She Who Watches (8 page)

“Unless we determine that the victim is a tribal member, this is your case. I'd be obliged if we worked together, though. The beaded leather may or may not be related to the body—in which case, we may have a murder case as well as an archeological find.”

“Always glad to share the wealth.” Mac checked his watch. “Ready to take a look, Dana?”

“I am.” Turning to Nate, she asked, “Have you started a crime-scene log yet?”

He raised his clipboard. “Right here.”

A set of headlights highlighted the scene as Mac and Dana introduced themselves to Steve Whitman, the deputy medical examiner for the county. Mac hoped Whitman would be half as good as Kristen Thorpe. As the head medical examiner for the state, Dr. Thorpe often made field visits, and though Mac sometimes thought she'd like to, she couldn't respond to all thirty-six counties herself. For this reason, each county employed deputy medical examiners who were trained in the field of death investigation. All unnatural deaths were routed to Dr. Thorpe's office in Portland if the deputy examiners determined they would require an autopsy to determine the cause of death or for identification.

“What's ODOT doing here?”Nate asked as the vehicle with the lights pulled up to them. The orange color of the truck indicated that it was an Oregon Department of Transportation vehicle—the one Mac had requested to bring up the lights.

“I invited them,” Mac answered. “They're bringing some halogen lights for us to use while we process the scene. I figured we'd be working through the night with that fire looming over us.”

“Good call.”Nate looked across the river, toward the direction of the fire. “We have our entire department on the fire; I'm afraid I'm the only resource we could spare at the moment with the road closures and evacuations. Your troopers out of Madras and The Dalles are helping out on the east side, but we could use even more help.”

“We'll make do.” Mac motioned toward the ODOT guys and told them where he wanted the lights. “Let's get going. With the fire bearing down on us, this scene isn't going to hold until morning.” Mac set his box on the ground and pulled out a digital camera. He photographed the scene, taking several pictures of the earth around the body in the event the camera could capture a footprint that his eyes were missing in the poor light. The smell of smoke partially masked the sour odor of rotting flesh, making the job easier than usual.

Dana sketched the area, dictating notes onto her tape recorder as they approached the body. “Any idea on how long she's been here?” Dana asked the medical examiner.

“Not really,” the heavyset man replied. “I can't give a guesstimate until we get her out of the hole.”

“I have enough pictures,” Mac said, going back to his box. “Dana, I need you to help me grid the scene.”

Dana knelt next to Mac and pulled out a stack of wood stakes and some twine.

Mac gestured toward the two FBI agents, who were standing nearby. “They're a big help, aren't they?”

Dana shrugged. “Guess they figure it's not their case either way now. If our victim turns out to be Sara, it's our ticket. If she's a tribal member or anyone else, it will probably still be ours. Besides, do we really want them mucking up our crime scene?”

“Good point.”

Dana cleared her throat, apparently affected by the condition of the remains. “They probably just want some closure, Mac. It must be tough seeing your hopes of finding someone crushed like that.”

“We don't know it's Sara yet.” Mac stood up and took the stakes from Dana. “Let me take those. I'll hammer the stakes if you document the evidence; you have better handwriting than I do.”

“Deal.” She picked up her clipboard and legal pad as Mac walked toward the body.

A mass of thick, dark hair and rigid cheekbone were visible above the soft dirt. The eye socket was beneath the surface with the rest of the face. “The hair length looks like Sara's, only the color seems a bit lighter,” Dana noted.

“It could be the dust.” Mac approached the body. “Let's lay out a twelve-by-twelve grid with square-foot grid markers.”

Mac pounded the stakes into the ground, one after another, until he had a chessboard grid set up around the body. He'd used heavy stakes at the perimeter and thin wire standards closer to the body to support the twine and hopefully not destroy any evidence. They would process the scene the same way in which an archeologist would process an ancient tomb or preservation site. Because of the fire, however, they'd have to move much more quickly.

Mac photographed and processed each square of the grid around the body. After a cursory search of each square foot for evidence, he shoveled the dirt from the squares into a plastic bag and labeled each bag with an evidence tag.

