Dana shot Mac an odd look.
“What?” He glanced at her and then focused back on the road.
“I hope it isn’t Sara.”
“Me too.” Even though they hadn’t been able to work the case in more than a support role, it was hard not to be affected emotionally.
“Better not to speculate. Like Patrick said, one report said the remains could be from an old burial ground.”
“Well, one way or the other, they have my attention.” Dana made a couple of notes on her pad. “Shouldn’t we get the lab techs on the way?”
“Probably not if they think we’re dealing with ancient remains.” The reservation was located about an hour and a half from Portland, between the state’s most populated metro area and the central Oregon town of Bend. Neither CSI lab would be called until their services were needed. And they didn’t respond to ancient remains, which was fairly common with the tribes and Oregon Trail graves.
Mac forced himself to think about their destination rather than the body waiting for them at the end of the line.
Warm Springs was the largest Native American reservation in the state, a sovereign nation located in central Oregon about ninety miles southeast of Portland. The high desert location was home to thousands of members of the Warm Springs Confederated Tribes. They employed their own police force, and due to their status as a sovereign nation, Mac and Dana had no police authority on the reservation. The only Oregon State Police presence allowed was on the state highways that ran through or around the reservation. The real estate off the highways was treated the same as a foreign country for the troopers. The only non-tribal enforcement that was permitted on the reservation was that of the FBI, who nationally have police and investigative authority on Native American lands.
Mac’s cell phone rang while en route. He answered, surprised to hear Kevin’s voice. After speaking for a few minutes, he snapped the phone shut.
“That the boss?” Dana asked.
“Yep, more complications. Did you see the news report about a forest fire on the reservation?”
Dana nodded.
“Well, it’s moving toward our destination. Kevin wanted to let us know the fire is only about twenty miles away from the body dump and is still burning out of control.”
“Oh, great. That fire has already eaten up about ten thousand acres.”
“Close to fifteen now. It merged with another fire, and they don’t have any sides contained yet.”
Dana let out a low whistle. “Let’s hope the wind blows it in the other direction. Or at least that we get the evidence we need before the body is destroyed.”
“You ready to make some time?” Mac asked as they hit Highway 26 south of Gresham.
“Let her rip.” Dana flipped on the red-and-blue strobes and the wigwag headlights.
Mac crushed the gas pedal and pointed the car toward Mount Hood. Nothing was more beautiful than the mountain at sunset with the year-round snow reflecting the glimmering red, gold, and purple of the sky. And tonight the sky and the mountain were glorious.
Mac and Dana crested the summit of the Government Camp pass on Mount Hood at sunset. The pink reflection of the sun was fading on the snowy peak, while the crest of clouds to the east reflected something dark and sinister. The Simnasho wildfire was burning hot and fast, painting a wide brush of red, gold, and black across the high desert landscape.
Centuries ago, an ancient eruption from the then-active volcano had left the eastern half of the landscape a barren wasteland. Even today, you could see the demarcation leaving the west side lush with dense forests of Douglas firs.
Dana looked over at the digital clock on the dash, then back to her own watch to compare the time. “Looks like we’ll be working this gig in the dark. I was hoping for a little light.”
Mac took a left onto Highway 216, starting toward the town of Maupin and the milky-looking White River. “We might have cell coverage now. Why don’t you hit dispatch, and we’ll see if there are any updates. The fire looks closer than I thought.”
Dana phoned their dispatch in Salem, again speaking with the floor supervisor. “Hi, Mac, Dana. Not too much more I can tell you except that it’s definitely a recent body dump.”
“You’re sure?”
“We got the verification from Officer Webb with the Warm Springs P.D. A deputy medical examiner from Wasco County is just arriving at the scene.”
“What about our CSI people?”
“They’ve been requested, but it’ll be at least another two hours before someone from Portland could get out there, and the fire is blocking the folks from Bend.”
“Do we have anyone from the Bureau of Indian Affairs?” Dana asked.
“Negative. They have their hands full dealing with the fire. Word is they’re going to wait for the medical examiner’s report.”
Mac tipped his head down to get a better look at the sky. “We may not be able to wait for the crime lab. We’ll have to grid the site ourselves if the fire pushes any closer.”
“Have you done that before?” Dana asked, a hint of hesitation in her voice.
“Once, but I’ve seen it done several times. I have plenty of twine and stakes in the trunk.” Mac turned right into the White River campground.
