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She gave a final wave as the Dentons moved off, still holding hands.
“So the wounds weren’t the cause of death?” Morgan asked at her side.
“Apparently not,” she murmured.
“Well… shit.”
“Yeah… But that dust. I want to check it out.”
“The dust?”
“Mhmm.”
“Right… you used to be a big game hunter for the state, didn’t you? Going after predators, right? You seen that dust before?”
She shook her head. “But I have a way of finding it.”
She turned and began to move with long strides away from the crime scene.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rachel’s frustration was mounting in the dimly lit precinct interrogation room. She’d been allowed to borrow it from the locals for research purposes, but now, the late-afternoon sun peeking through the single reinforced window above the table almost seemed to be taunting her.
She’d spent over an hour poring over maps and geological surveys of the area, searching for any hint of where the red dust could have originated.
Her eyes were starting to blur, and her head was beginning to ache. She rubbed her temples, pausing to take a deep breath and clear her mind. She couldn’t give up now.
Ethan Morgan had dozed off in the chair across from her, his head lolling to the side.
She frowned briefly, staring at the red dust particles in the small plastic baggie sitting on the table next to her.
Her eyes returned to the database open on her computer. Geological samples were compiled on a public works website, and her eyes had glazed over as she kept scrolling through.
The reddish tinge of the dust she’d found on the victim’s clothing, accompanied by the faint marks of residual sediment, gave her a unique enough starting point that the venture didn’t feel entirely hopeless.
She paused for a moment. She narrowed the soil sample by visual appearance, this time removing any out-of-state results. She had no lab results, so she couldn’t narrow by sediment type.
She looked again at the small plastic bag on the desk.
She’d grown up as a hunter.
Had lived in the wilderness, knew this place like the back of her hand.
She opened the soil sample and inhaled the contents.
She ran her fingers over the grains as if she were stroking the fur of some favorite hound.
Soft to the touch. Dry, but not as dry as sunbaked soil. She frowned. Irrigated?
She thought she detected the faint fragrance of petrichor.
She glanced to make sure Morgan wasn’t watching, and then dabbed her pinkie against the soil, raising it to her lips. The taste was earthy, slightly bitter, but with a hint of sweetness. No… not sweetness. A soil additive. The sort of additive to help plants grow?
She wiped at her lips and sat back in her chair, her mind racing with possibilities. Irrigation meant agriculture, and the faint fragrance of petrichor hinted at a recent rainstorm.
She pulled up a map of the local farms and began to cross-reference the soil samples with the locations of the farms and recent rainfall.
None.
