Page 27 of Remember Her Name

Josie’s heart hammered so fast and hard, she had trouble hearing his words. “Let’s cross.”

Turner hesitated. “You want me to walk through this?”

“It’s only, what? Ten feet across, maybe? Come on.” Josie plunged into the stream. At its deepest, the water came to her knees. Although wet boots made it more difficult to walk, the cold of the water soothed her heated skin. Turner splashed behind her, muttering something about his loafers and suit pants. The smell of death was stronger here, invading her nasal passages and coating her tongue and throat. A loud, pervasive buzz filled the air. Josie’s heart stuttered as they drew closer. Bloodied fingertips curled over the boat’s edge.

“Son of a bitch,” Josie said, forcing her feet to keep moving.

Turner trudged alongside her, faster now.

Mud squelched around Josie’s boots as they reached the opposite bank. More of the horror cradled inside the boat’s crumbling shell came into view. Blood clashed with the faded blue of its hull and the green growth all around them. Cleo Tate lay on her side, legs stretched like she was running. One arm was folded under her body while the other gripped the side of the boat. Dried blood matted her dark hair.

Blowflies buzzed around her, skittering across the pale skin of her face, arms, and calves. They were drawn to corpses,showing up minutes after death. They blended with Cleo’s dark blue shirt, dozens of them forming a single roiling mass that undulated across her torso, their metallic blue and green backs winking in the shafts of sunlight that punched through the trees. Little sequins of death. Every few seconds, one or two flies would break away, flitting to her face, looking for any orifice in which to lay their eggs. Adult female blowflies laid as many as two hundred and fifty eggs each. They disappeared into Cleo’s ear and then crawled back out, one after another. One perched on her lower lip before scurrying inside her mouth. More followed. Others attacked her eyelids, seeking entry. Several emerged from her nostrils, making way for more blowflies to enter, their movements jerky and frenzied.

A breeze soughed through the trees, skating over Cleo’s body. A lock of her hair lifted. The rippling swath of flies covering her middle shifted in response to the disturbance, climbing over one another. A gap formed long enough for Josie to see a large stab wound near Cleo’s kidney. It gaped open. The small pearly bodies of maggots wriggled inside it. Dozens upon dozens spilling out until the blowflies’ bodies cloaked the gash once more, impervious to anything other than their task.

Over the persistent hum of the insects, Josie heard Turner swear.

There was no point in checking for a pulse. Cleo Tate had been dead for some time.

EIGHTEEN

Josie swatted at the mosquitoes and gnats that assaulted her face. No matter where she positioned herself, they followed like a cloud enveloping her. Finally, she stopped moving. Leaning against the trunk of a large maple tree, she watched the ERT and Dr. Feist work. After Hummel and his team cordoned off the scene, setting a perimeter, they had erected a pop-up tent over the boat. When Josie and Turner made their calls, notifying everyone necessary to process the scene as well as uniformed officers to secure it, they’d kept it off the police scanners that the press and many citizens followed. The longer they could keep this quiet, the better. Remy Tate and Kellan Neal had yet to be notified. Still, there was always the chance of the press finding out and WYEP sending a helicopter out to the scene.

The sound of mud sucking at someone’s boots drew Josie’s attention. One of the uniformed officers trudged toward her. Conlen. Just like the rest of them, he was sweating profusely. He’d been the one to provide a stroller for little Gracie Tate. He was out here helping them process the body of a mother who’d been savagely ripped away from her child, all while he had little ones at home. For a moment, Josie wanted to ask if it ever bothered him. She was an overachiever when it came tocompartmentalizing, but would she be able to do it as well once she and Noah had their own baby? She shook off the thought.

Conlen said, “We’ve broken up the area into quadrants. We’re going to start the line searches. See if this asshole left anything behind.”

“If I were marching a kidnapped woman out here to kill her,” Josie said, “I’d take the shortest route, which is from the north.”

Conlen nodded. “We’ll start there.”

“Keep me posted.” Josie watched him walk off. Turner had gone to interview Edgar Garcia. He had also promised to speak with Cleo Tate’s family. A knot of apprehension tightened in the pit of her stomach at the thought of letting Turner notify Cleo’s husband and father that they’d found her body, but she let it go. Noah had been drilling it into her head since Turner’s arrival that as long as he was there, they had to find a way to work with him. For Josie, that meant not trying to micromanage the aspects of every case to keep Turner on the sidelines.

Officer Jenny Chan ducked under the crime scene tape and worked her way over. Using the sleeve of her Tyvek suit, she wiped perspiration from her brow. A camera rested in her gloved palms. “We found a bunch of partial footprints around the boat,” she told Josie. Flipping the screen of the camera so Josie could see it, she clicked through several photos. “We couldn’t find one that was complete.”

“The treads look like they’re from boots,” Josie said.

Chan nodded. “We’ll likely be able to narrow down the brand through the FBI’s footwear database, but I’m not sure how helpful it will be. There’s not enough for us to determine his shoe size, unless the search turns up additional impressions.”

Josie looked past Chan to where Dr. Feist leaned over Cleo Tate’s body. “Anything else?”

“Looks like your killer left the murder weapon behind,” Chan said. She clicked through several more photos until she came toone of a large, bloodied knife. “It was in the bottom of the boat, near her feet.”

He had stabbed Cleo Tate, likely repeatedly, then dropped the knife at her feet and walked away.

The next photo showed the ruler Chan had put next to it in order to measure the knife’s length. The blade was eight inches, the black handle five point six inches. “That’s a chef’s knife,” Josie said. She had one at home in her butcher block.

“Yeah,” Chan agreed. “Once we get it cleaned up and processed for prints and DNA, we can try to figure out the brand.”

Josie’s empty stomach burned at the thought of that blade plunging into Cleo Tate’s body. Whoever had stabbed her would have made a colossal mess. There was no way the killer managed it without getting blood spatter all over himself. The search teams would probably find drops of it from where he walked out of these woods.

Josie’s eyes were drawn back to the gently flowing water of the stream. Even if he’d washed some of it off here at the scene, he’d still be dripping with Cleo Tate’s blood. It would be on his clothes, shoes, hat. Everywhere. Given the remoteness of the area, it was possible he had walked out of this forest covered in blood and gotten into a vehicle without being seen, but that vehicle would have Cleo Tate’s DNA all over it.

Behind Chan, Dr. Feist waved at Josie. “Suit up and have a look,” she called.

Josie thanked Chan and found the impromptu station that Hummel had set up containing all the equipment the ERT needed to do their jobs. As quickly as she could, she donned her own Tyvek suit. Her hair got tucked up inside a skull cap. She worked her feet into booties and her sweat-damp hands into gloves. The uniformed officer standing sentry outside the scenelogged her information on his clipboard before lifting the crime scene tape to allow her to duck under.

She joined Anya at the side of the boat. The smell of decomposition was stronger now, clinging to her, invading her senses. Angry blowflies dived at their heads, their shiny green and blue metallic bodies gleaming. They still teemed over Cleo Tate’s body, trying to return immediately after Anya shooed them. Cleo’s clothes looked stiff with dried blood. Up close, Josie could see where it flaked along her bare skin.

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