The Body in the Woods (8 page)

Ruby zoomed in on the sweatshirt until it filled up the screen of her laptop. Nobody she knew would have called it a sweatshirt. Instead, it was a hoodie. Black, it had white angel wings drawn on the back, overlaid with pink sparkly curlicues that spelled out the brand name of a manufacturer of skateboard clothing.

She had seen girls at her school wear that brand of hoodie before. Not because they were skaters, but because their boyfriends were. Sometimes Ruby observed what the other girls wore, trying to make sense of their choices. Like magpies, they collected shiny, eye-catching things. They wore clothes that showed dirt, that were see-through, that wouldn't keep you warm, that had to be hand washed or dry-cleaned, that had flounces and beading and other useless decoration. Sometimes they boasted to each other about the brand, or how much something cost, or dressed in clothes that had huge logos that did their talking for them.

Ruby could have happily worn the same thing every day as long as it didn't itch and was more or less clean.

Reading the article, she was certain of one thing. The person who had worn that sweatshirt hadn't been a grown woman, no matter what the police thought. Not a real adult. She knew that determining the age of a body wasn't an exact science. One way was to use X-rays to look at the teeth. If the dead girl had gotten her wisdom teeth in early, they might have decided that she was older than she was.

But while the medical examiner might have made his best guess, he didn't know anything about teenage fashion. Because the person who had worn that sweatshirt probably wasn't any older than twenty.

So the victim was more than likely a teenage girl who had been strangled to death in the woods.

Just like the girl they had found.

CHAPTER 15

WEDNESDAY

ANYTHING GOD DIDN'T PUT THERE

“Feeling okay today?” Alexis asked Nick as they all set down their SAR backpacks a hundred yards from where they had found the girl's body.

Nick felt his face get hot. “My mom's been sick with the stomach flu all week. I must have caught it from her.” One minute he had been talking to that counselor girl, Kelsey, the one with teeth like a rabbit, and then suddenly he had been doubled over.

But Nick didn't need trauma counseling, not even from a girl who could be kind of cute if she just closed her mouth. He wasn't some little kid who was going to get all weepy or jump at shadows. So yeah, they had seen a dead body. But there hadn't been any blood.

“You looked pretty upset.” Alexis didn't sound like she believed him.

“I'm fine. My dad was in Iraq. He's told me some stuff.” Now, where had that come from? Although it wasn't exactly a lie. His dad had been in Iraq, and he would have told Nick stuff if he had lived. Instead Nick had to read about Iraq on the Internet when his mom wasn't home.

“Okay, you two lovebirds,” Dimitri called out in his accented English. He was eighteen and one of the certifieds, which meant he had completed the nearly three hundred hours of training. “Please to knock off all those whisperings and get over here for the briefing.”

Nick felt his face get hot. Did everyone think there was something going on between him and Alexis? He snuck a quick glance at her, but her face was impassive.
Was
something going on? Maybe she was interested in him. His face felt like it was on fire. He hadn't noticed that everyone was lining up, but now they were all standing with their backs to the crime scene tape that marked out a large rough square about a hundred feet across. Alexis and Nick hurried to join them, standing next to Ruby.

“As most of you already know, a girl's body was found yesterday in this location when we were out conducting a hasty search.” Mitchell pointed, and everyone turned. “The body was found roughly in the middle of this square.”

As Nick listened, he bounced in place, trying to keep his blood circulating. Per SAR protocol, he was dressed in three layers, top and bottom, starting with long underwear, then a fleece layer, and finally a rainproof layer. Still when he ran his tongue over his front teeth, the inside of his upper lip was disconcertingly cold. He wished he still had his grande mocha, but he had had to gulp it in the van, since he wasn't allowed to bring it on-site. Even their lunches would be eaten well away from the search area. They didn't want something of theirs to be erroneously labeled as evidence. In the van, Ruby had gone on and on about the local principle, or something like that.

