Back from the Brink Page 6

  “You take MacAulay up,” she said to Lars. “I have a few more questions for Tandy Longhorn.”

  Nicole approached her. The woman crossed her arms over her middle and waited.

  “How did you know the young lady was in trouble?”

  “She missed her appointment,” Tandy said. “And she never did that. Not even once. She never even rescheduled.”

  “And her appointment was yesterday?”

  “At four o’clock,” Tandy confirmed.

  “But you waited until two o’clock in the morning to check on her?”

  “Before that,” Tandy said. “Yesterday, clinic hours started at two and ended at nine thirty. I called twice during the evening. I left messages. When she called me back, it was almost midnight and she was certain she was in labor. We stayed on the phone, measuring the minutes between contractions. Nine minutes and her water hadn’t yet broken. So maybe she was in labor, maybe not. I knew there was time. I hadn’t eaten dinner because we were busy and there was much paperwork to be done after closing. After hanging up with Georgia, I prepared two sandwiches, ate one and packed the other. I collected my medical bags and called one of my nurses. That’s the arrangement. When I’m on a delivery, the nurses cover any emergencies. And then I came.”

  “What time did you get here?”

  “I got lost,” Tandy said. “It’s very dark up here, and once the pavement ends, so do the streetlights. It took me longer than I expected.”

  “Did you look at the time when you arrived?”

  “Two AM.”

  “Exactly?” Nicole challenged, knowing she wasn’t making a friend in the woman.

  “Two-oh-two on the dash clock,” Tandy replied.

  “And the first thing you noticed?”

  “The quiet. It was not natural.” She walked toward the perimeter. “You found it, then,” she said, and indicated the trailhead, marked with a yellow cone. “I followed, but not nearly as fast and starting much behind her and the others.”

  “How far behind?”

  “I did not see her but knew I had missed her by minutes. The men were running from the house, scrambling over the hill. They were dressed in black and had guns and packs.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Like I told the doctor, the cars. There were two, and neither had a license plate. They were dark. SUVs. But I can’t tell you make—all of that was removed, and I’ve never been good about those things.”

  “They were in the driveway?”

  “Of course not. They were a half mile back, parked at the side of the road, already turned around. There was no one in them.”

  “You checked?”

  “As I passed by, the moon peered from behind the clouds and I could see through the windows. The vehicles were empty.”

  Nicole considered that and nodded. “So you followed on foot?”

  “It was the only way.”

  Nicole looked over the woman’s head to the silver Toyota Tundra parked in the turnout at the side of the road. “Driving would have gotten you to help faster,” she said.

  “But the trail would be lost. Her fate hopeless.”

  Nicole wanted to point out that following had done little to change that, but there was nothing to be gained from it other than an expression of her own frustration.

  “Is she strong?” Nicole wanted to know.

  “To think in a moment of panic?” Tandy asked. “Or to outrun a den of wolves?”

  “Either. Both,” she hoped.

  “I think she could push past panic. She was nine months pregnant though. At some point her body would tire, and you can’t push past that.”

  Not even if her life, and the life of her baby, depended on it? Nicole wondered.

  “I asked you this before, and I’d appreciate a straight answer—do you track?”

  “I know what to look for,” Tandy said. “The signs of someone’s passing are as clear to me as words written on a page are to others.”

  And still Tandy Longhorn had lost the woman’s trail.

  “There’s a young man upstairs, dead,” Nicole said. “Did you know about that?”

  “If I had known, I would have told you.”

  Nicole pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and brought up the picture of the victim who still lay in the upstairs bedroom. “It’s not pretty,” she said. “But not as bad as some.”

  “I have seen worse,” Tandy said. “I’m sure of it.”

  Nicole turned her cell phone for Tandy’s viewing. “Is this man Matthew?”

  Tandy looked in silence. She stepped closer and took hold of Nicole’s hand to tilt the cell for better lighting. She squinted, taking her time.

