He folded his tall lanky form inside and started up the Jeep while she was buckling in. Several minutes later, he abruptly pulled off the road and began driving across a field. After the first couple of jolts, Ramsey braced herself with one hand on the dash and the other on the roof of the car.
“Sorry.” Rollins seemed to move seamlessly with each jar and bump. “It’d take half an hour for us to get there by road. The kids that found the body hiked across through the woods on the other side, but going in from this direction will be an easier walk, though I’m told it takes longer. Brought the body out this way.”
“Has the victim been ID’d yet?”
“Nope. White female, between the age of eighteen and twenty-five. Found nude, so no help with the clothin’.” A muscle jumped in Mark’s jaw. “Not from these parts, is all I know. No hits from any of the national missin’ persons databases. The medical examiner took a DNA sample, and we submitted the results to the FBI’s system, but no luck.”
So a Jane Doe, at least for now. Ramsey felt a stab of sympathy for the unknown woman. Maybe she hadn’t even been reported missing. She’d died alone and away from home. Was that worse than being murdered in familiar surroundings? Somehow it seemed so.
“How valuable have the wits been?”
“What, the kids?” Mark shot her a look. “Told us what they knew, which didn’t turn out to be much. Both scared silly, of course. Spoutin’ nonsense about red mist and screamin’ and dancin’ lights . . . Tell you what I think.” The Jeep hit a rut with a bone-jarring bounce that rattled Ramsey’s teeth. “I think half is fueled by that blasted legend folks ’round here insist on feedin’ regularly.”
“Legend?” The case file contained only facts of the case. But when facts were in short supply, other details took on more importance.
Rollins looked pained. “Guess you’ll be hearin’ it from ’bout every person you talk to in town. I know I can count on you, out of anyone, not to be distracted by nonsense.” Still, it seemed to take him a few moments to choose his words. Or maybe he was saving his strength for wrestling the Jeep. Beneath the spread of grass, the terrain was wicked.
“We’ve got somethin’ of a local phenomena called the red mist. Someone else could explain it better, but it’s caused by some sort of reaction from certain plants in the area comin’ in contact with iron oxide in stagnant water, coupled with contaminants in the air. Once every blue moon, the fog in low-lyin’ areas takes on a red tinge for a day or two. Nothin’ magical ’bout it of course, ’cept the way it makes folks ’round here take leave of their senses.”
“So the kids that found the body saw this red mist?”
“That’s what they’re sayin’. And I do have others in these parts that claim they saw the same thing, so might’ve been true. But local legend has it that whenever the red mist appears, death follows.”
The Jeep hit a rut then that had Ramsey rapping her head smartly on the ceiling of the vehicle. With a grim smile, she repositioned herself more securely in her seat and waited for her internal organs to settle back into place. Then she shot the man beside her a look. “Well, all nonsense aside, Sheriff, so far it appears, your local legend is more grounded in facts than you want to admit.”
Rollins brought the Jeep to a halt a few hundred yards shy of the first copse of trees. “Don’t even joke about that. My office is spendin’ too much of our time dealin’ with hysterical locals who set too much store by superstitious hogwash. The truth is, this is a quiet place. The crime we do have tends to be drunk and disorderlies after payday at the lumber mill, or the occasional domestic dispute. Once in a while we have a fire or a bad accident to respond to. But violent crime is a stranger here. And when it appears, people don’t understand it. They get scared, and when folks get scared, they search for meanin’. This legend is just their way of gettin’ a handle on how bad things can happen near their town.”
Ramsey got out of the car and stretched, avoiding, as long as possible, having to look at that expanse of woods ahead of them. “That’s downright philosophical, Mark. Didn’t learn that in the psych courses at TBI.”
He reached back into the car for the shotgun mounted above the dash, and then straightened to shut the door, a ghost of a smile playing across his mouth. “You’re right there. I understand these people. Lived here most of my life. I know how they think. How they react. Don’t always agree with ’em. But I can usually figure where they’re comin’ from.”
