Chapter Three
Three
Madrone was the sort of place where everyone knew everything about everyone, for better or for worse.
People looked after one another’s homes.
Their kids. Their wandering dogs. People waved at intersections and drove through town without using a turn signal, because what was the point if everyone knew where you were going?
Having grown up in Madrone, Leanne was accustomed to the inherent intrusiveness of life in a small town.
She hadn’t minded so much as a kid, but eight years in Dallas had shown her the allure of privacy and the life-altering freedom of being able to shop for groceries without someone peering over your shoulder.
“Thanks, Bip.” Leanne collected her sixteen-ounce coffee as Bernhard Nielson, aka Bip, slid two packets of sugar across the counter.
“I heard about the gal out by the tracks.” Bip watched her closely from underneath fuzzy gray eyebrows. “Migrant?”
“We’re investigating.”
“Coyotes?”
“We’re investigating.”
One of the eyebrows lifted, a giant caterpillar arching its back.
“Say hi to Mel for me.” She turned and left the store before Bip could squeeze in any more questions. Nestling her coffee in the cup holder, she pulled out of the parking lot and dialed Josh Cooper.
“Where are you?” she asked when the detective picked up.
“The station. I just pulled in and—”
“Is Izzy there?”
“I thought she was with you. Aren’t you still at the scene?”
“I had to run up to county and drop off something. I thought she’d be there by now.”
“It’s just me and Rodriguez. Akers is back on patrol, and the chief is in his office with the door closed.”
Leanne slurped the coffee, scalding the roof of her mouth.
“Crap!”
“What?”
“Nothing. Hey, if you see Izzy, could you tell her not to go anywhere? I’m on my way,” she said.
“Roger that.”
Leanne tapped the brakes at an intersection, scanning the sidewalks along Main Street.
The cafés and shops were busier than usual as stragglers wrapped up their weekends before heading back to Austin and Santa Fe in their fancy SUVs.
January was high season for Big Bend National Park, and Madrone had seen a boom in tourism in recent years as they diverted some of the visitors bound for Marfa and Alpine on their way to the park.
Madrone was an up-and-coming travel destination, but it hadn’t quite found its groove yet.
It didn’t have Alpine’s university or Marfa’s art-scene vibe.
But the town’s railroad museum, coupled with its quaint adobe bungalows, gave Madrone a burgeoning charm of its own.
Plus, the craggy red canyons nearby had attracted some of the artists and nature lovers who’d been priced out of Marfa as rents skyrocketed.
Leanne slammed on the brakes as a cyclist cut her off. Yet another thing they’d managed to steal from Marfa—an abundance of mountain bikers who took over their roads every weekend.
It wasn’t only tourists in town today. Two men in slacks and dress shirts stood in front of the chamber of commerce. And the woman in line behind Leanne at the gas station had been wearing a black pantsuit and full makeup. Reporters, all of them—she would bet her badge on it.
As Leanne pulled into the police station parking lot, her stomach started to churn, and not because she was on her third cup of coffee. She grabbed her cardboard cup, along with a thick brown accordion file, and headed for the low brick building that housed the Madrone Police Department.
The station house was the same chilly temperature as outside. Leanne made eye contact with Nadine, who was on the phone in her usual weekday spot even though it was three o’clock on a Sunday. Her extra-tall blond hair told Leanne the receptionist had come here straight from church.
“He in?” Leanne asked.
Nadine covered the phone with her hand. “He’s looking for you. He’s in a meeting, though.” She craned her neck to peer through the plexiglass window that divided the reception room from the bullpen. “Door’s closed, so you’d better wait.”
“Thanks. Heater out again?”
“You betcha.”
Nadine returned to her phone call, and Leanne noticed the stack of pink message slips at her elbow. She pushed through the door to the bullpen.
The department’s newest detective, Mark Rodriguez, sat pecking away at his computer, no doubt typing the first of many reports that would result from this morning’s discovery.
Leanne wended her way through the sea of cubicles and dropped her accordion file on her desk, which was already piled with paperwork.
She’d planned to spend part of her Monday catching up, but that wouldn’t be happening now.
“Leanne.”
She turned to see Josh coming at her like a missile. “Hey, Coop. What’s up?”
He stopped in front of her and glared down, hands on hips. Like her, he was in flannel and jeans today, but he wore shit-kickers, too, and she figured he’d been helping his dad around the ranch when he got this morning’s call.
“You seen the chief?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
Josh glanced over her head at Chief McBride’s closed office door. “He’s in there with Novak.”
