Notes on an Execution(30)

The bodies had been buried by a stream. In the years since, the ground had shifted, churned up with the rain and the rising creek, and the bones had scattered, resettled across the forest floor. As the forensic photographer crouched over that discolored skull, lonely in its patch of dirt, Moretti turned to Saffy, one hand propped to shield the sun from her eyes.

“Remind me what we have around here?” Moretti asked. “Homes, farms?”

Saffy tilted toward the canopy of trees, trying to banish the scent of decay. Moretti was an outsider, originally from Atlanta. She would never understand this land like Saffy did, would never know the subtleties of the forest at night.

“Mostly farmland,” Saffy said. “There’s a convenience store about a mile away and a trailer park with a dozen homes behind it. The rest is protected wilderness.”

“These woods are too dense for a car, or even a bike.”

“He could have used a wagon or something,” Saffy said. “Or else he’s a big man.”

“Three separate trips, don’t you think? He couldn’t have brought them all here at once. That, or we’ve found our crime scene.”

Saffy shook her head. “It’s too tangled back here. The brambles are so thick. This feels like a spot for stashing, not for lingering.”

Moretti sighed. “We’ll confirm at the morgue, but it’s them all right. The decomposition, that damn backpack. These are our missing girls from ’90.”

Saffy watched as the forensic team hunted through the dirt. If these bones belonged to the girls from 1990, they had been here over nine years now, and any chance of footprints or fibers, fingerprints or stray hairs, had long been degraded.

“Honestly, Singh?” Moretti sighed. “I didn’t think we’d ever find them.”

There was a plea in Sergeant Moretti’s gaze—a cynical hope Saffy had come to recognize, the most honest expression of this inscrutable job. A perfect mirror of the fucked-up world, violence and tragedy mingling with a desperate sort of faith.

“I’ll take care of the witness,” Saffy offered, leaving Moretti to her own reflection.

The hiker sat on a mossy log, wrapped in a trauma blanket. He grimaced as Saffy approached—an older man, with a gash oozing up the back of his muddy calf. He’d tripped down the mountain in his rush to reach a pay phone.

“I’ve already answered all your questions,” he said, exhausted, as he took in Saffy’s curt smile, her tight ponytail, her fitted navy blazer.

“I’m sorry,” Saffy said. “But we need a formal statement.”

She sat gingerly on the log and turned toward the man, noting the tracks down his dirt-stained face where tears had rolled into his wiry beard. Get a statement then take him home, Moretti had murmured, as the man choked out his story. He just got unlucky. Saffy’s instincts discerned the same. At its most fundamental level, detective work was a study in reading people, and Saffy had been perfecting the art all her life.

“Did you touch anything?” Saffy asked. “Maybe when you first discovered the scene?”

“No. I found the backpack first, and I reached to pick it up—I hate when people litter on the trails—and that’s when I saw the skull. I ran right back down for the phone.”

The hiker’s story was short and uncomplicated, useless but necessary. It’s all about building a case, Moretti liked to say. Nothing counts until it counts in court.

“You look awfully young for this job, don’t you?” the man said, after the statement had been signed, as he chugged a paper cup of water from the CSI tent.

She did. Saffy knew her face still carried the narrow naivety of adolescence, along with the surprise of her brown skin, a constant questioning she read regularly in strangers’ eyes. When she landed the promotion, her young features had not helped: at the record age of twenty-six, Saffy would be training under Emilia Moretti, the only female senior investigator in the state of New York. The other troopers had been livid. It was true that Saffy had only served the requisite four years as a state trooper, that Moretti had written a glowing recommendation directly to the superintendent, but it still stung when one pimply guy cornered her in the parking lot, a cop Saffy had known since Basic School in Albany. Bitch. He’d spat a wad of saliva right onto her chunky black boot. Next time, try working for it.

Saffy had almost reminded him of the Hunter case, though no one had forgotten. When the Hunter boy went missing, Saffy stayed late every night, holed up past midnight in her stiff wool uniform. Tiny Tits, the other troopers hooted, frat-boy loud. Does she even speak English? They busted into Saffy’s locker and filled it with days-old takeout from the single Indian restaurant in town. They only stopped after Saffy convinced Moretti to drive out to the crumbling cabin where the Hunter boy’s karate instructor had taken his monthly fishing trips. Sure enough. The child was traumatized but alive. Saffy had watched from the station window as the boy collapsed into his sobbing mother’s arms.

“Come on,” Saffy said, ignoring the man’s question. She stood, brushed a pat of moss from her pants. “I’ll drive you home.”

She helped the hiker into the back seat of her Crown Victoria, which to this point had mostly carried drunken day laborers from the bar to the police station. As they pulled away from the trailhead, Saffy turned onto the service road she knew by heart, the mountain rising green in her rearview. The memories seemed to follow, kicked up like dust beneath her tires. She had known the underbelly of this land, smelled the rancid bloom of its decay, seen the ghosts that floated hazy through the night. She knew what this place was capable of.