was about nothing more than showing superiority. I considered that. Was this a statement of superiority? Most likely, you didn’t just skin a human because it sounded like fun. It required effort, dedication and determination.
I stood up and continued to look around. There was a stained area in the snow, the blood had soaked in there, but how? Skinning, if done correctly, didn’t bleed. And where were his footprints? Why weren’t they marked off?
“Hey, where are the killer’s footprints?” I shouted to the nearest uniformed officer.
“We didn’t get here in time to save them. A TV crew found the body first. Instead of reporting the find, they reported the story, on the news. We learned about it that way. By then there had been two dozen people or more and we couldn’t get elimination prints from all of them. They did a great job of trampling the crime scene.”
“Why would a reporter not report it to the police before showing it on the news?” I frowned.
“Because she was some upstart local who thought it was her way to get national coverage.” The officer informed me.
“Stupid woman,” I sighed.
“Ambition and greed are amazing things,” Lucas reminded me.
“They lower the intelligence of all involved,” I responded.
“Yes indeed,” he looked at the rope. “Get it down, preserve it the best way possible, we might be able to get skin, hair, or fibers off of it.”
“Yeah, the reporter’s,” I muttered.
“Don’t be a pessimist,” Lucas whispered to me.
“Don’t be such an optimist,” I shot back. “It should be very hard to be an optimist when stupid people are trampling crime scenes and airing the grisly material on the news instead of reporting it to the police.”
“Remind me not to leave you alone with her,” Lucas gave me a quick grin.
“Probably a good plan,” I turned a slow circle.
It was white. There were brown patches that belonged to trees, but that was the only break-up in the view. The rest was snow, snow, and more snow. It was all pristine and perfect. No animal tracks, no human tracks, aside from the path, nothing to indicate that anything had been touched outside of this small area.
On the flip side, it looked like everything had been touched on the inside. There were dozens of shoe prints around the stake in the ground. They circled the base of the tree. There was even an indication that at least two people had scampered up the tree or that the same person had gone up twice.
I moved in closer to the bloody snow. There was something else in it. It was yellowish and had caused a good deal of snow melt. It also smelled like Pine-Sol. I backed up and put a hand over my nose. Pine-Sol was like poison to people with migraines, the smell was strong, overpowering and I hadn’t met another person with migraines that could stand to be around it for very long. My stomach flopped, so I moved back another step.
The blood seemed to be frozen. Most likely it had been cold when it hit the ground. There seemed to be a large pool of it considering the victim was skinned. The hook from the rope was directly over the spot where the blood had frozen. If I had to guess, I’d say the Pine-Sol came before the blood. Lucas came up to me.
“See anything?” He asked.
“Blood, Pine-Sol; not sure why there is Pine-Sol but that’s what it smells like. Maybe he urinated on the ground here and used the Pine-Sol to cover it up?” I suggested.
“We’ll have someone check it out,” Lucas knelt down closer to the spot than I could get. He seemed to be inspecting it, memorizing its measurements. Of course, that was probably exactly what he was doing, he had a photographic memory.
“How far off the ground was she?” I asked.
“About ten feet or so,” Commander Nielsen answered.
“Who went up the tree?”
“The coroner went up once. We don’t know who the other was. We swabbed the tree.”
“I can’t think of a reason for our killer to climb the tree,” Lucas said.
“Maybe the rope got hung,” I offered.
“Maybe,” he agreed doubtfully. “More likely, it was the reporter.”
“She’d have wished she’d reacted differently if it was her hanging from that tree,” I growled.
“Yes, she would have, but it wasn’t her and human nature is what it is,” Lucas tempered me.
“Because I need more proof that people suck,” I gave him a small smile.
“That’s better,” he turned away from me again.
Someone was now carefully using a ladder to dislodge the rope from the tree. The hook was handed down and placed in an evidence bag. The rope was carefully being coiled up by a guy dressed in what appeared to be a HAZMAT suit. Someone else was prying the stake out of the ground. When it was up, it too got put into a bag and sealed.
