Autopsy(Kay Scarpetta #25)(82)

Finding powerful flashlights for each of us, he tucks his pistol in the back of his pants, and we set out across the grass. The low tide quietly plashes, and I paint my light over the narrow lip of loose sandy dirt that no one would run along. There’s really no beach, and visitors aren’t invested in swimming and sunbathing.

They jog, ride bikes, go sailing, have picnics and romantic trysts or cruise by in tour boats. It’s popular to take nature walks looking for bald eagles, hawks, woodpeckers, wigeons, warblers, all sorts of birds including nocturnal ones. Like the owl just now barking from somewhere in the forest, and then another one clucks and whistles its reply in a hair-raising counterpoint.

“Cammie’s body was right around here.” I show Marino with my light. “In photographs, the restrooms were there.” I point to the building, the empty parking lot nearby, my eyes adjusting to the dark.

THE RIVER IS SHALLOW along the shore depending on the tides, and I think about what I reviewed a little while ago. She was facedown, her head turned to one side, her upper body in the water, her long dark hair floating on the current, arms and legs bent.

“She was fully clothed in running tights, a T-shirt and jacket. They were disarrayed and dirty but intact except for her right shoe.” I describe what I saw in her file. “It was some twenty feet from her body, the lace tied in a double bow, her right sock grass-stained and halfway off her foot.”

“How long do you think she’d been dead?” Marino looks around, his right hand ready to reach for his gun if needed.

“Not long at all based on her body temperature and other postmortem findings,” I reply. “Most striking was the lack of washerwoman’s changes, the wrinkling of the hands and feet when bodies are submerged. She wasn’t in the water long enough for that to happen.”

I explain that a couple out for a romantic interlude had the grisly misfortune of happening upon her body, and the first thing they did was pull it all the way onto the shore. Her killer may have heard these two people coming, and chances are he bolted, knowing the police would roll up soon enough.

“That in addition to her convulsions, and he was interrupted,” I say in summary. “If there were other things he might have done to the body, he didn’t have the chance.”

“Like cutting off her hands.”

“Possibly.”

“Because if it’s the same killer, why not remove her hands the same way he did Gwen’s?”

“I suspect he was out of time.”

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight.” Marino’s eyes are all over the place. “She’s running along the trail at the back of the park and is confronted by some douchebag who’s hiding, maybe waiting for her. She hauls ass through the woods, loses a shoe, and ends up in the water? When did she have the seizure?”

“I can only speculate.” I step closer to the dark ruffled river, another plane thundering low overhead, and it wouldn’t be my choice to fly in this weather. “I suspect the stress and physical exertion of fleeing an attacker triggered a seizure. Possibly this happened where she lost the shoe.”

The slivered moon slips in and out of clouds as we return to Marino’s truck, and I get that feeling again of being watched. I sense a presence, and someone could be hiding in the woods even as we speak. We might not see him. Or maybe what I’m feeling is the dark energy of a violent psychopath, possibly one who frequents this place.

“Maybe she was better off,” Marino says. “If she was seizing all over the place? At least he didn’t get to finish what he started.”

“He finished, all right.” Images flash as I envision what I think he did. “She knew what was happening, and what an awful way to die.”

“He probably intended to kill her by the railroad tracks.” Marino points his key, remotely starting his truck, the lights flaring on. “Maybe he was going to leave her body there the same way he left Gwen’s, assuming they were killed by the same person,” he adds, and I suspect he’s thinking of Cliff Sallow again.

Back inside the truck, we follow another access road that leads deeper into the forest. We drive slowly, our windows half down, listening.

“Talk about spooky,” Marino says to an owl’s hoot-hooting. “All that’s missing is that Shock Theater music.”

“No eyes or ears. No one to hear you scream.” I’ll just keep saying it. “The perfect hangout for a predator.”

“Yeah, this may be where he first spotted his victims.” Marino follows the access road, careful not to overrun his headlights in the rolling ground fog.

“Then how did he know where Gwen lived?” I reply as we continue sorting through the information, nearing the back of the park. “It would seem that whoever abducted her would have to be familiar with Old Town, and Colonial Landing in particular.”

“That’s why I keep coming back to the manager,” Marino says.

“Maybe,” I reply.

The Mount Vernon Trail is just ahead, and its tall iron lamps don’t dispel the foggy darkness but would illuminate anyone jogging by or biking. We park where I did last Friday night when arriving alone in the rain after Gwen’s body was spotted by the conductor of the seven o’clock train.

I remember tucking my Subaru next to August Ryan’s unmarked Dodge Charger, having no idea what awaited. All I knew was that a woman’s nude dead body had been spotted by the railroad tracks running through the clearing where Marino and I are now climbing out of his truck.