“What's he going to do with that?” Nate asked Dana, who was documenting each bag on the department evidence form.

“We'll sift the dirt once we get to a controlled environment, to make sure we aren't missing some evidence, like a bullet or something that was dropped or passed through the body.”

“Check.”

Nate seemed truly interested in the process, and Mac appreciated that. He painstakingly processed the area, and it was well after midnight when he indicated that they could began to exhume the body.

“The body is nude,” he told Dana, “and seems to be covered with a white powder. Lime, I'll bet.” Mac scratched his chin with his wrist to avoid touching himself with his latex-gloved hand. He secured some of the powder and dropped it into an evidence bag.

“Lime?” Nate hunkered down beside him.

“To decompose the body and throw off time of death. The lime works great if it's wet and decomposes the body. The lime here probably didn't do much because there hasn't been much rainfall. My thinking is that whoever buried this gal wanted the body to decompose quickly. But he forgot to do his homework on the conditions needed to make the lime work. We'll have to let the crime lab verify that, though.” He handed the bag to Dana, who added it to her evidence roster.

“One thing for sure.” Mac grinned up at Nate and lifted the dead woman's left hand out of the shallow grave. “This isn't an ancient site. Not unless your ancestors wore wristwatches.”

“Humph. I concur with your findings, Detective.”Nate raised an eyebrow at Mac's attempt at humor. “But we still have that piece of beaded leather.”

The medical examiner assisted in cleaning the dirt from the body, every particle going into an evidence bag. The body was lying on its right side in the hole. There was no evidence of restraints or clothing. “She can't have been here too long. The high desert only gets around six to eight inches of rain a year,” the M.E. said. “Most bodies found out here look like mummies, with the skin stretched over bone and tendon. This woman hasn't even begun to mummify. I'm guessing maybe four to five weeks.”

“That's how long Sara's been missing,” Dana said.

Preparing to pull the body clear of the shallow grave, the medical examiner nodded at Mac. “You ready for this?”

“Just a sec.” Mac looked for and found a better handhold. “OK, let's get her out. I hate doing it this way; we should take more time. But it looks as though Mother Nature has other plans for us.”

Mac and Steve pulled on the body, sliding it out of the shallow grave and setting it down about four feet away. The hair was long and black. “Any of your people unaccounted for, Nate?” Mac asked.

Nate shook his head. “Nope—not that I know of, anyway.”

Mac dusted off the face and then stood and backed away from the body. Without looking at the agents, Mac asked, “You guys have a picture of Sara?”

“Yeah. Hang on a sec.” Miller went back to his car and hurried back to where Mac was standing. He handed over a large black-and-white photo of their missing person. Mac scrutinized the photo, focusing on Sara's beautiful features. He placed the photo on the ground beside their victim's face. Sara had high cheekbones and a small mole on her cheek. So did the corpse.

“We'll need the doc here to tell us for sure,” Mac said, “but I'm guessing this is Sara Watson.”

EIGHT

M
ac and Dana secured an evidence tag over the zipper of the body bag after Sara's body was loaded in the back of the medical examiner's truck.

“Looks like the investigation is yours now, Detectives.” Agent Lauden rubbed his forehead. “I hate to see a case end like this.”

Dana nodded, offering empathy. “We were all hoping for a better outcome.”

“She was probably killed within a few hours after the abduction.” Miller pursed his lips. “We'll meet up with you guys Monday morning to brief you and turn over our files.”

“Thanks,” Mac said. “Appreciate the offer.”

“I'm taking the remains into Portland,” the M.E. told them. “We won't be able to get to the autopsy until late morning.”

They would need the official report from the medical examiner's office, of course, but it looked as though all the rumors and speculation of Sara's whereabouts had come to an end with a dog's find in a shallow grave. Mac watched the M.E.'s taillights move into the darkness outside of the bright halogen lights. Tires crunched on rocks and pavement as Steve pulled out of the campground, en route to the state medical examiner's office.

