Blake Pierce - Before He Covets

“I said stop this nonsense ,” Officer Smith said. “One more time and every single one of you are out of here. You got it?”

Apparently, they did. The forest fell into silence again. Bryers stepped behind the tape with Mackenzie and when everyone else busied themselves behind them, he leaned over to her. She felt Charlie Holt’s eyes on her and it made her want to punch him.

“This could get ugly,” Bryers said quietly. “Let’s do our best to get out of here post-haste, what do you say?”

She went to work then, combing the area and taking mental notes. Bryers had stepped out of the crime scene and was resting against a tree as he coughed into his arm. She did her best not to let this distract her, though. She kept her eyes to the ground, studying the foliage, the ground, and the trees. The one thing that made little sense to her was how a body in such bad shape had been discovered here. It was hard to tell how long ago the murder had occurred or the body had been dumped; the ground itself showed no signs of the brutal act being carried out.

She noted the location of the placards that marked where the different parts of the body had been found. It was too far apart to have been an accident. If someone dumped a mutilated body and placed the parts so far apart, that spoke on intentionality.

“Officer Smith, do you know if there were any signs of bite marks from possible wildlife on the body?” she asked.

“If there were, they were so minuscule that a basic exam didn’t reveal any. Of course, when the autopsy comes in we’ll know more.”

“And no one on your crew or with local PD moved the body or the severed limbs?”

“Nope.”

“Same here,” Clements said. “Rangers, how about you guys?”

“No,” said Holt with an evil sneer in his voice. He now seemed to be taking offense to just about everything.

“Can I ask why that might matter in terms of finding out who did it?” Smith asked her.

“Well, if the killer did his business here, there would be blood everywhere,” Mackenzie explained. “Even if it happened a long while ago, there would be at least trace amounts scattered around. And I don’t see any. So the other possibility is that he maybe dumped the body here. But if that’s the case, why would a severed leg be so far away from the rest of the body?”

“I don’t follow,” Smith said. Behind him, she saw that Clements was also listening attentively but trying not to show it.

“It makes me think the killer did dump the body out here but he separated the parts so far apart on purpose.”

“Why?” Clements asked, no longer able to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“It could be several reasons,” she said. “It could have been something as morbid as just having fun with the body, scattering it around like it was nothing but toys he was playing with. Wanting to get our attention. Or there could be some sort of calculated reasons for it – for the distance, for the fact that it was a leg, and so on.”

“I see,” Smith said. “Well, some of my men already wrote up a report that has the distance between the body and the leg. Just about every measurement you could ask for.”

Mackenzie took a look around again – at the gathered group of men and the seemingly peaceful forest – and paused. There was no clear reason for this location. That made her think that the location was random. Still, to be so far off of the beaten path spoke of something else. It indicated that the killer knew these woods – maybe even the park itself – fairly well.

She started walking around the scene, looking closer for trace amounts of dried blood. But there was nothing. With every moment that passed, she became more and more certain of her theory.

“Rangers,” she said. “Is there any way to get the names of people that frequent the park? I’m thinking about people that come here a lot and know the area well.”

“Not really,” Joe Andrews said. “The best we can do is provide a list of financial donors.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

“You have a theory to test?” Smith asked.

“The actual murder was done elsewhere and the body was dumped here,” she said, half to herself. “But why here? We’re almost a mile away from the central path and there appears to be nothing significant about this location. So that makes me think that whoever is behind this knows the park grounds fairly well.”

She got a few nods as she explained things but got the overall feeling that they either doubted her or just didn’t really care.

Mackenzie turned to Bryers.

“You good here?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Thanks, gentlemen.”

Everyone looked at her in silence. Clements seemed to be sizing her up.

“Well, come on then,” Clements said, finally. “I’ll give you a ride back to your car.”

“No, that’s okay,” Mackenzie said a bit rudely. “I think I’d rather walk.”

Mackenzie and Bryers took their exit, heading back through the woods and toward the walking trail Clements had brought them down.

As they sank back into the forest, the stares of the state police, Clements and his men, and the park rangers at their backs, Mackenzie couldn’t help but appreciate the grand scale of the forest. It was eerie to think about how endless the possibilities were out here. She thought about what the ranger had said, about the countless crimes that took place in these forests, and something about that sent an icy chill through her.

If someone had it in them to slaughter people like the person who had been discovered within this taped-off triangle and they had a fairly decent knowledge of these forests, there were virtually no limits to the amount of menace they could cause.

And she felt sure that he would strike again.

Mackenzie settled down in her office just after six in the evening, exhausted from the long day and tidying up her notes to prepare for the debrief she had requested on their way back from Strasburg.

A knock came on her door and she looked up to find Bryers, looking as tired as she felt, holding a folder and a cup of coffee. He looked like he was trying his best to hide his exhaustion and it then occurred to her that he had been hands-off back in the state park, allowing her to take the lead with Clements, Smith, Holt, and the other egotistical men out in the forest. That, plus his coughing, made her wonder if he was coming down with something.

“The debrief is ready to roll,” he said.

Mackenzie got up and followed him to the conference room at the end of the hall. When she entered, she glanced around at the several agents and experts that made up the team on the Little Hill State Park case. There were seven people in all and while she personally thought that was too much manpower for a case this early on, it was not her place to say such a thing. This was Bryers’s and she was simply happy to be along for the ride. It was much better than reading up on immigration laws and swimming in paperwork.

“We have a busy day today,” Bryers said. “So let’s start things off with a quick recap.”

If he had been tired when he came in, he had shrugged it off. Mackenzie watched and listened with rapt attention as Bryers filled in the seven people in the room with what he and Mackenzie had discovered in the woods of Little Hill State Park that day. The others in the room took notes, some scribbling on pads, others typing it into tablets or smartphones.

“One thing to add,” one of the other agents said. “I got a ping about fifteen minutes ago. The case has officially hit the local news. They’ve already started calling this guy the Campground Killer.”

A moment of silence filled the room, and inwardly, Mackenzie sighed. This would make life much harder for them all.