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When Anya looked at him, tears shone in her eyes. Her voice was throaty. “One of the last murder scenes I attended was with Mett. I’m sorry. It’s just a little…it’s harder than I thought.”
“We know,” Josie said. “We’re here with you. We’ll get through this together.”
Anya took a bracing breath and knelt near Felicia’s waist. “Back to work.”
She tugged lightly at Felicia’s hand, trying to pry it from where it rested over her abdomen, but it was fixed in place. “She’s in full rigor. Don’t ask me about time of death. The best estimate I can give you right now under these conditions, without taking her internal temperature and making my calculations, would be that she died within the last six to twelve hours.”
While Dr. Feist continued to look over Felicia Evans’s body, Josie took a closer look at the area. There was no sign of any traps. No sticks carved, bent, or split in such a way that could be used for a deadfall trap. No heap of leaves, twigs and coiled vines. Nothing hanging from the trees overhead. Had the killer simply attacked Felicia? Was this a departure from his MO? Was this not the work of the same person after all? Were they trying too hard to force all the cases into a pattern? Maybe it had been a simple disagreement between Brody Hicks and Felicia Evans. They didn’t even know what type of relationship the two had had. They might have been dating. Domestic violence among teenagers was on the rise. Was Felicia Evans’s death a horrible coincidence?
Josie’s gut told her that it wasn’t.
She knelt down across from Anya and pointed to Felicia’s feet, both clad in sneakers. “I’d like to look at her ankles.”
The three of them gathered at Felicia’s feet. Josie had to contort her body, her cheek almost pressed into the dirt to see the backs of Felicia’s sneakers. The pull tab of the right shoe was crushed down and in, as if she’d put the sneaker on in a rush. “This one,” Josie said.
She sat back up and watched as Anya folded back the cuff of Felicia’s jeans, revealing a sporty white sock, its elastic band soaked in blood. Anya said, “Lieutenant Fraley, get me my camera.”
Noah found it and handed it to her. She snapped some photos. Then she said, “Josie, would you mind?”
Carefully, Josie hooked one gloved finger inside the sock’s elastic and pulled it down.
“Would you look at that,” said Anya, rapidly snapping photos.
A thin ligature mark marred Felicia’s skin.
Noah gave a low whistle.
“What do you think that’s from?” asked Anya.
Josie said, “A snare trap.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Dr. Ahmed Nashat, the attending physician at Denton Memorial Hospital’s emergency department, emerged from behind one of the curtained treatment areas and strode toward Josie and Noah, who waited at the nurses’ station. Behind him trailed Pam Hicks, looking haggard but calmer than she had earlier. Dr. Nashat smiled at them. “I have Mrs. Hicks’s permission to tell you that her son is just fine. He’s a bit dehydrated. We were worried about shock. He’s been getting oxygen and fluids. We gave him something to calm him down as he was quite distraught when he arrived.”
“I brought him a change of clothes,” said Pam. “One of your officers took the clothes he was wearing. They said it was evidence. Brody told me that a young lady—” Here she lowered her voice to a whisper even though the medical staff rushing to and fro around them weren’t paying attention. “She died out there. Is that true?”
“I’m afraid that it is,” Josie said.
Pam closed her eyes and tilted her head back to the ceiling. After several deep breaths, she looked at them again. “I had hoped maybe he was wrong. That maybe she survived, even though there was so much blood.”
“Is he able to speak with us?” asked Noah.
“Yes. But only for a short while. I don’t want him upset again just when I have to take him home.”
“We’ll try to keep it brief,” Josie said.
Pam turned and motioned for them to follow her. They crowded in behind the curtain that surrounded Brody’s gurney. He was asleep on his back, a sheet pulled up to his chin, its edge clutched in both of his meaty hands. Although someone, likely his mother, had made a valiant effort to clean him up, blood still stained his cuticles. A cannula fed oxygen into his nostrils. His dark hair looked as though it had been wet and slicked to the side. He looked smaller than he had in the woods. Pam touched his shoulder gently, whispering into his ear. One of his fists nearly made contact with her face when he startled awake. Josie recognized the blind terror in his eyes as he transitioned from sleep to waking. His mind was still in those woods, reliving whatever terror he’d found there.
Pam recovered well from his unexpected thrashing, jumping back, waiting a few seconds, and then approaching him again, gentle as ever. Josie watched the fog of his nightmare clear with each word Pam whispered into his ear. After two slow blinks, he focused on Josie and Noah.
In a quiet voice, Brody said, “Did you find her?”
“Yes,” said Noah.
He fisted his hands under his chin again. “Do her parents know?”
“Yes,” Noah repeated.
