you mean, Doctor?” Jimmy to the rescue.
“Your perp—that’s what you Feds call them, right: perps?”
“Only on TV,” Jimmy says.
“Well, then, it appears your suspect separated the skull from the spinal cord right at the occipital bone, probably with a hacksaw, if I had to guess. The exterior has mostly been picked clean—that part was predation; crows and rodents and such—and, of course, the flesh from the top and back came off with her hair when she was scalped. Despite the damage from both man and beast, the teeth are still intact, and Alison’s dental records were already on file. She was reported missing four months ago, which means either she was kept alive for a while, or our estimated time of death was a bit off.”
“Local girl?” Jimmy asks.
“Born and raised. No drugs, hardworking, pretty, just your all-American girl.” He shakes his head slowly. “She didn’t deserve this.”