“I can’t. But I can tell you that the blood is pretty fresh on these bodies and whoever did—did what they did to them—has to be completely covered in it. That guy’s clean.”
I raised a challenging eyebrow and Alex’s inner groan was almost audible. “I’m going to go ask him a few questions anyway.”
I moved to take a step toward Alex and he put a hand on my chest, effectively holding me in place. “You’ve got two choices. Go sit in the car or wait here. This is a police investigation.”
“Don’t patronize me, Alex Grace,” I hissed.
“You’re not a cop, Lawson.” Alex’s eyes had changed from that warm, inviting cobalt to a steely grey that rivaled the unsettling rage of the ocean. “I don’t need you here.”
Alex walked away from me and suddenly the hiss of the sea-soaked wind was biting. I pulled my jacket against it, but the icy fingers still slid down the back of my collar, whipped up my pant legs, and stung my cheeks. I was left in the clearing with the two sheeted bodies—dead bodies, I sadly reminded myself—while the police, paramedics, crime scene investigators, and finally, the coroner, buzzed around taking statements and photographs or poking through the foliage carefully collecting evidence. I watched while a younger guy, his black jacket slick with mist, bent down and collected a few strands of hair with a pair of industrial-sized tweezers.
I squinted at the find when he did—a small bunch, possibly ten or twelve—of brown hair, about six inches long. I filed it in my mental database when he zipped it in his evidence bag. He took a careful step and I found myself doing the same thing, gingerly picking my way through the shrubs and the broken remainders of puzzle bark suckers. I don’t know how long I wandered, but when I looked up the crime scene and its surrounding task force were just a few inches tall, the chatter and squawk of the police radios and onlookers strangled by the sound of the crashing waves below me. The grass and shrubs were broken here, too, tramped down and spattered with something tarry and black. I poked at it with the tip of my finger and recoiled, the blood dripping down to my palm. “Oh, god!” I rubbed my palm against my thigh until it burned.
I did my best to pick around the broken grass and splattered blood, but in my zeal to be delicate and light-footed, I hooked my toe over the top of a jutting rock and vaulted forward, landing hard on my chest in the grass. My head bobbed forward and a starburst of pain shot across my forehead, blinding me. I tried to blink away the blob of darkness that started in my right eye, but when I looked up, everything was a watery blur and fuzzy black spots shot across my field of vision. I tried hard to focus on what was right in front of me: first a few blades of grass. The rock that sprouted an offensive trickle of my blood. The trees swaying in the breeze fifty feet in front of me. The shadowy figure that stood there.
Terror overtook the pain and I shoved myself up, feeling the soft earth digging itself into the tears in my palms. I knew the wind was blowing, slapping my hair against my cheek and neck; it matted into the blood at my temple, but I couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything. I tried to yell, but the wind snapped by and snatched the scream right out of my mouth.
“Lawson!”
Alex was at the bluff running toward me. I had pushed myself onto my butt and was shivering, my teeth chattering. I tried to tell him, tried to warn him, but all I could do was point. Two women had been torn limb from limb twenty feet from me and there, in the trees, their killer lurked.
“What?” Alex turned, eyes squinted, looking toward the trees.
“There’s a person there!” It was barely a croak, barely audible.
Alex stood up to his full six-foot height, still staring toward the trees. “I don’t see anything. Are you sure?”
I pumped my head—then stopped. Was I sure? I gingerly touched my forehead. The cut was sticky and throbbing.
“I hit my head.”
“Yeah.” Alex turned to me, slid an arm under my shoulders to help me up. “Looks like you banged it pretty hard. Can you stand on your own?”
I strained to look over Alex’s shoulder while he supported me. “Did you see him? Did he get away?”
“Lawson, there’s no one there. You hit your head.” He went to touch it but recoiled. “You really did a number on it.”
I tried to squirm out of Alex’s arms but he held me firm. “So you’re saying I’m seeing things?”
“No,” Alex said, pushing me farther up the bank, “I’m saying you fell and hit your head and that there is nothing over there now, okay? Don’t make this bigger than it is.”
“There was someone there, I’m sure of it. He was watching me. Watching the crime scene.”
I looked at Alex hard and his eyes softened as he relented. “Okay. Can we get a medic over here?” he called. “Romero, Tibbs—Lawson thinks she saw someone.”
I pointed. “There. About fifty feet down.”