Mariah Stewart - Cold Truth

“Not as good as you might think. It’s soft now because it rained yesterday morning and it’s been cloudy ever since. The day we found her, it was hard-packed.”

He followed her along the side of the road.

“This road doesn’t appear to be heavily traveled. Is there more traffic along here during the week?”

“Not really. It leads to the remains of an old lighthouse. Hardly anyone comes this way anymore. You might get some people crabbing off the bulkhead, but not at night. The pier was taken down a few years ago-it was so badly deteriorated, it was an accident waiting to happen. There are no houses down here, it’s too swampy to build on. There’s no nice beach, the water comes right up to the marsh along here. So there’s not much reason to be down here, especially at night.” She stopped and pointed to the ground. “This is where we found her. You saw the photos, you know that she was posed right out in the open.”

Rick stared at the place where Yvonne Hunt’s body had been found.

“It would’ve taken a few minutes to have gotten the pose just so, wouldn’t you think?” he asked. “He must have felt pretty confident that no one would be coming along while he was doing it.”

“You’re thinking that he must be local.”

“Would an outsider know that this is a road to nowhere? Would a stranger to the area risk being seen by taking the time he’d need to lay her out the way he did?”

“I wondered, too. As a matter of fact, I mentioned it to the chief. But before you start thinking that this narrows the field, you should know a couple of things. First of all, during the season, our population increases greatly. Remember that we’re a resort town. We get a lot of renters starting Memorial Day weekend. Renters and summer people who move down in June and stay right on through September. And keep in mind, a lot of folks have rented here for years. Add to all that the fact that there’s a big high school reunion next week, and you have a lot of people who are well acquainted with the traffic patterns.”

“What year reunion is it?” he asked.

“All years. They just built a new high school, and they’re taking down the old one. So we have people coming down from the 1930s classes clear on through to last year’s class.”

“Swell,” he muttered. “Not much chance of narrowing it down, is there?”

“We can maybe eliminate certain years. I mean, I doubt anyone past the age of, say, sixty-five or so would have been strong enough to overcome our last victim. She’d been taking karate lessons for about four months, so she had some basic skills in self-defense. Someone too much older would have had a tough time with her. I’d have expected to see more defensive wounds on her. As you know, there were none.”

“Maybe we should bring in one of our profilers, get a little insight into this guy, get some ideas as to why he’s doing what he’s doing.”

Cass shrugged. “Fine with me.”

“I’ll call and see what we can arrange. Maybe we can get someone here early in the week. Hopefully by then we’ll know what that trace fiber is, the threads that were found in the vics’ hair.”

“You think that might be important to the profiler?”

“I think whatever it is, it’s part of what he needs to do to make this thing work for him.”

“His signature.”

“Yes. I think whatever it is, it has to do with his signature.”

“Did you want to look around a little more?” She gestured vaguely.

“What’s back this way?” Rick tilted his head to the right.

“It’s a bird sanctuary.”

Rick parted the rushes that grew almost to the roadway and walked farther into the marsh. Cass leaned back against the car, waiting for him to return. Two days ago she’d walked the entire length of the fence that enclosed the bird sanctuary. She knew he’d find nothing of interest there.

“Any other way in?” he asked as he walked toward her.

“There’s a dirt road about a half mile up toward the highway. It winds through the marsh, sort of a loop, then out again on the opposite side.”

“What’s the main attraction?”

“In the sanctuary?” She thought it over, then replied, “I guess the blinds are pretty popular during the migration times-we’re just coming to the end of one of those. Heavy bird migrations mid- to late-April through mid-June, then again in the early fall. There’s a big bird count on New Year’s Day every year. And there’s a cabin where you can buy bird books, bird calls, that sort of thing. You can ride through in your car, follow the loop around, or you can stop at the observation posts. There are several of those. Places where you can get out of your car and walk a sort of wooden boardwalk farther into the marsh.”

“Sounds as if you’re well acquainted.”

“My mother was part of the group that petitioned the state to set up the sanctuary. It was her favorite place. She spent a lot of her spare time here, training guides, walking the wetlands to look for injured birds, tracking rare birds and photographing them. She even worked in the gift shop when they got shorthanded, though she much preferred being outside.”

“She sounds like quite the nature girl.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Was?”

“She died when I was six.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So was I. Anything else you want to see?”

Rick looked around, his glance returning to the bird sanctuary.

“I think I’d like to drive that loop on the way back, if you can spare a few more minutes.”

“Sure.”

Cass got into the car and started it up, waiting while Rick fastened his seat belt before making a U-turn in the middle of the road. She drove the half mile, then took a right on the rutted dirt road.

“It would be nice if the county or the state could get around to paving this one of these days,” she said as she stopped in front of the long wooden gate that stretched across the roadway.

“Is it locked?” Rick asked.

“No, I’m sure it’s just closed. Lots of people come out here. You can see by the tire marks there’s been a lot of activity over the past few days since the rain.”

Rick got out of the car and walked to the gate. He lifted it and moved it to one side. Cass pulled the car up and he got back in.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, the road winding slowly, dividing the preserved area in two, the salt flats on one side and the more solid ground of the marsh on the other.

“There’s one of the blinds.” She pointed to a wooden structure that sat surrounded by tall rushes and cattails. “That one looks out over the marsh, so if it’s marsh birds you’re interested in, you might spend some time there.”

She pointed out several more blinds along the way.

“This one was named for my mother,” she told him when she stopped at the top of the loop. “It looks out into the bay. One time during the migrations in the spring-when the birds fly from South America to the Arctic?-she brought me with her to watch the birds gobble up the horseshoe crab eggs on the beach down there. It’s not as dramatic as it is on the Delaware Bay, but it was certainly something to see. At least for a six-year-old. All those birds swooping around, calling and scolding…”

She sat for a silent moment, then drove on, but not before he saw the sign on the side of the road. Dedicated to the memory of Jenny Burke, whose tireless work helped turn a swamp into a sanctuary.

“Seen enough?” she asked.

He nodded. “I think so.”

She accelerated, heading for the exit, then paused to wave on an incoming car, then drove out through the gate.

The driver of the other car slowed to a stop as Cass passed, watching in his rearview mirror from behind dark glasses as she negotiated the bumpy dirt road.