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Kay’s phone chimed before she could answer. She ignored it, but within a second, Elliot’s phone rang too. His eyebrows locked in a frown as he held the screen in front of Kay’s eyes.
“Is she, Detective?” Reaching across the table, Mrs. Jerrell grasped Kay’s hand. “Please tell me she’s going to be okay.”
Kay’s blood turned to ice as she looked at the screen. The dispatched message read:
Young girl’s body found by Wildfire Ridge. ME on the way.
SIX
SCENE
It wasn’t noon yet, but it was hot as hell out there and worse inside the Interceptor. Three hours of direct sunlight had baked the black SUV to the point where Elliot couldn’t touch the steering wheel without muttering an oath. The scorching air was an unusual occurrence for Mount Chester, where temperatures borrowed the coolness of the nearby mountain’s alpine climate during summers. But he welcomed the heat as a reminder of his native state, with a faint smile and a touch of melancholy. He didn’t miss the dust settling on his face or the horseflies, but there was something about those endless Texas prairies that still clung to his heart.
Kay climbed into the SUV without saying a word. Since they’d been dispatched to the crime scene, she’d turned silent and grim. She was staring straight ahead at the road, her jaw clenched and her breaths shallow as if she’d just been hit in the gut.
“Do you think it’s Jenna?” he asked. The Interceptor’s wheels crushed loose shoulder gravel as he took the turn off the highway at high speed, heading toward the ski resort. From there, a couple of more miles to the Winter Lodge, then another mile to the Wildfire Ridge trailhead parking. Soon they would know.
She didn’t reply at first. Her lips were pressed into a fine line, tense and rigid. “I’m hoping it’s not Jenna,” she eventually said. “But whomever she is, she’s still someone’s daughter.” She looked at him briefly, and he thought he saw the glistening of tears in his partner’s eyes. “And we’ll have to let another mother know her child is never coming home.” She breathed deeply as if to steel her frayed nerves. “Sometimes, this job gets to me, that’s all.”
She didn’t usually show it. Not in the faintest. During the emotionally charged interview with Mrs. Jerrell, his partner had displayed impeccable self-control and amazing skill at comforting the anguished parent. It seemed as if none of that touched her. Kay’s eyes had remained dry while he’d struggled; grief, like most intense human emotions, is contagious.
Resisting the urge to pull over on the side of the road to sweep her in his arms and seal those lips under a fiery kiss, he pushed the gas pedal all the way down, the SUV swerving and bouncing on the uneven, curvy mountain road. Kay’s unexpected vulnerability did things to him he didn’t want to acknowledge.
The road curved for miles, flanked by tall evergreens on both sides that filtered sunlight and hid the stunning view of the mountain at times, less and less as they approached. He drove around the Winter Lodge, and soon, the flashing red-and-blue lights of two marked deputy vehicles came into sight at the base of the slopes near the chairlift terminal.
Elliot stole another glance at Kay. The earlier moment of weakness was gone as if it had never been there. Her eyes were dry and focused, her demeanor alert.
“Yes, I believe it’s Jenna,” she said. Her voice was calm, steady, professional. “Chances are this is not coincidental.”
Elliot reduced speed as the asphalt ended, replaced with a mix of loose gravel on a two-rutted earth road leading to the trailhead parking, nothing more than a cleared piece of meadow marked with two posted signs and surrounded by tall firs.
Traditionally filled with at least a dozen vehicles belonging to tourists, most of them California tagged, the trailhead parking was almost deserted today. The two deputy vehicles with flashing lights and the coroner’s van likely deterred any visiting hikers.
Elliot slowed to a stop near one of the marked SUVs. Deputy Hobbs was busy unloading four-wheelers off a platform hooked to his vehicle. He was down to the last two of the six all-terrain vehicles the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office used for rugged terrain interventions.
“Hey,” Elliot called through the open window, touching his hat briefly with two fingers. “How far is it?”
“Hey, Detective,” Hobbs replied, smiling widely. He was young and a bit on the chubby side, enough to make his uniform shirt buttons be stretched within a thread of their lives. Usually pale, the young man was red to the face from the hot sun, or perhaps from the effort he was visibly not used to. Beads of sweat marked his forehead, although a stain on his right sleeve proved he’d been wiping them off every so often. “About a mile or so past the chairlift terminal.” He swiped his brow with his sleeve in a quick move accompanied by a loud breath. “Farrell is up there with a couple of ATVs.”
“All right,” Elliot replied, looking quickly at Kay to see how she wanted to proceed. She nodded slightly. Behind them, red flashing lights and a familiar siren warned them a fire truck was approaching. “Where’s the fire?”
Hobbs chuckled. “No fire, D. Just a deep ravine. They can’t get the body out, from what I’m hearing.” A wide grin displayed two uneven rows of tobacco-stained teeth. “I heard the perps were collared already, so no rush.”
“You got it, boss,” Elliot replied sarcastically. Everyone thought they had all the answers, but few bothered to ask questions. He gave the SUV enough gas to make it lurch ahead, throwing loose gravel against its steeled underbelly. “That would be the day when we get to crime scenes and the perps are collared already,” he muttered. “I’d be as useful that day as the second buggy in a one-horse town, but slick as a whistle ain’t coming my way today.” He grinned sheepishly. “Or yours, for that matter.”
But Kay wasn’t paying any mind to his childish blabbering. She was carefully taking in the setting: the hiking path as it narrowed down gradually as they drove uphill, the SUV’s wheels riding low in deep ruts, the nearby fir branches low and heavy, scratching against the sides. She’d rolled down the window halfway and her nostrils were flaring in the wind like a predator’s out for prey.
“You have five senses, six if you’re lucky,” she’d once told him when they were working their first crime scene together. “Use them all.”
He inhaled the air and noted the smell of fresh fir and sap, the dryness of the air, the tinge of heated dust he picked up driving only a minute or two behind another vehicle. Bone dry, the path was covered with fine dust lifted up high in the air in a reddish-brown cloud that took a while to settle after each passing vehicle.
Another turn and they reached the end of the drivable path. A widening in the road allowed several vehicles to be parked between the trees lining up the trail. Deputy Denise Farrell signaled them with broad gestures of her hand, then pointed at a space between two old firs where Elliot’s Interceptor could fit.
Approaching as he slowed down, Farrell nodded a quick greeting. She wore her hair in a ponytail that day, not just entirely up to regs. “I can take it from here if you’d like. An ATV is waiting for you.”
“How far to the scene?” Kay asked. She climbed out of the SUV with the nimbleness of a teenager. She’d make a fine horse rider one day.
“About four miles. It’s at the base of Wildfire Ridge.” As Kay approached Farrell, the deputy lowered her voice. “I hear it’s a bad one.” Kay nodded, and the two women locked glances for a split moment. Then Farrell pointed at the ATV parked on the side of the road past the sheriff’s vehicle. “That’s a two-seater, or I can give you two four-wheelers if you prefer.”
