I wasn’t expecting a reaction or a dove from God or anything, but sometimes you have to say something out loud and see how the words land, how they end up sitting in your gut. These words felt like knives inside me. I stared at her build, the long brown hair, the skimpy dress too early for the season. No matter what I’d said to Jake, these details told me who I was looking at when I first walked in the barn.
When Bud came into my office this morning and told me he had to file a missing persons on Hattie, both of us figured she’d taken off. Nothing that girl ever wanted more than to get out of town, but Bud’s wife wasn’t so sure. Hattie was starring in her high school play this weekend and Mona didn’t think for one second that Hattie would leave town before finishing the show. Some Shakespeare play. Mona also said Hattie wouldn’t’ve left two months before graduation. What she said made sense, but hell would freeze over before I bet on the common sense of a teenager. I put out the standard missing persons alert, all the while thinking Bud and Mona would get an email from her next week saying she was in Minneapolis or Chicago.
Now, as I stared down at what was probably the remains of my fishing buddy’s only daughter, a worse question started tearing at me, the question that would gut Bud’s life as easily as we’d gutted sunnies and carp not five hundred yards from this very spot.
Who could have murdered Hattie Hoffman?
By the time the crime lab team arrived and the ambulance negotiated the overgrown trail to the barn to load up the body, I’d already gotten two dozen phone calls. The only one I answered was from Brian Haeffner, Pine Valley’s mayor.
“Is it true, Del?”
I stood off to the side while the forensics boys combed over the entire barn like ants at a picnic.
“Yeah, it’s true.”
“Accident?” Brian sounded hopeful.
“Nope.”
“You’re telling me we’ve got a murderer on the loose?”
I walked outside and spat near the side of the barn, trying to loosen the dead taste from my mouth. The grass was untrampled, waving toward the lake in a light wind.
“I’m saying we’ve got an open homicide case on an as-yet-unidentified victim and that’s all I’ll be saying.”
“You’ll have to make a statement. We’ll have every news station in the state calling.”
Brian always exaggerated the hell out of everything. He’d likely get a few calls from the County Gazette. The truth was, his wife probably wanted to know all the details so she could spread it around at Sally’s Café, where she baked muffins every morning. Brian and I went back pretty far, since we were both long-standing public officials. We endorsed each other every time an election rolled around and he was a good mayor, but I couldn’t take more than one drink with him at a time. He yammered on about every little thing and was always wanting to know about cases and “crime trends.” Sometimes he reminded me of one of those excitable dogs that can’t stop licking your hand.
“You just got my statement, Brian. We’ll release the victim’s ID when it’s confirmed.”
“I need to know if the town’s at risk, Del.”
“So do I.”
I hung up on him and pocketed the phone as one of the medics walked over.
“Sheriff, we’re ready to take her in.”
“Okay, I’ll follow later. I’ve got some things to check first.”
“Some leads?” The girl looked hopeful. I’d never seen her before—she wasn’t from the county.
“No such thing as leads.” I walked back into the barn. “You either got the guy or you don’t.”
The forensic boys bottled and bagged everything that wasn’t nailed down and dragged every inch of the water in the barn. They turned up an empty wine bottle, a kerosene lantern, five empty cigarette packs, some generic matchbooks, and three used condoms.
I watched as they taped up the door and window.
Jake came up next to me. “No murder weapon.”
“Nope.” We waited for the team to finish up and clear out. They’d found a few hairs and were going to test the condoms, too, to see if there was any DNA left. Beyond that, they’d hold the rest until we either told them what we needed or closed the case.
After their vans disappeared over the horizon, there was only the sound of the wind drying out the fields and an occasional sparrow call from the lake. It was easier to think that way.
“She was in the far corner from the door.”
“So she either got backed up into the corner or someone found her there.” Jake was right with my line of thought. This was why I’d picked him as my chief deputy.
“No visible wounds or marks on her hands, so there wasn’t much of a struggle.” I walked toward the barn door and faced out, like I’d just left. Farmland stretched to the horizon in gentle hills in every direction, empty fields shedding the last of their snow. There wasn’t a single house or building in sight of the barn. “He kills her and heads out. Doesn’t leave the knife. He needs to get away and deal with the weapon and his clothes.”
Jake pointed at the trail that circled around the lake toward the beach and the boat launch. “That’s our best bet. He parked in one of the lots and went back the same way.”
“It’s either that or cross-country to the highway or past the Erickson house to Route 7. Both are about a mile.”