as I settled, the smell came back into focus and it was stronger. I wished I’d had the tin of Vicks we used at homicide scenes to dab inside my nose. Instead I pressed my left hand to my nostrils and pointed the flashlight to where the boar had been snuffling.
In a slight depression at the base of a clump of black mangrove roots my light caught a torn strip of yellow plastic first. The animals had shredded it and parts were still pushed down into the thick muck. When I fanned out with the light and got down closer, even I could identify bone fragments. Out here in the wet heat where insects and microbes flourish, a corpse could be consumed in a matter of a few days. Scavengers like the boar and gators and even birds would cause a certain amount of destruction and drag evidence for yards, maybe more, spreading out the crime scene. Non-biodegradables like plastic and clothing would last much longer, but even they would eventually disappear.
I did not want to disturb more than I had to, so I stepped up onto the tree root and bent to pick up a strip of the plastic. It was a medium thickness like the kind used for police tarps. I’d used them myself to cover bodies, to give them some dignity in death while the news camera crews in Philly flocked around homicide scenes. “Bastard,” I whispered aloud.
I shined the flashlight down into the pile again where the boar’s hooves had dug down and the light found something metal the size of a penny. I snapped a twig from the tree and poked it loose. It was a snap button, still rimmed by frayed blue-jean material with the word GUESS stamped into it. I put the button and strip of plastic into a ziplock baggy and then I widened the search, not panicked but intent. If it weren’t edible the animals wouldn’t have carried it.
I studied the muck in concentric circles at first, like I’d seen crime techs do. Then I took a chance and looked back from the pile shaped like a cone where the digging boar would have flung the muck and bone as it was pawing.
I picked up the glint of shiny metal six feet back. It was lying in a patch of standing water, just below the surface, and shimmered in the beam as I moved closer. The water had cleansed it of dirt and it gleamed up at me. It was a flat chrome bottle opener with a handle at one end, the kind of opener women bartenders slip into their back pockets, the kind men watch and the girls know that they watch. But this was never supposed to be a part of the game.
CHAPTER 32
“I’m bringing the evidence back,” I said. “Where do you want to meet?”
“At Kim’s,” Richards said. “She’s back.”
“What?”
“Marci, she’s back and I’ve got her working.”
I was in the truck, driving, fast, for the city. It had taken me half the time to get back to the roadway. I stayed in the middle of the two-track to keep from messing up any tire prints for the impression techs but there wasn’t anything else to look for. With what we had, Morrison’s documented trip to the burial spot, a trace of a police tarp and obvious property belonging to the missing girls, we could squeeze the hell out of this guy. And that was before the crime scene guys got out there to match his tire tracks and go through the forensics at the site. In daylight there was no telling what they might find. The son of a bitch had gotten cocky. That had been his mistake.
When I got back to my truck I’d used a marine rope from my truck and strung a barrier across the entrance just in case someone should come along. When I got Richards on her cell phone I told her what I’d found and she’d gone quiet long enough to make me think I’d lost the connection again. Then she came back.
“I’ll call the Florida Highway Patrol and have them put a trooper out there to secure the scene,” she said.
“You’re still on Morrison, right?”
“Yeah. I’ve been checking with dispatch. They’ve been in touch with him by radio and have been sending him out on regular assignments,” Richards said.
“So what’s with Marci? Where the hell was she?”
Richards lowered her voice.
“She won’t say. When I asked her she just said, ‘Wait and