Gone Missing (Kate Burkholder 4)

tangled up in some tree roots.” He heaves a phlegmy cough. “I thought it was one of them mannequins, like at the department store down there at the mall. I put my light on it and got the shock of my life. Scariest damn thing I ever saw.”
    “You sure she’s dead?” Tomasetti asks.
    “Her eyes were all fuckin’ glassy and looking right at me.” He blows out a breath. “She’s dead all right.”
    Tomasetti digs out his cell phone, hits speed dial. I listen with half an ear as he explains the situation to Goddard and asks him to set up a perimeter with roadblocks around this part of the creek.
    “What did you do after you found the body?” I ask.
    “I puked my guts out; then I called nine one one.” He takes a deep breath, blows it out. “Then I got the hell out of there.”
    The flash of blue and white lights on the treetops announces the arrival of a law-enforcement vehicle. I glance behind me and see a sheriff’s department cruiser park behind the Tahoe.
    “Where, exactly, did you find the body?” Tomasetti asks.
    Foster thrusts a finger toward the mouth of the path. “Take the trail. You’ll hit the creek a quarter mile in. Go another thirty yards and you’ll see it on your right. There’s a tree grows into the bank. Floods washed out the soil and the roots are exposed. She’s jammed up in all them roots.”
    Beyond where Tomasetti stands, I see Sheriff Goddard slide out of his Crown Vic, his Maglite in hand, its beam trained on the fisherman. “Danny?” he calls out. “That you?”
    “Yeah, Bud.” The man heaves a huge sigh. “I’m here.”
    The sheriff nods at Tomasetti and me, then turns his attention to Foster. “What the hell you doing out here this time of the morning?”
    “Fishing, like I always do. There’re large-mouth bass down in that deep hole. I don’t know why everyone keeps asking me that when I done answered already.”
    “Well,” the sheriff drawls, “you know how cops are.”
    I see sheet creases in his face and I know he was also ripped from his bed, the same as Tomasetti and I, and he’s not in a very good mood.
    Goddard shines his light on Foster’s clothes. “How’d you get that mud all over you?”
    Foster looks down at his pants, realizes his crotch is wet, and pulls out his shirttail to cover it. “I got so shook up when I found that woman down there, I dropped my flashlight and got off the trail. I fell down in some bramble.”
    Tomasetti looks at Goddard. “You get a perimeter set up?”
    Goddard nods. “I got two deputies out there. State Highway Patrol’s on the way. We’re covered, but barely.”
    “We’d like to take a look at the scene, if it’s all right with you,” Tomasetti says.
    The flash of relief that crosses the chief’s face is palpable. Most cops are, to a degree, adrenaline junkies. When something big goes down, most want to be in the thick of it. Some, I would venture to say, have an overstated sense of morbid curiosity. Goddard seems to break the mold on all counts. “Probably best if a bunch of us don’t trample the scene,” he says. “You two go on, and I’ll wait for the coroner.”
    With Tomasetti in the lead, we descend the steep shoulder, cross through the bar ditch, and enter the path cut into the woods. The canopy closes over us like a clammy, smothering hand. Around us, the woods are dark and damp and alive with insects and nocturnal creatures. Mist swirls along the ground and rises like smoke from the thick undergrowth. Neither of us is dressed for wet conditions—no boots or slickers—and within minutes the front of our clothes is soaked.
    The redolence of foliage and damp earth and the dank smell of the creek curl around my olfactory nerves as we move deeper into the forest. Dew drips from the leaves of the brush growing along the path and the treetops overhead. Mud sucks at our shoes. The low rumble of thunder tells me conditions are probably going to get worse before they get any better.
    Tomasetti’s Maglite penetrates the darkness like a blade. But the path is overgrown in areas and difficult to follow. Twice he veers off the trail and we have to backtrack.
    “There’s the creek.”
    I follow the beam of his flashlight and catch a glimpse of the green-blue surface of slow-moving water. We continue for a few more yards, and I spot the tree Foster mentioned. An ancient bois d’arc grows out of the steep bank, its trunk leaning at a forty-five-degree angle. “There’s the tree.”
    My heart