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“Sad, isn’t it,” she said.
“Very.” Crime was pervasive. It always had been in his world. But at least he was on the right side of the law now.
Harper moved to the section the evidence from Anne’s murder was in, and they searched the aisle, reading the victims’ names.
“Ah. There it is,” Harper said, pointing up. She moved for the sliding ladder and pulled it over.
“I can get it,” Deckard offered.
“It’s okay,” she said, already climbing the ladder steps. “Got it.” She pulled, lost her balance, and came tumbling down, clutching the box. “Whoa!”
“Got ya,” Deckard said, catching her, the box and all. His arms wrapped around her, holding her. The skin where her shirt was askew was warm and soft. It was the most innocent of touches, but something sparked through him all the same. “I should put you down,” he said.
She nodded.
“Right,” he said, moving his bottom arm first, and not releasing her until both her feet were firmly on the ground.
“Okay,” she said, setting the box down, then lowering to the cold concrete floor beside it.
He followed her lead, sitting beside her.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” She pulled out a sling backpack and opened it. She fished out two plastic wine glasses.
“Looks like a rendezvous to me,” Deckard said. No one took wine hiking.
She pulled out an unopened bottle of wine. “I’d have to agree.” She set it aside and fished a little deeper. “Wine opener,” she said. Lastly, she pulled a neatly folded lightweight blanket. “The register also says there was bread, cheese, and chocolates. Food items get disposed of after being tested.”
“Tested?”
“For poison, date rape drugs, et cetera.”
“And none were found, if I remember correctly.”
“Correct.”
She pulled out Anne’s clothes, the bloodstains visible through the plastic evidence bag. Next came the shoes ... with zero blood on them.
“That’s odd,” he said.
“What is?” she asked.
“If you’re stabbed, blood is going to splatter. You’d think it would be on her shoes, at least some of it.”
“Not if she was lying down while stabbed, like I surmised. Think about it. If he knocked her out, which I strongly believe he did, then he could have laid her in the rock pile, straddled her, and stabbed away,” Harper said.
Deckard rubbed the back of his neck, playing the scenario through his mind. “Why not just stab her on the bench?”
“I’m guessing so it would look like Simmons went into a passion-fueled rage. The killer put the rock in the pile with the rest to make it look like she’d fallen back on them.”
“Then he what...” Deckard said. “Straddled her and stabbed away? No, then there’d be other cloth traces. He knelt beside her and stabbed away? I swear. It’s the weirdest murder I’ve ever seen.”
Harper shook her head. “I’m sorry to say, I’ve seen weirder.”
He arched a brow.
“Trust me.” Harper shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
