Chapter 8 Annie
The poorly maintained Forest Service road was not kind to the low-bottomed police cruiser, and Annie gripped the handle above the window as they climbed up and around the mountain.
She was doing her best to avoid looking at the sheer drop-off just feet from the spinning tires of the car and watched instead the slate-gray clouds at the top of the windshield, their dark edges roiling inward, threatening rain.
Jake’s foot stayed on the gas as they bumped and jostled their way over the uneven gravel, engine whining loudly against the steep grade.
“That’s Ben,” Jake muttered, swinging the cruiser in behind the SUV and shifting into park.
Ben, his mostly gray hair tousled, blue track jacket rippling in the wind, jogged to the driver’s-side window of the cruiser.
“It’s bad, Jake,” he said when Jake opened the door. “Really bad. You’re not gonna be able to get her out of here.”
“That’s okay,” Jake said, zipping his jacket and climbing out. “County has a recovery team. I radioed on the drive up. They’re on the way, but I gotta get down there and take some pictures of the scene first. You didn’t touch anything, did you?”
Her. Annie made the correction in her mind as she climbed out of the car, bracing herself against the stiff wind. You didn’t touch her, did you?
“No, no, I just climbed back down and hiked out of there as fast as I could.”
Jake nodded. “Good. You show me where she is, then you can get on home. I’m sure you’re pretty shaken up.”
Ben nodded, and Jake clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder as Annie stepped forward with her hand outstretched.
“I’m the new game warden, Annie Heston.”
Ben shook her offered hand.
Jake added, “Annie’s going to take a look at those marks on the body.”
Ben blew out a breath. “They’re not pretty, ma’am.”
“Understood.” Annie turned to Jake. “You ready?”
Jake nodded and Annie fell into line behind the men as they started down the eastern fork of the trail at a pace just shy of a jog.
The thick morning fog had burned off into a fleeting hour of sunshine, but storm clouds had billowed up from the east, and now the wind was streaming in, bitter and steady around the mountain, directly into their faces as they hiked.
Jake glanced over his shoulder and, catching Annie rubbing her arms briskly, slid out of his jacket and passed it to her without breaking stride.
They walked east for several minutes without speaking, Ben halting at intervals to peer down over the railing. Finally, he stopped and motioned them forward.
“Down there.” He pointed, and over the sound of the wind, Annie could hear the tremor in his voice. “We’re right over her; you can see her hair on the rocks.”
Jake met Ben at the railing, leaning over to look, and Annie watched as Jake’s shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch and his face fell. Grim, but not distressed. He turned to Ben and pulled a small, black recorder from his pocket.
“Let me take a quick statement from you, then you can get on home to the girls.”
As Ben shared his version of events, Annie moved to the railing and peered over.
Her stomach lurched. A hundred dizzying feet down was the woman, lying on her stomach on the rocks. Even from so far up, Annie could see the clothing torn across her shoulders, and the long, dark hair billowing out over the cliffside like a sheet on a clothesline.
It was an insane distance, an unthinkable fall, and Annie could not imagine any sensible person climbing over this railing and risking such a plummet for any reason, unless they were forced… or desperate.
Annie searched the ground around her feet, looking for tracks, for a story told in the dirt, but the path here was too well-worn, dented with the prints of a dozen shoes, slurred and indistinct. Useless. There would be no telling what had happened from up here.
“Thanks, Ben,” Jake said behind her, “you get on home. I’ll call you later if I need anything else.”
Ben left without another word, jogging back up the trail to his car, and Jake and Annie turned to each other.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get down there,” Jake said.
“I think we can.” Annie pointed into the woods.
“If we head down on the western fork of the trail, then cut back across this way, we should come right out to where she is on the rocks. It’ll be tough.
It looks pretty steep, and there’s no real trail to follow when we cut over, but I think it’s doable. ”
Jake assessed her proposed path, eyeing the near-vertical hillside and the protruding rocks, then nodded. “Worth a shot.”
Annie led the way down the steep western trail, estimating their distance as she went. She slipped once, her foot skidding over a root, and Jake caught her by the arm, hauling her upright again.
She cut left into the woods when she guessed them to be about parallel with the rock shelf where the woman lay.
