Jonathon King - A Killing Night

Now I knew the snorting noise and I stood and snapped on the light and searched for an opening in the tree wall and stepped in. The terrain went down at an angle, covered in the soft detritus of fallen leaves and loose soil that in the flashlight beam appeared to have been disturbed already. I had to crouch to get through and under the limbs and found a footprint, big enough for a man, pointing back up in the direction I had come. I was thirty feet in and flicked the light beam back up and there was a pair of luminous eyes staring at me. It was a wild boar, its ugly face frozen in the sudden circle of light, its massive body looming black and glistening behind. Strings of gristle and dirt hung from its mouth and I yelled, half in fear, half in disgust and anger. The beast startled and I yelled again and crashed through the trees and my upright and aggressive assault caused the damn thing to scream from its throat and flee the other way.

I stayed still and listened until I could no longer hear the sounds of the animal splashing and snapping twigs in retreat. Then I waited until I couldn't hear my own heart banging in my chest. But as I settled, the smell came back into focus and it was stronger. I wished I'd had the tin of Vicks we used at homicide scenes to dab inside my nose. Instead I pressed my left hand to my nostrils and pointed the flashlight to where the boar had been snuffling.

In a slight depression at the base of a clump of black mangrove roots my light caught a torn strip of yellow plastic first. The animals had shredded it and parts were still pushed down into the thick muck. When I fanned out with the light and got down closer, even I could identify bone fragments. Out here in the wet heat where insects and microbes flourish, a corpse could be consumed in a matter of a few days. Scavengers like the boar and gators and even birds would cause a certain amount of destruction and drag evidence for yards, maybe more, spreading out the crime scene. Non-biodegradables like plastic and clothing would last much longer, but even they would eventually disappear.

I did not want to disturb more than I had to, so I stepped up onto the tree root and bent to pick up a strip of the plastic. It was a medium thickness like the kind used for police tarps. I'd used them myself to cover bodies, to give them some dignity in death while the news camera crews in Philly flocked around homicide scenes. "Bastard," I whispered aloud.

I shined the flashlight down into the pile again where the boar's hooves had dug down and the light found something metal the size of a penny. I snapped a twig from the tree and poked it loose. It was a snap button, still rimmed by frayed blue-jean material with the word GUESS stamped into it. I put the button and strip of plastic into a ziplock baggy and then I widened the search, not panicked but intent. If it weren't edible the animals wouldn't have carried it.

I studied the muck in concentric circles at first, like I'd seen crime techs do. Then I took a chance and looked back from the pile shaped like a cone where the digging boar would have flung the muck and bone as it was pawing.

I picked up the glint of shiny metal six feet back. It was lying in a patch of standing water, just below the surface, and shimmered in the beam as I moved closer. The water had cleansed it of dirt and it gleamed up at me. It was a flat chrome bottle opener with a handle at one end, the kind of opener women bartenders slip into their back pockets, the kind men watch and the girls know that they watch. But this was never supposed to be a part of the game.

"I'm bringing the evidence back," I said. "Where do you want to meet?"

"At Kim's," Richards said. "She's back."

"What?"

"Marci, she's back and I've got her working."

I was in the truck, driving, fast, for the city. It had taken me half the time to get back to the roadway. I stayed in the middle of the two-track to keep from messing up any tire prints for the impression techs but there wasn't anything else to look for. With what we had, Morrison's documented trip to the burial spot, a trace of a police tarp and obvious property belonging to the missing girls, we could squeeze the hell out of this guy. And that was before the crime scene guys got out there to match his tire tracks and go through the forensics at the site. In daylight there was no telling what they might find. The son of a bitch had gotten cocky. That had been his mistake.

When I got back to my truck I'd used a marine rope from my truck and strung a barrier across the entrance just in case someone should come along. When I got Richards on her cell phone I told her what I'd found and she'd gone quiet long enough to make me think I'd lost the connection again. Then she came back.

"I'll call the Florida Highway Patrol and have them put a trooper out there to secure the scene," she said.

"You're still on Morrison, right?"

"Yeah. I've been checking with dispatch. They've been in touch with him by radio and have been sending him out on regular assignments," Richards said.

"So what's with Marci? Where the hell was she?"

Richards lowered her voice.

"She won't say. When I asked her she just said, 'Wait and see.'

"I was still in the office working the phones and the computer using her social security number to trace her folks in Minnesota but they'd both died-her mother when Marci was young and her father of a heart attack three years ago. Then Laurie called me and said she'd just shown up for work, begging to make up her time on the night shift."

Instead of sounding relieved, maybe even giddy over Marci's safety and my report on what we'd gotten from the Glades site, Richards sounded wary.

"So where are you now?" I said, slowing as I moved into a more populated section of Broward County. I didn't need to get stopped now.

"I'm at Kim's. I pulled a stool back into the hallway and I'm watching her work. She keeps answering the phone and looking out the windows," Richards said. "I'm not letting her out of my sight and if Morrison comes in here I'm going to arrest his ass myself."

"Look, Sherry," I said. "If that happens, call for backup first, OK?"

"Right," she said, and the phone clicked off. It was one in the morning when I got to the bar. My jeans were wet up to the middle of my thighs from the swamp. My shirt was smeared with muck and I thought I could still smell the stench of death in the material. I parked in a spot on the back side of the shopping center and walked through the pool-room entrance. Richards was still sitting in the hallway that linked the two rooms, her back up against the wall. Another patron was making his way to the men's room and said to her: "Hey, honey. You still here? I told you I'd be glad to give you a ride home."

"My boyfriend will be here any minute," she answered.

"That's what you said an hour ago, sweetheart."

"I was being polite," she said and then noticed me walk in. "And I still am."

The guy shrugged and slid by me.

"What's up?" I said, looking beyond Richards to see Marci behind the back bar, working at the register, closing out the paper tabs that were piled there.

Even here in the shadows I could see the gray in her eyes. She'd let this whole mess boil too long in her head.

"I woke up the damn prosecutor and he said the evidence is circumstantial," she said, the bitterness snapping off the words. "He said we'll have to take it to a grand jury if we want to go after a cop."

I put my back to the wall opposite her and leaned into it. I was tired.

"He said if forensics comes up with a blood match out there in the morning, maybe. If we run a photo spread past some other women who pick him out as trying to take them out there, maybe. The fact that he might have driven his squad car out there to look at the stars isn't criminal. Even if you're right and those are my girls out there, it's still circumstantial. No judge will order an arrest warrant."