Axel nodded and gave his attention to the body. Flies were swarming around them.
As Andrew had noted, the sky was alive with vultures.
But at least this woman had been found. And that gave them a far better chance of finding her killer than the women who went missing, never to be found.
The victim had been in her midthirties, he thought, but even that was difficult to judge. Even the prettiest little birds that flitted about down here were fond of soft tissue. That meant they’d gone for the eyes, the lips and the line at the waist where the body had somehow been severed.
“Never seen an alligator do anything like that,” Andrew noted.
“But they will eat what’s already dead when they’re hungry enough. Don’t need to drown a body when it’s—”
“Gator can only snap down,” Nigel said. “Usually lies in wait, mouth open.”
“When it hunts on shore, it finds prey, opens its mouth and snaps. I’d say improbable, but possible. Snapped down on her, dragged off the bottom half. It’s not like he’s going to think about it and say, Uh-oh, I only got half, better grab that other part, too,” Andrew said. “And what with all the constrictor snakes we’ve got around here now, food is scarce.”
Axel saw Dr. Warner standing with his medical bag in hand, stoic as he waited, but surely growing impatient.
He looked at the body again. There were points he could note without the bottom half of her body. She was naked except for remnants of her clothing—Axel thought her clothing had been destroyed by birds or other scavenging creatures, rather than having been torn by a human hand. A ring of blood sat around her throat like a necklace. There were abrasions on her wrists; she had been bound at one time. Most probably by rope. The abrasion marks were rough. Someone had held her against her will, but with the bottom half of the body gone, they wouldn’t know about sexual assault unless Dr. Warner found telltale fluids elsewhere on the body. Most evidence would have been heavily compromised.
The Everglades, as Axel knew too well, could swallow many a sin like a massive, stygian, dark hole.
He stood and looked at the tribal policeman and the homicide detective, both men he had known since he’d been a child. They had each decided on different paths to law enforcement, all headed in the direction where they thought they might serve best.
Nigel and Andrew had often worked together. As a Miccosukee officer, Andrew had passed all the state certification requirements and then been commissioned by the United States Department of the Interior, Indian Bureau Affairs and by the National Park Service as well as the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Complicated, but while a homicide detective would be called in by Miami-Dade on this, the eastern side of the Trail, Andrew would remain part of the force of the investigation.
Axel knew that during the years he had been at the academy with Adam Harrison’s Krewe of Hunters unit, his two old friends had been working many a case together.
Two bodies in oil drums—case solved, traced back to a drug ring.
A domestic situation. Murder at a campground.
The capture of felons involved in a murder-for-hire case, caught as they tried to hide in the great southern section of the river of grass.
Axel knew as much as he did about the cases because the three of them had kept up and also made use of each other—listening, being sounding boards, offering theories or suggestions from afar. Sometimes the distance could lend a different perspective—like a bird’s-eye view when others were on the ground. And he’d come down himself, just a year or so ago, on the oil drum case.
And now, they were together. The pattern emerging suggested there was a cold and calculating killer on the loose. A serial killer, but not the usual kind. Sane and organized. Aware of the density of the Everglades, the ability of the land, the foliage and the animals to destroy evidence, allowing the killing to go on and on with the bodies leaving nothing for investigators to use in their search for justice.
Dr. Keith Warner came striding over.
“Let me take a look at her,” he said simply, hunkering down as Axel stepped back. “You’ve noted the obvious. She was bound. Throat slit. I’m not seeing any obvious defensive wounds, but under these circumstances, I won’t know until the body is cleaned. There will be things