Signature: A David Wolf Mystery (David Wolf Mystery Thriller Series Book 9) Read online

  “They were here first.”

  He raised an eyebrow and Yates nodded.

  MacLean failed to mentioned the FBI on the phone. More of them mingled on the other side of river, along with a dozen SBSCD deputies.

  Three black Chevy Tahoes were parked nose to tail, blocking access onto the bridge on the other side. Down river, along the highway shoulder above the water, was a line of SBCSD vehicles, all with turret lights flashing.

  He recognized three of the FBI agents at the center of the bridge as men that were stationed at the Denver Field Office.

  “When was this called in?” he asked.

  Yates shrugged. “An hour ago. The race supervisor called it in. He’s across the bridge giving a statement, I think.”

  The math didn’t add up. “And they beat us here?”

  “Yeah. Me and Wilson got here first, and they had three of them big black Tahoes parked like that. Then they started ordering us around, telling us to make a perimeter and push the crowd back down the road. Assholes.”

  A feminine figure emerged from the cluster of agents and waved in his direction. Special Agent Kristen Luke had a cell phone pressed to her ear, her mouth moving, her eyes fixed on him.

  He raised his chin.

  She gave a single impatient wave and turned around, resuming a heated conversation into her cell phone.

  Yates saw the interaction and pulled up the crime tape. “Go ahead.”

  Boots crunching on the wet gravel, he made his way across the bridge, the white rapids of the Chautauqua billowing underneath with a low roar.

  Down river, a banner strewn high above the river said, 5th Annual Adrenaline Games—Rocky Points. The now too familiar logo of a mountain biker flying sideways through the air was splashed next to it.

  Rocky Points had been blessed with this year’s tour stop, which had been in Breckenridge the year before, Keystone the year before that, Steamboat Springs the year before that, and Vail the inaugural year. If history was to repeat itself, the fanfare promised to bring a lot of money to local businesses, excitement to throngs of people, and a lot of headache for the department.

  Crowd control and risk mitigation had been the topics of the last month at each and every situation room meeting. Planning for the event took precedence over everything else. Man-hours were adding up and there were a lot of overworked deputies getting overtime pay.

  A corpse and a dozen FBI agents was a hell of a way to kick start the opening weekend.

  He walked up onto a circle of agents, who looked at him like an underclassman walking into a secret meeting about stealing the rival school’s mascot.

  One agent broke away and eyed his SUV in the distance. Wolf’s SUV was dark gray, unmarked, but clearly a department vehicle to the trained eye.

  “Can I help you?” The agent asked.

  “I don’t know,” Wolf said. His badge was on his belt underneath his jacket, but he made no move to show it.

  The agent had the delta shaped torso of a special forces soldier. He creased his forehead and eyed Wolf up and down. Raising a finger, he pointed at Wolf. “You check in with the deputy down there?”

  Wolf turned to the railing and took the first opportunity to study the scene below.

  Now it was clear why they were all standing here, this was the only place from this vantage point they could see the dead body. Like parted curtains, there was a gap in the tall reeds and bushes, and on the ground was the corpse of a woman. She was lying on the right side of the river—the far side for the patrons that would be gathered up along the highway to see the race.

  Forensic suits circled and bent over her, their progress with the scene blocked by a pop tent they had erected with zip-sides that flapped in the wind.

  The corpse, lying on dark, lush green grass, almost matched the snow-white fabric of the forensic suits.

  “Stand down, Special Agent Hannigan,” Luke said. “This is Chief Detective Wolf.”

  Turning to the man, he held out a hand, a little surprised to see the big agent had stepped so close, like he had been entertaining the idea of tossing Wolf in the water below.

  “Special Agent,” Wolf said with a nod.

  Special Agent Hannigan’s face showed anger, resentment, and thoughtful contemplation as he wondered if the detective in front of him could somehow get him in trouble, and then he settled on a smile that fooled nobody. “Nice to meet you.”