He looked up at the red sky, the peaceful glow of the sunset long since replaced by the forest fire's ominous presence. Ash fell like snow over the White River and the empty campground behind him.
Why, God?
Sara's sweet little girl would grow up without a mother.

“The fire's getting close.” The voice startled him. He turned to see Nate standing beside him.

“Sure looks that way. I hope our scene is still intact later. I'd like to see it in the daylight. Any reports from the fire line?”

“Burning hot, still heading north, northeast.”Nate pulled off his green ball cap and wiped his brow with a once-white handkerchief.

“My wife and kids are going to Madras to stay with her sister, just to be on the safe side.”

“Do you live on the . . .” Mac stopped midsentence, not knowing the acceptable term for the Indian reservation. Although listed on the map as a reservation, the word sounded a little harsh to Mac, and he didn't want to offend Nate.

“On the rez?” Nate smiled. “Yeah, I have a house on Warm Springs tribal land and have some pasture land in Jefferson County.”

Mac nodded. “Sorry, I didn't know the proper name.”

“No worries. The reservation or rez is fine. I'm proud of my heritage and my home. I left Warm Springs for a few years, but my heart and my spirit longed to come back.”

“You moved away for work?” Mac asked.

“Actually, I moved away for eight years after high school—four years in the army and four years at Oregon State University. My wife and I moved back to the reservation after college to farm, raise horses, and have a family. Things were a little tight a couple of years back, so I took a job as a police reserve at the sheriff 's office. One thing led to another, and I ended up taking a full-time officer assignment at Warm Springs. I like this line of work more than I thought I would. The Spirit led me to this profession for a reason— if nothing else, to give back to my people. Many of them are not as fortunate as myself. Alcoholism still runs rampant on the reservation, and many of our people have lost focus.”

“The Spirit?” Mac asked, thinking Nate would spin an interesting yarn of Native American beliefs.

“The Holy Spirit.” Nate turned to look at the red glow of the fire. He slapped the cap back on his head. “Do you believe in God, Mac?”

Nate's directness startled him. A few years ago, the question might have been met with a sneer and a flippant answer from Mac. Maybe having Kevin as a partner had changed him—made him less cynical and more at ease with the idea of God. He remembered when Kevin had asked the same question of him in the early days of their friendship. His response had been much different then. He'd answered more out of embarrassment than a true reflection of his personal beliefs.

“Yeah, Nate, I do.” Although he didn't understand many things in today's world, Mac's faith had grown over the past year to the point he could answer the question with little hesitation. “Are you interested in working this case with us, Nate?” he asked.

“You mean it?” Nate smiled.

“Of course,” Mac said.

“You bet I am.” Nate couldn't keep from grinning.

“Not that you'd have much choice.” Dana, who'd been talking to Miller and Lauden, joined them. “Having the body dumped this close to your jurisdiction, I'm sure we're going to have some follow-up that would require your expertise.”

“Ever been to an autopsy?” Mac asked.

“A couple of times, both on natural deaths.”

“Why don't you plan on coming to the post with us?” Mac offered. “That is, if you can get away.”

“I'll try. Since there may be some tribal ties to the case, I doubt the police chief will have a problem with my attending. I'll tell him I'm in for the experience. He's pretty progressive with our training. Where should we meet?”

“How about our OSP office in southeast Portland at around ten? We'll shoot for a post time of eleven or so. Is that too early for you with the drive time built in?”

“Let's see. My workday starts around three a.m. to take care of the farm and horses before I go to work. I may be able to drag myself out of bed on a Saturday by seven o'clock to make your schedule.”

Nate grinned and slapped Mac on the shoulder.

“I'm not getting up any earlier than I have to. I guess I wouldn't make a very good farmer.” Mac glanced at his watch. Almost one thirty. Even with a late start in the morning, they wouldn't get much sleep.

“Tell you what, Mac. There's nothing better than working the earth with your own hands. I'll make a deal with you. I help you solve this case, keeping in mind I don't get paid overtime on my days off like you city slickers, and you help me on the farm for a weekend. Deal?”