“This must be the place.” Dana motioned to a green Chevy pickup with the yellow Warm Springs Police Department logo printed across the door.
Mac checked out on the radio, requesting the ODOT crews out of the Bear Springs station to bring some light standards to the scene in preparation for having to work in the dark. He would rather hold the scene processing until morning, but with the fire bearing down on them, he couldn’t chance it.
They parked next to the green truck, noting the medical examiner’s white van on the other side of the wooded campsite, and prepared to process the scene.
Special Agents Miller and Lauden pulled in less than ten minutes later, just as Mac and Dana had finished taping rubber covers over their shoes to prevent scene contamination.
“Hey, Jimmy.” Dana smiled as the lead agent exited his car. The agent nodded back, mumbling something to his partner as they approached the detectives.
Jimmy?When had Dana gotten to a nickname basis with the guy? He pushed the thought from his mind. He had to stop obsessing over Dana and her relationship or nonrelationship with other guys.
“Is it Sara?” Miller cut to the chase. Agent Lauden looked a little uncomfortable with his partner’s abruptness.
Mac motioned to the yellow crime-scene tape and the vehicles in the campsite. “No idea. We just pulled in and were readying our gear so we can approach the scene.”
“If you haven’t seen the body, why would you think it was Sara?” Dana asked.
Miller folded his arms. “We can talk about that later.”
“We were just about to log in,” Dana told them. “I just hope the fire stays on that side of the river.”
“No kidding.” Agent Lauden looked up at the crimson sky. “Looks threatening. How far out is it?”
“According to dispatch, flareups are as close as seven miles away and moving fast.” Mac ducked into the trunk, pulling a hammer from his tool kit. “Since we don’t have time to wait for the crime lab, we’ll have to process the scene ourselves. Our Portland lab techs are hooked up on another assignment.”
“You don’t have anyone closer?”
“We have a CSI unit in Bend, but they’re not available either. Statewide budget cuts and too many crimes have made for a backlog. Besides, they’re cut off by the fire.”
“That for the stakes?” Dana pointed at his tool kit.
“Yep. Hope you brought your muscles,” Mac said. “This ground looks pretty rocky.”
“Oh, please.”
Mac approached the crime-scene tape, making eye contact with the uniformed tribal officer. The slender, muscular man of medium build lowered his clipboard to his side as he approached the yellow tape from the opposite side.
“Howdy.” The officer held his hand out over the crime-scene tape. “Nathan Webb from Warm Springs P.D.”
Mac shook his proffered hand and introduced Dana and the two agents.
“I know these two turkeys,” Nathan teased as he shook hands with the federal agents.
“Hey, Nate.” Agent Lauden nodded. The FBI agents, stationed in Portland and Bend, were regulars on the reservation and were often called to assist with complex investigations.
“Are we on the reservation?” Mac directed his question to Officer Webb.
“Nope.” He pointed to the river, meandering about forty yards away. “Once we cross over that river from the reservation, we’re back in the Oregon Territory.”
Good, a sense of humor. Mac grinned.
“Huh?” Dana frowned, obviously not getting the innuendo.
Nate laughed. “An inside joke. The reservation is inside Oregon, but being that it is a sovereign nation, it is not Oregon. We’re kind of like a doughnut hole in the state.”
Mac pointed toward the body dump. “What do we have, Nathan? Can you give us a rundown?”
“Please, call me Nate.” His smile was warm and genuine. “From what I understand, the body was discovered by a camper, Mitch Foster. He and his family have been camping out here for the last few days. Their little boy,Nick, was walking his dog along the river trail.”
Dana winced. “Don’t tell me the kid found the body.”
“Fortunately not. Like I said before, the reservation ends at the river, and this area is still part of the state park.”Nate pointed toward the improved campsites. “Anyway, this little guy was walking his dog, and the pooch leaves the trail and starts off on his own.”
“I take it this trail we’re standing on is the one you’re talking about,” Mac interjected, wanting to get his bearings.
“Yes, it wraps around down by the river and has access to nearly all the campsites at one spot or another.At any rate, the dog took off and started digging. The kid called his dog, but it wouldn’t come. He started to pull the collar and saw that the dog was chewing on something. The boy pulled it out of his mouth. Turns out, it’s a piece of beaded leather.” Nate produced a plastic bag from his pocket with a torn-off piece of brown leather, decorated with intricate beadwork.