  “There are similarities,” she said. “The hair color and cut. The shape of his face. But the father’s eyes are blue, and this man had hazel. And Matthew has a scar above his left ear, in his hairline but peeking out at the temple. It’s red and thick, not to be missed.” She stood tall and shook her head. “No, this man is not the baby’s father.”

  She stepped back, and Nicole pocketed her phone.

  “As I told the doctor, the baby’s father has a tattoo over his left bicep. Semper fi. You could look for that on this man,” Tandy suggested.

  “The baby’s father is a Marine?”

  “That’s what I saw.”

  “What else did you tell the doctor?”

  Tandy shrugged. “Ask him. I think I’ve told you about everything, but he is younger and a man for details. He might remember things differently.”

  Nicole planned to compare notes with MacAulay later.

  “I can go now?” Tandy asked.

  “I’m sending a sketch artist out, Tandy. For a picture of the girl.” And maybe Matthew too.

  “I’ll be waiting,” Tandy said. She climbed into the cab of her truck and shut the door. The powerful engine turned over, and the midwife made a wide U-turn and headed out.

  7

  Nicole covered her nose and mouth with the tail of her shirt. The window in this upstairs bedroom was closed, the screen kicked out from inside and lying on the peaked roof. The door was narrow and propped open with a rachiotome from MacAulay’s bag. Still, there was little movement in the air. The stink of rotting flesh was thick, though Nicole could see little outward evidence of decomposition. MacAulay was talking into his recorder.

  “GSW to the head … entry at the glabella … skin around the wound burned and puckered … left pupil blown, indicating a downward trajectory through the frontal cortex, penetrating the skull and severing the optical nerve …”

  An execution at close range. Likely the muzzle of the gun had been pressed against the man’s head.

  “How long, Doc?” Lars asked.

  “Hours,” he said. “Not yet half a day.”

  So after midnight. A lot of activity in a small window of time. The discovery of the man in ice, the missing BP agents, the running girl, the birth of a baby, and the dead man here.

  MacAulay pulled a thermometer from his bag and pushed the dead man’s shirt up to expose an area of skin close to his waist. The corpse had fallen forward after the gunshot, head turned toward the window, arms at his side, fingers loosely curled. The body did that as a last physical act, involuntary muscle relaxation. Before that, forced to his knees and kept there, hands clenched in fear and possibly rage, had he looked his killer in the eye? Or had he looked out the window, at the black night, hoping his sacrifice had saved a young, pregnant woman?

  MacAulay slid the thermometer into the man’s liver for a reading. That, and taking into consideration the current temperature in the room, the degree of gradient as outdoor temperatures dropped during the night and heated up from sunrise on, would give them the best estimate of time of death.

  She and Lars heard the pop at the same time and stumbled backward. There wasn’t a lot of space in the room—about a hundred square feet filled with a bed and dresser and nightstand. MacAulay grabbed a beaker and held it under the thermometer. He shook his h
ead.

  “I’ve read about this, of course,” he said. “Seen it in film.”

  The liver was a dicey organ. It just as often filled with bile during the end-of-life process as it shuddered to a stop. Sticking it was sometimes like popping a balloon.

  Outside she heard the closing of vehicle doors, and from where she stood in the small upstairs bedroom, she watched her forensics techs as they changed out gear and headed toward the house. A few minutes later one of them arrived at the top of the stairs, sidled past the gurney MacAulay had left in the hall, and stopped at the threshold to the bedroom, a tool kit in each hand.

  Nicole greeted the tech, Jenner Lee. “Thanks for staying,” she said. He was one of the first who had arrived on scene at the lake, and in fact he had been waiting onshore as Nicole pulled the skiff into dock.

  “I always appreciate a little overtime,” he said. The smile was genuine, if somewhat worn. The night shift in forensics was a skeleton crew consisting of two techs. With a start time of ten PM, Jenner was running at fourteen hours.