Annie gripped trees and rocks as she moved across the steep terrain with Jake scrambling behind her.
After a few minutes, the trees tapered away into brush and shrubs, and they emerged into open air on the hillside.
The going was treacherous, and Annie’s breath was shallow as she leaned into the grade, testing every step before she took it.
The forest up here had changed so much in just a few weeks.
Gone were the early-spring blossoms and tentative April wildflowers.
Now, mustard-yellow buttercups and bright red Indian paintbrush were scattered across the slope in reckless abundance.
The sight of those crimson flowers on any other day would have stirred joy in her, but today, they seemed like thick drops of blood littering the hillside at random. Heralds of the death ahead.
Here in the open, the wind was worse, tearing at her clothes and swiping tears from her eyes, sending them sideways into her hair as she moved across a slope that was ever steeper. She gripped the land with her hands, clasping at shrubs and stones as her feet fumbled for holds beneath her.
Slow and steady, Annie girl. Each move like you mean it.
Her father had first spoken those words to her as she scaled the dry bed of a waterfall in Bend, young arms trembling with fatigue—and countless times after.
The wind gusted again and Annie clung to the hillside, leaning hard.
“Hang in there,” Jake called out, and for the life of her, she couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or not, but just ahead were the protruding rocks, hemmed in on the cliffside by a few disheveled pines that had dared to take root on the precipitous ground.
Annie edged toward them, growing overwarm in Jake’s jacket as her muscles worked hard, straining to keep her stable.
She kept her sights on the long expanse of bare rock that broke the plummeting fall from the ridge high overhead.
“I can see her,” she called over her shoulder, “about fifty yards ahead.”
Annie forced her hands and feet forward, like an insect clinging to the gully wall.
Stretching her arms high, she clambered up onto the rocks.
The shelf was narrow at the outset, only a foot wide where it jutted out over the drop, and with her eyes glued to her shoes, Annie inched forward, shuffling toward the dark hair dancing in the wind.
The rocks beneath her feet were smooth and precariously sloped. Risking a quick glance at the darkening sky overhead, she prayed that the rain would hold off. Wet rocks would be an absolute nightmare right now.
Foot by foot, the drop beneath her steepened into the vertical fall that was Lewis Ridge, and foot by foot, she edged nearer to the body.
Fifty feet more. Forty. Annie blew out a breath as the shelf of rock beneath her feet widened, expanding into a trail of its own.
Still, the ever-present plummet into the gulley kept her stomach balled up like a fist as she moved forward.
Another gust of wind ripped past, and Annie tensed, rigid on the rocks, but Jake was right behind her, pressing a steadying hand to her back.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “You can do this.”
The woman was lying in a place where the shelf jutted out broadly, creating a wide, flat space, eight feet of standing room; the plateau that had broken her fall.
Annie moved forward in what felt like slow motion until she was standing over the body with her trembling hand at her mouth.
Blood darkened the rock around the woman’s head, dried now in a clover-shaped shadow that was half covered by her hair.
Her head seemed off in proportion, too small somehow, and Annie realized with horror that it was because the right side of her skull had been crushed against the unforgiving stone and now lay flat.
But worse by far was the absolute carnage inflicted by razor-sharp claws on the back side of her body.
Annie had seen the carcasses of animals.
Many times. Countless times. Deer and elk, left headless and skinless, their hides and antlers claimed as trophies and their flesh left to rot in the woods by the worst sort of men.
But this… Her gaze traveled the length of the woman from head to toe and back again.
Something had torn into her out here on the rocks, shredding the dark clothing to get at the body underneath—flaying it in long, deep gashes.
There were dozens of marks, slashing down to the bone in places, and Annie let out a muffled cry at the sight of the woman’s spine, white and knobby, exposed in one particularly vicious stripe.
Beside her, Jake muttered something under his breath that sounded like a prayer.
Annie took a step forward, but Jake’s hand landed on her shoulder, pulling her back.
“Don’t. I don’t know what I was thinking. You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do,” she said without turning around.
“No.” His hand was still on her shoulder. “I’ll take pictures and you can look at them back at the station. Let’s do it that way.”
Annie turned to face him, shrugging out from under his hand. “I can help, Jake. Let me do my job.”