When she came to a “Y” she hesitated for a moment before bearing right, only to be startled into a full stop when something large and ghostly rose from the fog ahead of her.
It was only a statue, she realized, laughing at her fear and moving forward to run a hand lightly over the cold marble. She recognized the tableau. Jesus is Condemned to Death. She peered through the fog and saw another statue a few feet ahead. The Stations of the Cross cut in intricate detail on expensive stone. They’d probably been here since the beginning days of the school, if the dark green moss edging the marble’s surface was anything to judge by.
She ran slowly past the remaining eleven statues, looking at the story of Christ’s passion worked in stone. And then it was only trees again and the wind whipping lightly across her face. She ran hard, blanking her mind to everything but the movement of her feet. When a large pond came into view on her right she slowed and pulled off the path, feeling the grass cold against her ankles as she headed for the water’s edge. There was a small stone bench and she took a seat, breathing hard.
The water of the pond, murky and algae laden where it merged into grass, was a still oval of silver. Leaning against the bench, feeling the cold stone press into her back, she looked out over the water and went through the mental checklist of everything she needed to finish prepping for class that morning.
Something caught her eye. A glimmer of color between the trees. She stood up and squinted, trying to see it more clearly. A coppery red color. Something bright, but it couldn’t be a bird, could it?
She stood up and circled slowly around the approximately quarter-mile loop, running at a slower pace in an attempt to keep sight of it, but the trees blocked her view. Once she was on the far side she slowed to a walk, looking around in vain for that color and then back across the pond to find the bench where she’d been sitting so she’d have a reference point.
This was where it should be, but she saw nothing but green as she walked toward the trees until suddenly there it was again. Just a splash of color. She moved past the trunk of a maple and saw it clearly this time, that bright coppery red that should have seemed familiar.
It was hair, hanging damp and heavy. But Lauren didn’t notice that as much as she did the naked body it was attached to.
Stephanie was making love with Alex when the phone rang. They were in bed, half-asleep, a slow, sweet, good morning suddenly and rudely interrupted. The noise echoed through the small town house, a chorus of phones jangling in tandem. He ignored it, trying to hold her attention, but she couldn’t. Cursing, he slipped out of her as she plucked the phone off the nightstand.
“Detective Land.”
“It’s not even six,” Alex complained, grunting as he climbed out of bed and stalked to the bathroom still semi-erect.
“Got a call from the Hill,” the nasally voiced dispatcher said. “Detective Plane said ten minutes.”
“Okay.”
Stephanie hung up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, slipping into her panties and reaching for the pair of khaki pants she’d left on a chair the night before. She walked toward the bathroom, avoiding Alex’s work boots and fastening a bra as she went.
“What’s it this time? Someone shoot their neighbor’s dog?” Alex flushed the toilet and moved roughly past her.
“I don’t control the calls,” she said, but she was speaking to the air.
He was in bed, lying with his back to her side, when she came back out, fully dressed with her long brown hair twisted into a knot at the base of her neck. His short dark hair was disheveled and she could see the rigid set to his shoulders through the T-shirt he’d put back on. She took her weapon from the nightstand and checked it before slipping the holster around her shoulders with the ease of long practice. A light blazer on top, badge in the breast pocket and comfortable shoes on her feet. Nine minutes and thirteen seconds.
She leaned down to kiss Alex, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“Sorry,” she said in a whisper, breathing in his scent for a moment.
“S’okay,” he murmured, turning to press a brief kiss to her lips, but he sounded sulky.
Detective Oswald Plane, known as “Oz,” drove up in an unmarked sedan as she was pulling the door to the town house closed behind her.
“You gotta move closer to town, Land,” he said, shaking his grizzled head as she got in the passenger door.
“Yeah, move my paycheck closer to a living wage and I’ll see what I can do.”
Plane grinned, his walrus mustache parting to show large teeth yellowed from too much coffee. “Why don’t you just sleep with the chief?”
“And spoil the fun I’m having with your brother?”
This time he guffawed. Stephanie smiled and reached for the cup of take-out coffee closest to her. “You remember my sugar this time?”
“Oh, I know you like it sweet.”
“Sweet and hot, Oz, don’t forget it.”
Sometimes she wondered what Alex would make of this banter, whether he’d be appalled or embarrassed by the sexual innuendo that his girlfriend participated in with such relish. Fiancée, not girlfriend. She kept forgetting that. They’d been engaged for barely a month. The diamond solitaire sparkling on her hand was still new to her.
“Stop mooning at your ring, Land, and tell me where we turn off for the Hill.”
Stephanie flushed and looked up at the road ahead. “Another two miles at least. You need GPS. What’s up?”
“Some kid’s dead. Probably offed herself.”
“Shit. I hate those.”
“Yeah. If they’re going to kill themselves why can’t they go off a cliff in Morristown and spare us the cleanup?”
He reached toward a white bakery box sitting on the dash. “You want one?” he said, rustling around in it as the car swerved slightly on the road.
Stephanie steadied the corner of the wheel closest to her. “Way to be a walking stereotype.”
“They’re Danish, not doughnuts.” He took a big bite out of a pastry that managed to look pint-sized in his beefy hand.
“Same difference.”
“Now that’s just plain ignorant. They’re not the same thing at all.”
“It’s still just sugar and fat.”
“My two favorite food groups.” Oz grinned and waved the half-eaten Danish at her. “These are from Rosenbaum’s—best bakery in town. C’mon, have one already.”
“You shouldn’t be eating them.”
“Yeah, yeah—who are you, my mother?”
A patrol car was waiting by the stone-pillared entrance to flag them down—evidence that Oz’s notoriously bad sense of direction was known beyond the detective squad.
In the two minutes it took to climb the hill, Stephanie loaded up with latex gloves and checked to make sure that she had Vicks in her pocket. Oz shoved the rest of the Danish in his mouth and brushed crumbs off onto the floor.
They passed the main building, where a small crowd stood on the steps, and drove by a patrolman signaling them to go farther up the road. It ended in a large parking lot where Oz pulled up behind two black-and-whites, lights flashing. An EMS van was nearby and one of the paramedics was sitting on the back bumper smoking a cigarette. A sheriff’s department vehicle signaled that the crime scene unit had beaten them to the scene.
A