Page 18 of Whispers at Dusk
“Difficult,” she murmured.
Mason wondered if she might be on to something—if their killer might be taking a route through the trees and brush.
“Any bracken found on the bodies?” he asked Wilhelm.
“I suppose a few leaves attached to the clothing. Dirt, of course, they were left lying in these clearings, dirt beneath them, trees around them,” Wilhelm said.
They would see the medical examiner soon enough, and there were questions he might answer for them as well. But Mason found it hard to imagine—even in a place as small as Lillehammer—that a man might have taken known hiking trails and not be seen by anyone at all.
Then again, they hadn’t passed another soul today.
“I guess people are avoiding the area right now,” Della murmured, her thoughts following his. She stood, looking over at him. “Thinking of a direction?”
Mason looked over at Wilhelm. “If you were trying to come up here without being seen, and you thought there might be others about, hiking, enjoying the air...from which direction would you try to reach this spot?”
Wilhelm cast his head at an angle, frowning. “I know the path, so I wouldn’t be coming up another way. But if I was an organized murderer—who I believe would easily kill anyone in his way but might not want to because it would destroy his plan on displaying his victims—I would have started where we did. But I would have taken a direct route up. No gentle curving, but a real climb through thick foliage where one might encounter some angry rodents or other creatures. Maybe even a resting predator. But if one did come that way, they would arrive over there to your left.”
Mason quickly strode over to the foliage, inspecting the trees. He had never been a forest ranger, but it didn’t take sheer brilliance to study trees and bushes and determine if they’d been disturbed.
“Here, Mason,” Della said.
She was about fifteen feet to his side and he joined her quickly. Wilhelm came behind him.
“As you Americans say, I’ll be damned,” he murmured.
A broken branch on an aspen tree gave way to thick brush with much of it disturbed. Della anxiously started to push ahead, heedless of the branches and brush that pulled at her clothing as she forged ahead.
At one point, a branch snapped back at Mason, and she paused and turned quickly.
“I’m so sorry—”
“Not to worry. Let’s move on.”
She pushed ahead. Then stopped suddenly. He almost plowed into her.
Wilhelm did plow into him and apologized quickly.
“No problem, we’re on a mission,” Mason said lightly. Della still hadn’t moved.
“Della?” he said.
“There is a break here...as if there’s another path leading...somewhere,” Della said. “Look. It’s narrow...but a path, I think?”
“I guess there are those who do choose to push on through bushes,” Wilhelm said. “I am not sure if this will take us anywhere, but let’s see.”
Della remained in the lead, pushing forward. But as she said, it was something of a path although very narrow—and probably created by enough people cutting through the brush.
She suddenly came to a dead stop. Mason and Wilhelm right behind her.
“Oh, my God!” Della breathed.
He set his hands on her shoulders to step around her to see what she was seeing.
A woman.
The clearing here was small, almost half the size of the other two they had seen. But it offered a circle within the trees, and at the base of a towering aspen, she had been laid out.
Mason thought he had never seen flesh so devoid of color. She had long blond hair, and it was splayed out as if her head were surrounded by rays of the sun.
