“More. West Coast for starters, and I’ve talked to the local jurisdictions, as well. Just to double-check. So far, nada.” Carter fiddled with his pencil, wiggling it between his fingers, a nervous habit he’d taken up right after he quit smoking. It had worked for him except for that black time surrounding Carolyn’s death. From the corner of his eye, he saw the last remaining picture he’d kept of her in the office, propped in a rosewood frame, a snapshot he’d taken of her on their last trip to the coast. “What about cause of death?”
“Unknown at this time, but the M.E.’s working on it.”
“And the pink stuff on her hair?”
“I asked about that and they’re still analyzing it.” Her lips folded over her teeth as they often did when she was mentally working through some kind of puzzle. “It’s probably some kind of synthetic, sort of like modeling clay made out of some rubbery substance. Kind of like…Silly String or Play-Doh, but not really…”
“Plastic?”
“I don’t even think they can go that far. But the lab’s working on it.”
“And?” he encouraged, seeing her eyebrows knit.
“And?” she repeated.
“And you look like you have something more to say.”
“Nothing concrete, but they found more of that pink stuff in the log. Quite a bit of it. They’re trying to reconstruct the scene.”
“So she had it on her body?”
“Maybe, but more likely in her body. The stuff was compacted, solid, in bigger chunks rather than a little bit that would have been smeared on her. They think it was either in her lungs or her stomach.”
“She ingested it?”
“Maybe. Possibly drowned in it. That pink gunk, whatever it is, might well be the cause of death.”
“Drowned in it?” His jaw clenched. He rubbed his moustache thoughtfully. “It was liquid?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for the report.”
“Wait a minute. This is sounding like something that would be aired on the Sci-Fi channel. Why would anyone kill a person with pink crud?”
“We don’t officially know it’s a homicide yet.”
He leveled a gaze at her. “You think suicide? By inhaling pink goo? And ending up at the top of a mountain in a hollowed-out log? What kind of weird ritual is that?”
“I’m just trying to stay rational.”
“Forget rational. Because it’s not. This isn’t an accident, either. It’s a homicide, I’m sure of it. But why all the mess? Why not just shoot the victim, or choke her, or slit her throat?”
“Who knows?” She lifted her shoulder. “If your theory’s on the money, then we’ve got a psycho running loose, or maybe we had one who was just passing through last winter. He did his business, either around here or somewhere else, decided to dump the body, and took off. It’s been a while since this girl was killed. Our guy could have moved on.”
Carter wondered, his eyes narrowing. He looked through his window and saw the ominous gray skies surrounding this small town nestled deep in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It was isolated; the only serious connection to the rest of civilization was I-84, the interstate freeway that ran parallel to the Columbia River at this point on the map. He scanned the timber-covered ridges and thought, not for the first time, that the steep cliffs and dark forests surrounding Falls Crossing were the perfect place for a wanted man to hide. But a psychopath? The thought set his teeth on edge.
Maybe he was jumping to conclusions.
“We’ll keep trying to find out who she is, but we’ll work with the State Police, let them run this thing; they’re gonna want to anyway, and they have more resources than we do.” Scratching his chin, he added, “I’ll talk to Larry Sparks in the local office—I’m sure he’ll keep us informed.”
“It’s not like you to call in another agency.”
“This case is different,” he said, but didn’t add that he had a bad feeling about it. Real bad. “Contact all the surrounding jurisdictions again—make that all of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California, even western Montana. See if we come up with any matches. Find out if there are any other cases of a woman found dead with some kind of unknown substance in her hair or body cavities.”
BJ nodded. “Anything else?” she asked, slapping the folder of missing-person reports onto his desk.
“Yeah,” he said, reaching for the phone to call Lieutenant Sparks. “Get me that autopsy report on the Jane Doe ASAP.”
CHAPTER 5