Page 23 of Water's Edge

“Sorry. I forgot, Sheriff.” I nod at Ronnie. “Coming?”

She looks at the sheriff and he gives her a serious look.

“You’ve got to get the whole experience, Deputy Marsh,” he tells her. “You might want to work with Megan one day. Not that Motor Patrol’s not important. Or the jail. You could always work with the corrections officers at the jail. Have you rotated through there yet?”

Ronnie snatches her coat off a peg by the sheriff’s door and hurries over to me.

“We should get going,” she says. “Wouldn’t want to miss the autopsy.”

Ronnie looks pale. Sheriff Gray grins. She doesn’t see it, but I do.

The sly dog.

Outside the Taurus we go through the same routine. Me trying the key fob, remembering the fob doesn’t work, using the key. When we get settled, I see that Ronnie is wearing her uniform. Brown twill pants with a light brown stripe down the legs. A light brown shirt with a sparkling new gold sheriff’s badge. New brown lace-up boots too.

She sees me appraising her.

“I thought I should wear something I could work in today,” she says. “I hope it’s all right.”

I wonder if vomit will come out of the shirt very easily. Where we are headed, she may need a hooded raincoat.

“Perfect,” I say. “It will give you more authority until people get to know who you are.”

Ronnie adjusts the shiny badge on the left front of her shirt. Most of the deputies have opted for the embroidered badges. The shiny steel badges make for a good target, and they tear your expensive uniform shirt when they are ripped off during an arrest.

She’ll learn the hard way.

“I see you have your hair pinned up,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “I took the self-defense classes at the academy and the instructor kept harping on not having long hair.”

I wonder if she thinks I’ve been harping on her as well. I don’t care.

“Oh. I forgot to give you this.” She opens her purse and takes out an envelope with my name printed on it.

It is already opened. It’s the crime scene report I’ve been waiting for. I read the report and it more or less backs up what Larsen said last night. It also indicates they checked the cliff for one hundred yards and found no evidence of someone scaling down besides us. It documents every soda and beer can they’d found. The all-seeing eye is in the report and they collected the rock. I may want to keep it after this case is over.

“This envelope was sealed,” I say. “It had my name on it. Did anyone else see what’s in here?”

Ronnie says nothing. She just sits and looks out the passenger-side window. I prefer the silence but I don’t want to start the day out pissed off at her. Besides, there was nothing new in there that she didn’t know.

“Okay, Detective Marsh,” I say. “What did you make of the report?”

Ronnie straightens in the seat and turns to me. “We didn’t find any clothing except what she was wearing. I don’t know if you noticed, but the panties were put on inside out.”

I didn’t.

I urge her to continue.

And she does.

“No purse. No identification. No jewelry. Not even those white bands you get on your fingers when a ring has been on there for a while. Her face wasn’t messed up to the point someone wouldn’t recognize her. All the bruises and cuts show she was beaten. I think this killer has done this before. It was too thought-out. Except for the panties being inside out.”

“Why do you think the killer put the panties and bra back on her?”

“Maybe he didn’t want her to be found naked.”

Seriously. That’s the best you’ve got?

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