TUESDAY, 9:23 A.M.
BRIDGER-TETON NATIONAL FOREST
“This is where it happened.” She eyed the drop-off. “And look down there. See, that’s where I took pictures of the grizzly bear. I set up near that boulder by the gully. The bear was by the river. Across the river, that’s where the crime happened.” And where, a lifetime ago, she and Dad had gone fishing on the Grayback River. Now the murder overshadowed those memories.
Harper carefully led Sheriff Taggart and his investigator, Detective Moffett, closer to where she had been when she’d taken the pictures.
She hesitated. “I don’t want to destroy evidence. You do plan to collect evidence, don’t you? I mean, in case the guy came over here to look for me.” As soon as she said the words, she regretted them.
Taggart eyed her. “We know what we’re doing, even here in the country. Moffett will collect it—that is, if she finds any.”
Harper wasn’t sure she liked the suspicion in his tone. Add to that, Moffett was taking pictures with the camera on her cell, not a high-quality camera that would be used by a serious crime scene photographer. Harper pursed her lips before she said something else she’d regret.
“Nature has already taken care of evidence.” Detective Moffett gestured at the ground where rain had formed rivulets that left pine needles, leaves, and debris behind on its path to the river. “Even if it hadn’t rained, the pine needle carpet wouldn’t reveal footprints easily. So far, I haven’t seen any. Yours, McKade’s, or the killer’s. But we’ll keep looking.”
Harper didn’t want to be critical of their methods—then again, if they hadn’t found a body or evidence of a crime, then maybe they weren’t looking hard enough. She wanted to suggest they bring in the state and use those additional resources, but she didn’t want to further antagonize the sheriff, who already seemed irritated. Maybe it was more that he believed her but wasn’t uncovering the required clues to confirm her story.
She wished Emily had come with her today, but she and Emily had agreed they should leave as soon as the sheriff said they could go. So Emily stayed behind to do some prep work. She was very particular about her vintage Airstream that way. And Harper didn’t want to spend one minute longer here than necessary.
“Right next to this boulder is where I stood to look through the camera after I positioned it on the tripod.”
Detective Moffett angled her head. “You used a tripod here?” She was referring to the steep incline.
Harper shrugged. “This was an extreme situation, but I’ve had a lot of practice, and it was worth it to get the bear.”
“Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to get that close to a grizzly?”
“I wasn’t close. This isn’t close. The bear was way down there. At least eighty yards away.” Harper pointed.
“Still too close. You should keep at least a hundred yards away if possible.”
“The gully prevented me from putting that much distance between us. I couldn’t have gotten the shot a hundred yards away.” Unless she’d been on the other side of the river. Her heart palpitated at the thought. Who knew if she could even have seen the murder from there? But it was more likely she would have been a victim too.
Sheriff Taggart stared across the river. “You say the camera was pointed toward the bear down there. Your camera was focused on the bear. Tell me how you took pictures of a murder across the river.”
“I saw something. A flash of color. So I panned the camera—moved it until I saw the woman across the river. That’s where it happened.” She pointed straight across. “See where the woods open up to the meadow at that stack of rocks? I zoomed in to get a real close look.”
Taggart angled his head. “You’re sure about that? We were just there.”
A lump grew in her throat. “Yes. I’m sure. Have you considered the possibility that he disposed . . .” She couldn’t finish the words.
“I’ve considered the possibility that he got rid of the body, yes. You weren’t able to witness what happened next because you say he spotted you and you ran.”
“Yes. I was afraid he would shoot me too. I was able to grab the camera. I knew the pictures I had taken would be important, but in scrambling to get away I stumbled, fell, and hit my head. That’s when I dropped the camera.” Harper slumped at the confession. They already knew about the camera, but the failure grated.
His gaze flicked to the bandaged wound on her head. “Are you taking the painkillers this morning?”
Was he accusing her of not remembering where the crime happened because of being drugged? “No. I didn’t take them. I won’t lie, the wound hurts and I wish I had.” The painkiller she’d taken last night had worn off sometime early this morning. Should she simply speak her mind? “I’d like to go over to the other side to see for myself where it happened. If you’ve already looked, I want to look for myself. I don’t see any yellow tape cordoning off the scene yet, so will you take me there?”
