Gone Missing (Kate Burkholder 4)

CHAPTER 10

The glowing red numbers of the alarm clock tell me it’s 3:53 A.M. when I go through the door. Tomasetti has already pulled the Tahoe up to the gravel area outside my cabin and is leaning against the passenger side’s front fender, talking on his cell phone. The night is humid and still, and I smell rain in the air.

He cuts his call short as I climb in. A moment later, he’s behind the wheel and we’re idling across the parking lot. “Hell of a way to start the day,” he growls.

“Tell me what you know,” I say.

“Not much. There’s no positive ID yet. But apparently, the victim is a young female.”

I think of a young life cut short, the parents who will be notified in the coming hours, the family that will be shattered by the news. I feel the familiar rise of outrage in my chest.

The tires spew gravel as we pull onto the highway. Beside me, Tomasetti scans the darkened storefronts and black shadows of the foliage as we cross a bridge and head toward town. He’s in cop mode, I realize, already hunting for the perpetrator.

“Where’s the body?” I ask.

“In a creek, evidently. Guy out fishing found her.”

I cringe at the thought. Murder is always horrific, but water somehow always makes it worse. In terms of evidence, it has just made our jobs exponentially more difficult. “Anyone on-scene?”

“Goddard’s en route.” He tosses me a grim look. “We’re closer.”

“Coroner?”

“There’s a team from Youngstown on the way.”

I glance at him. He looks grim and tired and not quite friendly. He’s not a good sleeper, and I suspect last night wasn’t any different.

We pass through Buck Creek and head north on a narrow two-lane road that cuts through a heavily forested area. A few miles in, we come to a rusty steel bridge. A big Dodge Ram is parked on a gravel turnout. Tomasetti parks behind the truck, kills the engine, and grabs a Maglite off the backseat. “There’s another one in the door panel.”

I find the flashlight and swing open my door. The night sounds—crickets and bullfrogs and nocturnal animals—emanate from the thick black of the woods.

Tomasetti is already walking toward the truck. “Where the hell’s the driver?” he mutters.

I look around, but there’s no one in sight. I set my hand on my revolver as we start toward the Dodge. Chances are, this call is exactly as it seems: a citizen who’s stumbled upon a terrifying scene. But we’re all too aware of the fact that where there is murder, there is also a murderer. More than one cop has been ambushed when he thought he was walking into a benign scene.

Lightning flickers on the horizon as I reach the truck. Tomasetti tries the driver’s door, but it’s locked. Using the Maglite, he checks the interior, sets his hand on the hood. “Still warm.”

I drop to my knees, shine my beam along the ground. “No one underneath.”

We’re checking the truck’s bed when I hear something large crashing through the brush on the other side of the bar ditch twenty yards away. At first, I think it’s some kind of animal—a rutting buck or a black bear—charging us. Adrenaline skitters through my midsection. I raise my sidearm and spin to face the path cut into the trees.

Tomasetti rounds the front of the truck and comes up beside me, his Glock leading the way. “Police!” he shouts. “Stop! Identify yourself!”

A man bursts from the darkness, stumbles, and goes to his hands and knees in the grass. Both Tomasetti and I take a step back as he scrambles to his feet and lunges toward us. I catch a glimpse of a bald head and a tan flannel shirt.

“Jesus Christ!” he cries as he uses his hands to scale the incline.

“Hold it right there, partner,” Tomasetti says. “I mean it.”

His voice is deadly calm, but the man doesn’t seem to hear him. He’s either high on drugs or terrified out of his mind. Considering the nature of the stop, I’m betting on the latter.

I maintain a safe distance as the man regains his footing and stumbles up the side of the bar ditch. He’s breathing so hard, he’s choking on every exhale. He’s slightly overweight and falls to his hands and knees in the gravel ten feet away.

Tomasetti dances back, keeps his weapon trained on the center of the man’s chest. “Get your hands where we can see them.”

The man is so out of breath, he doesn’t raise his hands. “For God’s sake, don’t shoot! I’m the one who called the cops.” He gulps air, chokes on his own spit, and begins to cough.

Scowling, Tomasetti lowers his weapon, but he doesn’t holster it. “What happened?”

“There’s a fucking dead body down there!” the man chokes out.

Tomasetti’s eyes dart to the woods. Using his left hand, he shines the beam of the Maglite on the trailhead. Nothing moves. It’s as if the forest has gone silent to guard the secrets that lie within its damp and murky embrace.

“Is there anyone else down there?” Tomasetti asks.

“I didn’t see no one except that fuckin’ body.” He coughs, taking great gulps of air. “Just about gave me a heart attack.”

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Danny . . . Foster.” The man raises his head and squints at us. “Who’re you? Where’s Sheriff Goddard?”

I pull out my identification and hold it out for him to see. “You got your driver’s license on you?”