They headed for the woods, and Ramsey could feel her palms start to dampen. Her heart began to thud. The physical reaction annoyed her. It was just trees, for Godsakes. Each nothing but a mass of carbon dioxide. And she’d mastered this ridiculous fear—
she had
—years ago.
Deliberately, she quickened her step. “You hoping to go hunting while we’re here?” She cocked her head at the shotgun he carried.
“Not much of a hunter. But we do have some wildlife in these parts. Those kids were downright stupid to come in here at night. There’s feral pigs in these woods. An occasional bobcat. Seen enough copperheads ’round in my time to keep me wary.”
When her legs wanted to falter at his words, she kept them moving steadily forward. Felt the first cool shadows from the trees overhead slick over her skin like a demon’s kiss.
“Wish I could tell you there was much of a crime scene,” Mark was saying as he walked alongside her. “But apparently a bunch of kids dared each other to come into the woods and fetch proof they’d been here. First ones back to town got braggin’ rights, I ’spect. So they paired off and trooped out in this direction. Shortly after the two found the victim, a few others arrived. And then the whole thing became one big mess with tracks and prints all over the damn place.”
Ramsey felt a familiar surge of impatience. No one liked to have the scene contaminated, but one of the few down-sides to her job with Raiker Forensics was that she was rarely called to a fresh crime scene. By the time their services were requested, the crime could be days or weeks old. She had to satisfy herself with case files, pictures of the scene, and notes taken by the local law enforcement.
“The way Jeffries talked, you’ve gotten more than your share of unwanted media attention.” They stepped deeper into the woods now and the trees seemed to close in, sucking them into the shadowy interior. She resisted the urge to wipe her moist palms on her pant legs. “Seems odd for national news to be interested in a homicide in rural Tennessee.”
“I suspect some local nut job tipped them off. It’s the legend again.” Mark’s face was shiny with perspiration, but Ramsey was chilled. She would be until they stepped back out into the daylight again. “Every two or three decades there’s this red mist phenomena, and a couple times in the past there’s been a death ’round the same time. The two circumstances get linked, and all of a sudden we have people jabbering about secret spells and century-old curses and what have you.”
She made a noncommittal sound. Part of her attention was keeping a wary eye out for those copperheads he’d mentioned so matter-of-factly. But despite her impatience with idle chitchat, she was interested in all the details that would be missing from the case file. Evidence was in short supply. It was people who would solve this case. People who’d seen something. Knew something. The tiniest bit of information could end up being key to solving the homicide. And with no murder weapon and no suspects and little trace evidence, she’d take all the information she could get.
“Have you eliminated each of the kids as the possible killer?”
“Shoot, Ramsey they’re no more than sixteen, seventeen years old!”
When she merely looked at him, brows raised, he had the grace to look abashed. “Yeah, I know what you’ve seen in your career. I’ve seen the same. But ’round here we don’t have kids with the conscience of wild dogs. They all alibi each other for up to thirty minutes before the body’s discovery. Witnesses place the lot of them at Sody’s parking lot for the same time. Pretty unlikely a couple hightailed it into the woods, committed murder, and dumped the body knowin’ more kids would be traipsin’ in any minute.”
Unlikely, yes. Impossible, no. But Ramsey kept her thoughts to herself. She was anxious to hear what Agents Powell and Matthews had to say on the subject.
There was a rustle in the underbrush to her right, but it didn’t get her blood racing. No, that feat was accomplished by the trees themselves, looming like sinister sentinels above her. Hemming her in with their close proximity. She rubbed at her arms, where gooseflesh prickled, and shoved at the mental door of her mind to lock those memories away.
Some would have found the scene charming, with the sun dappling the forest floor and brilliant slants of light spearing through the shadow. They wouldn’t look at the scene and see danger behind every tree trunk. Wouldn’t feel terror lurking behind. Horror ahead.
