As I pull past the reporters to park, I feel their eyes on me. I turn off the car and put a hand to the ring hanging on the chain at my neck, tucked as usual safely out of sight under my shirt. I press the ring against my skin until I feel the reassuring sting. I’d love a way out of my car and into the scene without walking past the reporters. But the woods look too thick in that spot, not to mention too wet to cut through. I have on lace-up boots, but they’re not very tall, and it swamps quickly around here.
I take a breath as I finally climb out of the car, my heel slipping instantly. I have to grab onto the side of the car like a fool to avoid hitting the ground. Shit. Chuck was right.
“You okay?” a young female reporter calls out, high-pitched and shrill, as she charges over. She’s very thin and wearing way too much makeup, even for TV.
I raise a hand like a stop sign and look away. I am screwed if she recognizes me. “I’m good.”
She closes in fast anyway. “Detective, we’ve heard this is now a homicide investigation. Can you confirm?”
Goddamn it. Seldon will decide it’s my fault that word of that’s gotten out, even if it was on Dan’s watch. Unforced error number one. I won’t get many more.
“No comment,” I say, keeping my eyes straight ahead as I brush past her.
When I finally make it back to the smashed Audi SUV in the woods, Dan is standing a few feet away, arms crossed, boots covered in mud. He’s tall and well-built— a good-looking guy, for sure. Dan is watching a crime scene tech in a zipped plastic suit dig around the back seat. The car is badly crushed on one side, headlight shattered. The two front doors are hanging open, interior of the car aglow in the lights that have been set up. The body has been removed. Dan glances my way, then points his chin in the direction of the car.
“There’s arterial spray on the far side of the driver’s seat and the dash. Uniforms on the scene didn’t see that at first. Dark interior, light wasn’t great.” He uses his flashlight to point. “Anyway, that’s why I called. Thought you should see for yourself.”
To his credit, Dan could have kept this from me and tried to run with this case on his own. Seldon certainly wouldn’t mind. But Dan isn’t doing that. Because he’s too decent. It’s kind of aggravating.
“Yeah, thanks,” I say, a little begrudgingly. “What did the ME say?”
“On a quick look, he found two neck wounds. Left side, deep, irregular shape. Not sure of the weapon, but probably not a knife. Also, he’s not sure about the face.”
“What do you mean, not sure?” I ask. “Isn’t it from the crash?”
“Apparently the car would have to have been accelerating a lot to do that much damage,” Dan says carefully. “And that would have completely destroyed the car, not just smashed the front. So it’s possible someone did that, too, after the fact.”
I keep my eyes on the car, but I can feel Dan staring at me. He knows about Jane’s face. Thanks to The River, everyone knows that Jane was finished off with some unidentified object to the face. A signature, the podcast fans like to speculate. There was a well-known and never-caught serial killer at the time who had a similar MO. Was it theoretically possible that Jane and Bethany were among his victims? Sure. But only because anything was possible. Is it possible the smashed face here is the work of that same guy, all these years later? Seems pretty unlikely to me, especially because it’s not that uncommon for a killer to disfigure a victim’s face. Damn, the pod people would love that kind of sick connection.
However, the right explanation is almost always the simplest. A person in a car dead, another person missing? Missing person is the culprit. Weekender on weekender, exactly as Seldon wants.
“So what did Seldon say when he called you?” I ask.
Dan is quiet for a long minute. Finally, he exhales. “He said go down there and keep an eye on things.”
“Keep an eye on me.”
“Eye on her. I think that was the way he said it. You know, like you were a little kid or a knapsack,” Dan says. “Come on, Seldon’s a jerk. That’s not news. Anyway, one of the two punctures— weapon as yet to be determined— must have hit an artery, the ME says.”
“Still no sign of the driver?”
“With the rain, the dogs can’t seem to catch a scent. I called in a potential armed and dangerous as soon as we saw the blood. But the wounds are on the side. Could be they came from a third party, in the back seat. Left-handed then, would be my guess.”