That didn’t make any sense.
“Why would Cheney leave the Jeep at a rest stop and go off with a drug dealer, taking Deborah with him, and come out here?”
I asked. “Why not just buy the drugs at the rest stop and be on their way?”
“They may have come out here to party.”
“Who in his right mind would come out here after dark to party or do anything else? And where are their shoes, Morrell? Are you suggesting they walked through the woods barefoot?”
“We don’t know what happened to their shoes,” he said.
“That’s very interesting. So far, five couples have been found dead and we don’t know what happened to their shoes. Not one shoe or sock has turned up. Don’t you find that rather odd?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. I think it’s odd, all right,” he said, hugging himself to get warm. “But right now I’ve got to work these two cases here without thinking about the other four couples. I’ve got to go with what I’ve got. And all I’ve got at the moment is a possible drug connection. I can’t allow myself to get sidetracked by this serial murder business or who the girl’s mother is, or I might be wrong and miss the obvious.”
“I certainly wouldn’t want you to miss the obvious.”
He was silent.
“Did you find any drug paraphernalia inside the Jeep?”
“No. Nothing out here so far to suggest drugs, either. But we’ve got a lot of soil and leaves to go through – ” “The weather’s awful. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to begin sifting through the soil.”
I sounded impatient and irritable. I was put out with him. I was put out with the police. Water was trickling down the front of my coat. My knees hurt. I was losing feeling in my hands and feet. The stench was overpowering, and the loud smacking of the rain was getting on my nerves.
“We haven’t started digging or using the sieves. Thought we might wait on that. It’s too hard to see. The metal detector’s all we’ve used so far, that and our eyes.”
“Well, the more all of us walk around out here, the more we risk destroying the scene. Small bones, teeth, other things, get stepped on and pushed down into the mud.”
They had already been here for hours. It was probably too damn late to preserve the scene.
“So, you want to move them today or hold off until the weather clears?” he asked.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have waited until the rain stopped and there was more light. When bodies have been in the woods for months, leaving them covered with plastic and in place for another day or two isn’t going to make any difference. But when Marino and I had parked on the logging road, there were already several television news trucks waiting. Reporters were sitting in their cars, others braving the rain and trying to coax information out of police officers standing sentry. The circumstances were anything but ordinary. Though I had no right to tell Morrell what to do, by Code I had jurisdiction over the bodies.
“There are stretchers and body bags in the back of my car,” I said, digging out my keys. “If you could have somebody get them, we’ll move the bodies shortly and I’ll take them on in to the morgue.”
“Sure thing. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.”
Then Benton Wesley was crouching next to me.
“How did you find out?”
I asked. The question was ambiguous, but he knew what I meant.
“Morrell reached me in Quantico. I came right away.”
He studied the bodies, his angular face almost haggard in the shadow of his dripping hood. “You seeing anything that might tell us what happened?”
“All I can tell you at the moment is their skulls weren’t fractured and they weren’t shot in the head.”
He did not respond, his silence adding to my tension.
I began unfolding sheets as Marino walked up, hands jammed into his coat pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold and rain.
“You’re going to catch pneumonia,” Wesley remarked, getting to his feet. “Is Richmond PD too cheap to buy you guys hats?”