Chapter 5

She stood, and looked around at her surroundings. It had been a while since she'd been here herself. Although there wasn't much in the way of crime in the town of just a little bit over three thousand, just the occasional runaway cow, or a cat caught in a tree, she still somehow found her days very well occupied.

There were the calls from the elderly who imagined every sound, every creaking floorboard to be an intruder or a harbinger of imminent death, and those were plentiful.

Or the rare dustup between some tourist and one of the locals who took offense to what they saw as their town being disrespected. That can be for something as simple as spitting chewing gum on the sidewalk.

For all its lack of anything approaching adventure, or even a nightlife, or any of the things a young woman like herself would appreciate for that matter, she loved it here, in this little haven she'd found after working for a few years in the big city.

The move had been a bit of a culture shock for sure in the beginning, and it had taken some time getting used to the change as well as being accepted by the locals who had all been here for generations.

But in the three and a half years that she'd been here the place had grown on her and now she couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Even if she wasn't able to recognize her full potential, there were other things to compensate. Like the peace and quiet that couldn't be bought.

She heard the engine of an approaching vehicle at about the same time she saw officer Bailey huffing his way back up the opposite side of the incline in her direction. "Found it; you're not going to believe this but that's Sonya Davis, at least it's her car at the bottom of the hill."

"Sonya?" She looked down at the remains and tried to picture the beautiful vivacious woman's face superimposed over what now laid at her feet. She didn't know the other woman personally, they didn't move in the same circles after all. But she knew her enough to say hi in passing.

As a cop she'd been trained to disassociate herself, to separate what she thought she knew of the person from the reality of her cases, but no amount of training can prepare you for something like this. "She was so young." She looked over as the crime scene techs trudged their way over to her side.

She exchanged greetings with Simon Porter the coroner and his crew and they stood around for the first few seconds taking in the unusual sight of a body that had not expired due to natural causes. It was easy to tell from the odd positioning of the body that it was not a natural fall, if the fumes and scent of burnt flesh didn't already give it away.

"A murder it is then." Detective Sparks looked at the coroner after his cryptic comment. "What do you mean?"

"Well, after I got the call and heard all the particulars I thought for sure old Barney's cheese had fallen off his cracker." He popped a handful of peanuts from his pocket into his mouth.

He gestured towards the body with his hand. "But that doesn't look like an accident to me. Not unless she was running with whatever is in that liquid that's giving off that scent and it spilled all over her." He looked around before turning his attention back to her. "I don't see a container."

Detective Sparks nodded her head amazed that for someone who hadn't handled a suspicious death before he sure seemed to be on the ball. "Well, better get to it then, the heat's rising. It's going to be a bitch of a day." She snorted at his irascibleness and stepped back to let him get to work.

For a crew who didn't see many murders, they got right to work, marking off the area, taking samples of the liquid and checking the surrounding area for anything that might shed some light on what had gone on here.

When the coroner finally turned the woman all the way over the severity of her injuries were revealed. There was a lot of indrawn breaths and mutters of disbelief.

"What do you think doc? Is this what killed her, whatever was used to do this to her face?"

"Well, it looks like some kind of acid was used. That in itself might not have killed her outright but the immediate shock to the system might've played a part, not to mention the fact that she was face down in about an inch of liquid."

"This liquid, I know there's some kind of acid in it, but is there any water?" That would mean the difference between an accidental spill of some kind that this poor woman had been unlucky enough to fall into and something more deliberate.

"No, I don't think so. And look at this hole that it's in. This was freshly done in the last day or so. And since we haven't had any rain lately there was no way for water to gather in there unless someone purposely poured it in there."

"Since she was heard screaming just before she was found I guess we can estimate time of death, but you'll check all the same won't you doc?" He touched the back of one of the victim's arms, which was about the only place not affected that was naked to the eye.

"Rigor mortis hasn't begun to set in so the timing sounds about right. Sometime in the last two hours." He fixed his glove with a snap and went back to poking at the body.

"Hmm, okay doc, I'll leave you to it. Get me what you can as soon as you can." Detective Sparks did her own shaking of the bushes, going back to the car and trying to retrace the steps of the victim. Nothing made sense; there was nothing to give so much as a clue.

"Widen the search Pete, there has got to be something here."

"Yes boss!" They went in two separate directions, taking their time as they made their way deeper into the woods.