Page 4 of The Wolves Come at Night
Carson sat gingerly on her desk chair, Izz on the opposite sofa arm. She’d gone all colt when Simeon showed up, legs and arms akimbo, giggling and flipping her hair. If Carson didn’t take charge, Izz was going to topple over into his lap.
“We were almost to the coordinates when we heard a couple arguing. There was a gunshot. No, two. We think the man may have shot the woman. Her name was Georgia. He called her Georgia, at least. I suppose it could have been a nickname.”
“He shot her? With a gun? At my coordinates?”
Horror crossing his face, Simeon pulled out his phone and tapped a few times on the screen.
“Are you calling the police?”
“I’m locking the coordinates first. I don’t want anyone else going there. Why didn’t you call the police immediately?”
“We’re going to. We just got back here. We were scared. The man seemed really pissed off. I think he saw me,” Carson finished, annoyed at how small her voice sounded. “We were about to call the police when you knocked.”
Simeon gnawed a thumbnail for a moment. This gesture made Carson’s heart swell. It was the response of a child, not a man. So vulnerable, was Simeon Chase. Who knew?
“We should go back up there,” Carson said finally. “Just to make sure. If there’s not a body, and we waste everyone’s time…we could get into trouble.”
“No, no way. Bad idea,” Izz said. “What if he’s still there?”
“You say her name was Georgia?” Simeon was tapping away again.
“Now what?”
“I’m looking to see if there are any missing people named Georgia in the area.”
“That’s a waste of time.”
“What if he shot her but she isn’t dead?”
“Why would he have started to bury her, then?”
“He buried her?” Simeon asked.
Did he? It seemed like he was moving brush around, but maybe he was just walking across the top of the hill. Or running through the trees. “Maybe? It sounded like he was covering things up.”
“All right. No one by that name in the news.”
Carson tried once more. “Not to be argumentative, but this happened less than an hour ago. I don’t think someone would be identified as missing that quickly. Look, let’s just call the police, tell them what we saw, and let them deal with it.”
Simeon looked briefly pained but nodded. He had the campus police on speed dial. Vanderbilt had its own force that handled most of what happened on campus. He watched Carson as the call connected.
“Hello? I need to report a possible crime.”
Two
Carson found herself on the trail up the mountain again an hour later, leading a group to the crime scene. Simeon was behind her, and the cops, too. Campus police had called Nashville Metro immediately, and there were four of them, two patrol officers, a crime scene tech, and a smoking hot homicide detective who’d tagged along at the last minute. The officers in uniform and the crime scene tech were huffing and puffing, their equipment clanking away. It was only a matter of time until one of them went into cardiac arrest and she was forced to perform CPR until the Life Flight helicopter could meet them at the top of the mountain.
“We there yet?” the older of the two cops called. “Hotter than Georgia asphalt up here.”
“Nearly,” Carson said, cringing inside. Georgia was the woman’s name, at least that’s what she’d been called by the furious man. Though Carson hadn’t heard the euphemism before, she’d bumped into a few strange southern sayings since she’d moved to Nashville, and brushed it off. It was hot for a fall afternoon, and tiny gnats were buzzing around their head, delighting in the salty treat that came from landing on necks and arms.
Simeon backed her up. “We’re getting close to the coordinates, sir.”
Carson’s legs were screaming. She hadn’t planned to climb this hill twice in a single day. The hill seemed more like a mountain the second time. Geographic speed bump my ass. She was puffing as hard as the cops.
“It’s here,” Simeon said finally, his face lit by the phone in his hand. They all stopped, and Carson looked around, catching her breath, getting her bearings.
Yes, there was the mossy rock formation she’d tripped over. She pointed ahead of them. “He was on the other side of these trees.”