  He shook the man’s thick hand and turned back to the railing. “My deputy said you guys beat us here.”

  Luke tilted her head side to side. “We were in the area.”

  Wolf’s lips were moving, and the sound coming out of his mouth was just stalling. Meaningless details. The real question filled his body with dread. “Who is it?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  One of the men down at the body towered over the others. Six inches of black socks demarcated the end of his forensic suit pants and the beginning of his booties.

  “That’s Dr. Lorber,” Wolf said.

  “Yes.”

  He looked at her and frowned. “You’re using our forensic team?”

  “Yes. We have an assist team on the way up from Denver.”

  “There were going to be a lot of people standing on this bridge.” He pointed to the highway. “A lot of people lined up on the side of the road to watch this race.”

  “Yeah, there were. And they were arriving in droves when we got here. Lorber and his team were quick with setting up that tent, but I’m sure the Twitter-verse is going ape shit with pictures of the body.”

  “Let me see her.”

  At the sound of crackling tires, Luke looked past him and narrowed her eyes.

  “Shit.” Wolf stiffened. A silver Audi SUV sat idling next to Wolf’s SUV. Deputy Yates was talking to the open driver’s side window. “It’s Lauren and her daughter.”

  “Tell them to go a different way back into town.”

  “There is no different way.”

  “There has to be.”

  For them to turn around and take the county road to the east, the only access back to the north toward Rocky Points was following Pine Trail, which was a two-track road that cut through the forest with plenty of elevation change. Seven years ago this bridge had flooded out, and Wolf had taken the route to work for three weeks while they re-built it. It was suitable for a dirt bike or an adventurous 4 x 4 enthusiast, impassible for a nurse with her six-year-old daughter in her booster seat in the back. Especially after a night of heavy rain.

  “There’s no other way. I’ll drive them through.”

  Special Agent Hannigan had both his hands out. “Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’re going to have to allow traffic across the bridge. There’s no other way into town from this road.”

  Hannigan made like he was thinking about something, then nodded. “Okay.”

  Wolf walked to the crime scene tape, ducked under and went to Lauren’s window.

  “What’s going on?” Lauren’s eyes were wide with concern, her voice low.

  “Why are there so many coppers?” Ella was in her booster seat directly behind her mother.

  Wolf put on an easy smile. “We’re helping with the river race.”

  “Oh, cool! Can we watch the race, mommy?”

  “It’s cancelled for the day. That’s why we’re here. Sorry.”

  “Why?”

  He flicked his head to the side. “Can I talk to you a second?”

  “I’ll be right back.” Lauren left the engine running and stepped out.

  They stepped a few feet from the car. “We have a dead body down in the river. Just off the right side.”

  She put her hand to her mouth. “Someone drowned? Was it in the race?”

  “No.”

  “Then when?”

  “It was … something else, we think.”

  “What do you mean?” Her eyes bore holes into his. “Jesu
s … she was murdered?”

  He nodded. “Listen, it’s visible when you cross the bridge, off the right hand side. I need to drive you across. You can sit in the back seat with Ella and block the view. It should be out of sight when you get across the river.”

  “Should be?”

  “Just put a hand over her eyes if you have to. Once we cross, they have a tent set up to block the view from the public. I’ll drive you until the whole thing is out of sight.”

  They did the dance. Wolf drove with Lauren in the back seat. She sat close to Ella, square-shouldered to her daughter, pointing out the left side of the vehicle at random things. Ella was having none of it. There were cop cars and people with FBI jackets and commotion on the other side and the questions gushed out of her.

  Wolf deflected, and a quarter mile later he pulled to the side of the road and let himself out. Any suspicion of any deception by Wolf and Lauren was gone from Ella’s consciousness, because she was now firmly concentrated on the skateboard competition in town.

  “…and they have a ramp that’s like, two hundred feet high. That’s what Melody said. Her brother is a skateboarder …”

  Wolf shut the door and went to Ella’s open window. “That’s going to be awesome. I can’t wait to see it.”