He straightens and, still on his knees, digs out his wallet and thrusts it at me with a shaking hand.

Tomasetti comes up beside me and glances at the wallet, then frowns. “What are you doing down there?”

“F—fishing.”

“At four o’clock in the morning?”

“Well, I gotta be at work at eight,” he snaps.

Tomasetti holsters his sidearm, and I do the same.

The man looks from Tomasetti to me. “Can I get up now?”

“Sure,” I say.

He hefts his large frame and struggles to his feet. He’s a short, round man wearing oversize khaki pants, a flannel shirt, and a fishing vest. From ten feet away, I see that his crotch is wet.

“What happened?” Tomasetti asks.

“I was fishing by that deep hole down there, about a quarter mile in.” Swallowing hard, Foster jabs his thumb toward the path from which he emerged. “I’d just put my line in when I noticed something on the bank, tangled up in some tree roots.” He heaves a phlegmy cough. “I thought it was one of them mannequins, like at the department store down there at the mall. I put my light on it and got the shock of my life. Scariest damn thing I ever saw.”

“You sure she’s dead?” Tomasetti asks.

“Her eyes were all fuckin’ glassy and looking right at me.” He blows out a breath. “She’s dead all right.”

Tomasetti digs out his cell phone, hits speed dial. I listen with half an ear as he explains the situation to Goddard and asks him to set up a perimeter with roadblocks around this part of the creek.

“What did you do after you found the body?” I ask.

“I puked my guts out; then I called nine one one.” He takes a deep breath, blows it out. “Then I got the hell out of there.”

The flash of blue and white lights on the treetops announces the arrival of a law-enforcement vehicle. I glance behind me and see a sheriff’s department cruiser park behind the Tahoe.

“Where, exactly, did you find the body?” Tomasetti asks.

Foster thrusts a finger toward the mouth of the path. “Take the trail. You’ll hit the creek a quarter mile in. Go another thirty yards and you’ll see it on your right. There’s a tree grows into the bank. Floods washed out the soil and the roots are exposed. She’s jammed up in all them roots.”

Beyond where Tomasetti stands, I see Sheriff Goddard slide out of his Crown Vic, his Maglite in hand, its beam trained on the fisherman. “Danny?” he calls out. “That you?”

“Yeah, Bud.” The man heaves a huge sigh. “I’m here.”

The sheriff nods at Tomasetti and me, then turns his attention to Foster. “What the hell you doing out here this time of the morning?”

“Fishing, like I always do. There’re large-mouth bass down in that deep hole. I don’t know why everyone keeps asking me that when I done answered already.”

“Well,” the sheriff drawls, “you know how cops are.”

I see sheet creases in his face and I know he was also ripped from his bed, the same as Tomasetti and I, and he’s not in a very good mood.

Goddard shines his light on Foster’s clothes. “How’d you get that mud all over you?”

Foster looks down at his pants, realizes his crotch is wet, and pulls out his shirttail to cover it. “I got so shook up when I found that woman down there, I dropped my flashlight and got off the trail. I fell down in some bramble.”

Tomasetti looks at Goddard. “You get a perimeter set up?”

Goddard nods. “I got two deputies out there. State Highway Patrol’s on the way. We’re covered, but barely.”

“We’d like to take a look at the scene, if it’s all right with you,” Tomasetti says.

The flash of relief that crosses the chief’s face is palpable. Most cops are, to a degree, adrenaline junkies. When something big goes down, most want to be in the thick of it. Some, I would venture to say, have an overstated sense of morbid curiosity. Goddard seems to break the mold on all counts. “Probably best if a bunch of us don’t trample the scene,” he says. “You two go on, and I’ll wait for the coroner.”

With Tomasetti in the lead, we descend the steep shoulder, cross through the bar ditch, and enter the path cut into the woods. The canopy closes over us like a clammy, smothering hand. Around us, the woods are dark and damp and alive with insects and nocturnal creatures. Mist swirls along the ground and rises like smoke from the thick undergrowth. Neither of us is dressed for wet conditions—no boots or slickers—and within minutes the front of our clothes is soaked.

The redolence of foliage and damp earth and the dank smell of the creek curl around my olfactory nerves as we move deeper into the forest. Dew drips from the leaves of the brush growing along the path and the treetops overhead. Mud sucks at our shoes. The low rumble of thunder tells me conditions are probably going to get worse before they get any better.

Tomasetti’s Maglite penetrates the darkness like a blade. But the path is overgrown in areas and difficult to follow. Twice he veers off the trail and we have to backtrack.

“There’s the creek.”

I follow the beam of his flashlight and catch a glimpse of the green-blue surface of slow-moving water. We continue for a few more yards, and I spot the tree Foster mentioned. An ancient bois d’arc grows out of the steep bank, its trunk leaning at a forty-five-degree angle. “There’s the tree.”

