Page 13 of Water's Edge

We finish about the same time and exchange phones again.

“Any questions?” I ask.

“Lots of them. This is my first crime scene.”

I can tell, but she handled herself pretty well. She didn’t throw up on the body, or run screaming out into the cove, or start crying like the fire chief did when he saw the charred remains of someone’s beloved pet.

I start. “What do you think we should do next?”

“Me?”

“Yes. What would you do next if it was your investigation?”

“Well, I would try to identify the victim.”

“Okay. How do you do that?”

“Missing persons. Circulate her picture,” she says, stopping for a moment. “No, that won’t work. She’s pretty messed up.”

I intend to circulate the picture of her face, messed up or not. Someone in law enforcement may recognize her.

“How about give a face shot to all the law enforcement in the area and then get a forensic sketch to put on the news media?”

“That’s smart.” I smile. “While we’re waiting to identify her, what do we do?” I ask.

“See if there are any witnesses around the area where the body was found.”

“That’s a good idea. But how about we start with the last person to see the victim?”

“You mean Robbie Boyd?”

“He was the last person to see her.”

“But the coroner said she’s been dead more than twenty-four hours. Would he stick around that long?”

“Plenty of killers want the bodies to be found.” I reference the two types of killers: organized and disorganized.

“We learned that in the academy,” she says.

“Which kind of killer do you think this guy is?”

“Organized,” she says. “He must have planned it. The clothes are missing. He left no visible evidence behind. He hid the body, but not so well that it wouldn’t be found. He made it hard for us to identify her by messing up her face.”

“Do you think Boyd could have killed her?” I ask.

She thinks a minute. “I don’t know. He’s pretty creepy.”

I go into teacher mode. “Killers enjoy the kill. Sometimes they come back to where they’ve hidden a body. It gives them a sense of power, control. They know something no one else knows. The posing of the body means something to them. Maybe they’re mimicking another killer. Robbie said he was a criminal justice student.”

“So he would know about some of this stuff. He told me to either arrest him or let him go. He knew I couldn’t arrest him, didn’t he?”

She is catching on.

“But he’s still a suspect,” I say. “What did you think about his statement?”

Ronnie doesn’t hesitate. “His story about why he was there in the first place stinks. And he never told me who told him about the place. I don’t believe he was just hoping to find somewhere to climb rocks.”

“Did he have climbing gear in the car?” She took photographs of the inside and outside of the car but didn’t look in the trunk as far as I could tell.

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