CHAPTER THREE
By noon, the road to the old Montgomery place had narrowed to a strip of patched asphalt between the trees.
Selena drove with the window cracked, following the directions Cheryl had sent.
The temperature had climbed since morning, but the woods held on to the coolness of early fall.
Red had begun to spread through the maples.
Poplar leaves flashed yellow whenever the breeze turned them, and dry leaves skipped across the road ahead of her tires.
The route stirred memories she had not visited in years.
Mr. Montgomery had been considered a character even by Harlan County standards.
He had lived alone on the property, hunted through every season the law allowed, and mounted much of what he killed.
Deer heads, foxes, raccoons, birds of prey found dead along the roadside.
As a child, Selena had once watched him unload a black bear from the back of his truck while three men outside the hardware store argued over whether it was as large as he claimed.
When money became tight, he sold his taxidermy pieces in Elmsview.
They had appeared in diners, hunting cabins, pawnshops, and the front windows of businesses that had no obvious need for a glassy-eyed bobcat.
Her father had refused to buy one, despite Mr. Montgomery offering him a mounted pheasant at half price.
The man had been gone for years. The property had remained.
Selena turned from the paved road onto gravel. The trees opened around a sloping meadow, and a narrow bridge crossed a stream at the bottom. Beyond it stood a dark timber cabin with a rusted metal roof.
Two sheriff's vehicles and the county coroner's van were parked outside. Yellow tape ran from a porch post to a tree near the drive. A car sat apart from the official vehicles, its trunk closed, and its front end pointed toward the bridge.
Deputy Arnold Shaw waited beside the tape.
He smiled as Selena stepped out, then came forward with one hand extended.
“Great to see you, Selena.”
She shook his hand. “Good to see you, too, Arnold.”
He had not changed much since the last case. Blond hair still escaped beneath his campaign hat, and the attempt at stubble along his jaw remained uneven. He seemed more comfortable in the uniform now, though the eagerness beneath it had not disappeared.
“How are you settling in at Eagleton?” he asked.
“I’m doing fine. Slow and steady.”
Arnold glanced toward the woods as if checking that no one else could hear him. “Shame you couldn’t get a place in Elmsview, nearer the sheriff’s department.”
Selena smiled. “Connor would’ve loved that.”
“I’ve been telling him to drop in and see you. He keeps making excuses.”
A familiar weariness moved through her. “Sounds like Connor all right.”
Arnold’s smile weakened. Perhaps he had expected more amusement from her. He lifted the tape so she could pass beneath it.
“What do we have in there?” Selena asked.
The cabin door opened before Arnold could answer.
Connor stood in the doorway.
For a second, neither of them spoke. He wore his uniform shirt with the sleeves buttoned at the wrists, despite the warmth, and his hat cast a shadow over the upper half of his features.
Three weeks had passed since Selena accepted the Eagleton post. They had spoken once by telephone about jurisdictional contacts and exchanged two emails that could have been generated by attorneys.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
Connor stepped onto the porch. “I’m glad you came. This is a mess.”
Selena opened the rear door of her car and took out a compact scene kit. She slipped disposable covers over her shoes, then pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
“Show me.”
Connor handed her the scene log. Selena signed her name and time of entry before following him through the front door.
Closed-up heat lingered inside the cabin. Open windows had begun to move fresh air through the rooms, but the odor beneath it remained metallic and sour. Selena paused just inside, allowing her attention to settle on the entrance.
No visible damage surrounded the lock. Paint flakes lay along the threshold, though most appeared old. A purse rested on the sofa. One suitcase stood open near the front window, clothes folded inside.
“Anything on the other entrances?” Selena asked.
“Maybe,” Connor said. “There’s a utility door off the kitchen. Matt says the latch is worn and doesn’t always catch. He could open it from outside just by putting pressure on the door.”
“Any fresh damage?”
“None.”
Selena glanced toward the hallway. “So whoever did this may not have needed a key.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Who found her?” Selena asked.
“The mail carrier. Karen had a package that wouldn’t fit in the roadside box. The label showed it had been forwarded from her old address in Loyall. He drove down, found the front door standing open, and called out. When nobody answered, he stepped inside far enough to see her.”
“Did he touch anything?”
“Says he didn’t. Arnold took his statement and sent him to the station to wait.”