Before the team had arrived this morning, the cops had marked off the area to be searched for evidence. One end of the square was cut by the trail, and in the middle was the spot where they had found the girl's body. On the way in, they had passed one of the cops who were stationed on both ends of the trail to keep anyone from blundering in.

Detective Harriman stood next to Mitchell. Today he was dressed in a mountain parka and a black floppy nylon hat with a wide brim. When he had first seen it, Nick had decided the hat looked stupid, like something an old man would wear. Now in the slow, drizzly rain, he would have given every dollar in his wallet to buy one. His own wool hat lacked a brim, and even with his jacket hood pulled over his hat and helmet, the rain was still flecking his face.

“Today we will be looking for anything that will help the police solve this crime,” Mitchell continued in that super-serious way he had that set Nick's teeth on edge. “It could be as small as a fingernail or a tooth. If you find anything, don't touch it. Instead, call a halt. It's not your responsibility to determine how long it's been there. It's not up to you to decide if it's evidence. Your only job is to find it. Basically, we're looking for anything God didn't put there. Call it and let your team leader decide if the detective needs to check it out.”

His gaze swept over the group. People nodded or mumbled in assent.

“And don't get distracted by something far away. Focus on what's in front of you. You don't want to miss something small, like a hyoid bone or drops of blood. But don't just look down. Sometimes evidence might be higher than your head.” Mitchell's coat was unzipped as if he didn't feel the cold. He had a million pouches and holsters suspended from his belt, even more than Detective Harriman.

Toward the far end of the line, someone's teeth were audibly chattering. “You might as well get used to the temp,” Mitchell said. “It's not going to get any warmer. Especially not when you're down on your hands and knees.” His tone of voice implied this was a good thing, a secret test of their ability and will. “Okay, line up and count off!” He sounded like a drill sergeant.

“One,” yelled Ezra, who was standing next to the place where the tape made a corner.

“Two,” Dimitri called out. And so on down the line. All of them fast and loud. You were supposed to project when you were looking for someone who was lost, in case it could help them find you. And if the line was spread out, yelling made it possible for either end to still hear each other. But this was an evidence search, which Nick knew from a training weekend meant they would be shoulder to shoulder on their hands and knees.

Waiting for his turn to shout, he felt nervous. Which was stupid. It wasn't like you could blow saying your number. It reminded him of calling out numbers to choose teams in grade school. The kind of thing teachers did so that no one felt left out. As if there weren't a million other ways to be excluded.

“Seven,” he yelled out. And so on. At the end of the line was a certified named Max. He shouted “Fourteen!”

Max was wearing the string pack on his back. It buckled in front, and on the back was a giant roll of string, so much string you could probably fly a kite to the moon. Since there weren't nearly enough people to cover the whole marked-off square in one pass, Max would tie the string to the point where they began so it could serve as a guideline for the next pass.

“Team forward!” Mitchell called out.

“Team forward,” they echoed raggedly. Then they turned, dropped to their knees, and began to slowly crawl under the yellow tape.

“One entering grid!” Ezra called out.

“Two entering grid!” Dimitri yelled a second later. The rule was that you never got ahead of the person on your left.

“Three entering grid!”

Nick's heart started to beat faster. This was the real deal. He could be the one who found something important. Finally it was his turn. “Seven entering grid!”

In a few seconds, they were all under the line and crawling forward. The cold seeped through his leather gloves. He glanced over at Alexis, but her eyes were focused on the ground. Unlike the rest of them, Alexis wasn't wearing padded painter's kneelers. On her hands were regular red fleece gloves, not the leather SAR recommended for evidence work. Her hands and knees must already be wet. He wondered why she hadn't bought better stuff.

Inch by slow inch, they moved forward. Nick's eyes scoured the ground. Dirt, pine needles, pebbles, more dirt, decaying leaves, small plants, slightly bigger plants. At least there weren't any big bushes directly in front of him. The SAR rule was that if you couldn't see through something, you had to go through it, even if that meant tunneling through a blackberry bush. A bad guy might be counting on you not finding his gun because you weren't willing to brave the thorns.

