Alexa righted herself and glared.
Wallace jumped in like a playground supervisor. “This is Miss Glock, forensics from Auckland.” He handed Alexa the crime kit that had slid off her shoulder. “This is Ranger Gellman.”
“Glock?” The ranger ran a hand through tousled blond hair. He looked to be in his mid-forties.
“Like the gun.” If I had one I’d shoot.
“A Yank, eh? Call me Scratch.” His green eyes slowly raked her orange-clad body. He held up the tape for her to enter and showed off Crest whites.
Alexa focused on the fact that the rude ranger was on the inside of the core scene boundary. “You need to step out here,” she said.
He stepped toward her. “I like a Sheila who speaks her mind.”
She didn’t have time for macho crap. Ten yards past the ranger, a scarecrowish body wearing a camo hunting jacket was wedged against a fallen tree, a bright red tarp heaped next to it. She opened the crime kit, pulled on gloves and booties, readied the camera, grabbed evidence markers, and asked Wallace, “What’s the timeline of the discovery?”
The sergeant paused before speaking. “Right. Yesterday at 11:30 a.m. we received a call from a tramper who discovered the body.”
Stephen had said phones don’t work out here. “How did the hiker call?”
“He and his partner hightailed it to Big Hellfire Hut. Another tramper was there, waiting out the rain. He had a satellite radio.” Wallace flicked his chin toward Scratch. “Ranger Gellman hiked in to secure the area. That was yesterday, and Bob’s your uncle.”
Alexa looked at Scratch. “Why were hikers here? In the middle of nowhere?”
“Isn’t middle of nowhere. Just there,” Scratch pointed, “is the alternate North West Circuit track. It’s the high-tide detour.”
“Circuit track? What’s that?”
Stephen broke in. “It’s one of three main trails on the island. Takes ten days to hike it.”
Ten days of mud, sandflies, and quicksand? No thanks.
“The alternate cuts right through the Hellfire block,” Scratch said. “Kid who found the body was visiting the dunny.”
“The dummy?”
Scratch snorted. “He almost whizzed on the deceased.”
“What have you touched?” she asked.
“I moved the tarp to take a look-see. I didn’t touch the, er, body.”
She analyzed the taped-off area to make sure it was large enough, mindful of Dr. Winget’s tenet: Go big. You can always shrink the perimeter later. Her mentor and former boss at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation often popped into Alexa’s brain. Concluding that Dr. Winget would be satisfied, she ducked under, camera ready, eyes scanning left and right.
Scratch tried to follow, but Alexa put her hand up. “Stay back.”
“But…”
“You need to wait outside the perimeter.”
“Don’t get your knickers in a knot,” he said, stepping toward Stephen. “Yo, mate. Where you been? Didn’t see you at the DOC bash.”
Stephen mumbled something.
Keep an open mind, no jumping to conclusions, she thought. Her first photographs were wide angles. “Sergeant Wallace. There’s a pad and pencil in the kit. Will you sketch the scene?”
“On it.”
She nudged forward, aware daylight was diminishing.
Evidence needed to be photographed before it could be touched, but Alexa wasn’t hopeful for much. Rain and time had done their dance. There could still be fingerprints, she mulled, adjusting the lens. Prints aren’t as fragile as people think.
Her human decomp review had not progressed past Stage Two—the putrid bloating stage she had examined in the dumpster ten years ago. Alexa sniffed deeply. Only damp earth, loam, leaf rot filled her nostrils. No body gases.
During Stage Three, organs, muscle, and skin liquefy, leading to Stage Four—skeletonization.
It was Stage Four nestled against the tree. Alexa took time to form a general impression. The forest, the men, the strangeness of being in these remote woods collapsed to tunnel vision. The partly clad remains stretched full-length on its side. The skull faced the log as if the scene were too disturbing to witness. A rifle lay parallel to the buttock and back, less than a foot from the body. The left arm was concealed under the body, the right stretched at an awkward angle behind, hand resting near the hip. Scavengers had gnawed it to the bones. A gold band loosely encircled the metacarpal, or ring finger. The sight reminded her that a loved one would soon receive bad news. Hope would be jerked away.
She snapped photos, aware the position of the gun was important. Guns used in suicide were rarely recovered in the person’s hand. More often they were found on or near the body, as in this case. Its underside was an area from which Alexa hoped she could extract fingerprints.
Of course the position of the gun could have been staged. She searched the ground for drag marks. Moss and vegetation appeared trampled. She stepped back, took more pics.
“Where did the tarp come from?”
“The bloke who discovered the remains covered the body with it,” Scratch called. “Smart move, or I’d still be looking.”
“There should be a spent cartridge if he was shot here. Start searching while I examine the body. Glove-up first.”
“Glove-up? Who the hell are you?”
Alexa faced Scratch. Lots of times in her career, especially when she had been younger, male colleagues balked at being told what to do.
Wallace and Stephen complied. Two out of three, she thought—not bad. She turned back. Daylight was fading. A blood-curdling scream spliced the air. Another. Again.
“What the?”
“Female kiwi,” Stephen said softly. “Maybe the male will answer.”