  “Standing room only,” MacAulay said.

  Nicole didn’t need further invitation. “I have some calls to make.” She brushed past Lars but on her way out said to MacAulay, “I understand you and Tandy had a good conversation on your way up.”

  “We did,” he agreed.

  “So let’s talk before you leave the scene.”

  “I’ll find you,” he promised.

  Nicole took the stairs quickly, grateful for increased ventilation. In the living room she found the second tech, Molly Sounder, crouched at the window where the screen had been removed. She’d already dusted for prints—the powder was visible from several feet away—and was peeling something from the windowsill with a pair of long tweezers. Nicole stopped and watched.

  “What is that?”

  “Tread from a boot is my guess,” she said. “Seen plenty of it. Thinking military style. There’s pattern on this piece.” She held it under the light from the window. “So it’s a good find. We can get make and model from this, even size.”

  “All that in something the size of a splinter?”

  “That’s at least three centimeters in width and a half an inch long.” She sealed it in an evidence bag. “So far the most valuable trinket we’ve recovered here.” She smiled at Nicole. “I already casted several prints in the garden bed outside the window. Similar treads, different sizes, and all of them had to plant in order to lift themselves up and into the house. I don’t think I’ve casted better.”

  “How many men were there?”

  “Five. Some of the prints are partials—there was a lot of trampling—but five distinct size and weight combinations in the mix.”

  “That’s good work, Molly,” Nicole said. She was never short of impressed when it came to forensics. The more science they had behind an arrest, the better the outcomes. Always.

  “Thanks, Sheriff.”

  Nicole walked into the sunshine and the cool air. Noon and the temperature was a balmy sixty-two degrees. So far north, April often brought them unpredictable weather. She pulled a bottle of water from her Yukon, then closed the door and leaned against it as she typed a few notes into her phone. She’d been up and running eleven hours with only a few hours of sleep before Monte’s phone call. Ten hours of high-adrenaline pulls and lows in between. She was tired but doubted she’d see her bed before nine or ten o’clock that night.

  The evidence was beginning to accumulate in the county morgue. The original vic was stowed in a freezer compartment, awaiting MacAulay’s attention. He had stopped long enough to place the placenta in cold storage, and the body here would soon follow.

  MacAulay had mentioned needing blood type and a DNA sample from both inside and outside the placental sac. Both were easy tasks. The GSW here could be processed with perhaps an hour or two of time. The vic on ice was more complicated. He would need to thaw at room temperature with tissue and fluids collected along the way. She did a quick Google search. Up to twenty-four hours for a corpse to defrost. And the process included a caving in of flesh and other gruesome breakdown.

  Lars came out the front door. He had his cell out and stylus in hand. Digital note-taking was the rage. It cut down on paperwork and improved their ability to read case notes when all they needed to do was push print from their cell phones.

  “TOD between midnight and three AM,” he said.

  “Wow, that’s good.”

  “Numbers don’t lie,” Lars said. “Doc was up there taking temperature readings inside and outside the body, looked up temps through the night and the rate of rise and fall and barometric this or that.”

  “You’re impressed.”

  “Yeah. You can teach an old horse new tricks.”

  MacAulay wasn’t that old. In fact, he was younger than Nicole by eleven months.

  “So right around the time of Monte’s call and inside the window for the birth of the child.”

  “We need to find the young woman,” Lars said. “If nothing else, the timing could be helpful.”

  “She saw or heard something,” Nicole said. “Whoever happened to Monte and Baker could have happened to her.”

  Lars nodded. “MacAulay said Tandy told him she was Middle Eastern, coloring and accent. Possibly Syrian.”

  “And the vic upstairs looks a lot like the baby’s father.”

  “Both soldier types.” Lars made a note in his phone. “I’ll put calls through to the closest bases, see if they have any missing persons.”

