Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)(15)

She’s lost the tips of two toes to frostbite. The bottoms of her feet are callused and thick-soled. I also note that one of her wrists is slightly crooked, and April confirms that the bone has been broken and healed poorly. That could have taken place with the hostiles or afterward—medicine outside Rockton is primitive, and the fact that it healed at all shows she had basic medical care.

On to cause of death. April confirms it wasn’t the blow to the back of her head. That’s ugly, and it left a mark on the bone, but it wouldn’t have been incapacitating. The wound on her leg is indeed a bullet hole. A pellet hole, to be exact, from a shotgun. We find a buckshot pellet. There’s only one, which suggests the gun was fired from a distance. That’s not how you use buckshot—if you’re hunting large game with a shotgun at a distance, you’d use a slug and, arguably, you should be using a rifle, but out here, people take the weapons and ammo they can get. At that range, a buckshot pellet isn’t usually fatal, but if you hit the right spot—like the femoral artery—it can be.

Struck by a blow to the back of the head. Puts on her hat afterward. No time to treat the injury? Trying to get somewhere first? Then she’s shot. I don’t see any signs that she’d attempted to treat that or even stop the bleeding.

Mental confusion from the head blow? Shock? Hypothermia? She’d been escaping someone in the forest, possibly at night, snow falling.

I remember her position, fetal on her side, protecting the baby.

I’m just going to lie down for a minute. Rest.

That’s a classic sign of hypothermia. Someone accustomed to life out here would know better, but add the blow to the head with the baby clutched to her breast, and she had good reason to succumb.

Running. Fleeing. Lost. Exhausted. Drop and curl up … and bleed out in the snow, too befuddled from a head injury to tend to your injured leg.

The woman’s stomach has food in it. Not much, suggesting she hadn’t recently eaten. There’s nothing for me to analyze there. I don’t know what I’d be looking for anyway—ah-ha, she ate hare, and from the semi-digested bits, I can tell it was a specific subtype, found only on Bear Skull Mountain. Yeah, no. She isn’t starving, but neither had she just eaten before her death. That’s all I need.

Speaking of eating, that makes me realize the dead woman didn’t have any supplies on her. No backpack. Nothing to feed the baby either. Does that suggest she fled unexpectedly? She was properly dressed, so it wasn’t as if she grabbed the baby and ran out into the snow.

I check her clothing pockets. Only her parka has them, and I find a knife in an interior one.

Clothing next. The most interesting piece had been around her ankle—her sole jewelry. A braided leather anklet inscribed with “Hope. Dream. Love.” The letters have been burned in with painstaking care. The leather edges show faint wear. It’s not new, but it isn’t old either.

Most of the woman’s clothing is basic in its construction. It shows a knowledge of tanning and sewing at a journeyman level. It’s sturdy, and it does the job. Her jacket and boots are different. They’re serious craftsmanship. The parka is done in the Inuit style—caribou with the fur inside, the hollow hairs adding extra insulation. The hood is framed in ermine. Her boots are also caribou, and her socks are mink. Warm and luxurious. All three have decorative flairs not found on her clothing. The jacket buttons are polished stones. The laces on the boots and jacket end in bone carvings of fox heads—gorgeous work that I didn’t even notice until now.

Her outerwear must be trade goods. With that, I have my first solid clue. Someone made her parka and boots. Someone with enough talent that others will recognize the workmanship.

The first person I’d normally ask is Jacob, Dalton’s brother, who still lives in the forest. He’s away, though, on a hunting expedition with Nicole, a Rockton resident. I’m hoping it’s more than a hunting trip, but either way, he’s not nearby. My second point of contact would be former Rockton sheriff Tyrone Cypher. Yet his winter camp is a few hours away, and he might not be there.

We’ll start with option three: the First Settlement. I’d much rather deal with Jacob or Cypher, but I will admit that someone in the settlement is more likely to recognize the workmanship. It might even come from there—after Rockton, they’re the largest community in the area.

Once April finishes the autopsy, I go into the waiting room to check on the baby. Jen starts passing her to me.

I lift my hands. “I can hold her if you have to do something, but I need to go talk to Phil.” I take the baby and pull her into a cuddle. Then I stop. “What’s that…” I sniff again and look at Jen.

“Why do you think I was handing her to you?” she says. “I’m about to teach you a valuable baby-care lesson. You can thank me later.”

Dalton walks in. “We need to—”

I hand him the baby. “She wants you.”

His brows arch, but he takes her. Then his nose wrinkles.

“Jen’s going to teach you how to change a diaper,” I say. “I’d love to help, but I need to talk to Phil.”

I hurry out the door before he can argue.





EIGHT


Phil isn’t at his house. I’ll admit to some relief at discovering that, even if it means I have to go find him. When he arrived—or was exiled here as our new town council rep—he’d stayed in his house as much as April stayed in hers.