Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (red white royal blue TXT) 📗

it junk. Old condoms, rusty cans, beer bottles. Nothing about our missing lady. Not a trace.”

“They’ll keep going until it’s dark,” I say. “Go on home. Please?”

He doesn’t like it, but he nods. I stand up and walk away without another word. I can feel him watching me, but I don’t turn around. I hear his engine start with a loud, rattling roar, and he backs that boat-size sedan out with the ease of a lifetime of driving these narrow roads.

I’m double-checking the laces on my boots when a young woman in the outfit of the sheriff’s office comes over. I silently produce my badge and ID, and she makes a note in her logbook. “Detective.” She nods. “Uh, the boys are all up in the hills right now. You want to wait at base or—”

I want to wait at base, damn right I do, but I put on a heavier jacket, then add a fluorescent vest. Don’t want to get mistaken for a damn bear. Or a black woman. “I’ll take the grid Detective Prester was walking,” I say. I strap on a flashlight; it gets dark under the trees even in full sun, and clues can be easy to miss. And I keep my sidearm handy, because there are indeed damn bears. And predators on two feet, too, who might enjoy a potshot at a cop. Bears don’t shoot back. I will.

I follow the accommodating deputy uphill to her small folding table. She’s got a map spread out that’s weighted down at the corners with rocks, and still rippling a little in the strong, chilly breeze. “Okay,” she says, and points to a spot on the paper. “This is your section. Grid search, north to south, then east to west, no more than three feet apart on each pass—”

“Thank you, Deputy; I know how a grid search works,” I say. “Channel?”

“We’re on seven,” she says, and hands me a walkie-talkie. It’s a brick of a thing, heavy enough to use as a baton in an emergency, and built so sturdy it would probably work if you ran over it with a truck. I turn the dial to the right channel and do a radio check. At her nod, I head uphill into the tree line.

Darkness drops a cloak on my head, and I pause to let my eyes adjust. It’s oddly warmer here, mainly because the breeze isn’t as strong and direct; I take a few breaths and flip on the flashlight to look for the marker Prester would have put in to show where he stopped his search. The fluorescent hit of the neon yellow flag jumps out at me. He didn’t get too far.

I walk to it, alert to the whisper of the woods. There are other cops out here doing their own grids, but I can’t see or hear them; I might as well be alone, as far as it feels. I love Javier, but if he laughs at me one more time about feeling vulnerable out in the wild . . . I shake that off and pull up the marker flag. The deputy’s given me neon orange flags to use if I find any potential evidence; the number of them in the bag is damn optimistic, seems to me. But I’ve noted which way Prester had his flag pointed, and I start slowly walking that grid. I frequently refer to my compass to be sure I’m straight on the path; too easy to get turned around out here.

I pause when I spot a glint in the light and crouch to examine it. A broken beer bottle, label long tattered from being out here for years. I mark it anyway and move on.

Prester’s grid is not rich in clues. I finish north to south, start east to west, and I’m halfway through (and an hour in) before I spot something odd. I examine it, trying to figure out what it is; it’s just a shape half-hidden by a scramble of ferns, but it looks wrong. I carefully move the plants and take a closer look.

Smooth. Pale. Curved. Organic.

This has nothing to do with our missing woman, but this is bone. My heart starts beating faster, but I talk it down. Probably just an animal, I tell myself. That would make sense; it is the middle of the damn woods. I know it’s risky, and the TBI boys will probably, righteously, scream about me tampering with evidence, but I don’t want to be that stupid local who fussed over a deer skull either. So I crouch down and start carefully working the dirt away from the sides.

It’s a human skull, buried in the ground chin down. Whether it was fully covered before and rain washed it visible, I can’t tell, but when I get to the brow ridge and orbital sockets, I know for a fact it’s human, and probably male, since the brow ridge is large. I stop, back off, plant an orange flag, and key my radio.

“Got something,” I report to the deputy manning the table back down the hill. “I’m going to need the scene commander up here, now.”

“Yes, Detective,” she replies crisply. “I’m sending him now. Y’all need forensics up there, too?”

“Absolutely,” I say. I think that’s the end of the conversation, but after a short pause she comes back.

“Did you find her?” She asks it tentatively, almost reverently.

“No,” I said. “Something else. No sign of our missing woman.”

She doesn’t respond this time. I wait, staring at that half-buried skull.

Who are you? I wonder who put him out here in the dirt too. And why the hell he’s so close to the drowned car in the pond. Because something—nothing logical, something deep at the base of my brain—is whispering that it can’t be a coincidence. We like things to make sense and be logical, we cops. I know this probably won’t mean a damn thing except some drunk hunter broke his leg and got eaten by the proverbial bear, but . . . still.

It’s connected.