Page 3 of Sworn to Silence
CHAPTER 2
I dream of death.
As always, I’m in the kitchen of the old farmhouse. Blood shimmers stark and red against the scuffed hardwood floor. The scents of yeast bread and fresh-cut hay mingle with the harsh stench of my own terror, a contrariety my mind cannot reconcile. The curtains billow in the breeze coming through the window above the sink. I see flecks of blood on the yellow fabric. More spatter on the wall. I feel the stickiness of it on my hands.
I crouch in the corner, animal sounds I don’t recognize tearing from my throat like stifled screams. I feel death in the room. Darkness all around me. Inside me. And at the age of fourteen, I know evil exists in my safe and sheltered world.
The phone rattles me from sleep. The nightmare slinks back into its hole like some nocturnal creature. Rolling, I grapple with the phone on the nightstand and set the phone against my ear. “Yeah.” My voice comes out like a croak.
“Chief. This is Mona. Sorry to wake you, but I think you’d better come in.”
Mona is my graveyard dispatcher. She’s not prone to hysterics, so the anxiety in her tone garners my full attention. “What happened?”
“T.J.’s out at the Stutz place. He was rounding up cows and found a dead body.”
Suddenly, I’m no longer sleepy. Sitting up, I shove the hair from my face. “What?”
“He found a body. Sounds pretty shaken up.”
Judging from the tone of her voice, T.J. isn’t the only one. I throw my legs over the side of the bed and reach for my robe. A glance at the alarm tells me it’s almost two-thirtyA.M. “An accident?”
“Just a body. Nude. Female.”
Realizing I need my clothes, not the robe, I turn on the lamp. The light hurts my eyes, but I’m fully awake now. I’m still trying to get my mind around the idea of one of my officers finding a body. I ask for the location, and she tells me.
“Call Doc Coblentz,” I say. Doc Coblentz is one of six doctors in the town of Painters Mill, Ohio, and acting coroner for Holmes County.
I cross to the closet and reach for my bra, socks and long johns. “Tell T.J. not to touch anything or move the body. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The Stutz farm sits on eighty acres bordered on one side by Dog Leg Road, the other by the north fork of Painters Creek. The location Mona gave me is half a mile from the old covered bridge on a deserted stretch of road that dead ends at the county line.
I crave coffee as I pull up behind T.J.’s cruiser. My headlights reveal his silhouette in the driver’s seat. I’m pleased to see he set out flares and left his strobes on. Grabbing my Mag-Lite, I slide out of the Explorer. The cold shocks me, and I huddle deeper into my parka, wishing I’d remembered my hat. T.J. looks shaken as I approach. “What do you have?”
“A body. Female.” He’s doing his best to maintain his cop persona, but his hand shakes as he points toward the field. I know those tremors aren’t from the temperature. “Thirty feet in by those trees.”
“You sure she’s dead?”
T.J.’s Adam’s apple bobs twice. “She’s cold. No pulse. There’s blood all over the fuckin’ place.”
“Let’s take a look.” We start toward the trees. “Did you touch anything? Disturb the scene?”
He drops his head slightly, and I know he did. “I thought maybe she was... alive, so I rolled her over, checked.”
Not good, but I don’t say anything. T.J. Banks has the makings of a good cop. He’s diligent and serious about his work. But this is his first job in law enforcement. Having been my officer for only six months, he’s green. I’d lay odds this is his first dead body.
We crunch through ankle-deep snow. A sense of dread staggers me when I spot the body. I wish for daylight, but it will be hours before my wish is granted. Nights are long this time of year. The victim is naked. Late teens or early twenties. Dark blonde hair. A slick of blood two feet in diameter surrounds her head. She’d once been pretty, but in death her face is macabre. I can tell she’d originally been lying prone; lividity has set in, leaving one side of her face purple. Her eyes are halfway open and glazed. Her tongue bulges from between swollen lips, and I see ice crystals on it.
I squat next to the body. “Looks like she’s been here a few hours.”
“Starting to get freezer burn,” T.J. notes.
Though I was a patrol officer in Columbus, Ohio, for six years, a homicide detective for two, I feel as if I’m out of my league. Columbus isn’t exactly the murder capital of the world, but like every city it has a dark side. I’ve seen my share of death. Still, the blatant brutality of this crime shocks me. I want to think violent murder doesn’t happen in towns like Painters Mill.
But I know it does.
I remind myself this is a crime scene. Rising, I fan my flashlight beam around the perimeter. There are no tracks other than ours. With a sinking sensation, I realize we’ve contaminated possible evidence. “Call Glock and tell him to get out here.”
“He’s on va—”
