Page 15 of Water's Edge

The body bag is laid on the stretcher. Larsen unzips it. I’m thinking how uncomfortable being zipped up in that bag must be.

Then: “She’s dead. She doesn’t feel a thing.”

I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies. Made a few that way. I was never concerned for the ones I killed. I hope those assholes suffered after death and burn in hell. My heart goes out to this victim. I don’t know anything about her. Yet.

Larsen is examining the body. I am too.

Stretch marks on her lower abdomen.

Similar stretch marks on her upper thighs, and when they roll her to the side, I see them on her lower buttocks.

Lost weight? Had a child?

Deep tissue bruising on her upper chest, back, and the right side of her jaw, around both eyes. Some the size of a big fist. Some on her arms and cheeks like fingermarks. She was grabbed by the face.

Some are older injuries that were healing. She was held captive awhile.

The split lip is more recent. I didn’t open her mouth to see if teeth were missing. I didn’t have to.

The marks encircling her wrists are narrow but deep indentations. Skin was abraded from struggling. Handcuffs. Not likely steel cable or nylon rope. Autopsy will show.

Deep blue bruises encircling ankles in shape of chain links. Reminds me of chain used to hold up a porch swing. Or tie a dog outside. Or chain someone to something. I’ve seen that. Can’t unsee it.

One other thing passes through my mind. I didn’t see any rings or jewelry or signs of it. White circles where rings would have been. She might not have been married.

My phone rings. It’s Davis.

“Ma’am, I found something.”

Do I have to ask? I guess so.

“What did you find, Deputy Davis?”

“I tripped over a rock and there was something scratched into the bottom of it.”

“Okay.”

“It looks like some kind of devil worship symbol. I’m not good with that stuff.”

“Can you send a picture to my phone?”

“Will do.”

“How far from the body was it?”

“About ten feet. I must have walked over that rock twenty times. Good thing I tripped, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Good thing. Send the picture.”

I hang up and my phone dings. I pull over to the shoulder. The symbol was crudely scratched into the rock. Davis took the photo with a ruler to show size. The rock itself is about the size of a toaster. The symbol is a circle with a triangle inside and an oval shape inside the triangle. I have no idea what I’m looking at.

I show it to Ronnie.

“Any ideas?”

Ronnie gets on her phone and taps and slides and taps her finger over the screen until I’m ready to scream. I hate it when people do that. She turns her phone toward me. “The Internet says it’s the all-seeing eye of God or the Eye of Providence.”

The Internet is never wrong.

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