The trail narrowed, forcing her to follow Rollins single file. “Whose property are we on?”
“Most of it belongs to the county. We’ve got little parcels that butt up against the land of property owners, but we’re standin’ on county ground right now.” They walked in silence another fifteen minutes, and Ramsey wondered anew at any kids foolish enough to make this trek at night.
Sixteen or seventeen, Mark had said they were. She knew firsthand just how naïve kids that age could be. How easily fooled. And how quickly things could go very wrong.
One moment they were deep in the woods. The next they walked out into a clearing with a large pond. It was ringed with towering pines and massive oaks, their branches dripping with Spanish moss and curling vines. The land looked rocky on three sides, but it was boggy at the water’s edge closest to them, with clumps of rushes and wild grasses interspersed between the trees.
Ramsey’s gaze was drawn immediately to the crime scene tape still fluttering from the wooden stakes hammered into the ground. A plastic evidence marker poked partway out of the trampled weeds near the pond, overlooked by the investigators when they’d packed up.
And in the center of that taped perimeter, crouched in front of the pond, a man repeatedly dunked something into the water and then held it up to examine it before repeating the action yet again. A few yards away, a jumble of equipment was piled on the ground.
She eyed Rollins. “One of yours?”
Looking uncomfortable, the sheriff shook his head. “Now, Ramsey,” he started, as she turned toward the stranger. “Better let me handle this.”
But she was already striding away. “Hey. Hey!”
The man raised a hand in a lazy salute, but it was clear he was much more interested in the reading on the instrument he held than he was in her. Ramsey waited while he lowered the tool to jot a notation down in the notebook open on his lap then looked up and shot her a lazy grin. “Afternoon, ma’am.”
“Interesting thing about that yellow tape all around you,” she said with mock politeness. “It’s actually meant to keep people out of a crime scene, not invite them inside it.”
The sun at her back had the stranger squinting a bit at her, but the smile never left his face. And it was, for a man, an extraordinarily attractive face. His jaw was long and lean, his eyes a bright laser blue. The golden shade of his hair was usually found only on the very young or the very determined. Someone had broken his nose for him, and the slight bump in it was the only imperfection in a demeanor that was otherwise almost too flawless. Ramsey disliked him on sight just on principal.
“Well, fact is, ma’am, this isn’t an active crime scene anymore. Hey, Mark.” He called a friendly greeting to the man behind her. “Kendra May know you’re out walking pretty girls ’round the woods?”
“Dev. Thought you’d be finished up here by now.”
Ramsey caught the sheepish note in Rollins’s voice and arched a brow at him. The sheriff intercepted it and followed up with an introduction. “Ramsey Clark, this is my cousin, Devlin Stryker. He’s uh . . . just running some tests.”
“Your cousin,” she repeated carefully. “And does your cousin work for the department? If so, in what capacity?”
Rollins’s face reddened a little. “No. He’s a . . . well, he’s sort of a scientist, you could say.”
Stryker rose in one lithe motion and made his way carefully back to the rest of his belongings, which included, Ramsey noted, a large duffel bag with unfamiliar-looking instruments strewn around it, along with a couple cameras, a night vision light source, and—she blinked once—a neatly rolled up sleeping bag.
“Odd place to go camping.”
“Can’t say I used the sleepin’ bag much last night.” He unzipped the duffel and began placing his things inside it. “Too worried about snakes. I thought I’d stick around awhile to compare last night’s readin’s with some from today.”
With quick neat movements, he placed everything but the sleeping bag in the duffel and zipped it, standing up to sling its strap over his shoulder. “I’m done here for now, though.”
“Done with what, exactly?”
Devlin sent her an easy smile that carried just enough charm to have her defenses slamming firmly into place. “Well, let’s see. I used a thermal scanner to measure temperature changes. An EMF meter to gauge electromagnetic fields. An ion detector to calculate the presence of negative ions. Then there’s the gaussometer, which . . .”