Read Online Consumed by E. H. Reinhard - Free Book Online Page B

Rawlings. I wanted to touch base with you on these bodies that have been found this morning.”
    “Yeah, I’m at one of the scenes now.”
    “Okay, which one?” I asked.
    “The one by Sango. Albright Road.”
    “We’re actually on our way there now. Did you have a forensics team on scene?”
    “Team? No. We have a forensics guy. He’s on his way here.”
    “Okay. We’ll be there in a half hour or so. Will you still be on scene?”
    “Yeah, I’ll be here,” he said.
    “Okay, we’ll see you in a bit.”
    “Sure.”
    I hung up.
    “Well?” Beth asked, looking over at me.
    “He’s at the scene we’re headed to. He says they have a forensics guy that will be at that scene as well. He also seemed just as I don’t give a shit as he did yesterday.”
    “Maybe that’s just the guy’s demeanor,” she said. “Some people are like that.”
    I shrugged and checked the e-mail on my phone, looking to see if anything had been sent from Ball or the twins. My phone showed no new messages. “Did you get anything from Virginia yet this morning?” I asked.
    “Nope. Nothing yet,” Beth said.
    “Did you make contact with the Nashville PD to let them know that we were heading out there today?”
    “Not yet. We can give them a call after we know what’s going on out here,” she said.
    “Fair enough.”
    The freeway drive made twenty-five minutes of our trip, followed by a quick five minutes of local highway. Beth flipped on her turn signal and made a left down the street the remains were found on. After a mile drive, we spotted official vehicles on the left and right hand sides of the road. Beth pulled up behind a gray Crown Victoria sedan with a small three-inch antenna on the roof—Clifford’s car. Ahead of Clifford’s vehicle, in a line along the edge of the road, were a sheriff’s SUV and a coroners van. On the other side of the street, parked in the opposite direction, was a single sheriff’s cruiser. We stepped out and headed over. The scene had no police tape, no camera crews, no onlookers, and no team of people searching for anything.
    We spotted Agent Clifford standing with Chief Deputy Whissell and two other men. One, wearing a white lab coat, I figured to be from the Nashville Medical Science place we’d visited the night prior, while the other was another deputy, stocky and wide—just a few yards ahead of the van was a tarp covering a body in the ditch. We walked up.
    “Rawlings, Harper,” Agent Clifford said.
    “Agent Clifford,” I said.
    Beth gave him a nod.
    “Let’s just go with Tom,” he said.
    “Tom it is then,” I said.
    The chief deputy said nothing.
    “Is the forensics guy here?” I asked.
    “Not yet,” Whissell said.
    “What are we looking at? Same?” I asked.
    “It looks like it,” the guy in the lab coat said. “Excuse me for a moment.”
    No one replied. The guy walked for his van and opened the back.
    Whissell nodded to his deputy and pointed at the tarp. “Show them,” he said.
    The deputy took a few steps toward it, and Beth and I followed. I noticed an evidence cone on the edge of the road to my right. We continued to the body.
    The deputy knelt next to the remains and drew the tarp back while looking back up at us, seemingly trying not to view what was beneath. He had a square jaw, matching the shape of his haircut. His shoulders were thick, yet he didn’t appear overweight. I chalked the guy up to have been raised on a local farm somewhere. I caught his nameplate on his shirt: Washington.
    My eyes went to the remains. A dark-haired woman lay flat on her back, facing the sky. She had a wound dead center in her forehead that was two inches wide and a quarter of an inch across, which wasn’t consistent with bodies found prior. Her eyes were glazed over, her throat opened wide. Though the tarp was only pulled down to her chest, in addition to the lack of arms, I could see multiple stab wounds.
    I rubbed my nose and coughed. The smell coming off the woman was