on it. Near it. In his jurisdiction. Mr. Blaine, the forest ranger, was there with the bodies, waiting to turn the investigation over to him. Did he know where the clearing was? Spencer shook himself to clear his head and to banish the weariness from his muscles. Wait by the phone,he told the hikers. You can save me time by showing me where to go. And I’ll need statements from you.
He had called Alton Banner and asked him to meet the patrol car at the roadhouse. The caller had assured him that the victims were dead, but Spencer wanted to take every precaution.
He took both cameras, the Polaroid and the 35-millimeter; the notebook; and all the paraphernalia that had to be carried to a crime scene. Spencer knew the drill: he had done it often enough before; he had even been in charge of investigations in the past, but they had been trifling occurrences of no real consequence. Murder itself was uncommon enough in this rural mountain county. A case like this was almost unheard of. You would have to go back decades to find another one. God help him, had he been eager? Had he been excited to have a terrible case dumped in his lap after weeks of routine and paperwork?
He locked the office and headed down the steps toward his patrol car, wondering if in his grogginess, he had forgotten some crucial point of police procedure. Oh shit,he thought, as his hand touched the car-door handle. The TBI.
He was running now. Unlock the office—his fingers seemed to have grown two sizes in as many minutes as he fumbled with the lock, swallowing the urge to kick in the door. A few more minutes wouldn’t matter. The real pros wouldn’t be there for another three hours at least, because Knoxville was 120 miles
away. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. You called them out for any serious crime, because they had all the toys. The TBI had a fully trained death squad of officers who did nothing but crime scenes, and who knew how to check for fingerprints, hair and fiber evidence, bloodstains. They also had the lab to process the evidence, which meant that they would get it all anyway, so he might as well let them collect the samples themselves so that there would be no question about tainted evidence when the case came to court. Whenthe case came to court. Spencer wouldn’t even consider the possibility of a stalemate.
He checked the county map before he made the call, because he would have to give directions to someone unfamiliar with the county back roads. He couldn’t say, “Turn left at the Evanses’ place, and go past that field where the white horse is usually grazing.” No. He located the church and the roadhouse on the map, noted down the road numbers, approximated the distances from the main road. Then he made the call.
The officer from the TBI would meet him at the crime scene in a couple of hours. Say, 3A.M. Spencer would secure the area and do the photography and the site mapping while he waited. When the sun came up, they would be better able to determine what they were dealing with. Nobody was getting any sleep that night. That much was a given.
He left the office with the taste of cold coffee still in his mouth. He found an all-night country station on the radio and turned it up as loud as he could stand it, so that the noise would keep him awake. He was hoping for happy songs that would drive away the darkness outside and the darkness to come.
One of the vacationing firemen was waiting for him at the crossroads beside the church. When he recognized the patrol car, he stepped out of the shadows of an oak tree and flagged him down. Spencer parked in the church’s gravel lot and followed the young man down the road and through the field toward the dark woods beyond.
The fireman’s name was Al Hinshaw, and he said that his buddy Neil was waiting at the site with the ranger. He explained about their hiking vacation, and how they’d stumbled over the bodies on their way back to the shelter. Hell of a way to end your vacation, he’d said, shaking his head. The trail was supposed to be a peaceful place, wasn’t it?
“It usually is,” said Spencer. Now he saw the glow of a Coleman lantern, and he knew they were within hailing distance