CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

May 14, 2015

7 P.M.

High Mountain Valley

Near the Central Idaho Primitive Area

 

Julia just couldn’t get her mind to accept that the white form floating there in the black water was her friend Trish. Yet she knew it was.

Trish could not be gone. She had been a part of Julia’s life forever. Trish had always been this wild element that Julia loved to watch and talk to and laugh with.

Now Julia would never hear Trish’s wonderful laugh again. How was that even possible?

She stood there beside Lott in the rain, staring out at the black lake.

She had to get her brain back.

As a detective, she had seen a lot of death. Right now she needed to figure out what happened. She would mourn Trish when the time was right.

“So you think it was an accident?” Julia asked, taking a deep breath of the cold night air to make herself try to think.

“There doesn’t seem to be obvious marks on her body,” Lott said, “from what I can see in this light.”

Julia was glad he didn’t shine his flashlight on Trish again.

But then something bothered her about Trish’s body.

Something didn’t look right.

If she had been in the water and was floating, her body would be bloated, at least enough to make it float. Trish didn’t seem to be bloated at all. Maybe the cold water of the mountain lake had kept that effect down.

Julia had seen enough three- and four-day-old-bodies pulled from the water to suit her for a lifetime. She had hated it worse when it was kids.

Suddenly the way Trish was floating there just didn’t seem right.

She took out her cell phone and took some pictures of how Trish was floating. Both down close and back a ways.

Lott nodded and did the same on his phone, making sure he got Julia in the picture as well. They needed to document anything they did here.

“Help me look at this,” Julia said to Lott after they finished with the pictures.

Once again they both moved so they could see Trish’s body.

The rain was easing some, so their flashlights were clear on her naked back.

“See something wrong with this?” Julia said

“Her arms seem to be tucked up under her chest,” Lott said. “That’s not the way a body floats.”

He was right.

She knew that.

Floating bodies mostly float face down, arms out, not tucked under as Trish’s arms seemed to be.

Suddenly both of their years of training as detectives seemed to kick in full force.

“Help me turn Trish over,” Lott said, his voice soft, yet firm, “I need your help to turn her over.”

Julia nodded and both of them got down on their hands and knees on the wet wood of the dock.

Then together they slowly reached down and grabbed Trish, Lott on her left shoulder, Julia just below her left knee.

“Pull up and roll her over,” Lott said. “On the count of three.”

Julia only nodded.

Julia took her grip on Trish’s cold, almost slimy-feeling leg. For an instant she was surprised. She had expected to feel the soft, almost pulpy flesh that she had felt with many bodies after days in water, but Trish’s flesh was almost hard and waxy.

“One. Two. Three,” Lott said. “Pull up.”

Like a canoe, not wanting to right itself, Trish fought them for a moment, then finally flipped over.

Both of them let go at once, drawing back as if they had been shot at. Julia almost felt as if she had been.

“What the hell?” Julia asked, staring at her friend’s body floating there.

Lott just stared, shaking his head.

In the dim light it was clearly Trish’s face, only drawn and almost mask-like. Not bloated at all.

Trish was smiling slightly, her eyes closed, her face peaceful in the faint light as water washed over it. Far more peaceful than Julia had ever remembered Trish being in life.

Trish’s hands were clasped across her stomach, almost as if she were asleep there in the water.

“Not possible,” Lott said softly.

He had his phone back out and taking pictures. Both down close and back.

It took Julia a moment to pull her gaze away from Trish’s face, then she glanced at Trish’s neck, then down her body until Julia found what she was looking for.

“She’s been embalmed,” Julia said, standing up and turning away.

For the first time in a few minutes, she noticed the pounding rain, the cold mountain air, and the remoteness of the valley.

“Embalmed?” Lott said softly. “What the hell is going on here?”

Julia forced herself to take a deep breath and think.

They were a good hundred-plus miles of winding mountain roads from the nearest funeral home. They hadn’t seen another car in the last seventy miles of road. Trish had no neighbors and no one was in this valley but the two of them.

And the house was completely clear of any struggle or signs of something like this being done.

“Embalmed,” Lott said, climbing to his feet. “It can’t be, but it is clear she is.”

Julia turned around and stared at her friend’s white body, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she looked up at Lott.

There was a haunted look in his eyes.

“Someone embalmed her,” Julia said. “That means she was murdered.”

“Looks that way,” Lott said. “But the real question is what is she doing in the lake?”

“And why?” Julia said softly.

“Exactly,” Lott said. “Why?”