“What is it?” Agent Miller asked.
“Hard to tell. It may be from a bag of some sort or a necklace. A talisman, maybe. I think we only have a small part of it, though. I can’t tell right now what the significance is. I’d have to ask one of the tribal elders. I don’t know if it is an artifact or not. My wife and several other members of the tribe do beadwork like this and sell it at powwows and such.”
Dana admired the piece. “It’s beautiful. That beadwork is something else.”When they’d each gotten a look,Nate started to slip the piece back into his shirt pocket.
“I’ll need to take that to the lab, Nate,” Mac said. “We can get photos for you, though.”
“OK. Sounds good.”
“How did we get from the dog finding that piece of leather to the body?” Mac asked.
The officer nodded. “The kid took the leather piece to his dad, who returned to the spot where the dog had been digging. Mitch thought the dog might have inadvertently uncovered an ancient Indian burial ground. Instead of finding more artifacts, he found a body buried in a shallow grave. He immediately drove into Maupin to notify the cops.”
“We heard there were some conflicting stories,” Mac said. “Are we looking at an ancient burial ground or a recent body dump?”
“I’ve been called out to dozens of so-called ancient burial grounds only to find ‘Made in China’ labels or deer bones that some hunter tossed out of his truck after butchering his kill. I’m pretty sure this one is human, and it is definitely not ancient. I didn’t dig around—wanted to preserve the scene as much as possible, but I can see some matted hair and the side of what appears to be a female’s face and left arm sticking out of the dirt.
“Unless we determine that the victim is a tribal member, this is your case. I’d be obliged if we worked together, though. The beaded leather may or may not be related to the body—in which case, we may have a murder case as well as an archeological find.”
“Always glad to share the wealth.” Mac checked his watch. “Ready to take a look, Dana?”
“I am.” Turning to Nate, she asked, “Have you started a crime-scene log yet?”
He raised his clipboard. “Right here.”
A set of headlights highlighted the scene as Mac and Dana introduced themselves to Steve Whitman, the deputy medical examiner for the county. Mac hoped Whitman would be half as good as Kristen Thorpe. As the head medical examiner for the state, Dr. Thorpe often made field visits, and though Mac sometimes thought she’d like to, she couldn’t respond to all thirty-six counties herself. For this reason, each county employed deputy medical examiners who were trained in the field of death investigation. All unnatural deaths were routed to Dr. Thorpe’s office in Portland if the deputy examiners determined they would require an autopsy to determine the cause of death or for identification.
“What’s ODOT doing here?”Nate asked as the vehicle with the lights pulled up to them. The orange color of the truck indicated that it was an Oregon Department of Transportation vehicle—the one Mac had requested to bring up the lights.
“I invited them,” Mac answered. “They’re bringing some halogen lights for us to use while we process the scene. I figured we’d be working through the night with that fire looming over us.”
“Good call.”Nate looked across the river, toward the direction of the fire. “We have our entire department on the fire; I’m afraid I’m the only resource we could spare at the moment with the road closures and evacuations. Your troopers out of Madras and The Dalles are helping out on the east side, but we could use even more help.”
“We’ll make do.” Mac motioned toward the ODOT guys and told them where he wanted the lights. “Let’s get going. With the fire bearing down on us, this scene isn’t going to hold until morning.” Mac set his box on the ground and pulled out a digital camera. He photographed the scene, taking several pictures of the earth around the body in the event the camera could capture a footprint that his eyes were missing in the poor light. The smell of smoke partially masked the sour odor of rotting flesh, making the job easier than usual.
Dana sketched the area, dictating notes onto her tape recorder as they approached the body. “Any idea on how long she’s been here?” Dana asked the medical examiner.
“Not really,” the heavyset man replied. “I can’t give a guesstimate until we get her out of the hole.”
“I have enough pictures,” Mac said, going back to his box. “Dana, I need you to help me grid the scene.”
Dana knelt next to Mac and pulled out a stack of wood stakes and some twine.
Mac gestured toward the two FBI agents, who were standing nearby. “They’re a big help, aren’t they?”
Dana shrugged. “Guess they figure it’s not their case either way now. If our victim turns out to be Sara, it’s our ticket. If she’s a tribal member or anyone else, it will probably still be ours. Besides, do we really want them mucking up our crime scene?”