She sucked a lungful of cool air. A boot imprint stopped her. She squatted, stuck a marker next to it, took close-ups.
“Probably the hiker who found the body,” Stephen said.
“Take a cast,” Alexa replied. “Supplies are in the kit.” She searched for more, but the greedy ground withheld.
Body time.
King’s skeleton—the parts exposed from sleeves, cuffs, and holes—would have made a perfect Halloween decoration back in the States. Alexa hadn’t known whether Halloween was celebrated in New Zealand. It had been a relief, really, that the day had passed with no fanfare. Halloween hype was touchy business for a Never Married No Kids. She missed the leftover candy, though. A Nestlé Crunch would hit the spot.
She carefully rolled the body flat. King—if it was King—wore a jacket of synthetic material. It showed little wear after ten months’ exposure to the elements. No visible tears that might indicate a struggle. The tip of a water bottle poked from a pocket.
The scream again. Closer. Evil. She had wanted to see kiwi but not now.
A bit of yellow caught her eye. She opened the jacket flap, revealing a wadded safety vest.
“Look at this,” Alexa called to Wallace.
“Why would he have taken off his high-vis vest?” Wallace asked. At some point he had put glasses on.
“Don’t know.” She took photos. “Maybe someone didn’t want him to be found.”
A higher-pitched scream made her start.
“Eh, that’s the male,” Stephen said.
Add it to her thumbs-down list: children, dogs, now kiwis.
The pants were in tatters, exposing bone. Ankle knobs were visible through remnants of sock, probably wool, and appeared too delicate to support a grown man. They disappeared into large black boots, the toe of one wedged under the log.
She could hear Stephen talking softly to Scratch as they searched for the ejected cartridge.
Alexa crept forward and zoomed in on the rifle, a rusting Browning A-bolt, and took several photos, first without evidence markers, and then with. Finished, she asked Wallace to see if the rifle was loaded.
Wallace carefully lifted it in his gloved hands. “The safety is off,” he noted. He set it and then removed the magazine, which he slipped into an evidence bag. “Okay. Safe now.”
“What kind of ammo is it?”
“Point thirty-two, medium.”
She needed to learn about guns and ammunition; Wallace’s reply meant nothing to her. She gingerly turned the rifle over and set up her fingerprint powder.
“Prints won’t be visible after all this time, eh?” Wallace commented.
Alexa ignored him and dusted the surface, hoping for a reward. The person who loaded the rifle, if not wearing gloves, would have transferred oils and sweat when pressing hard around the trigger or magazine chamber. She was let down; no identifiable marks appeared. “It might have been wiped clean.” Then she brightened, remembering an article she read on scientists finding fingerprints on wiped metal. “The ballistics guys might be able to find prints using electrostatic process.”
“Eh?”
“You can bag it now.”
She cleaned up her print kit and then got on her knees to examine the back of the skull. It was cue-ball smooth, which surprised her. After ten months, she would expect patches of hair to still be present, but then she remembered the photo—King had been mostly bald.
A beetle crawled out of a jagged hole. With a start, Alexa realized it was crawling out of the exit wound. “Be searching for a bullet too,” she said. Evidence like a gunpowder tattoo had decomposed long ago.
She set the camera down and maneuvered the skull for a frontal, grimacing when she discovered it was detached from the vertebrae.
The mandible was intact, but missing teeth created a macabre grin. “I’ll be able to tell if it’s King as soon as I can take X-rays.” She searched the ground for the missing teeth but couldn’t see them.
The entrance wound, smaller and neater than the exit, sat below the right eye socket. She imagined the bullet boring through the fragile skull-shell, perhaps somersaulting in deleterious assault on its fatal path through the brain, plowing through the jelly of King’s thoughts, actions, memories, deeds, feelings—his very soul—before exiting. She fought the urge to peer through the hole like a periscope to see King’s final thoughts. Had he thought of his wife or children? Had he known they were final thoughts?
What would my final thoughts be?
“Hand me the kit, please.”
Wallace set it next to her and watched as she removed a ruler and took measurements. She shook her head, jostling a faint caffeine headache, and gave thanks for bodily needs, for protesting scars, for sore knees, for these signs of life. She looked at the sergeant. “The entrance wound is awfully clean to be a contact shot. There’s no blow-out fragmenting.”
“So not suicide?”
Alexa sat back on her haunches. “I don’t think so.”
“And don’t forget that foot,” Scratch added, coming over. “He didn’t stick that boot under the log himself.”
The thought of someone deliberately wedging the body against the fallen tree and hiding the safety vest gave her the creeps. She looked at the darkening woods and flexed her cold, stiff fingers. Another strangled kiwi call floated from the shadows. With the gloaming breathing down her neck, she hustled to inventory the pockets—mints, compass whistle gadget, Repel bug repellent. Alexa bagged each, wondering about the whistle gadget. If the hunter had been lost, or in trouble, wouldn’t it have been in his hands? There was no phone or safety beacon. After gathering soil samples, she stood.
“I’m finished.”
Goosebumps pushed the hair on her arms to standing as she realized how isolated she was, here with a dead body, soul departed, and three strange men, souls debatable.