Before He Covets

“You self-righteous little fu – ”

“Come on,” a third man said. This was one of the state cops. The man was built like a mountain and wore sunglasses that made him look like the villain from a bad ’80s action movie. “I have the authority to throw both of you out of here. So stop acting like children and do your jobs.”

This man noticed Mackenzie and Bryers for the first time. He walked over to them and shook his head almost apologetically.

“Sorry you’re having to hear all of this nonsense,” he said as he approached. “I’m Roger Smith with the state police. Some scene we’ve got here, huh?”

“That’s what we’re here to figure out,” Bryers said.

Smith turned back to the seven others and used a booming voice when he said: “Step back and let the feds do their thing.”

“What about our thing?” the other ranger asked. Charlie Holt, Mackenzie remembered. He looked to Mackenzie and Bryers with suspicion. Mackenzie thought he even looked a little timid and afraid around them. When Mackenzie looked his way, he looked to the ground, bending over to pick up an acorn. He moved the acorn from hand to hand, then started to pick at the top of it.

“You’ve had enough time,” Smith said. “Just back up for a second, would you?”

Everyone did as asked. The rangers in particular looked unhappy about it. Doing everything she could to ease the situation, Mackenzie figured it would help if she tried involving the rangers as much as possible so tempers didn’t flare.

“What sort of information do rangers typically need to pull from something like this?” she asked the rangers as she ducked under the crime scene tape and started to look around. She saw a marker where the leg had been found, marked as such on a small clapboard marker. A good distance away she saw another marker where the remainder of the body had been found.

“We need to know how long to keep the park closed down for one thing,” Andrews said. “As selfish as it might sound, this park accounts for a pretty good chunk of tourism revenue.”

“You’re right,” Clements spoke up. “That does sound selfish.”

“Well, I think we’re allowed to be selfish from time to time,” Charlie Holt said rather defensively. He then regarded Mackenzie and Bryers with a stare of contempt.

“Why’s that?” Mackenzie asked.

“Do either of you happen to know what sort of crap we have to put up with out here?” Holt asked.

“No, actually,” Bryers asked.

“Teenagers having sex,” Holt said. “Full-blown orgies from time to time. Weird Wicca practices. I’ve even caught some drunk guy out here getting frisky with a stump – and I’m talking pants all the way down. These are the stories the Staties laugh about and the local PD just use as fodder for jokes on the weekends.” He bent down and picked up another acorn, picking at it like he did with the first one.

“Oh,” added Joe Andrews. “And then there’s catching a father in the act of molesting his eight-year-old-daughter just off of a fishing path and having to stop it. And what thanks do I get? The girl yelling at me to leave her daddy alone and then a firm warning from local and state PD to not be so rough next time. So yeah…we can be selfish about our authority from time to time.”

The forest went quiet then, broken only by one of the other local cops as they made a dismissive laughing sound and said: “Yeah. Authority. Right.”

Both rangers stared the man down with extreme hatred. Andrews took a step forward, looking as if he might explode from rage. “Fuck you,” he said simply.

“I said stop this nonsense,” Officer Smith said. “One more time and every single one of you are out of here. You got it?”

Apparently, they did. The forest fell into silence again. Bryers stepped behind the tape with Mackenzie and when everyone else busied themselves behind them, he leaned over to her. She felt Charlie Holt’s eyes on her and it made her want to punch him.

“This could get ugly,” Bryers said quietly. “Let’s do our best to get out of here post-haste, what do you say?”

She went to work then, combing the area and taking mental notes. Bryers had stepped out of the crime scene and was resting against a tree as he coughed into his arm. She did her best not to let this distract her, though. She kept her eyes to the ground, studying the foliage, the ground, and the trees. The one thing that made little sense to her was how a body in such bad shape had been discovered here. It was hard to tell how long ago the murder had occurred or the body had been dumped; the ground itself showed no signs of the brutal act being carried out.

She noted the location of the placards that marked where the different parts of the body had been found. It was too far apart to have been an accident. If someone dumped a mutilated body and placed the parts so far apart, that spoke on intentionality.

“Officer Smith, do you know if there were any signs of bite marks from possible wildlife on the body?” she asked.

“If there were, they were so minuscule that a basic exam didn’t reveal any. Of course, when the autopsy comes in we’ll know more.”

“And no one on your crew or with local PD moved the body or the severed limbs?”

“Nope.”

“Same here,” Clements said. “Rangers, how about you guys?”

“No,” said Holt with an evil sneer in his voice. He now seemed to be taking offense to just about everything.

“Can I ask why that might matter in terms of finding out who did it?” Smith asked her.

“Well, if the killer did his business here, there would be blood everywhere,” Mackenzie explained. “Even if it happened a long while ago, there would be at least trace amounts scattered around. And I don’t see any. So the other possibility is that he maybe dumped the body here. But if that’s the case, why would a severed leg be so far away from the rest of the body?”

“I don’t follow,” Smith said. Behind him, she saw that Clements was also listening attentively but trying not to show it.

“It makes me think the killer did dump the body out here but he separated the parts so far apart on purpose.”

“Why?” Clements asked, no longer able to pretend he wasn’t listening.

“It could be several reasons,” she said. “It could have been something as morbid as just having fun with the body, scattering it around like it was nothing but toys he was playing with. Wanting to get our attention. Or there could be some sort of calculated reasons for it – for the distance, for the fact that it was a leg, and so on.”

“I see,” Smith said. “Well, some of my men already wrote up a report that has the distance between the body and the leg. Just about every measurement you could ask for.”

Mackenzie took a look around again – at the gathered group of men and the seemingly peaceful forest – and paused. There was no clear reason for this location. That made her think that the location was random. Still, to be so far off of the beaten path spoke of something else. It indicated that the killer knew these woods – maybe even the park itself – fairly well.

She started walking around the scene, looking closer for trace amounts of dried blood. But there was nothing. With every moment that passed, she became more and more certain of her theory.

“Rangers,” she said. “Is there any way to get the names of people that frequent the park? I’m thinking about people that come here a lot and know the area well.”

“Not really,” Joe Andrews said. “The best we can do is provide a list of financial donors.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said.

“You have a theory to test?” Smith asked.

“The actual murder was done elsewhere and the body was dumped here,” she said, half to herself. “But why here? We’re almost a mile away from the central path and there appears to be nothing significant about this location. So that makes me think that whoever is behind this knows the park grounds fairly well.”

She got a few nods as she explained things but got the overall feeling that they either doubted her or just didn’t really care.

Mackenzie turned to Bryers.

“You good here?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Thanks, gentlemen.”