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“I noticed it earlier,” Valerie explained. “But I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Charlie?”
Valerie knew the person for detail was Charlie. His abilities as a tracker and to evaluate a forensic scene for minuscule evidence were second to none.
Charlie crouched down beneath the tree and looked at the ground. He studied it.
Putting his hand in his pocket, he pulled out a small, plastic evidence bag and a pair of tweezers.
“What is it?” Carter asked again.
Charlie picked a small strand of something from the ground with the tweezers and put it in the bag. “Rope strands,” he said. “And I’m betting …”
He jumped up, holding onto a different, more robust branch. He pulled himself up with ease and then moved along it. In seconds, he was studying the end of a broken branch next to him.
Valerie handed him another evidence bag, and Charlie then pulled something from the crooked limb.
“The same strands?” Valerie asked.
“It looks like it,” he said. “But we’ll only know after forensics checks it out.” He placed the strand in the other evidence bag and then dropped down from the tree.
“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Carter asked, frustrated.
“Look over here,” Charlie said, pointing at the ground beneath the tree. “There’s a depression. Something heavy fell from the tree. And then there are what look like rope strands.”
“Our killer hung the victim first,” Valerie said grimly. “Then, after cutting her down or removing the rope, she fell onto the ground. He then moved the body to the cabin of the tractor and cut her after tying her to the steering wheel.”
“I don’t think she was dead, though,” Will offered.
“Neither do I,” Valerie agreed.
“Why?” asked Carter.
“Because,” Will continued, “there was a lot of blood inside that cabin. Blood tends to pool at the lowest point of the body after death, but it looks to me like the heart was still beating, that’s why there is spatter on the windows and steering wheel.”
“We might have something to add to the profile then,” Valerie thought out loud. “Let’s say our killer hung the victim first so that she lost consciousness but didn’t die.”
“Then he moved her to the tractor and killed her?” Carter asked, taking the hat from his head, revealing scruffy, black hair, and wiping his brow.
“Exactly,” said Valerie.
“Sick bastard,” Carter grumbled.
“Sick, yes,” Will agreed. “But it reveals something about the killer’s mind.”
“Yes,” said Valerie. “The killer may have some lingering empathy.”
“Empathy!?” Carter now sounded angry. “He butchered that woman!”
“You’re saying that from the perspective of someone who thinks like a normal, caring human being,” Charlie said. “But in our line of work, we’re dealing with people with crossed wires.”
“Crossed wires, indeed,” Will said.
“Sheriff Carter,” Valerie said, softly, “I know this is all new to you and difficult, but by figuring out how the killer feels, and how those feelings lead to him picking victims, it gives us a way to start to predict his movements. And if we can predict, we can catch him out.”
The sheriff sighed. “I hate all this. Kerry County is usually so peaceful. The most I have to deal with is Gina and Mac arguing over whose cattle ate whose grain. But this … What makes someone do something like that?”
Valerie liked the sheriff more and more as she spoke with him. He was a man who cared. And she knew the world needed more of that.
“We need to check the other victim autopsies,” Valerie said. “If they were strangled or hung first, then we can definitively say we have a serial killer on our hands. And if he’s doing it this way, it’s for a reason. Probably because he can’t face killing when someone is able to feel pain.”