  The vic upstairs wore combat boots and a buzz cut. He was fair-haired and pale skinned. Georgia Peach’s boyfriend had similar coloring. Semper fi. There were no Marine bases in Montana, but the state had an Air Force base, an army reserve, and a secreted regiment that was all about missiles and wing captains. But all of it was far away from Blue Mesa. They were hardly a hub of military action. Militia, that was another story. She was aware of a few factions, calling themselves by various names, who gathered in the name of patriotism.

  “Yeah, do that. And contact USMC, see if they will provide a list of servicemen with connections to Blue Mesa.”

  “Now you’re asking for gold from a silver mine.”

  True. The military was tight with information, classified or not. They might help with an ID if they had a body, but not if a soldier was in the wind. “Ask MacAulay to examine the body for tattoos first thing.”

  Lars nodded and made a note of it. “We checked for dog tags when we rolled him. Nothing.”

  “There’s been talk of an organized movement,” Nicole began. “All under the radar. Supporters of refugees who provide them with a place to stay, a meal, clothing, even medical attention.”

  “That ‘underground railroad,’ ” Lars agreed. “I’ve heard whispers of it.”

  It had been strictly a BP concern up until that moment, and Nicole and her department hadn’t received a briefing on any of it. It was a question for Green, their division chief, when she saw him next.

  “I can see Tandy doing that. Providing medical care,” Nicole continued. “I mean, it’s not like she let something as small as a name bother her.”

  And there was no telling how many she was helping, not that Nicole was particularly concerned about the numbers. But if the young woman they were seeking was Syrian and Tandy had information that led to family connections, finding her would not be nearly as impossible as it seemed. Nicole would have to take another pass at the woman.

  “You get a look at the DOA on ice?” Nicole asked.

  Lars nodded. “That was something.”

  Terror, stark and thick enough to slice.

  “Nationality?”

  “Could be Syrian,” Lars said.

  “I thought so too. It fits the activity we’ve seen around the lake.”

  “Shadows against the backdrop of night,” Lars said. “There are homes in our jurisdiction providing help.”

  “Yeah, but which?” Last Nicole had heard, BP hadn’t gotten close to identifyi
ng known sympathizers. “We’ll circulate his likeness,” she said. Not a picture but a police sketch. Anything else would be frightening.

  “No missing-person reports that come close to matching the guy.”

  Of course not. UDAs couldn’t take the risk of reporting a missing loved one. “MacAulay says he couldn’t have been killed before Thanksgiving week, when we had that three-day stretch of temps in the teens. The human body needs that long and that cold to deep freeze.”

  “Five months.”

  Or less, but missing for how long on top of that?

  “Female is possibly underage,” she said. “Tandy didn’t say for sure, but that’s the feel.”

  “An illegal crossing,” Lars began, “draws BP out on the lake. They make no mention of contact with the UDAs in their base reports, so they lost that thread but stumble on the dead guy in the ice. That’s a weird one. It’s not like they were following a treasure map. What drew them to that particular spot?”

  “They’ve been looking for the ice man for weeks,” Nicole said. “Maybe last night Monte was lucky.”

  “Before you arrive—what was it, thirty-five, forty minutes from the time you hang up with Monte until Ty is loading the boat down the slip?”

  He scrolled through his notes, but Nicole knew the answer.

  “Thirty-eight minutes from call to scene,” she said.

  “Another twenty minutes before contact is made with the BP skiff. It’s not such a small window of time,” Lars said. “But add the party barge, a pregnant girl, and the guy upstairs, and the night is standing room only.”

  “Tandy said she saw the party boat sweeping the lake.”

  Lars raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “She was still uphill then and had good visual. She heard the voices of men raised in argument and then saw the bigger boat searching the water.”

  “Man overboard,” Lars said.

  “At least one,” Nicole agreed. “And there was time for that. Time for whoever was aboard to search, to make shore, and for the current to pull the party boat back toward the center of the lake.”