“You say the victim was hidden in the culvert?” Joanna asked.
Hal Witter nodded. “Completely out of sight. I’m guessing she was there but unconscious this morning when we all walked past. It’s a miracle we didn’t miss her this afternoon as well. I was bringing up the rear. That’s my self-imposed task assignment. I keep an eye out for stragglers. In Volksmarching, everybody walks at their own pace. I don’t want to rush anybody, so I give everyone else plenty of space and let them go on ahead.
“I was walking by myself when I heard a moan. At first I was afraid one of my marchers was sick or hurt—that maybe someone had fallen and twisted an ankle. Sprains are pretty common at these kinds of events. As soon as I saw all the blood, though, I knew getting help ASAP was a matter of life and death. I used my cell phone. The cops and medics who showed up did what they could for the poor woman and then called in a helicopter. But I guess she was too far gone. Mr. Montoya here tells me she didn’t make it.”
Joanna nodded. “That’s right.”
Witter shook his head. “It’s too bad, but I was afraid that’s what would happen. I’ve seen gunshot wounds before. This one didn’t look survivable.”
“Where’s that?” Joanna asked. “Where have you seen gunshot wounds?”
“In the service,” he said. “I was in Korea and Vietnam both. Something like this brings that other stuff back—stuff I wish I’d forgotten.”
As he turned away from her, Joanna noticed him brushing away a tear. Wanting to give the man some privacy, she focused her attention on Jaime Carbajal. Armed with a camera, the young detective had clambered down into the ditch and was snapping pictures around the entrance to the culvert.
“It’s real sandy down here, Sheriff Brady,” he reported. “And it looks like the EMTs pretty well tore things up getting her out of here. I doubt we’re going to get any useful pictures out of this, and we sure as hell aren’t going to get any usable footprints.”
“Do the best you can, Jaime,” Joanna told him.
By then it seemed Hal Witter had regained his composure, so Joanna redirected her attention to him. “Since you were first on the scene, Mr. Witter, is there anything you saw to begin with that may have been disturbed by all the coming and going?”
Witter frowned. “You might want to check the weeds here. See where they’re mashed down? I suspect she was pushed or thrown out of a vehicle, rolled down into the ditch, and then dragged into the culvert. That’s just my initial impression.”
Joanna looked up and down the road. If a vehicle had been there once, now there was no sign of it. Other than the three parked official sheriff’s department vehicles, the road was totally deserted in both directions as far as the eye could see.
For the next several minutes, Joanna and Frank Montoya scrutinized the winter-brittle grass along the roadside. As Hal Witter had suggested, broken stalks testified to the fact that something sizable had rolled from the roadway down into the ditch. Careful not to step inside the area, Frank and Joanna marked it off with a boundary of yellow crime-scene tape so it could be searched later for any kind of trace evidence.
Finished with that, Joanna turned back to Hal Witter. “You found no identification?” she asked.
He shook his head. “None, and I checked, too. There was no purse, but people sometimes wear medical identification tags. There wasn’t one of those, either, but I did find a necklace—a little silver necklace with a strange turquoise-and-silver pendant on it.”
“What kind of pendant?”
“It looked like a devil’s claw,” Hal answered. “You know, those funny two-pronged gourds? It resembled a tiny one of those, with a pearl-sized seed of turquoise showing through from inside the gourd and with the two prongs made of silver. Why someone would walk around wearing a silver devil’s claw around her neck is more than I can figure.”
Joanna glanced in Frank Montoya’s direction and was relieved to see that he was busily taking notes. For the time being, that meant she didn’t have to. She was also relieved to know that the victim was wearing a piece of what sounded like very distinctive jewelry. Something that unusual might possibly make the prompt identification of an unknown victim far more likely than it would be otherwise.
“What did the woman look like?” Joanna asked. “How old was she? Anything you can tell us about her would be a big help.”
“Native American or Hispanic,” Hal Witter said at once. “I’d guess she’s somewhere in her mid-thirties. Dark hair—not really black—and going a little gray around the temples.”
“Wearing?”
“A sweatshirt—a red sweatshirt with nothing on it—no logo, no Walt Disney characters, or anything else. Jeans. Tennis shoes—Keds, I think. No socks. Nothing really memorable or remarkable about any of her clothing.”