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“Whoever came around after I fell was wearing a hat. I could see a brim.”
“Does the timing work?”
“I realized Storm wandered off after I couldn’t hear you anymore. I came over here, fell in, and she took off. Maybe five minutes passed before I heard someone out there. Probably less.”
“Could have been the same person. I was trying to figure out where they holed up, but instead they’d circled back here.”
“Possibly.”
“Am I right in remembering that Bruno was last seen in a dark jacket, jeans, and ball cap?”
“You are.”
“Huh.”
“Agreed. Now do you mind checking for evidence out there while I finish up in here?”
“On it.”
I tell Dalton what to look for, and he heads off to do that. He’s not a trained detective. Not a trained police officer, either, in the proper sense of the word. Hell, he didn’t even attend elementary school. His education was all informal, and he’s uncomfortable about that, but it’s enviable to me—a life spent pursuing whatever interested him, with no need to learn anything that didn’t affect him. For detective training, he chose to learn what he needed to assist my investigations.
When I first met Dalton, I couldn’t have imagined him taking training—or instruction—from anyone. He was the sheriff. He was in charge. Again, that’s a useful fiction. He was only in his mid-twenties when his adoptive parents retired south, leaving him as sheriff.
Fake it ’til you make it, and baffle them with bullshit. Those are Dalton’s keys to successfully convincing a town that he’s in charge. The reality is a whole lot different.
I continue examining Penny. I don’t find much else of interest. I don’t conduct an internal exam for recent sexual activity. The empty condom wrapper suggests the answer to that is yes, and either way, that evidence won’t change when she’s moved. I need to check everything that might be affected by that move.
I do discover one more thing. The soles of her feet are dirty. That leads me to realize, a little belatedly, that her boots are on the wrong feet. No new information there—it just supports my conclusion that she’d been attacked while wearing little more than a shirt. She is also, I note, braless. That could mean she wasn’t wearing one. It could also mean that her killer didn’t put it back on when he redressed her. She’d put her shirt back on for a bit of warmth after sex, and then she’d been attacked.
Attacked by her partner, who I suspect was Bruno? Or attackedwithBruno? Is he out there, dead or injured?
Yes, the person we saw roughly matches his description, but I’m not making any presumptions. All I know for now is that we have Penny, dead and buried in a pit, with stab wounds inflicted while she’d been in a semi-naked state, on a night cool enough that you wouldn’t have undressed unless you were doing something that required it, like having sex with your secret lover.
CHAPTER FIVE
It’s another hour before we leave. Dalton has combed the area up top, but after he helps me climb out of the pit, he wants me to double-check his work, and I appreciate that—it’d be awkward if I had to suggest it myself.
That’s the downside of any work-plus-personal relationship, one made even more awkward when one party is technically the other’s boss. Here is one of many reasons I’m grateful for Dalton’s unusual upbringing: he doesn’t carry the typical cultural baggage. I am the detective. He is not. Therefore, I should check his work, for the sake of the victim.
He didn’t find any footprints up top, and I don’t either. Whoever buried Penny in the pit didn’t leave any obvious evidence. I didn’t see any prints below either.
“What would someone be catching in that pit?” I ask as Dalton straps Penny’s body to the stretcher. We’ve used lightweight rain jackets from his backpack to wrap her, as best we can. I move to the edge of the pit. “Have you ever seen something like this? For trapping?”
“Too much work. Also, do you want to come check it and find you caught a pissed-off grizzly?”
“Fair point.”
“It’d work for moose or caribou. They’d break a leg falling in. Helluva thing to do.” He moves to the edge. “Could be for wolves, too, if they were a problem.”
“Really hoping they’re not.”
Dalton shrugs. “For most people, just having wolves around is a problem. We know better. Could also be wolverines. Hell, I’d set out a trap myself for them. The pit seems to be years old. It definitely wasn’t just dug—thawing the permafrost takes time. More likely it’s long abandoned.”
“And whoever killed Penny knew about it and used it to hide her body.”
“Yeah.”
I look over at Penny, her covered body roped to the makeshift stretcher.
