Chapter 9 Louise
LOUISE
After that, everything was a blur.
Within ten minutes, base camp was swarming.
Squad cars, reporters, gawkers. Half the town showed up once the news spread.
I gave my statement—flat, hollow—and then we were asked to leave while the authorities secured the scene.
The medical examiner, a redheaded woman named Jessica Heathrow, arrived and started her work.
Quiet. Efficient. Expressionless. Like it was just another Tuesday.
I stood off to the side, arms wrapped around myself, listening.
Chief McCord told one of his officers the body was likely too decomposed to determine anything useful. Someone muttered maybe Kara had overdosed and been dumped there by her “friends” to avoid being implicated. Like she was trash. Like her life was already written off.
McCord instructed someone to track down Kara’s mother.
“Let her know her daughter’s been found,” he said, like he was ordering a sandwich.
“She won’t care anyway.” Then he moved on, just like that.
I didn’t get the sense that much more time would be spent on what they saw as just another dead girl with a rap sheet and a history of bad decisions.
It made me sick.
Almost as sick as the image of her body, now permanently seared into my brain. I’d never seen a corpse before, and I’d never be able to unsee it. The lifeless limbs. The open, empty sockets. The way the wind had carried her hair like it still belonged to someone alive.
Back at the motel, after too many beers and a handful of whispered conspiracy theories, Miles, Margie, and Austin all retreated to their rooms sometime after one.
Sometime between three in the morning and my second bottle of wine, I made a decision.
I wasn’t going to let this go.
I didn’t care if McCord and his boys wrote her off.
Kara Meyers deserved justice. And I was going to make damn sure she got it.