“Good point.”
Dana cleared her throat, apparently affected by the condition of the remains. “They probably just want some closure, Mac. It must be tough seeing your hopes of finding someone crushed like that.”
“We don’t know it’s Sara yet.” Mac stood up and took the stakes from Dana. “Let me take those. I’ll hammer the stakes if you document the evidence; you have better handwriting than I do.”
“Deal.” She picked up her clipboard and legal pad as Mac walked toward the body.
A mass of thick, dark hair and rigid cheekbone were visible above the soft dirt. The eye socket was beneath the surface with the rest of the face. “The hair length looks like Sara’s, only the color seems a bit lighter,” Dana noted.
“It could be the dust.” Mac approached the body. “Let’s lay out a twelve-by-twelve grid with square-foot grid markers.”
Mac pounded the stakes into the ground, one after another, until he had a chessboard grid set up around the body. He’d used heavy stakes at the perimeter and thin wire standards closer to the body to support the twine and hopefully not destroy any evidence. They would process the scene the same way in which an archeologist would process an ancient tomb or preservation site. Because of the fire, however, they’d have to move much more quickly.
Mac photographed and processed each square of the grid around the body. After a cursory search of each square foot for evidence, he shoveled the dirt from the squares into a plastic bag and labeled each bag with an evidence tag.
“What’s he going to do with that?” Nate asked Dana, who was documenting each bag on the department evidence form.
“We’ll sift the dirt once we get to a controlled environment, to make sure we aren’t missing some evidence, like a bullet or something that was dropped or passed through the body.”
“Check.”
Nate seemed truly interested in the process, and Mac appreciated that. He painstakingly processed the area, and it was well after midnight when he indicated that they could began to exhume the body.
“The body is nude,” he told Dana, “and seems to be covered with a white powder. Lime, I’ll bet.” Mac scratched his chin with his wrist to avoid touching himself with his latex-gloved hand. He secured some of the powder and dropped it into an evidence bag.
“Lime?” Nate hunkered down beside him.
“To decompose the body and throw off time of death. The lime works great if it’s wet and decomposes the body. The lime here probably didn’t do much because there hasn’t been much rainfall. My thinking is that whoever buried this gal wanted the body to decompose quickly. But he forgot to do his homework on the conditions needed to make the lime work. We’ll have to let the crime lab verify that, though.” He handed the bag to Dana, who added it to her evidence roster.
“One thing for sure.” Mac grinned up at Nate and lifted the dead woman’s left hand out of the shallow grave. “This isn’t an ancient site. Not unless your ancestors wore wristwatches.”
“Humph. I concur with your findings, Detective.”Nate raised an eyebrow at Mac’s attempt at humor. “But we still have that piece of beaded leather.”
The medical examiner assisted in cleaning the dirt from the body, every particle going into an evidence bag. The body was lying on its right side in the hole. There was no evidence of restraints or clothing. “She can’t have been here too long. The high desert only gets around six to eight inches of rain a year,” the M.E. said. “Most bodies found out here look like mummies, with the skin stretched over bone and tendon. This woman hasn’t even begun to mummify. I’m guessing maybe four to five weeks.”
“That’s how long Sara’s been missing,” Dana said.
Preparing to pull the body clear of the shallow grave, the medical examiner nodded at Mac. “You ready for this?”
“Just a sec.” Mac looked for and found a better handhold. “OK, let’s get her out. I hate doing it this way; we should take more time. But it looks as though Mother Nature has other plans for us.”
Mac and Steve pulled on the body, sliding it out of the shallow grave and setting it down about four feet away. The hair was long and black. “Any of your people unaccounted for, Nate?” Mac asked.
Nate shook his head. “Nope—not that I know of, anyway.”
Mac dusted off the face and then stood and backed away from the body. Without looking at the agents, Mac asked, “You guys have a picture of Sara?”
“Yeah. Hang on a sec.” Miller went back to his car and hurried back to where Mac was standing. He handed over a large black-and-white photo of their missing person. Mac scrutinized the photo, focusing on Sara’s beautiful features. He placed the photo on the ground beside their victim’s face. Sara had high cheekbones and a small mole on her cheek. So did the corpse.
“We’ll need the doc here to tell us for sure,” Mac said, “but I’m guessing this is Sara Watson.”