“We’ve secured the area across the river. No one is coming or going until further notice.” He scraped a hand across his jaw. He seemed young for a sheriff, at least in Harper’s limited experience. Sharp brown eyes stared back at her. “Ms. Reynolds.”
“Please call me Harper. I’m not big on formalities.”
“Ms. Reynolds, if I don’t find a body or evidence of a crime, I’ll open a file and keep it open, but without anything to go on, there’s nothing more I can do.”
“But you have the pictures from my camera.”
Detective Moffett stepped up, her form inflexible. “I’m afraid that’s another dead end.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve already looked here and only wanted you to confirm we were looking in the right place since we didn’t recover the camera, the phone, or the memory card.”
“You’re telling me that someone climbed down to look for my camera and it wasn’t there?”
Moffett nodded.
Harper stared at the woman for a few long seconds, her heart in her throat. Deputy Herring had failed to mention that on the drive there. Maybe he didn’t know. Or maybe they wanted to see her reaction to that news.
Harper turned and retraced her steps. “This is where I was when I fell and dropped the camera.” And she would get it now too. She started making the climb and slipped, barely catching herself on a rock that stopped her fall. Her stomach clenched. This would be a hard, rocky descent.
“Ms. Reynolds, Harper, please come back up here,” Sheriff Taggart called down after her. “We’ve already looked down there. I told you. And you hit your head last night. I don’t need you getting hurt again, and on my watch.”
“I’m going to find my camera. The proof you need.” Her hands shook. This turn of events had surprised her. The sheriff was having doubts about the murder she witnessed. Doubts about her.
Well, she would prove she was telling the truth.
“Oh, for the love of Pete!” Taggart scrambled down after her.
Arms crossed, Detective Moffett supervised from above like a petite drill sergeant.
Harper continued down, using patches of foliage or jutting rocks for leverage. “I would have gone after it last night, but . . .”
Now wasn’t the time to add in that she’d been confused and disoriented. She never should have left her camera. Honestly, with the gash in her head, the bear, and Heath, she’d all but forgotten about it until she’d told the sheriff last night. In the back of her mind, she’d hoped to go back for it and believed it would remain where it had fallen. She hadn’t considered the rain or the possibility that someone would take it.
Finally, she hopped to the bottom. Last night’s rain had washed a ton of debris into the gulley. Had it also washed her camera out to the river? For some reason, she didn’t think it had fallen all the way to the bottom. And in that case, she should have seen it on her way down. The deputy who searched earlier would have found it already.
She looked at her path down. The rocks, trees, bushes. No camera. The camera, with the big telephoto lens and the tripod, all gone. That was going to cost her in multiple ways.
“What happened to it?” Harper eased to sit on the edge of a boulder. Was she going crazy? Losing her mind?
I know what I saw.
She’d been thinking about how she didn’t want to photograph blood and crime and violence again, and then she’d seen him.
A killer.
A murderer.
That woman brutally hunted and shot.
That couldn’t have been a figment of her imagination brought on by past traumas.
Unshed tears surged in her eyes. She’d better pull herself together or the good sheriff would think she was crazy and had imagined it all, or was pulling a stunt and wasting his time.
She and Emily had planned to head home as soon as the sheriff said she was fine to leave, and she’d been hoping that would be today or tomorrow, after he found the crime scene. She’d told him everything she could. But things were turning out much differently than expected. How could she leave if he wasn’t even convinced a crime had taken place there?
If no one believed Harper, then who would solve the murder? Harper thought about the woman. In her mind, she could see the woman’s eyes pleading for help from her unmarked grave in the Wyoming wilderness.
Justice hadn’t been served for Harper’s father either. “The woman, she should have been reported missing by now.”
Sheriff Taggart frowned again as if he feared Harper would send him on a wild goose chase. If he’d called her old boss, he might already know about her mental health issues. He lifted his palms and approached her slowly. Yep. He thought she was unstable.
She’d have to prove otherwise.
“I want to meet with a sketch artist. I can describe the victim for you.”