  Ella smiled brightly. She had her mother’s sea green eyes and squint when she smiled. Ella Coulter was going to have a lot of boys chasing her in life. “Yep,” she said.

  Wolf ruffled her hair and met Lauren coming around the back of the car with a hug. Her arms were limp at first, and then she gave him a quick one-two count embrace.

  She tried to duck past him but he caught her, putting a finger under her chin and tilting it up.

  Her eyes were wet, her lips quivering.

  “See you later, okay?”

  She nodded, sniffing and wiping her nose. “Yeah.”

  He let her go and she opened the door. “Talk to you later.”

  The door thumped and they were gone, the expensive imported engine purring into the distance.

  “What happened to that girl up there?” A shirtless man with swim trunks, long hair and tanned skin edged towards Wolf.

  Eying the sky, there were currently no breaks in the clouds, no sign of the sun showing itself for minutes. The man had to be pre-hypothermic. He scrolled through his mental Rolodex of generic quips. “Thanks for your patience. We’re working on it.” With that he marched back up the road toward the bridge.

  “Yeah, good answer,” the guy said under his breath.

  A black BMW SUV blew past toward the bridge at unsafe speed for the amount of people milling around. Wolf recognized the car, and if there was any doubt, the driving style told him it was District Attorney Sawyer White.

  He jogged the quarter mile back to the bridge. Out of breath and now sweaty, he stepped up to one of the Chevy Tahoes and watched as Special Agent Luke, Hannigan, DA White, and Sheriff MacLean walked away from the rest of the group toward his parked SUV on the other side.

  They ducked under the tape and cut left behind some bushes.

  “Hey, what’s happening?” Detective Tom Rachette appeared next to him.

  Wolf gave him a double take. The detective was a squat and muscular man and was normally quick to break into a sweat during rigorous activity, but he looked like he’d been swimming in the river his shirt was so soaked. “What happened to you?”

  Rachette shook his head. His breathing was heavy. “Frickin’ FBI and MacLean. They’ve got us on crowd control. I’ve been running up and down the road, telling people to back off, making them get in their cars. It’s a nightmare. More people just keep showing up.”

  “Where are they going?”

  Rachette looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know. To the DB, I guess. And I tell you what, that DA White is one real prick. Almost ran over me on the way in. Then he got out of his car and told me to move out of the way. Almost drop-kicked him right there.”

  Wolf nodded absently. “Okay, you’re off crowd control. Instead, figure out who in that crowd was camping around here and interview them. Did they see anything? Hear anything? Figure out what they know.”

  Rachette nodded.

  “I’ll see you in bit.”

  He ducked under the crime scene tape and jogged across the bridge. The group of FBI agents watched him pass.

  “Sir.” Yates straightened. “Uh … I’m not supposed to let anyone else down there.”

  “Then don’t.” Wolf walked past him and cut into the brush.

  He caught up with DA White, MacLean, and special agents Luke and Hannigan on the eastern bluff above the river.

  DA White was taking the rear, his suit jacket flapping in the wind, and he turned with a start as Wolf’s footsteps crunched up behind him. “Where have you been?”

  “Wolf,” Sheriff MacLean said with a nod.

  “I was detained for a moment.”

  “You been briefed?” White asked.

  “That’s what we’re doing now, right?”

  White’s eyes narrowed before he turned and continued onward. It mattered little what people said or how they said it, the man seated in the most influential office of the county always had a problem with the way people spoke to him.

  Luke eyed the exchange and followed behind Agent Hannigan, who had kept walking and was now making his way down the bluff in the distance.

  When they were even with the body below they shuffled down the same path. Luke took the lead, sticking to a game trail that switched back and forth.

  Wearing black dress shoes that shone with reflections of the clouds, White fell twice, but Wolf and MacLean gave him the courtesy of ignoring him. At the bottom of the incline they reached a copse of coyote willow, and then it was straight bush whacking toward the sound of moving water.