“Let’s go find Xavier,” Lucas said to me. He looked over the scene one more time. I knew he was committing it to memory. He wouldn’t forget a single detail. It was part of what he did.
I, on the other hand, wouldn’t remember much of it. The blood stained snow, the weird melted spot where the skin had been laid out, the pristine condition of the snow all around the kill zone, those were what I would remember. After we finished the case, I would remember the bow and arrow in the melted snow. The rest would get lost as we started another case. I was not Lucas, I would not be haunted by it for eternity. Sometimes it made me wonder how he carried on, knowing that every crime scene would be indelibly etched in his memory forever.
Three
“Hello my lovelies, just in time,” Xavier gave us a grin as we walked into the morgue. It smelled like Pine-Sol and my stomach gave a small flop. I grabbed a mask and put it on, trying not to gag on the smell.
“Did you find anything?” Lucas asked him.
“Loads,” Xavier looked at me, “don’t you dare break your streak. You have never yakked in the morgue, don’t start now.”
“It isn’t the morgue, it’s the Pine-Sol,” I informed him.
“Pine-Sol makes you yak?” Xavier gave me a skeptical look.
“Yes, it also triggers migraines. Why the hell is it so strong in here? Why not use bleach?”
“Because it is coming from the body,” Xavier told me.
“That’s just weird,” I responded.
“Isn’t it just?” Xavier gave me a look before grabbing something and handing it to me. It was a small brown bag. I wasn’t big on dignity, but I wasn’t going to toss my cookies in the thing. I held my breath instead.
“Why would you douse a body with Pine-Sol?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know, which is why it is so weird. There is nothing in Pine-Sol that would speed up decay and it isn’t like this guy is looking to speed it up anyway. It won’t work as a human preservative either,” Xavier shrugged.
“Oh god,” I gagged. I knew why it was covered in Pine-Sol. I left the room, motioning the others to follow me.
Outside, in the hallway, I took a deep breath. After a few more, I felt a little less like throwing up, but still not up to talking. I put my head between my knees and breathed.
“Are you alright?” Lucas asked.
Xavier fell to work, his fingers began lifting my eyelids; a flashlight appeared in his hands and blinded me for a moment. His fingers moved to my mouth and nose, opening both and looking in them. I pushed him away.
“Stop that,” I finally told him.
“You look like you are going to pass out.”
“If you had migraines and a nose as sensitive as mine, you’d look that way too,” I said staring at Xavier and trying not to gag. The smell was still overwhelming. So much so, that it made me realize the purpose of the hideous floor cleaner. “The Pine-Sol is there to keep the wildlife at bay. There were no animal tracks within fifty feet of the body. It’s barely spring in Alaska, where are the scavengers? The large birds looking for a snack? The wolves? The bears? Avoiding it like it has Plague because
it smells so badly.”
“Bears eat car seats because of the formaldehyde,” Lucas informed me.
“Yes, but it smells like a termite mound. I can’t imagine they would be attracted to Pine-Sol and they certainly aren’t going to eat anything covered in it.”
“I hadn’t considered that. She may have a point,” Xavier looked at me. “We need a zoologist.”
“Pine-Sol smells worse than a dead body?” Lucas asked me.
“In large quantities, yes. Pine-Sol will give me a migraine and it certainly doesn’t smell like food. I imagine it doesn’t smell like food to the predators and scavengers around here either.”
“Decomposing, half-frozen bodies smell like food?” Lucas continued.
“Not to me, but I’m sure it does to other animals. I think it smells like death, personally.”
“Stop you two, I will take that under advisement. So, I also discovered that he torched the skin on the tops of the feet and on the hands, then peeled it off instead of taking it off with the knife. He did something similar around the lower genitalia and face as well, burning it off instead of trying to skin it. However, aside from that, the rest of the skin was removed with delicate precision. He rarely went too deep or moved the knife so that it exited the skin prematurely. The victim didn’t lose much blood and there was evidence of searing, meaning he knew how to do it and kept the knife very hot. It reminds me of the Predator kills from the movie, only without all the dripping blood.”
“Those were good movies,” I commented dryly.
“They were and gave the wrong impression about how hard it is to