Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

Either because Gallagher was afraid he'd hurt someone, or because he was afraid he'd make himself look bad in front of the villagers, Kate thought.

"So you took the creek to the river," Jim said. "Then what?"

"Well, it's only a couple hundred feet to the river, and it was real dark, the trees and the bushes hanging over everything and all. I didn't see her on the way down."

"What did you see?"

"Her snow machine. Of course at first I didn't know it was hers, so far all of them look alike to me. It's like women and cars, you know? Show me a female who can tell the difference between a Chevy Silverado and a Ford Ranger and I'll marry her." He smiled. "I'm like that with snow machines."

No one smiled back, and his own vanished. "But you recognized Talia's," Jim said. "How'd that happen?"

"Well, it was just sitting there, stuck in a snowbank, idling, with nobody on it and nobody around. I pulled up next to it and I saw her stuff in the trailer. I shouted for her a couple of times and there was no answer. So then I got to thinking that maybe she hit a bump and fell off and the snow machine kept going. So I went back up the creek, slow like, you know, looking for her." He paused, and swallowed.

"And?"

"And I found her," Gallagher said. "Both parts."

There was a momentary silence. "Both parts?" Jim said.

"Yeah." His face was pale and damp with perspiration, and his clasped hands were grinding against each other. "Her body was lying over to my left, kind of close to the bank, in the shadows, you know? So it was no wonder I didn't see her on the way down." He swallowed again.

"Want some water or something?"

"No, no, I'm okay, it's just, it's so godawful, Sergeant Chopin."

"What was, Mr. Gallagher?"

Gallagher looked up and said, "Her head was missing."

"What?" Jim said.

Gallagher nodded. "I found it about twenty feet up the creek."

Kate felt Old Sam look at her and turned her head to meet his eyes. It was the first time she'd ever seen that expression on his face.

"I went and got someone from the village to stay with her, and then I came back. I know you hang out a lot at that bar out the end of the road, Sergeant Chopin, so I figured I had a good chance of finding you there. You weren't but Sam was, and he brought me here."

He spread his hands. "The rest you know."

They left at first light, Jim on one snow machine, Kate on another, Matt Grosdidier on a third hauling an empty sled. Dick Gallagher was still asleep at Auntie Vi's, and Jim said there was no reason to get him up. They were in Double Eagle well before noon. Ken Kaltak came out to greet them, looking as if he hadn't had a lot of sleep. "Thank christ you're here so I can be done with this freak show."

"Did anybody touch anything?"

"Not after I got there," Ken said flatly. "I can't answer for before. It doesn't look like it, but I'm not a cop. Kate, Matt."

"Hey, Ken. How was she…" Kate's voice failed her. "How was it done?"

Ken shook his head. "This you gotta see for yourself."

He led the way to the creek, a narrow, winding affair between low banks, those banks thick with willow, alder, and spruce, all of them drooping beneath the weight of a heavy layer of snow. They turned the path of the creek into a low, cold tunnel into which even the noontime sun could not reach. Jim's head brushed a branch and snow fell silently down his neck. He stooped a little and walked on.

"Stay," Kate told Mutt, and followed him.

Talia's head was where Gallagher had said it was, about twenty feet away from her body. The face was turned away but the open portion of the neck revealed frozen blood and tissue and the bony beginnings of a brain stem. It was not a pretty sight. Kate heard Matt, just behind her, take a sharp breath.

Her body lay on its back, arms and legs splayed wide. Her snow machine was nosefirst in the snowbank on the right-hand side of the creek. The trailer had jackknifed, probably when the snow machine had run into the bank, but it hadn't overturned.

Jim bent over the windshield and ran his flashlight over every inch of the clear plastic. He stepped back and walked back up the creek. "Kate, you take the right side. I'll take the left."

"Got it."

Ken and Matt watched, Ken with his attention firmly fixed on the overhanging trees, Matt looking a little green around the gills, a color that matched one of the colors in his Cinemascope black eye. About halfway between the snow machine and the body, Kate said, "Here."

She tried not to mess up the snow next to it, but it was a futile effort. It probably didn't matter, as with the warming weather there had been intermittent snow showers over the past two days and there wasn't much to see.

She heard Jim's breath at her shoulder and pointed with a gloved finger, slightly trembling. "See it?"

His breath exhaled on a long sigh. "Yeah. Line for mending gear, right?"

"Yes."

They regarded it in silence. "You can get this stuff anywhere, he said.

She nodded. "Yes," she said again, a little mournfully. "Everybody has a spool lying around. I've got some in the garage. I think I even saw some spools at the Bingleys' store, in that corner in the back where she's got all the nonedible stuff."

"So no possible chance of tracking down which spool this came from."

"Probably not, but that's for the crime lab to say. You never know, Jim, they can do some pretty amazing stuff." "Let me get the camera."

He was back a moment later, and took a series of photos. It took longer than it usually did because of the cold-he had to keep tucking the camera inside his parka to warm it up so the shutter would work.

They found a corresponding length wrapped around the base of a tree opposite the first one. Jim took more photos.

"About the right height," he said, measuring the top of the creek bank against his height. "Three feet, maybe?"

"The windshield," she said.

"Yeah, but it's swept, it doesn't go straight up, it slants. It hits the mono hard enough, the mono slides right up the windshield and snaps back. She must have been kneeling on the seat for it to catch her right on the neck like that."

"If she'd been sitting," Kate said, "the mono could have caught her forehead. Same result, but then maybe it would have just broken her neck."

"Would have left a mark."

Neither one of them moved to check if such a mark was on Macleod's forehead. If that was what had happened, Macleod's head would still have been attached to her body.

Kate couldn't believe she was putting those words together in a sentence. She had another thought. "That may have been more in line with what the murderer was planning, Jim. When the filament broke the two ends snapped back around the base of both trees. If she hadn't been decapitated, if we'd just found her with her neck broke, would we even have thought murder?"

He considered. "Maybe not."

"He might not have been expecting this. Who would?"

"And an accidental death doesn't come under the same magnifying glass a murder does," Jim said, nodding. "He wouldn't think he had to be that careful. Gotcha."

"Maybe not hard evidence," Kate said, "but there'll be something."

They both hoped she was right.

Nothing else was found at the scene, however. They brought the snow machine back up the creek and Jim took more photos with it positioned between the two trees. He strung crime scene tape between them, pulling it taut, and pushed the snow machine forward. The tape caught the windshield about midway. Kate climbed on, straddling the seat, and at Jim's request Ken and Matt pushed it slowly forward while Jim took photos. As the windshield pressed against the tape it rode up, until it snapped off the windshield and whipped over the top of Kate's head, ruffling her hair.