Page 36 of Close Her Eyes

Noah said, “Why didn’t you call someone last night, or even this morning?”

Zeke didn’t even look at him this time, keeping his eyes on Josie. He pinched the cigarette between a thumb and forefinger. “It’s not in my nature to be in other people’s business.”

Josie suppressed an eye-roll. “You don’t say.”

“Aw, come on, JoJo. I thought we was on good terms.”

As good as it was ever going to get, she thought. He was still on the other side of the law with a long history of petty crime to his credit. She said, “Why did you wait to call me?”

He took another drag. Ash tumbled down the front of his jacket, but he didn’t bother to brush it off. “’Cause I wasn’t sure if it was trash or a body. Your boyfriend’s right. People dump a lot of trash over there. The city always comes and does a big clean-up in the spring and fall but then people come and dump more. Anyway, it’s when I saw the birds that I knew it wasn’t trash.” He used the cigarette to point at the buzzards again. “I only ever see them when they’re picking at a carcass. Usually deer. Sometimes smaller game. Never did see an animal wearing red, though.”

Josie said, “Were you able to see what kind of car it was? Make, model, color? Anything?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, JoJo. It was too dark.”

“Did you see the driver?”

Zeke took one last puff of his cigarette before flicking it into the river. “It was too far away.”

Noah said, “Could you tell if there was more than one person in the car?”

“Nope.”

Josie knew from prior experience with Zeke that he wouldn’t tell her anything unless they specifically asked. “Whatdidyou see, Zeke?”

He reached into his pockets again until he found another cigarette. He put it in his mouth, unlit. “I told you. A car. Lights. Noise. That’s it. Like I said, it was dark and all the way across the river. But the dome light inside the car came on when the driver’s side door opened. That was the only door that opened.”

Josie asked, “Did you get any kind of a look at the driver when they went to open the trunk? Tall, short, fat, thin, male, female?”

He shook his head, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth. “Too dark to tell. The driver was just a dark shape.”

“What about the car?” she asked. “Dark? Light? Sedan? SUV?”

He lit the cigarette. Smoke shot out through his nose. “Light, I think. Sedan. It was low to the ground. Not an SUV.”

Josie looked at the red peeking out from the brush, gauging the distance. In the dark, with no streetlights and no other vehicles to provide illumination, it would be impossible to tell much else from this vantage point.

“Thanks, Zeke,” she said, relieved that the words didn’t feel like razor blades over her tongue anymore.

“Anything for you, JoJo,” he said. The leathery skin around his pale gray eyes crinkled as he smiled down at her. “Say, you think you could get me a sleeping bag?”

TWENTY-ONE

The woman in the red coat had been dumped like garbage. From the road, Josie could see the path her body had taken down the incline, tamping down the dried brush and dislodging discarded beer cans and other trash as it rolled to its final resting place. She had landed face down, her arms and legs splayed in unnatural positions. Curly blonde hair shone in the waning sunlight, dried thistle caught in it. She wore a black skirt that had caught on a bramble and now rode up on one side. A black ballet flat clung to one of her feet. Her other foot was bare. There were abrasions on her legs where crows and buzzards had attempted to feast. Josie and Noah had had to scare off several of the birds when they’d arrived. The odor of decomposition had been unmistakable from the moment they stepped out of their vehicle.

Now, members of the ERT moved carefully and slowly around the body. Their white crime scene garb stood out in stark contrast to the brown winter tones of the bank. Josie and Noah had called them out to the scene after shooing the birds and confirming that what Zeke had seen was, in fact, a body. Noah had gone back over to the other riverbank with a couple of patrol officers to canvass the East Bridgers. It was a long shot, but they had to find out if anyone else had seen or heard anything the night before. Josie alternated between sitting in her warm car and standing on the shoulder of the road, watching the ERT work. Mettner and Gretchen had gone home to get some rest.

Gravel crunched behind her. Then she heard Anya’s voice. “Another one?”

Josie glanced over at her. Her puffy blue winter coat dwarfed her thin frame. Her silver-blonde locks swished across her shoulders. Circles of red smudged her cheeks and the tip of her nose.

“Another body,” Josie said.

“We get a lot of bodies,” Anya said. “But this one so close to Sharon Eddy? Dump site next to water? I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Josie didn’t have a great feeling either. They stood in silence while the ERT brought out lights to battle the onset of evening. Hummel’s team erected a pop-up tent over the body and pointed bright halogen lights at it. Finally, Hummel gave them the signal that they were cleared to enter the crime scene. They suited up and Dr. Feist retrieved her supplies from her truck. Getting down the steep bank to where the body was located proved difficult in their booties. Josie nearly fell twice. Anya stumbled as well but only once. As they reached the body, she took out her camera and began taking photos. Josie waited as she documented every angle. Flies buzzed around every part of the body, flitting from limb to limb. Here, the stench of death was much worse. Up close, the dirt that smudged the woman’s clothes and clung to her hair was more noticeable, as were the places on the backs of her legs where the crows and buzzards had begun their gruesome work. Another wound gaped open on the back of her left hand.

Anya zoomed in on each one of them. “Scavenger birds,” she said. “You can tell by the triangular shape of the wounds. These were made postmortem. If they’d occurred before her death, when her blood was still circulating, I’d expect to see a lot more blood.”

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