Page 21 of Nora
“And watch the markers,” Dr. Birch called out as she started to follow the crawl trail toward the main crime scene. She didn’t bother responding but stayed well clear of the first one she passed. It wasn’t where the victim had been stabbed, but the spot was more disturbed than the rest. Maybe he’d paused to rest there.
Following the markers to the main scene, she paused twenty feet away from the buzz of activity. Crime scene techs were collecting evidence, taking measurements, and shooting pictures. She couldn’t get a good look at the central location, but it wasn’t what she was primarily interested in anyway. Skirting the site, she walked toward the trail Miller had said the jogger had been on. Markers set by the team guided her. Judging by the way the rocks were kicked up and the rough winter foliage disturbed, Nora agreed that the victim had been dragged from the trail to the more isolated spot.
Studying the scene as she walked, she considered the options. Subduing and dragging the victim several hundred yards wouldn’t have been easy. He wasn’t a young man, but he was tall and obviously in good shape. Was it something a woman could have done?
Willa had been out on a run with her and wasn’t a suspect anyway. That left Sophie, Ingrid, Anne, and Marie. Size didn’t always equate to strength, but Sophie was shorter than Nora. With the height differential, there was no way she could have wrestled the victim off-trail on her own. She would have had to subdue the victim somehow—maybe with a drug—before dragging him anywhere.
Both Marie and Anne were taller than Sophie, but not exactly tall. Making it possible, but not likely, that either had committed the crime. Ingrid was certainly tall enough, but Nora just couldn’t see it. She’d paid for her crimes early on in life. She wasn’t the most joyful person, but she was a woman who’d fought hard for the life she had. She didn’t strike Nora as the sort to put that at risk.
The men, though, that was a different story. She considered each of them as she reached the trail Miller had noted. He was right—it appeared little used and was so overgrown and narrow that she’d almost stepped over it. The only reason she hadn’t was the cluster of yellow markers and the crime scene tech taking pictures.
The woman behind the camera looked up as Nora approached. “Is this where he was taken off the trail?” Nora asked.
The woman hesitated, clearly not sure who Nora was or if she should talk to her. “Detective Miller gave me permission to come this way,” she said. “I’m a consultant for the government.”
“Go ahead and talk to her,” Dr. Birch called as he strode toward them. “I need these images done in the next few minutes or we’re going to lose the scene,” he added, pointing up. Nora looked at the thick, dark clouds, then noticed that the snow had started sticking. She didn’t think they’d get much more than a half-inch. But to the doctor’s point, anything that coated the ground would obscure the evidence.
The tech started taking pictures again as she answered. “Yes. We think he was headed south on the trail and was met here by someone. That someone subdued the victim, then maneuvered him off the trail.”
Nora contemplated that scenario as she took in the scene. Then, with a nod to Dr. Birch, she turned and headed south. She wanted to see the direction the victim had been headed before meeting his untimely death.
When she was far enough away, she pulled out her phone and mapped her location. Sure enough, as the crow flies, she was less than two miles from the training center. She looked down the trail toward the direction of the center. Had the killer come from there?
Zooming in on the map, she saw no direct routes from the training grounds to where she currently stood. But the image didn’t pixelate well on her phone. When she returned to her room, she’d consult a satellite image.
Standing in the cold, the snow drifting down around her, she debated whether to follow the trail or not. Glancing at the display on her phone, she accepted she’d have to come back later. If she remained much longer, she wouldn’t make it back in time for the start of the afternoon training session.
With a frustrated huff, she pinned her location on the map for later reference and walked back up the trail. When she reached the spot where the tech had been taking pictures, she found the woman and Dr. Birch gathering the markers. Detective Miller was there as well, surveying the scene.
“Thank you,” she said, turning off the trail to head back to the main branch. “I’ll be in touch,” she added with a nod to the three officials.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Miller said, inviting himself along. It took him less than two minutes to ask the question Nora had known was coming. “Any chance you’re going to tell me what agency you work with?”
“I work for several,” Nora answered, picking her way through the snow.
A few minutes later, he spoke again. “And you just happened to be in the area?”
Nora smiled at the cynicism in his voice. “You don’t believe in coincidences?”
Miller tipped his head as he held a branch out of the way for her. A few seconds later, they stepped back onto the main trail. “I do, actually. Just not right now.” Smart man.
Knowing it was better to keep any exchange to the bare necessities, Nora remained silent. They reached the parking lot a few minutes later and paused at the newly strung crime scene tape.
Miller let out a deep exhale. “Look, all I need to know is if this is going to become a problem. Not working together, but this murder. If it isn’t a coincidence, and you were sent here, then that means someone expected this or something like it to happen. I want to know if we can expect any more.”
Nora respected that. It was his job to police this area. It wasn’t unreasonable for him to want to know—to want to prepare—for something more if more were to come. She shoved her hands into her pockets and let her gaze drift to the field across the road. “Between you and me?” she asked. She didn’t know him well enough to know if his promise meant anything, but she sensed that it would. He nodded. “It’s possible,” she said.
His jaw ticked. “How many?”
Nora’s attention shifted to him. “Two. Unless I can stop it.”
His eyes bored into hers. “And you’re not going to tell me any more than that?”
She held his gaze and answered. “Right now, there’s not much to tell. If I discover something I think you should know, I will tell you.”
His expression hardened. He hadn’t missed her qualifier—ifshethought he should know, she’d tell him. It couldn’t be any other way, though. She wasn’t going to put the K9 program at risk because of one, or possibly two, bad actors. Especially not when the murders likely had nothing to do with the program itself. They all felt too personal to her for that to be the case.
After a long pause, he nodded. She wished she could give him more, but what more could she give him? He didn’t need to know that one victim would be set on fire and the other strangled. She didn’t know who or where or even when those events might take place, so there wasn’t anything he could do to stop them. And if she could figure out who the killer was, they wouldn’t happen at all.