My heart taps out a rapid tattoo as we approach the water’s edge. Vaguely, I’m aware of the flicker of lightning overhead and the patter of rain against the canopy above. Tomasetti stops where the ground breaks off and shines the beam downward. The dead are never pretty, but water does particularly gruesome things to a corpse. I come up beside Tomasetti and my eyes follow the cone of light.

I see the glossy surface of the muddy bank, the spongy moss covering the rocks, and the spindly black veins of roots. My gaze stops on the gauzy fabric flowing in the current like the gossamer fin of some exotic fish. I see the white flesh of a woman’s calf, a slightly bent knee, a waxy thigh. Lower, the foot is swallowed by the murky depths below. She’s clothed, perhaps in a dress, but the current has pushed the skirt up to her hips, exposing plain cotton panties—the kind a young Amish woman might wear.

She’s faceup; her left arm is twisted at an awkward angle and tangled in the roots. My eyes are drawn to the pallid face. Her mouth is open, as if in a scream, and full of water and leaves. A cut gapes on her lower lip. Her eyes are partially open, but the irises are colorless and cloudy.

“Fuck me,” Tomasetti mutters.

Looking at the body, watching her long hair ebb and flow with the current is surreal. Neither of us moves or speaks. The tempo of the rain increases, but I barely notice. I don’t feel the wet or the cold. I can’t stop looking at the dead girl, and I wonder how her life came to this terrible end so long before her time.

I pull myself back to reality. When I speak, my voice is level and calm. “How long do you think she’s been there?”

“She’s intact. No deterioration that I can see.”

I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. “No visible wounds,” I say, thinking about the blood we found on the road that afternoon.

“Still wearing her underclothes.”

But we both know it’s no guarantee that a sexual assault wasn’t committed. Perpetrators have been known to re-dress their victims. “No makeup or jewelry. Nails are unpainted. Tomasetti, that dress is an Amish print.”

“Goddamn it.”

I look upstream, toward the bridge, but it’s too dark to see anything. “You think someone dumped her here? Or at the bridge?”

He shines the beam on the ground, illuminating several footprints, ours and a waffle stamp that may or may not be Foster’s. But there are no broken branches. No crushed grass. No blood. “No obvious sign of a struggle,” he growls. “We’re going to need to get tread imprints from Foster’s shoes.”

He trains the beam on the steep bank directly below us, then shines it across the surface of the water. The creek is about twenty-five feet wide. It looks deep, but I can hear the gurgle of a shallow bottleneck a few yards downstream. “He could have dumped her upstream. Current carried her down.”

“Or stopped on the bridge and threw her over,” I say.

“Shit.” Pulling out his phone, Tomasetti calls Goddard and asks him to cordon off the bridge. “Tire-tread impressions are a long shot,” he says as he snaps his phone closed.

“We might get lucky.”

Neither of us believes that. It’s extremely difficult to extract meaningful evidence from an outdoor scene that’s spread over a large area, especially if it’s been left unprotected or trampled. Or rained on.

For several minutes, we stand there, using our flashlights, getting a sense of the scene. I wish for a camera, but we’re going to have to hoof it back to the Tahoe to get it. I make a mental note of the time and memorize as much as I can—the location and position of the body, the slant of the tree, the erosion of the bank, the profusion of roots at the water’s edge, the victim’s clothes. But I know it’s her face that will stay with me.

“We need to go back, get the camera, and a generator and lights,” Tomasetti says after a moment.

“I hate leaving her like that.” I know it’s a stupid comment; we can’t move the victim until the scene has been documented. But I hate the idea of leaving her in the water, where it’s murky and cold and her flesh is at the mercy of the aquatic creatures whose domain has been invaded.

Abruptly, Tomasetti jerks the beam from the body, clicks off the flashlight, and stalks away. Surprised, I glance over at him. In the gray light seeping down from the canopy, I see him set his hand against a tree and lean against it, close his eyes. And I realize that even though he is a veteran witness to this kind of violence, he is as outraged and repulsed as I am.

After a moment, he scrapes a hand over his jaw and pushes away from the tree. “I’m going to get a CSU down here before the rain destroys what little evidence is left.” Turning on the flashlight, he runs the beam along the steep, tangled bank of the creek. “They might be able to pick up some footwear imprints.”

But he doesn’t pull out his phone. He stands motionless between the path and the creek bank, the beam focused on the ground. His back is to me and his shoulders are rigid. I can’t see his face, but I sense he doesn’t want questions.

I give him a minute before asking, “Do you want me to make the call?”

Slowly, he turns. I can just make out his features in the peripheral light from the beam. The shadows reveal lines in his face I never noticed before, something in his eyes I understand because I know he’s seen the same thing in mine.

“I’ll do it.” He looks away. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look fine.”

