Page 24 of Evidence of a Folktale

“Oh my god.” Bel picked up her pace. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“It’s not all blood,” Eamon said.

“What on earth?” Her words died on her tongue as they closed the distance. “Can you hear a heartbeat?”

“No.”

“What in god’s name happened here?” Her head spun at the sight, at the red in the snow, at the bloody feminine hand peeking out from below a crimson cloak. “Women don’t just end up dead in the middle of the woods naked except for a red cloak by accident,” she whispered.

“No, they don’t,” Eamon agreed, and Bel cursed as she fished out her phone.

“Griffin,” she said when he answered, and by his stillness, her tone already warned him of what shewas going tosay. “There’s a body.”

“I’d hopedyou’d found a prop that got blownoff setby the storm,” Griffin said as he and Bel hovered over the body bathed in crimson. He cursed, the harsh words echoing off the trees, and then he stared at Eamon’s hulking form flanking them. A wordless conversation passed between the men, and Bel knew the sheriff had arrived at the same realization she had. Eamon had located the corpse, and if he’d found it, it was no prop.

“We need to keep this quiet,” Griffin said. “We have hundreds of fans in town and a month-long filming schedule. If word gets out that we found a body in the woods…”

“It’s going to get out,” Bel said.

“I know, but if we control how the news is released, it’ll cause less panic… there’s no chance this was an accident, is there?”

“Naked except for this red cloak and left to bleed out from a chest or abdomen wound? No, someone killed her. See here?” Bel crouched beside the woman’s legs. “I’m no medical examiner, but I’ve seen enough bodies to recognize lividity. She died in this position and hasn’t been moved.”

“A naked girl running through a snowstorm gets killed in the middle of nowhere?” Griffin stared at their surroundings. “What on earth happened out here?”

“Not the middle of nowhere,” Eamon interrupted, speaking for the first time. “She died close to today’s filming location… on my property.”

“This is part of the Reale Estate?” Griffin asked. “Good god, Mr. Stone, is there ever a murder you aren’t potentially involved in?”

“In this town, apparently not,” Eamon said. “But as you can see, this wasn’t me. She bled out in the snow. If I’d done this, there’d be no blood.”

The sheriff grunted in protest. “I don’t want to know.”

“He has an alibi.” Bel stifled her laugh. “He was with me last night.”

“His girlfriend would be a terrible alibi if it weren’t you. If Eamon committed something this gruesome, you’d be the first person to have him pinned to the ground and handcuffed,” Griffin said as deputies, techs, and the medical examiner arrived. They drove silently, absent lights and sirens, and then they walked to the location to keep the scene from attracting spectators.

“Sounds fun,” Eamon said, and Bel couldn’t stop the laugh this time. She knew he was pushing her boss, and as horrible as this death was, she loved his presence during a case. The darkness didn’t weigh as heavily on her shoulders when the devil kept the demons at bay.

“Nope.” Griffin glared at them, but Eamon just shrugged.

“Oh my god,” Lina Thum whispered as she settled beside the body. She was Bajka’s respected medical examiner, and Bel pitied the poor woman. The Matchstick Girls autopsies had been a depressingly daunting undertaking, and now, barely a few weeks later, another dead girl lay frozen for her to witness. “What happened to this poor girl?”

“We’re hoping you can tell us,” Bel said. “I noticed lividity, so she hasn’t been moved. She’s also covered in a light dusting of snow, which suggests she died as the storm was ending.Notsure what time that was, though. I was sleeping.”

“I can call the weather channel and get an update,” Griffin said.

“You’re right about lividity,” Lina said. “The position doesn’t appear posed either. She fell face down like this.”

“Which means she was probably on foot when she tripped since there are no tire tracks.” Bel moved to the victim’s legs. “Her feet don’t look rough, though, so she didn’t run far. Unfortunately, our shoes have destroyed the scene, but there weren’t footprints when we arrived. I think placing the time of death at the end of the snowfall is correct. It was falling long enough to cover her tracks, but not long enough to bury her.”

“Plus, bodies are warm immediately after death. Some of the snow would’ve melted off her at first,” Lina said. “And it’s a short walk from the parking spots, so her feet wouldn’t have suffered much damage if she ran from down there…” She gazed back the way they’d come. “I didn’t see blood, though, yet there’s a ton below the body. So, she wasn’t bleeding while she was running.”

“This is probably where the killer caught up with her,” Bel said. “Maybe she was trying to escape a car.”

“But why risk the woods in a storm to kill this poor woman?” Griffin asked as a tech photographed the scene.

“She’s naked and wearing a red cloak. It’s a little theatrical,” Bel said. “I don’t watch Aesop’s Files, but a red cloak fits its narrative. I wonder if fans drove close to today’s shooting location to hook up, but things went too far. Maybe she felt uncomfortable and tried to escape, and her date killed her for it.”

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