Stone Cold Heart (Tracers #13)(23)

“You make it sound like we’ve got a serial killer on the loose.”

She just looked at him.

His eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you think we’re dealing with here?”

“I don’t know yet.”

His eyes sparked. “I need a better answer than that, Sara.”

A low yelp had her turning around. Peaches bounded up the path, followed by Raul, her handler. The dog stopped at Sara’s feet and gazed up at her expectantly.

“Good girl! Look at you!” Sara crouched down and rubbed her ears. She glanced at Raul, and her heart sank. “What is it?”

“We got a hit.”

? ? ?

Sara, Raul, and Peaches spent the entire afternoon searching, only stopping twice for breaks. The tree-lined ravine was shaded, which mitigated the heat factor, but dense vines and thorny undergrowth covered the steeply sloping walls. Sara swatted at the leaves as she moved through the thicket where Peaches had discovered a cranium. She scoured the ground but found nothing new, and she’d been over this section three times now.

“Sara?” Raul called from the top of the ridge.

“Coming!”

Sara looked around and sighed. It was a steep hike out. She could follow the creek bed until it intersected the hiking trail, but that would take three times as long. Grabbing a sapling, she hauled herself up, trying to avoid razor-sharp thistles. Not that it mattered at this point. Her arms were covered in scratches from tromping through the brush all day.

After ten minutes of climbing and pulling, she reached the top, where Peaches waited with her tongue hanging out. Her tail thumped as Sara approached.

“She looks tired,” Sara said.

Raul nodded. “She’s beat. I need to get her home and hydrated.”

“It’s almost five. I can’t believe she lasted so long.”

“She’s a worker.”

They trekked back to the base of operations they’d established near the picnic area. A uniformed officer—Crowley was his name—stood guard beside a Springville PD pickup truck. The tailgate was down, and a flat cardboard box in the truck bed held an array of bones. Sara surveyed the assortment.

“You found another femur?” She looked at Raul.

“It was south of that big boulder. Don’t worry, I photographed it from every angle.”

“Good.” Sara grabbed a clipboard and added the femur to the inventory.

“Detective Hess just called, ma’am.”

Sara looked at Crowley as she peeled off her latex gloves. The officer’s blue uniform was soaked with sweat, but he hadn’t complained about being stationed in the scorching heat all afternoon.

“What’d he say?” Sara asked.

“He’s wrapping up some business at the firehouse. Said for you to meet him back at the station.”

Sara didn’t comment. She’d planned to stop by there anyway, but she preferred to be asked, not ordered. Nolan had been brisk with her since Peaches first started alerting on bones all over the ravine. After the fourth hit—a mandible that was clearly human based on the fillings—Nolan made the call to shut down the entire park and then summoned several uniforms to the scene to help cordon off the area. Around noon, Talia arrived, and Nolan left to handle something in town. From what Sara gathered, the police chief had called a meeting with people from the park district and the sheriff’s office to talk about the latest bone discovery.

Sara retrieved some water from her SUV and walked over to the pickup. She offered Crowley a bottle and gave two to Raul, who crouched beside Peaches and helped her drink straight from the container. When she finished, he opened the second bottle for himself.

“You two should head out,” she told Raul. “I’ll get the equipment loaded for transport back to the lab.”

“You need help with anything?”

“No, I got it.”

Raul gave her the Delphi Center camera he’d been using and then tossed his gloves into a nearby trash bin. He opened the door to his gray pickup, and Peaches jumped in the front, clearly eager to go.

With Crowley’s help, Sara got everything packed into the back of her Explorer. The officer looked faintly sick as Sara wrapped the cranium in gauze and loaded it into a separate cooler for transport. The cranium was a gold mine, evidence-wise, and she didn’t want to risk it getting knocked around.

Sara hitched herself up behind the wheel and plugged her dead phone into the charger. She was tired and sweaty, and her lips tasted like dirt. She wasn’t looking forward to this meeting with Nolan.

Buzzing the windows down, she let the wind whip around her as she wended her way through the park. Her AC was on the fritz again, and she really needed to get her car into the shop, but she never had the time. Her black ’98 Explorer was on its last leg, but she couldn’t bear to give it up. She used it so much for hauling remains to the lab that people called it her hearse.

Sara pulled up to the main exit. A ranger—not Evans, thankfully—was stationed there and opened the gate as she approached.

“You’re closed down for the day?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll be closed tomorrow, too. Chief’s orders.”

“I might be back then,” she told him. “If so, I’ll call ahead.”

“Yes, ma’am.”