A certified named Jackie was the first to find something. “Team halt!”

The team echoed her. “Team halt!” One by one, everyone straightened up until they were kneeling, all of them looking at Jackie.

Mitchell hurried up behind them. “Who called team halt?”

Jackie, who was a senior, said crisply, “Twelve. Possible evidence.” She pointed, but didn't touch. They had been lectured about this several times. If they didn't touch or disturb the evidence, they didn't enter the official chain of custody.

Mitchell leaned over Jackie's shoulder.

“Whatcha got?” Detective Harriman asked, coming up behind him.

Mitchell turned toward him. “A piece of gum, sir.”

On the other side of Alexis, Ruby said something about DNA. Nick hadn't thought about it before, but gum must have spit on it.

“Flag it and keep going,” Detective Harriman said. Mitchell handed Jackie a small orange plastic flag on a wire, which she poked into the dirt. On their first training weekend, Nick had been a little disappointed to find out that evidence flags looked exactly like survey flags at a construction site. They had been told it was better to flag everything than to stop to collect each item. It made it less likely that they would miss a spot. Only the important finds were worth pulling everyone off the search.

After she finished, Mitchell called out, “Team forward!”

“Team forward!” they answered, a little more in unison. They started crawling again, with Jackie detouring around the gum and the flag.

“Cozy up,” Mitchell called. “Shoulder to shoulder. We are aiming for a high POD.” POD meant probability of detection.

Alexis was already so close that Nick could hear her breathing. He could even smell her, the scent of something familiar. The press of her shoulder, the sound of her breath, the sweet smell hovering over her, it all made it hard for him to concentrate on the ground in front of him, which basically looked exactly the same as the ground they had already crawled over.

Now that Alexis's shoulder was touching his, he could tell that she was shivering. Well, no wonder. Most of the other kids' waterproof layers were lined coats, but her blue jacket didn't look much thicker than a plastic bag. Her bright yellow rain pants were the kind you could get at any variety store for fifteen dollars.

They came to a tree. Nick was able to maintain his line and go past it, although his shoulder scraped the bark. Since Alex couldn't maintain her spacing, she had to say, “Eight, out of sequence.” That let Nick and Ruby know they had to guide off each other. As soon as they were around the tree, Alexis reclaimed her spot, calling, “Eight, back in sequence.”

Now that she was back next to him, there was that smell again. Nick sniffed.

“Why do you keep sniffing?”

“You smell like chocolate chip cookies,” he whispered.

Mitchell butted in.

“Stay engaged in the task, people! We need everyone focused on finding evidence. If you're talking, you're not concentrating. If you're talking, you're distracting others. If you're talking, you can't hear commands.”

“Sorry!” Nick mumbled, and kept his eyes on the dirt and tiny plants and pine needles.

An hour passed and then another. Every five minutes or so, someone would call a halt to flag evidence. They found:

• A cigarette butt.

• Another cigarette butt.

• A third cigarette butt.

• A small piece of black rubber that looked like some kind of stopper.

• A broken piece of flat blue plastic no bigger than a thumbnail.

• The gold line of cellophane used to open a pack of cigarettes.

• Part of a Snickers bar wrapper.

• A crumpled silver gum wrapper with no gum inside it.

• A little bone, no bigger than the end of Nick's pinky, that surely had to have come from a bird or small animal.

But nothing really cool. No phone, gun, pool of blood, or bullet casing. No old condoms or scraps of fabric. Even Detective Harriman seemed to have lost interest. He no longer came forward to inspect every find.

When Dimitri called a halt for another bit of paper, Nick sat back on his heels and looked behind them. The ground was dotted with dozens of flags.

The search began again. They were just past the point where the girl's body had been found when Nick's eye spied something glinting on the ground right in front of him.

He started to reach for it.

CHAPTER 16

WEDNESDAY

THINGS GO SOUTH

What was Nick doing? Ruby shot her hand past Alexis, who gave a startled gasp, and grabbed his wrist. His forefinger and thumb had been about to close on something a few inches in front of his right knee.