“Good. We’ll need finger and shoe prints and DNA to discount him from the scene. What about Karen’s phone?”
“Missing. The charging cable is still plugged into the car, but the phone isn’t in the vehicle or the cabin.”
The narrow hallway ran toward a small kitchen at the rear. A strip of tape marked the approved path through the scene, keeping traffic away from several numbered evidence tents near the main room. Matt Price’s camera clicked from somewhere ahead.
Connor stopped beside an open doorway.
“In here.”
Selena entered and halted.
A writing desk had been pulled beneath the front window.
Karen Sloane lay across it; her upper body turned partly onto one side.
One arm hung toward the floor. The other stretched across the desktop.
Blood darkened the front of her shirt and spread across the wood beneath her shoulder and chest. More had run down one leg of the desk before drying on the boards.
The green chair had fallen onto its side.
Matt Price crouched near the far end of the desk, photographing the floor beneath it.
Slim and wiry, more so than before, he wore a black long-sleeved shirt pushed to his elbows.
Tattoos covered both forearms and disappeared beneath the collar toward the left side of his neck.
Two silver rings marked one ear, and a small stud caught the light at his nose.
He lowered the camera when he saw her.
“Agent Raven. Welcome back.”
Matt sounded genuinely pleased, a reaction Selena did not often inspire at homicide scenes.
Doctor Alistair Blethan stood on the opposite side of the body.
Shirtsleeves and a dark waistcoat did little to make him appear conventional.
He remained broad through the shoulders, with a trimmed beard and the same wild cast that made him seem better suited to a remote Highlands practice than a Kentucky crime scene.
His open medical case sat on a chair behind him.
“Hello, lass,” Blethan said, his Scottish accent deepening the word.
“Hello, Dr. Blethan. I prefer Selena or Agent Raven.”
Blethan turned toward Connor and rolled his gaze upward.
Matt rose from his crouch. “Don’t let him get under your skin. He’s a sweetheart, really.”
“I heard that,” Blethan said.
“You were meant to.”
Selena moved closer to the desk, careful to remain outside the markers. “What do we have?”
Blethan stepped aside.
Karen’s head rested near the edge of the desk. Blood had dried along her chin and down the side of her neck. Her mouth remained open, the jaw fixed in a position that did not appear natural.
Selena took a small flashlight from her scene kit and directed the beam inside.
The tongue was gone.
The cut surface was ragged and dark, partly obscured by blood. Selena forced her breathing to remain even and lowered the light.
“The poor woman’s tongue was removed,” Blethan said.
“As a trophy?” Selena asked.
Matt shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. The killer left it on the floor beside the smashed word processor. I photographed it in place before covering it.”
Selena followed his gesture. A numbered marker stood beside cracked yellow casing and scattered keys.
Connor stared at the arrangement. “So the killer wanted it found.”
Selena nodded. “A statement.”
The room quieted.
Selena moved her light over Karen’s hands. Several cuts crossed the palms and fingers. Another ran along the outside of one wrist.
“Lacerations to both hands,” she said. “She tried to defend herself.”
“Aye,” Blethan replied. “The pattern is consistent with her raising them against a bladed weapon. From the blood distribution and the bruising along her lower back, I believe she was driven backward against the desk during the attack.”
Selena considered the position of the fallen chair and the blood along the desktop.
Blethan pointed without touching. “The attacker then stabbed her in the chest. Several wounds from what I can see. One or more caused fatal internal injury, but I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
“Was the tongue removed before or after death?”
“I can’t give you a reliable answer here.”
“Any estimate on time?”
Doctor Blethan scratched his bearded chin. “Late yesterday afternoon into the evening is the best I can do until I examine her properly. The condition of the body and the temperature in the cabin give us a broad range.”
Selena nodded. “Any sign she was moved after the attack?”
“Not beyond being forced across the desk. The blood patterns suggest this is where she died.”
Connor stood near the doorway, keeping out of Matt’s working area.
His attention remained on Karen, but his posture had tightened since Selena entered.
Local victims were rarely strangers to him.
Even when they were, someone at the station knew a cousin, a former employer, or the person who had sold them their first car.
She wondered if he knew who owned the cabin.
Selena crouched near the broken word processor without crossing the nearest marker.
“That took effort.”