Josie’s house sat back approximately two hundred feet from Schenck Road. Dell’s driveway, located to the left of her house, was a half-mile-long lane that led straight back through pasture to his barn and home. To the left of Dell’s lane were several thousand acres of wide-open pasture, small groves of pi?on pine, and a small mountain range that ran through the middle of Dell’s ranch. Josie planned to search the area between the road and Dell’s house where the car had stopped earlier that night.
The four officers lined up in a row parallel with the road, with Nick on the far left, farthest from Josie’s house, then Josie, then Otto, and finally Roy, who walked alongside Dell’s driveway. With their flashlights, they swept the land in front of them, looking for any tracks or sign of crossing.
Just a few hundred feet from the road Josie held her flashlight steady and quietly called Nick’s name. He jogged over to where her beam of light was trained.
“Jesus,” Nick muttered under his breath.
Josie’s heart clenched in her chest at the sight of a young woman lying flat on her stomach, her arms thrown out to the side, a bullet hole in her back.
Worried that someone else might be hiding in the distance, she called Otto on her cell phone rather than holler for him. “You find something?” he asked.
“There’s a body,” she said. “A female, probably the same age as the woman inside the house. Let Roy know. Then you’d better keep going. Check the barn and outside Dell’s house. I’ll call Cowan and start processing the scene.”
“You’ll let Dell know we’re checking his barn? Make sure he stays inside?”
“I’ll call him now.”
Josie called Dell and told him they were surrounding his house, and he agreed to remain indoors until further notice. She wouldn’t tell him about the body until she knew more details. He was probably already worried enough. At seventy-plus years, Dell was in good physical condition, and a self-proclaimed hard-ass, but he’d suffered a heart attack a few years back during a nightmare ride in her police car that involved a chase through the desert with the Medrano Cartel. She would do everything in her power to protect him now. She couldn’t imagine losing Dell.
*
Nick had served as a police officer for years. Now, as a kidnapping negotiator, he was forced to investigate crime scenes as horrific as anything a cop would see. Josie trusted he knew the protocol and the necessity of looking carefully for evidence while not disturbing the crime scene. While she started scouting the area directly around the body, he walked to her jeep and brought her evidence kit back with him to the pasture. He established a thirty-square-foot perimeter around the body with the crime scene tape and small tent stakes while Josie updated Border Patrol. Next, she called the coroner, Mitchell Cowan.
*
Cowan was in his late forties, never married, with a solemn demeanor and awkward social manners. He didn’t get cop humor, rarely smiled, and had a difficult time participating in conversations that didn’t involve dead bodies. He considered himself a physician for the dead. He had confided to Josie that he’d tried his hand at private practice, but the social aspect of practicing medicine for the living made him miserable. He’d said he was better equipped to work for dead people. She respected his self-awareness and had wondered if she was that aware of her own shortcomings.
Many of the police officers, especially Otto, found Cowan to be overbearing and unfriendly, but Josie had always liked him. He was a man who cared deeply about the job he performed, and she appreciated that.
Cowan answered his phone, but just barely. The line was connected, but it was several seconds before he spoke, and his hoarse voice sounded confused. If she hadn’t already known Cowan didn’t believe in what he called “imbibing,” she’d have guessed he’d gone to bed drunk.
“Yeah, yes,” he said. “Who is this?”
“Cowan, this is Josie. I’m sorry to wake you like this. We’ve got a dead body.”
He cleared his throat, and after another moment he finally said, “What’s happened?”
Josie gave him a brief summary and asked how long it would take him to arrive on scene.
“Give me thirty minutes.”
*
Training the lights from her jeep between the road and where the body was found, Josie and Nick slowly walked a twenty-foot section of pasture from the body to the road, searching for evidence, including tracks or footprints, but found nothing.
Next, Josie took photos of the area surrounding the girl and again noted there were no footprints. Nick walked concentric circles, searching with his flashlight for anything the killers may have dropped. Josie began photographing the scene from various angles. This was all part of the initial walk-through. The body wouldn’t be touched until the scene had been documented with video and photographs.
Next, she knelt beside the body and examined her clothing for signs that it had been torn in a scuffle, or even removed and the girl later re-dressed, as might be the case with a rape victim. She studied all sides of the body and found nothing to dispute what appeared to be the obvious cause of death: a gunshot between her shoulder blades.