been placed by her killer. She took in the broken streetlight above and the surrounding cobbled area. The police tape that had been previously strung was flapping in the wind. The screen was gone and there was no officer present to secure the scene. She supposed that they didn’t have enough manpower to do that sort of thing. The crime scene apparently got one going-over and that was it.
The public had been duped into thinking that all police departments and all police investigations were conducted just like those on the TV shows. Cool offices, every forensic gadget available, limitless resources, hunky men with awesome firepower, and women in tight clothes showing cleavage.
The idea of limitless resources was a joke, even for the FBI. And the last time Pine had shown cleavage while on the job was…never.
She ducked under the tape and headed behind the line of old buildings on the main street. This was the way the killer had to have come. And Pine was careful to keep far to the side of the path. She would have liked to assume that the local police had already covered this area for footprints, other markings, and traces of any kind, but she couldn’t safely trust that such had happened. At least not to the level of detail she would want.
She walked the area back and forth for over an hour, reaching all the way to the tree line before concluding that she could find nothing there.
She then took a small Maglite from her pocket and went into the trees just as the rain started to fall harder. Fortunately, there was no thunder and lightning. She followed a worn-down path until she was free of the trees once more. There was a dirt road here that was quickly becoming mud. Any tire tracks that might have been there had long since been obliterated.
She walked back to the main street and ducked under the cover of one of the storefronts. Her hands in her pockets, she thought about what to do next.
The ME had emailed her the photos of the round marks on Rebane’s backside and hamstrings. She took out her phone and looked at them, scrolling through them one by one. They could have come from many things, although Pine ideally needed to drill that down to one source to make any progress on the case.
She looked around the small downtown. The rain had scared away most of the pedestrians, although there were a few hardy souls still out and about. The place looked pretty much the same, at least the little that she could recall. She wished at this moment that her memory could be perfect, but that was simply not possible. Eyewitnesses, she knew, were not reliable. The average person really saw little of what was going on around them and remembered even less. Even then, they got the details of what they did remember wrong more than half the time. That had always troubled Pine about eyewitness testimony in a court case. It was often the deciding factor for a jury deciding whether someone was going to lose their liberty, or their life.
She leaned against a support post and watched the rain now pour down, quickly flooding the road. And while my memory is better than most because of my training, I didn’t possess that training at six years old. So on that score, my recall is as bad as everyone else’s.
She had proof of that with her realization that maybe her attacker and Mercy’s kidnapper had not come through the window, but rather his image had been reflected in their mirror.
But what if that memory also turns out to be false? What if I really didn’t see anyone in the mirror?
Pine was a seasoned detective. But none of her other cases had involved a family member. She felt confused and unorganized, things she could not afford to be if she really was going to get to the truth.
She knew one thing, though: She was going to have to take another crack at Myron Pringle. He had not been entirely truthful with her, and she didn’t know why.
“You look pensive.”
She gazed over at the black Porsche SUV that had slowed down in front of her. The rear window was down, and Jack Lineberry was peering at her.
“Just thinking some things through.”
“Got time for lunch? I know a place over in Americus. I can drop you back at the Cottage.”
Pine really wasn’t hungry for food, but she was for information.