She took a moment to digest that. “As in the district attorney?”
“Yep.”
She looked at the door again, which normally stood open. The chief talking to the DA this early in the investigation was a surprisingly good sign. She’d felt like he was blowing her off earlier when he hadn’t bothered to come to the crime scene, but maybe she’d misread things.
“Something’s up,” Josh said. “They’ve been in there almost an hour.”
Leanne spied a New York Yankees cap peeking up from a cubicle.
“Izzy’s here?”
Josh followed her gaze. “Yeah, she just got in.”
Leanne cut through the bullpen to one of the unassigned computers, where Izzy and other part-timers worked.
“Hey.”
The CSI glanced up. Chunks of purple hair stuck out from beneath her baseball cap, and her cheeks were sunburned. Leanne had offered her sunblock back at the scene, but she’d been too intent on her work to take any.
“I’m just getting started.” Izzy pivoted the screen, and Leanne saw that she was uploading more than three hundred images. “I’m about halfway through. Everything’s high-res, so it takes a while.”
Leanne leaned closer to study the thumbnail images as they appeared. “You got the hands, right?”
“I got everything.”
Her tone caught Leanne’s attention. Izzy’s brown eyes looked somber.
She was in her first year as a CSI—a job she’d trained for after realizing that her passion for nature photography wasn’t enough to pay the bills.
Izzy had a degree from NYU and, like Leanne, had spent her early twenties as far away as she could get from her sleepy hometown.
But—also like Leanne—circumstances had pulled her back.
Izzy’s forensic photography work showed promise, but at the moment she looked shell-shocked.
A violent death scene would do that. Leanne had wrestled with thoughts of quitting after her first homicide, but she’d stuck it out and learned to compartmentalize.
She hoped to hell Izzy wasn’t thinking of leaving. The department desperately needed her.
Izzy turned to the computer. “Some of these shots are…pretty disturbing.”
“I know.”
Izzy shook her head. “What is it about the hand, exactly?”
“There was some kind of mark on the wrist. I couldn’t really see in the shadows of the culvert, but I thought maybe a tattoo?” Leanne leaned closer to the screen as Izzy tapped open a photo. “I’m talking to the nearby sheriff’s offices, trying to run down MP files.”
A close-up shot of the victim’s wrist filled the screen, and once again the angle of the hand gave Leanne a jolt. Had the killer snapped the victim’s wrist? Was it a defensive injury? Leanne had been thinking about that wrist all day, and she hoped the victim had put up a fight.
“MP files?”
She looked at Izzy. “Missing person cases. So far, no matches, but a tattoo might help.”
Izzy enlarged the image and tipped her head to the side. “I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to tell with all the skin damage. You’ll have to talk to the medical examiner.”
“Everhart.”
Leanne glanced up. The chief stood in the door to his office, motioning her over. She crossed the bullpen.
Jim McBride was fifty-eight, bald, and had the heavyset build of a man who’d spent the past four decades ignoring medical advice. He liked fried food and bourbon and kept a carton of cigarettes in his desk because his wife threw out his packs whenever she found them at home.
“You clear the scene?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
McBride ushered her into his office, where Trey Novak sat in one of two visitors’ chairs. The signature gray Stetson that the Chisos County DA wore for his campaign posters sat brim up on his lap.
“Leanne,” he said with a nod.
She nodded back. “Hello.”
McBride closed the door behind her, and her sense of foreboding ratcheted up. The last time she’d had a closed-door meeting with the chief, he’d informed her that her brother had been arrested, this time in Alpine.
The chief sat on the edge of his desk and looked her over, making her wish she’d taken the time to go home and change clothes instead of buying coffee.
“Tell me about the crime scene,” he said.
God, where to start?
“Well.” She took a deep breath. “The victim’s face was smashed in. She had multiple broken bones. Given the state of her clothes, I’d say sexual assault is a strong possibility.”
“Hispanic?” the DA asked.
“That’s undetermined. The body was in rough shape.”
Novak and McBride traded looks.
“We found tire tracks, as I mentioned,” she continued. “Also, a scrap of duct tape near the body. I’ve reached out to the sheriff’s offices in the tri-county area, and so far, no MP report that matches. I’m working on a more detailed description, so—”
“What about debris?” the chief asked. “Trash? Clothing? Water jugs?”
“We collected some empty water bottles and soda cans. Plus, some food wrappers, that sort of thing.”
“And the carpet?”
“Sir?”