Chapter 11 Annie
Annie slept late, overtired from her night on the lake with Daniel, and was surprised to find the station empty when she stepped in a few minutes before eleven.
She put on a pot of coffee and settled into her seat with a mug just as Jake’s silhouette darkened the doorway.
“I’ve got it,” he said, stepping into the station with a manila envelope in his hands.
Annie rose to her feet. “Autopsy results?”
“Yeah, Doc Porter’s out right now, but he left it in the front office for me. I figured we should go over it together.”
“Okay”—Annie nodded—“let’s do it.”
Jake held the envelope out like an offering. “You want to grab a bite at the Sky High? It’s just about time for lunch and I could go for a sandwich. We could go over the results there.”
Annie nodded. “Yeah, I could eat.”
“Great.” He held the door open with an arm. “Let’s walk, it’s nice out.”
Annie followed Jake through the door, and they strolled together up the street and across the intersection to the café.
When they reached the Sky High, a quirky little place painted top to bottom with a mural of Mount St. Helens mid-eruption, Annie stepped up onto the curb and tugged at the door handle. It didn’t budge, and then she noticed the sign with an arrow that read USE OTHER DOOR.
“Here, this way.” Jake laughed, pressing a hand to the small of her back and guiding her around the corner to the restaurant’s main entrance. As he lead her inside, Annie swatted his hand away playfully.
When they were seated at a window booth and served tall glasses of ice water with lemon wedges, Jake peeled open the envelope and pulled out the stapled stack of papers inside, scanning the first page as Annie waited.
A familiar forest-green Ford Ranger rolled past the window, and she followed it with her eyes, wondering if it was Daniel’s. Probably not. There was a passenger inside that she caught a quick glimpse of as the truck passed the window, a young woman with long honey-blond hair.
When she turned back to look at Jake, his face had fallen.
“So?” she asked. He nodded without looking up.
Annie leaned forward, keeping her voice low enough to not be overheard by the older couple in the next booth. “Strangled?”
He passed her the paper. “Here.”
Annie scanned the page quickly. Medical jargon abounded, but near the bottom, there it was.
CAUSE OF DEATH: Asphyxiation.
She glanced up at Jake, who looked as though he’d aged ten years in the last five minutes. Just as they’d feared, the young woman had been strangled to death and then dumped over the cliffside. This was no accident, no work of nature, nor the fault of any wild animal.
“What can I get you?”
Annie quickly flipped the sheet of paper over as the waitress appeared, a woman nearing thirty with brassy hair and a mouth full of metal braces—her pen poised over a pad as her eyes darted between Jake and Annie.
“Actually, Becca, I’ve lost my appetite.” Jake slid the menu to the end of the table. “Can you just bring me a ginger ale?”
“Aren’t you feelin’ okay?” Becca frowned and placed the back of her hand to his forehead.
Jake batted her away. “I’m fine. I’m not sick.”
“Work stuff?” She eyed the stack of papers beside his water glass.
Jake covered them with the torn envelope and gave her a pointed look.
Becca shrugged as she swiveled toward Annie. “You want anything?”
Annie shook her head. She’d lost her appetite, too.
“Flu’s going around.” Becca turned back to Jake as she tapped the pen against the pad. “Fever might not’ve hit you yet, but I bet you’ve got it.”
“I don’t have the flu.” Jake sighed, but Becca didn’t look convinced as she turned away with her eyebrows raised.
“And don’t you go calling my mother,” he called to her back as she walked toward the kitchen.
Jake looked at Annie and shook his head. “Becca,” he said under his breath, as though the woman’s name itself should suffice for an explanation.
Annie took a sip of her water and nodded toward the stack of papers. “Anything in there about dental records?”
Jake thumbed through the stack, flipping past the printed photographs of the woman’s naked, maimed body on the stainless-steel table.
“Yeah, right here. Looks like he ordered them done. We should hear back in a day or two. Can’t come soon enough, honestly. I need to find out who she is. I hate that somewhere out there her mom and dad are just waiting for their little girl to come home…”
Jake’s words were choked with emotion, and he lifted his glass of water and took a sip, turning toward the window. He didn’t look up as Becca returned with his ginger ale, and Annie turned to stare out the window, too.
Cars passed. People passed. A boy with white-blond hair chased a black cat into a storm drain.
On the other side of the glass, the town of Lake Lumin was going about its daily business.
Tucked into these hills were men and women and families whose biggest concerns were which trees might fall in the windstorm forecast for the weekend, or how the Blazers would fare in the playoffs.
This little village in the mountains had just been rocked to its very core, and only the coroner and two citizens in the Sky High Café knew it.