  Breaking free of the brush, the scene was just a few yards ahead of them.

  White sniffed. “Ah.”

  The wind had died down, and the air was saturated with the stench of dead human.

  Dr. Lorber, the Sluice-Byron County medical examiner stood up from a crouched position, rising above the rest of his team by at least six inches. “Hold it there.”

  The M.E. walked to them, stepping carefully around plastic evidence tents, his thin, long legs like a crane. When he reached them he looked at his rubber-gloved hands and shrugged. “I’d shake, but …”

  “Just … show us what you have,” DA White said, his unblinking eyes staring at the body.

  Lorber raised his eyebrows and flicked a glance at Wolf. “Right. We have a female. Between eighteen and thirty years old, but I’m guessing on the younger side of the scale.” Lorber put two long fingered hands on his hips and stared over his shoulder. “Kind of hard to tell.”

  “Jesus.” DA White cupped his hand over his nose, then quickly dropped it and looked up toward the bluff on the opposite side of the river.

  Wolf knew the man was looking for cameras that had possibly caught his moment of weakness.

  Agents Luke and Hannigan stepped forward, and Wolf stepped around MacLean and White to get a closer look.

  “If you don’t mind,” Lorber said, “let’s keep it at that distance.”

  Even from ten yards away, they could see enough detail to haunt their dreams for the next decade or two. The woman was naked, laying on her back with her legs open and her arms extended from her sides. Palms up. The symmetry of the pose was striking, like that Vitruvian man drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.

  Lorber pushed his glasses up on his nose. “We found a few footprints, totally unusable after the rain of course, coming down from the road to the river. They’re large prints, so I’d say we’re looking at a man culprit. He must have walked along the banks to this point. Looks like he carried her by the lack of scrape marks. Then he put her down, strangled her, left her here in this position. Move this tent here and you can see she’s pointed straight at the registration area on the other side of the river. The guy was clearly putting her on display.”

>   “You have a time of death?” Wolf asked.

  “Rigor mortis hasn’t set in. By the cleanliness of her body, we’re saying she’s been out here since before three a.m.”

  “By the cleanliness of her body?” White asked.

  Lorber nodded. “Gene!”

  A member of Lorber’s team stood up from next to the body, picked up an aluminum case and jogged over. “Yes sir,” he said in a breathless whisper.

  “You’ve met Gene, right?” Lorber said to Wolf. “My new assistant?”

  Wolf had met Gene at various points over the last year. He was Dr. Blank’s replacement, and the new ME’s assistant had seemed like a stand-up guy, but he was something more altogether to Lorber—like the close little brother he’d never had.

  “Hi, yeah, we’ve met,” Wolf said.

  “Hello.” Gene’s mouth stretched wide, revealing a smile that would have been contagious in any other setting. Behind John Lennon style eyeglasses, his brown eyes were dark like strong coffee, his eyebrows matching his hair—black flecked with gray like static on a television.

  Just like Lorber, the man was ten years Wolf’s senior, and just like Lorber, he was a man stuck in the wrong era.

  “What do we have?” White said with a come on with it wave of his hand.

  “Gene, we were talking about the cleanliness of her body, and I was just going to explain our theory. Would you like to give it a go?”

  White shook his head. “Why don’t you explain it to me, Doctor. I’m not in the mood for Magic School Bus right now.”

  Lorber straightened and nodded. “Right. Let’s move closer, until I say stop.”

  The M.E. led them toward the body. Agents Luke and Hannigan followed first, followed by Wolf, then MacLean and White.

  As they approached, the smell of putrefaction grew stronger. Lorber held up his hands and they stopped only a few feet away.

  Bending down next to her head, Lorber pointed his finger like a yardstick. “The lividity suggests she died where she is. The bruising on her back conforms exactly to the contours underneath her. Clear signs of throttling and I’d say by the strong hands of a male. You can see the marks on her wrists and ankles.”