His eyes meet mine. “Five years ago, a scene like this would have pissed me off, and that would have been the extent of my emotional response. I would have felt nothing for that dead girl or her family. All I cared about was catching the fucker responsible. It was an added bonus if I got to take his head off in the process.”

“Don’t beat yourself up for being human,” I tell him.

“That’s the problem, Kate. I wasn’t human. I didn’t feel shock or sadness or remorse because a girl was dead. Sometimes I didn’t even feel outrage. It was a game. All I felt was this driving need to catch the son of a bitch who’d done it. Not because of some noble desire for justice, but because I knew I was better than him and I wanted to prove it.”

“That’s a protective mechanism built into all of us.”

“Now I know what’s it’s like to hear someone tell you everyone you’ve ever loved is dead.”

I cross to him. Before I realize I’m going to touch him, I set my palm against his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

Setting his hand over mine, he brushes his mouth across my palm, then pulls it away from his face. “Let’s go catch this motherfucker,” he says, and we start down the path.

An hour later, the township road swarms with sheriff’s deputies, state Highway Patrol officers, and paramedics. The red and blue lights of half a dozen emergency vehicles flicker off the treetops. The area has been cordoned off with yellow caution tape. The state Highway Patrol has set up roadblocks, barring all through traffic from the bridge. Two ambulances from Trumbull Memorial Hospital are parked outside the secure area, their diesel engines rumbling in the predawn light.

Rain slashes down from a low sky as three technicians from the Trumbull County coroner’s office struggle to carry the body up the incline of the bar ditch. Tomasetti snagged us a couple of county-issue slickers from one of the Goddard’s deputies, but we were already wet, and though the temperature hovers in the sixties, I feel the cold all the way to my bones.

I’m standing at the rear of the ambulance when the gurney is brought up. I can see the outline of the body within the black zippered bag.

“Any idea who she is?” Tomasetti asks.

“No ID,” replies one of the technicians. He’s about thirty years old, with a goatee and wire-rimmed glasses. “We preserved as much of the scene as possible, but the bank got pretty trampled.”

“Cause of death?” Tomasetti asks.

“No visible injuries.” The technician grimaces. “Tough to tell with the water, though. We won’t know until the autopsy.”

“How long will that be?” Tomasetti asks.

“Well, we’re not backlogged. Maybe tomorrow morning.”

Tomasetti passes him his card. “Keep us in the loop, will you?”

“You got it,” he says, and they load the body into the rear of the ambulance.

A fist of outrage unfurls in my gut as I watch the vehicle pull away. “I was hoping this would have a better end.”

Tomasetti sighs. “The case isn’t exactly coming together, is it?”

“Chief Burkholder. Agent Tomasetti.”

We turn as Sheriff Goddard approaches. He’s wearing a yellow slicker and holding two McDonald’s to-go cups of coffee. I’m unduly thankful when he shoves one at me.

“Is it Annie King?” I ask.

“No one recognized her.” The sheriff shakes his head. “And we don’t have a photo.”

I tell him about the Amish-print dress, the lack of nail polish and jewelry. “I think she might be Amish.”

Goddard’s expression darkens. “It’s probably her. Timing’s right. Damn it.” He heaves a grievous sigh. “We’re going to have to bring in the parents to identify her.”

“Who’s the Amish bishop for this church district?” I ask.

Both men look at me.

“Even though we’re only bringing in the parents to identify the body, if it’s her, the bishop should be there,” I say.

Goddard nods. “That’d be Old Abe Hertzler. He and his wife live out on River Road.” He lowers his voice, gives a single grim nod. “I’ll go get him. Can you two oversee things here? We can meet up at the hospital in Warren in a couple of hours. That’s where our morgue facilities are.”

Notifying next of kin is a responsibility no cop relishes. I would venture to say it’s one of the most difficult aspects of being a chief of police. Regardless of the manner of death, whether it’s a traffic accident, a drowning, or the result of foul play, breaking the news to a loved one can affect a cop profoundly.

Goddard starts to turn away, but I stop him. “I’ll do it.”

He casts me a slightly incredulous look. “Aw, Chief Burkholder, I can’t put that on you.”

“It might help that I used to be Amish,” I tell him.

I’m aware that Tomasetti’s watching me, but I don’t look at him. I’m not sure I’m succeeding with the “I’m not affected” persona I’m striving to project. “That’s why I’m here,” I add.

I don’t mention the fact that most Amish are not only suspicious of the English but also of Amish who are from a different area. Not to mention those who have been excommunicated, like me.

The relief on his face is palpable. “To tell you the truth, I’m a little out of my element when it comes to the Amish,” he says sheepishly.

“She knows the territory,” Tomasetti puts in.

“Where can we find the bishop?” I ask.

The sheriff gives us directions to the bishop’s house, which is only a few miles to the south. “I’ll see you at the morgue in a couple of hours.”