Merciless

Then I bristled. Had his abrupt departure this morning been related to this case? He couldn’t have warned me? I huddled in my coat after I slid from my pickup and waited for Turnbull. He’d parked in a vacant spot up closer to the action. He jogged back to me.

“I take it you’ve already been here?”

He nodded. “I got the call from the tribal police about this early.”

I squinted over his shoulder but couldn’t see anything beyond the cars besides patches of dead grass and a hillside dotted with litter. “What’s the sheriff’s office doing here?”

Shay studied me. “Dawson is pissing circles on the ground, bellowing about jurisdiction.”

“That sounds about right.”

“As soon as I saw the scene, I knew this was connected to our case, and I-”

“Took over.” Connected case meant one thing. “There’s been another murder?”

“Yeah. But before we head that way, you should prepare yourself.”

Another gruesome scene. Good thing I’d had only coffee for breakfast. But something in his tone keyed me in. “Prepare myself? Why? I know the victim, don’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why Dawson is here, too?”

“No.” Shay moved a fraction closer. “You okay, going head-to-head with him on this?”

“I’ll be fine, Turnbull. You seem to’ve forgotten I’ve spent most of my life in a male-dominated profession, shielding those closest to me about specifics of my job. This is no different.”

That placated him, and he relaxed slightly. “Well, this case is gonna hit you from another side.”

I braced myself. “Who’s the vic?”

“Verline Dupris.”

Shit. “Who reported her missing?” I couldn’t imagine her disappearance would go unnoticed. I scanned the vehicles for Rollie’s crappy pickup. Why hadn’t Rollie called me when she’d gone missing?

Maybe because of your reputation as being a bloodhound for the newly departed. But I hadn’t discovered a dead body in months, so I was hoping my debt to the universe had been marked PAID IN FULL.

“That’s the thing. According to both the tribal police and the sheriff’s department, she hadn’t been reported missing.”

My gaze snapped back to his. “How is that even possible? She has two little kids. One is a baby.”

Turnbull sighed. “I have no idea.”

“Who found her?”

“A guy who’d decided to dump his refrigerator just before dawn broke. He almost ran over her.”

It’d been only a week since Verline had been at my house. She’d given off a vibe of unhappiness, and young, unhappy people sometimes did impulsive, stupid things. If she hadn’t been reported missing… “You sure this wasn’t a suicide?”

“I’ll let you judge for yourself.”

I’ll admit I paused at the edge of the crime scene before I allowed my eyes to focus fully on the horror in front of me. My brain didn’t want to process the images.

Verline. Naked. Just like Arlette Shooting Star. Her body precisely arranged, also like Arlette’s body. But unlike Arlette, Verline hadn’t been staked.

I squinted at the object resting on her stomach. It took a second to register that the object was Verline’s hand. But that hand wasn’t attached to her arm. Her hand had been cut off at the wrist and placed on her lower belly. The fingers curled into a claw, as if those bloodied and dirty nails intended to dig into the flesh of her abdomen.

Definitely not a suicide.

Trying to maintain clinical detachment was hard when faced with such an atrocity. Huge purple bruises dotted Verline’s body. Rope burns crisscrossed her ankles from being bound. Her knees were scuffed up, as if she’d been kneeling on a concrete floor. My gaze skimmed her thighs and quickly moved over the dismembered hand. I glanced at the other wrist and saw more rope burns dug so deep into her flesh that the wounds had bled.

Had she been awake when this sick fucker had chopped off her hand?

I fought the surge of anger and forced myself to focus. Verline’s chest was awash in blood, which had congealed into black goo. That’s when I noticed her throat had been slit. With the funky angle of her neck, even lying down, I suspected Verline had been upright, tied to something when the fatal blow had been dealt. I glanced at Verline’s face. Her eyes were closed. Lines of blood had poured from the corners of her mouth and over her lips.

What made no sense to me was the neatness of her hair. Not a snarled mess, no hair sticking up like I’d expect from a woman who’d been tied down and had thrashed about. Especially since she’d struggled hard enough against her bonds that her wrists and ankles were bruised and had bled. Her hair was neatly fanned out above her head.

There was little blood on the ground beneath her. She’d been killed someplace else and dropped here.

Why here?

To reiterate the point Verline was a piece of garbage?

To guarantee she’d be quickly discovered?

I looked at the skiff of snow covering the ground. Perfect timing on the killer’s part. Dumping the body before the snow fell. No footprints. No tire tracks.

More white flakes drifted from the sky. My gaze connected with Shay’s. “Has Rollie been told?”