Chapter 8 Annie #2
After a beat, he nodded, and Annie turned back to the body, shoving the horror into the back of her mind as her training took over. There would be time later to process what she was seeing. Right now, it was time to work.
As Jake fiddled with his camera behind her, she took a knee on the rocks and zeroed in on a single mark breaking fabric and skin across the woman’s back.
She had seen the damage that different predators could do to human flesh, in pictures at least, in slideshows on classroom walls and photographs passed around in study groups, and she mentally thumbed through those images now, pulling them up one at a time to compare with the butchery in front of her.
They were impressive, these marks, sharp and deep, and she counted them, nodding to herself.
There was a pattern, gashes together in groups of four, sometimes two or three, but never more than four.
Never the five claw marks that she would have seen if a bear had done this, and they were too large to belong to any canid of these woods.
“I wonder how long she’s been out here,” Jake said behind her.
Annie lifted her nose, inhaling to catch any scent in the air, but there was no detectable smell of decay.
“Less than thirty-six hours.” She pushed herself to her feet. “In all likelihood, I’d say it happened yesterday, but only an autopsy will tell us for sure.”
Jake gave her a questioning look, and Annie’s shoulders rose and fell.
“I’ve seen a lot of death in the woods. Not people, but plenty of animals.” She met his gaze sadly. “There’s no difference.”
The startled look on Jake’s face told her how callous the comment had sounded, and she quickly added, “As far as decomposition is concerned.”
The wind howled through the gulley, whipping Annie’s braid sideways and lashing her cheek with it as a few barely there drops of cold rain peppered the back of her head.
“We have to hurry,” she said, and Jake nodded, raising the camera in his hands.
His face was colorless as he took several quick shots, and Annie stepped back when he moved around to the woman’s other side, kneeling to brush the hair away from her face. The gesture was gentle, so tender that it was almost intimate, and Annie fought the urge to look away.
Jake lifted the camera and snapped several more pictures; each click of the shutter overloud to Annie as she stood waiting.
“There they are,” Jake murmured, lowering the camera an inch.
He nodded toward the bruises, four blackish-purple marks running in an uneven line on the woman’s pale skin like a necklace of shadow.
The rocks beneath Annie started to spin, and her stomach clenched. Ben was right. They did look like hands. Tight fingers that had gripped this woman’s throat until blackness took over. How long had it taken for that to happen? How long had she suffered?
From some forgotten lesson of years before, Annie recalled the rule of threes. A human being could live for three weeks without food. Three days without water. Three minutes without air.
Annie stared down at the lifeless face with its bright brown eye fixed unblinkingly on the darkening sky above. Three minutes was an eternity.
Jake leaned in close, snapping another shot, then shuffled sideways to photograph the woman’s back, the torn dark shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Annie wished she were the one behind the camera, keeping a degree of distance between herself and the dead woman.
Finally, Jake lowered the camera and sank back on his heels. He wore the same crumpled look he’d had speaking to Ben on the phone as he stared down at the woman’s face.
“Who is she?” Annie asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s not local. I’ve never seen her before.”
He leaned over the woman and checked her pockets, one at a time.
“No ID.” He looked away, scanning the valley unfolding below them. “Tourist season’s almost here though. Out-of-towners from all over the country show up to hike the mountain during the summer, so she could be from anywhere, I guess.”
Pity swelled in Annie’s chest. This woman was a stranger in town, just like her.
Jake lifted his face, squinting as he scanned the top of the ridge where the wooden railing was barely visible. “Tourists almost never come out here alone though. It’s always families… or couples.”
Annie watched the train of thought as it unfolded on his face, his eyes tracking the downward drop from the ridge, the blood around the woman’s head, and the marks on her body. He was running through the timeline, but Annie had already done the math.
The fall was not an accident. Someone who had lost their balance at the top would have fought for their life the whole way down, clawing at the hillside, lashing out with their arms and legs for a hold, any hold; twisting, scratching, scraping.
And there was none of that. This woman had either jumped of her own volition or been thrown, already dead.
