the mud-crusted blue tarp that had been her burial shroud. Eric was with him when he had received the call and insisted on driving separately while Jack picked up his partner.
Eric Manson stood on the muddy creek bank nearby—his five-hundred-dollar Italian loafers ruined in the green mud—and watched the fire department’s water rescue diver slip back into the water. Responding police and fire department vehicles were parked a hundred yards from the creek, but any tracks near the creek bank had already been covered by dozens of others.
Jack and Liddell had interviewed the first arriving officers and were told the fishermen said they had “hooked” into “it” directly under the overpass. When they pulled “it” up to the side of the boat, they saw a blue tarp wrapped with chains. They were so shocked they almost turned the boat over. The old man had paddled to the creek bank while the young one held on to the gaff. They had both dragged it—and the concrete blocks that were tied to each end—out of the water. Then they called the police.
“Do you think it’s the dancer?” Eric asked as another diver splashed into the muddy creek water.
“Samantha Steele was five-two,” Liddell remarked. “The girl from Harrisburg was taller than that, wasn’t she?” He checked his notebook. “Hope Dupree was five-five.”
“It could be either of them. Or neither of them,” Jack said. It was difficult to accurately estimate a person’s height when the head was missing.
Eric remarked gloomily, “We have a serial killer on our hands.”
Walker came toward them, his boots making a sucking sound each time one would dislodge from the mud. “This one has a tattoo of a butterfly on her left ankle. I’ve got close-ups.”
“Can you send all these photos to Detective Jones in Harrisburg?” Jack asked.
“Will do,” Walker said.
Eric lifted one shoe out of the mud with a sucking sound. “No reason for me to stay here. I’ll call Trent.”
“Good thinking,” Jack said, glad to dismiss him. Had Eric just realized this was a serial murderer case?
He examined the body. No defensive wounds on the hands. Tattoos—ivy vines—climbed around the left arm from elbow to shoulder. A butterfly on her ankle stood out in the filmy mud on her skin. No other visible wounds or lacerations on the torso or extremities. So, maybe it wasn’t Hope Dupree. Most meth addicts lived a rough life. He would expect her body to be more emaciated, and somehow damaged. This body was not anorexic.
“Liddell, can you get someone to find the dancer’s boyfriend?”
“Way ahead of you, pod’na. He’s going to meet us at the morgue.”
“Where are the witnesses?” Jack asked one of the uniformed officers.
“Over there.” The officer pointed toward a skate park just east of their location. “And that,” he added, pointing to a bow sticking out of the head-high brush twenty feet away, “is their skiff. We checked. There’s nothing in it.”
“Let’s look anyway,” Jack said to his partner.
“That’s why we get the big bucks, pod’na.”
The skiff was made up of rotted planks that were sealed, here and there, with what looked like roofing tar and cut strips of rubber inner tube material. A cardboard shoebox was open on its side in the bottom of the boat. Fishing line, fishing hooks, red and white floats, and a pair of rusty pliers was strewn on the floor with dozens of empty beer cans. A mop or broom or rake handle had a large metal hook wired to one end, and the contraption lay on the ground by the skiff.
One of the rescue divers surfaced in the creek and shouted to get Jack’s attention. He raised two fingers and pointed into the water.
“Aww! What the . . . ?Oh shit!” Jack said.
Divers brought up two more blue tarp–wrapped bundles identical to the one the fishermen had snagged with a homemade gaff. Both were weighted with cinder blocks, and one was tied with the kind of chains used on a swing set. That one contained the body of an adult white male, fully clothed, covered in what could best be described as prison tats: one a dragon, another some kind of Celtic knots, others too faded from age to make out, and some scars that might have been old knife wounds. F-U-C-K Y-O-U was tattooed on the fingers, most likely not by his mother. The right nipple was missing, but it looked to be an old wound and had healed completely.
The other body was that of a young white female, early twenties