As for the gashes on her body, they were horrific, but there was some consolation in knowing that she hadn’t felt them. They were clearly postmortem, deep, but clean. Her heart had not been pumping blood when the scavenger found her.
The bruises were the key, and the autopsy would either confirm or disprove the theory that was forming in Annie’s mind.
But until they knew for sure, she had to keep all possibilities open.
She had to stop picturing it in one specific, horrible way—a man standing atop Lewis Ridge, holding this girl’s neck in a vise grip until the life faded from her eyes.
Dumping her body over the railing, watching as she fell down, down, down, until the dull thud when she hit the rocks below.
An act of pure brutality. Unimaginably cruel.
“What do you think?” Jake asked, gesturing at the marks on the woman’s back. “Cougar? Bear?”
For a moment, Annie didn’t answer, but paced the rocks, searching, her braid wild in the wind, freed strands clinging to her mouth and cheeks.
There were little pockets of mud and earth on the hard, dented surface, and Annie searched them one by one until at last, in a smear of dirt behind the woman’s shoes, she found what she was looking for.
“Cougar.”
“You sure?”
Annie nodded, turning to face him. “I’m sure. It’s the male I’ve been tracking.”
Jake’s eyebrows shot up. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Here.” Annie beckoned him over and pointed to the print, placing her finger on the slightly asymmetrical dent atop the pad. A cat with a limp.
The heavens rumbled with a long, low peal of thunder, and Annie looked up at the sky. They were running out of time.
“And there’s no way the cougar could have killed her?” Jake asked. “Maybe he fought with her at the top and followed her down when she went over? I mean, I know what the bruises look like, but could they be from the cougar pinning her down by the neck?”
Annie frowned. Cougars did sometimes pin animals down by the neck as they fed.
“I don’t think so. If she was still alive when he got to her, she’d be covered in blood, and if they fought at the top and she died in the fall, I can’t imagine him working his way down the ridge to get here, but I guess it’s possible.”
Jake nodded, twisting the lens of the camera back and forth in his fingers as he stared at the body.
“Do cougars do that? Scavenge? Eat something that’s already dead?”
“They’re opportunistic, just like any other predator.
” Annie nodded. “They need food, water, and shelter and will do just about anything to keep those resources at hand. Even scavenging, if it comes to that, just like the big cats on other continents. They prefer to hunt, but they’ll sometimes claim kills that aren’t their own. ”
Annie stepped around Jake, kneeling beside the woman and peering down at the bruises as thunder boomed behind the mountain again.
“In all honesty, Jake, these could be older bruises. Hickeys, even. They could have been there for hours before she died. Days, maybe, but there’s only one way to be sure.”
Jake screwed the lens cap on the camera. “Autopsy?”
“Autopsy.” Annie nodded. “If the cause of death comes back as asphyxiation, I guess we’ll know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
The rain was starting in earnest, tapping against the rocks, and Jake lifted his face to the sky.
“If they can manage to get her out of here today, Doc Porter said he’ll be able to look her over first thing in the morning, so hopefully we’ll have some answers soon.
” Jake lowered his chin, meeting Annie’s eyes.
“But for right now, I need you to not say anything to anyone. Not my parents, not anyone in town. Nobody. Until we know for sure what we’re dealing with, we have to be careful how much information gets out. ”
Annie nodded. “Okay.”
She understood. In a town this size, one whisper about murder could be the spark that set the whole house ablaze.
For the time being, she and Jake had to bear this burden alone, and the weight of it was like an anvil on her shoulders.
It felt oddly personal. A dead outsider in a closely knit town.
A woman with no voice of her own. No way to reveal what had happened to her.
“And, Annie?” Jake’s voice was hard. “You better find that cougar. Just in case.”
Annie nodded again. “I will.”
The raindrops were falling faster now, pattering on the rocks with the cadence of a snare drum. There was no more time to lose.
“We have to go,” Annie said, rising to her feet.
Jake hesitated, gazing down at the woman on the rocks. “I hate to leave her out here.”
Annie shook her head as the rain fell between them. “We have to.”
He nodded and turned to leave with Annie a step behind, following him toward the woods as the storm rose behind them.